August 31, 2010 • 41 mins
Cremation is a burial process practiced around the world, but how exactly does it work? Josh and Chuckers take a detailed look at cremation's history, practices and controversies in this episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chucker's bryant
(00:20):
with a full beard. Actually, yeah, do you know what
that would smell like if it caught fire? It would
smell like mayonnaise. It's it's smell worse than mandaise ever did.
Jerry's in there like she doesn't like the smell of
burning hair or mannix um. Burning mayonnaise would be particularly
bad if you had hair on top of your burning
(00:42):
hairy mannaise the worst thing you can burn, So chuck.
Hopefully that will never happen while you're alive. It could
possibly happen um after you're deceased, if you're cremated. Like
a fellow named Ralph White, who you know about? I've
never heard of the guy you have to chuck. Do
you remember that horrid webcast we used to have. Yes,
there's a guy. He was the president past president of
(01:04):
the Adventurers Adventurers Club and not to be confused with
the one from South Park. This guy UM was a
real life adventure and he he was I think he
was like a a cameraman for UM a skydiving show
called rip Chord National Geographic. He was there when they
discovered the Titanic Buddies with the Jim Cameron. Yeah he was.
(01:26):
He was second director I think on Titanic. Yeah, who
was Jim Cameron was also in that club, the little
Club in l A. That's right. Yeah, I'll bet Ralph
White got Jim Cameron in. And are we calling him
Jim Now? I didn't realize we were on that that
friendly basis Jim or Jimmy. Well, anyway, Ralph White was
had a pretty cool post not post mortem. He had
(01:46):
a very cool posthumous story and that was he was
cremated and his friends were so dedicated and loyal to
him that, Um, whenever they go on to travel now
they take about a tenth about a teaspoon or of
the teaspoon, some very small amount of Ralph White's cremated
remains and scatter and wherever they go. Pretty cool. Yeah,
(02:07):
I think he's in the whaling wall in Jerusalem. Um,
he's in Lake but call. He went on a space
flight and Ralph Whites. Posthumous adventures kind of illustrate all
the wonderful things you can do with a cremated body,
which is one of the reasons why people choose to
be cremated. It's highly portable, right, absolutely, and it's nothing new, Chuck.
(02:28):
Cremation has been going on for a very long time,
hasn't it. Yeah, we won't get into I mean, there's
we could rattle off every country and when they started,
but we really could because of this fine, fine article
written by a freelancer, right, Michelle Kim. I've never heard
of this person before, but it was a really great article. Um.
But it has been around since prehistoric times. China has
(02:49):
been doing it since eight thousand BC. That's more than
ten thousand years ago, more than ten thousand years ago.
One part of the history I did find interesting though
and fitting since we did our Freemason cast was the
Freemasons during the French Revolution kind of push for cremation
because it was the whole not anti religion, but just
sort of mixing it up with religion. You know. They
were anti Catholic Church, well, very much against the Church,
(03:11):
and they were saying, if you have yourself cremated, it's
kind of like sticking your thumb up because well, because
Catholic said, you can't get cremated for a long time. Yeah, well,
it kind of contradicts the whole resurrection thing. You know,
the body's kind of gotta be intact. It's like the
one thing we can't do. You know. We can rise
from the dead, but if you're sorry, yeah, and you
(03:34):
you don't want to come back and find that you're
nothing but asses, because you're gonna be ticked off, right right. Uh.
The actual creamator, the cremation chamber, which I like to
call the cremator even though it's not. It sounds like
a crib star product from the Adventures of Pete and Pete.
It does. It was invented in the late eighteen hundreds
by Professor Brunetti, and uh, it started in Earnest in
(03:57):
the United States in Pennsylvania in eighteen seventies six. Yeah,
when Pennsylvania isn't non licensed state still, which I thought
was interesting. Is it really Well, there's a little bit
of a scandal that we'll talk about later that Um. Apparently,
the the crematory business, you either have fine upstanding people
or like some of the earth ye running these places, right, Yeah,
(04:19):
let's talk about how this works, all right. Yeah, well
I got a step for you real quick though. As
far as it's popularity, Um, in n three point six
percent of bodies were cremated, and just a few years
ago that numbers at and they expected to be half right. Well,
there's a lot of a lot of reasons why right,
I mean, we're running out of land. Um. There's a
(04:42):
lot of people who think that burials aren't so green,
which is true. Yeah, um, yeah, because they use like,
you know, really nice woods and metals, and you have
to pour cement lining the bodies and balms, so it's
going to eventually leak out all of those things. Right.
We'll talk later about whether or not cremations green and
the spoilers it's not. Sort of is, but it's not.
(05:05):
Well it's not green, but it's definitely not green. It's
not brown either, it's not black. It's somewhere between. So chuckers,
you're ready to talk. Yeah, Like, just the actual process
is pretty gruesome. Um. Initially, they store the body in
a cool room just to keep it nice and fresh
for the cremation. Um. It's usually examined by a coroner
(05:28):
and they have to like sign off and say this
is good to go, because you can't exhume the body
later on if you need to. No accidental death that
hasn't been fully vetted, like I imagine, they wouldn't cremate
like someone that was had any kind of relation to
a crime or anything like that, at least not for
a long time. Uh. And then what happens is they
(05:49):
remove some things from your body. If you have the
following pacemaker, breast implants, silicon breast implants, prothesis, or cancer seeds,
the little radioactive seeds that they inject into a tumor
and then be shoot with like a laser or a
radio frequency generator. Yeah, none of this stuff is good
(06:10):
for for cremation, so they remove that from your body.
But there's some things that can't be removed. Well, they
could remove it, but they tend not to. Easy fillings,
mercury fillings, jewelry, and glasses like some people want, like
you would be buried with your glasses on. They want
you cremated with your glasses, right. But in some countries,
I didn't look this up, so I don't know what
(06:31):
countries there are laws against anybody who's cremating a body
from touching anything on the body. Right, you gotta do
it how you get it right, that's what they say
on the shirts. So you can buy, they can get shop. Uh.
And then they put the body once it's been removed,
these things into a flammable box like a pine or
cardboard box or one made of hairy mannaise. They slide
(06:55):
it into the incinerator is already preheated, by the way, yes,
to at least eleven hundred degrees fahrenheight, which is five
degrees celsius. I think off the top of my head. Um,
and that's hot, chuck, it's gotta be hot. But that's
not like you don't just put the body in and
then it just burns. It just catches fire. Right now.
(07:16):
They actually shoot a column of flame at the torso
like a jet engine. Yeah, basically, So once the body's
in what's it called the retort. Uh, it's called a retort.
They slide it in there on the old metal rollers
and uh. Families. Sometimes you can watch this process through
the window if you want, and if your Hindu, and
if it's a Hindu cremation, you can actually push go right, Yeah,
(07:39):
I guess to start the column of flame. Right you
just like so long? Yeah, so here aunt Tina. Uh
so the door is sealed up obviously, Um, like you said,
they aim at your torso and then this is what happens.
This is the gruesome part um as you would expe
(08:00):
when you have a jet engine jet flame shot at
your torso, it ignites the container initially. Obviously, your body
starts to dry out all that water that's in your
body pretty quick. Yeah. I would imagine your soft tissue
tightens up, it burns up, and it vaporizes. Your skin
discolors and blisters and splits, just like a broad Worth
(08:23):
on a girl. Yeah, exactly. The muscle chars, it flexes,
and your limbs actually can extend like your limbs are moving.
I looked all over the place to find the discussions
about this stuff about like a body sitting up. That's
the closest thing I saw was does a body sit up?
I think it was a wicky answer so that it
has zero credibility. But if you're if your muscles are
(08:45):
contracting or tightening or doing anything like, yeah, your arms
can go up. And I mean imagine the people eight
and eight thousand BC in China, they're like, wait, they're
not dead. Yeah. At a goldfish, I tried to flush
one time and I put him in and he started
swimming again. And then I put him back in the
tank and he just floated. So it was just like
the water most and those Well, now I didn't flush
(09:08):
it like I would when I put him in the toilet.
He started moving every single time. It was weird. That
is weird. I'm pretty convinced he was dead though, are
he was by the time I froze him in a
block of ice. And you'll find out when you get
to the the heaven. That's right. Um, So your muscles have
charred and tightened, and your limbs are flailing about and
your bones obviously you're the last thing to go, and
they are calcified and then kind of just flake off
(09:31):
and crumble into little bone bits. Yeah, and chuck. Uh.
The bones that are or the stuff that is left
are the charred bones that are really doesn't take a
whole lot, I think to pulverize them, but it does
take an extra step and they actually do hold their shape.
So you go from a body in a box to
like a charred skeleton is what it ultimately comes down
(09:52):
to and you either rake or sweep the remaining like
bone material into something called the cremulator cremulate, and that
is the that's a grinder that grinds up everything and
pulverizes into this fine, grainy actually coarse grainy powder. Yeah.
They described it as like um ash is sort of
(10:13):
a weird word because it's not like a like a
charred ash from your fire. It's it's more like gravel,
they said, like little tiny bits of gravel because it's
pulverized bone. Right, um. And it usually takes about two
to three hours, depending on the kind of uh crematory.
I guess whatever machine you put it in. Yeah, there's
different kinds, right, and how big your bones are too,
(10:36):
that has something to do with it too. But also UM,
I found that it depends on the level of well,
there's there's something called the um enter Tech four. You
should go on to Matthew's crematorium dot com. They have
specs and it's just weird because these guys are like
selling their crematorium uh, and here's all the specs for them.
(10:59):
This thing is like state of the art. Interchech four
is um and it burns a body and no more
than seventy five minutes. Really, that's pretty good. That must
have been the modern ones that they say are all
like automated. Now, well they also sell them ones that
burn a body in four hours. So it's like low
end to high end. Okay, you know what I mean.
Pay for what you get um. And at the end
(11:19):
of this whole process, you're gonna end up with about
three to nine pounds of ash. And that's actually that's
where it depends on your bones. They say it doesn't
matter like how fat you are because that I think
that burns away pretty easily. Yeah, I would think. So
it's like your bone structure. Bones tough to burn, I guess. So,
so chuck these things. We said that they are preheated
to about eleven degrees, right, but they get up to
(11:42):
about two thousand. So you can't just build this thing.
You can't build an inner chech or whatever you're building
out of um regular brick or cment or something like that.
I think it explode the first time you tried to
do this. So these specialized composite brick material and actually
over time the interior will be eaten away by the
(12:03):
heat and the expansion and contraction will actually lose surface.
So apparently what's recommended is after UM the bricks lose
about half of their width, they have to be replaced. Yeah,
and it sounds kind of crude, But the way it's
described in the article, and the way I've heard it
described is it's it's sort of like a pizza oven. Yeah,
they're made of similar things. Cooka pizza, cooka body, cookade body.
(12:26):
So these things go for a two and fifty thou
something like that. UM, and they use natural gas or
propane or um propane accessories or diesel. I've seen UM.
But they used to burn coal, and I imagine that
was a real pain in body back in the sixties.
(12:46):
I think they were still using coal. I gotta keep
stoking that fire, right. Another thing I thought was cool
was UM And I started thinking too, when you when
you burn a fire, obviously you see ashes kind of
floating all over the place, and I thought, well, surely
they've got a you know, account for that when you're
burning a body, and they do. They ignite a second
flame in a side chamber, and that burns off dust
(13:08):
that's trying to escape the retort, and some of them
even shoot water out the top to make sure none
of the dust escapes out of the top of the plume.
I guess it's called what scrubbing, wet scrubbing? What what
else do we do? Oh? That was the a fluorid thing, right,
descrubbing the inside of the and carbon sequestion sequestration. Yeah,
(13:29):
my brain is getting too full these days, I do
we need to stop doing the show. And after it's
all done, you can actually get remains cremated remains. And
I found that they say that you shouldn't call them creamines.
That's what the the c A n A says. Why
they just say it's sort of a crude thing that
people non industry people say, let's just shorten it. And
(13:50):
they're like, they think it's disrespected, So we won't say
the word cremains. But you can have your cremated remains
mailed to you via USPS if you want. But that's
it in the United States eights. You can't do it
via FedEx or ups or you can't if they know
what's in the box. Um and I couldn't find out
why there's no explanation on ups IS or FedEx this site.
(14:12):
They just say you can't. We won't ship that. They
also won't ship a disinterred body. Well, thank goodness for that,
I guess. But um, the only thing I could the
only suggestion I could find why they wouldn't do this,
You can't ensure cremated remains. Oh yeah, that's probably it,
which I imagine they ensure everything somehow, And they do
want to get hit with a lawsuit, right because people
(14:34):
get mad when you lose their Yeah. Probably so. The
other cool thing about the USPS, though, is that they
make sure to point out that it's got to be
a sift proof box. You don't want like ashes leaking
out the side, and you have to have like somebody's
got a sign for it. Right. So usually if you
don't get an urn or whatever, when when you get
your created remains, um, the crematorium will have them in
(14:55):
like basically a plastic bag inside maybe a plastic line
designed to hold this kind of thing, right yeah, and
there may be just like very small remnants of other
people with your remains. Like they did the best job
they can. They burn one body at a time. Um,
like you know, if you're on the up and up,
as a good cremator should be. But inevitably when you're
(15:17):
talking about ash and you're sweeping it out, there might
be a little bit of Joe mixed in with Harry,
if you know what I mean. Well, I know what
you mean, so chuck it. Also, I guess the industry
standard is, just like you don't want to switch babies
in the hospital, at the other end of life, you
don't want to switch cremated remains of dead people. Right.
(15:37):
So apparently they'll stick a tag in your mouth like
a metal disc, or they'll put it somewhere on your
person so that when you're when you're melted down, this
thing is still there so you can be identified. Um,
You've got paperwork that goes with you from the moment
you come to the crematorium to the moment you leave.
That's supposed to be with you every step of the way. Um,
(15:59):
And there's basically all of this is supposed to avoid
a mix up, Right, You're supposed to. It doesn't always,
especially when the crematorium operator or owner isn't on the
up and up, as you said, And there's been plenty
of examples of that, haven't there been. Yeah, I was
a little alarmed to find out how little regulation goes
on in some states. Yeah, only until the Tri States
(16:22):
Tri State crematorium Candle of I think two to Uh.
Did Georgia close its loopholes and now all crematoriums have
to be licensed by the state. Yeah, in Georgia. But
and and I actually got a different number here she said,
twenty three of the fifty states license, I've actually got
only eight do not license, is what I found. Oh well,
(16:43):
that's that's that's bettering. But if you look all of these, um,
the examples in this article are in the two thousands,
So I wonder if that caused like a state expansion
or crematorium regulation reform. So, because if you what happened
in Georgia will tell you a sec But if you
see this on the news and you're in like Pennsylvania,
(17:05):
they don't want that kind of news hitting their state.
So I would imagine it probably spurred some some action
Pennsylvania and Budd we'll talk about the Georgia guy first,
very Brent Marsh Yeah, pleaded guilty and apologized. Yeah he
uh he owned a CREMATORI um in noble Georgia, and
(17:25):
neither Chuck Nora, I know where that is, so don't
ask um. I think it's a probably in the north
west because it's where Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama come together,
which is why you call it tried state crematorium. He
was serving all three states, UM and in all three
states the bodies of the beloved deceased were basically half
(17:47):
buried out in the backyard because the cremator broke down
and they just never got it fixed. Yeah, the incinerator
broke and so I think three hundred and thirty six
bodies in total were found and UM I found they
originally they could only charge him with accepting money and
(18:07):
fraud for services not rendered. Yeah, there was no there's
no law in the books. They hit him with some
other stuff though I think it must have come out
after this article. He was actually charged with UM almost
eight hundred counts of theft and abuse of a corpse.
So they actually charging with stealing these corpses. You don't
want to go to prison within an abuse of a
corpse wrap on your head. They'll find out about that. Yeah,
(18:29):
And he was sentenced to eight thousand years in prison
and UM plea bargain that down to twelve years. Somehow
did you say eight thousand years? That was almost a spit.
Take that. Yeah, you were drinking your deep drink and
you almost fitted out. Uh so, yeah, eight thousand down
to twelve, which is pretty good deal for him. Um
(18:50):
there was a thirty six million dollar settlement from fifty
eight funeral homes that sent bodies to the sky, So
they sued the funeral homes and then they brought a suit,
an eighty million dollar civil suits settlement against um, this
guy and his father's estate. And they probably don't have
that kind of dose, so they're probably gonna do what
it happens when that happens, which is you go after
(19:11):
the insurance company. Oh yeah, the Georgia farm. But the
guy didn't even get around to having the incinerator fixed.
He does, he's got three bodies in his backyard. But yeah,
so he's uh, he's in jail right now as far
as yeah, almost for eight thousand years. And you said
Pennsylvania didn't want that to happen, Probably it did. In
(19:34):
two thousand five. What happened there there was a guy
who ran a crematorium and he had a he had
a deal with the local women's hospital to cremate the
remains of pre term babies. Basically aborted fetuses. This guy's
job was to incinerate him. It's probably not a fun
contract to sign. Even if that's the way you make
(19:54):
your money, you can't feel great about like closing that deal, right, Yeah, yeah,
you don't go out for a big fat st Um
the authorities, I guess we're tipped off. And they went
into his garage and found in boxes the remains of
three hundred fetuses. Actually nineteen of them were post term really,
so they were born children. Um that he was supposed
(20:18):
to cremate and he didn't. But they can only get
them on nineteen counts because they're unborn, so he couldn't.
They weren't technically human beings under the eyes of the loss,
so he didn't get anything for those, But for the
nineteen he he got in some trouble, but he set
in his body. I don't know, but he had him
in boxes in his garage to which is apparently the
m O of the shady crematorium operator. Yeah. I hope
(20:40):
they did the book at him. Oh yeah, I'm sure
they did. That makes me angry. Uh, can't you tell
how angry at him? Um? And like Elsinore, California, josh
In two thousand three, a a dodgy owner was selling
body parts for a medical research like heads yeah too people, Yeah,
which means that he was cutting these heads off. Oh yeah,
and he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. And
(21:03):
did I say just say prison? And then in Mississippi, Uh,
there was a really nice guy named Mark Sieep who
was mixing human remains together, giving out wrong ashes, dumping
them into trash bends and he was found guilty and
put in jail too. Yeah did you say that, um
Marie Brent Marsh was giving people wood, ash and cement.
(21:25):
I didn't mention that, but yeah, that's what he did,
because I mean, it's not like he was just like,
oh I got nothing and they burned up entirely. He
was like, here's some cement and an urn. Thanks for
the money. Yeah. I understand that guy's incinerator burning and
maybe not having the money to fix it, but I
bet you anything he may have made enough money to
get it fixed after that and was like, hey, I'm
kind of onto something here. We don't actually have to
(21:47):
do this as pure profit exactly, So Chuck, before we
get into things that you can do with um the
remains of a loved one, right, can we talk about
it whether or not it's green. I got a couple
of stats here that I think are important. So a
lot of people are like, a natural burial or a
regular burial is not very green, and it's expensive to
(22:08):
between like seven and ten grand. But then they also say,
you know, I don't want to go entirely green, which
is bio cremation, which is alkaline hydrosis. We talked about
that before, and what you can do with the dead body. Remember,
it turns you into oil that's poured down the drain.
That's pretty awesome, it is. So this has to be
something in between though, right for the conscientious person who
(22:30):
maybe kind of believes in and afterlife and wants to
do more with this body that do you believe in afterlife?
It's a vague noise. I wonder where you endure trying
to believe. It's like a tick sucking like a hot
dog pack. So in two thousand nine, Reuters just doing
this article on biocremation, they were talking about how green
(22:50):
is regular cremation, and it's not green at all like
you think about it. You're using tons of natural gas,
not tons OF's hyperbolic, but you're using a lot of
natural gas or diesel or whatever. You're using a lot
of electricity. It takes both. Um, So apparently it releases
a standard cremation releases about eight hundred and eighty pounds
(23:11):
of CEO two just one body, and that's the big enemy.
And it uses enough energy to basically power a five
hundred mile road trip, so not not one and the same,
like these are two separate things. So it uses the
energy to get you across country five miles and it
depending on the size of your country, and it releases
(23:32):
eight hundred and eighty pounds of CEO two into the air.
I wonder what that compares to footprint wise to standard burial.
I think it's I think I don't know, and I
think it's just entirely different ways. Where I think maybe
a natural or a regular traditional burial is more it's
more polluting, like directly polluting into the into the ground
(23:55):
and the kind of thing, and it's using up resources,
where um, a cream nation has less of an impact
over time, but immediately it's a lot of input. It
requires a lot of input. Gotcha, that's my concept of it, right.
I wouldn't mind being burned, but I like the um.
Which country was it where they like burn you on
top of the wood by like the banks of the river.
(24:17):
That's India. Yeah, I like that. That's what how I
would want to go. Well, buddy, if you live in
India and you're a Hindu, that's exactly how you have
to go. That was a perfect segrete of religion. And
I guess so. Uh you said Hindu is a mandate cremation. Yeah,
They're the only only religion that does. Yeah, and it's uh,
it's called um. I'm gonna go ahead and give it
a whirl here. Uh antem sandcar? Which is last? Right?
(24:40):
You wanna hit the other one? Uh? Antsd? Yeah? Antist?
I think? Which is last sacrifice? Yeah? And that is
those are one of the sixteen life rituals. I guess
it would be the last one. Actually, I'll probably be
corrected there. Maybe one after that the whole rebirth and
all that. Maybe, but the the I guess the smoke
(25:01):
um gets the body to the next life. I bet
it's one of the last four. I bet it is.
I'll wager on that. Uh. And they yeah, like you said,
it's their Hindu. So they say you dispose of this
body and it ushers you and helps you be reborn
into the next life when you're cremated. And while Hinduism
is the only religion that mandates you have that's how
you that's how your body is disposed of. Um, Sikhism
(25:25):
and Jainism are both kind of strongly adorse it, although
they don't require it. Right And Um, you were saying
that they cremate people in India along the banks of
the river. Most of their cremations from what I understand
our open air cremations idea, there's a city called Varanasi,
which is apparently is the holy city to be cremated
(25:45):
in and you are cremated out and open along the
banks of the Ganges. Yeah, that's nice. But they do
have an electric crematorium. But since there's a billion people
who live in India and all of one electricity, this
place that suffers power. Man, that's sad. If you are
a Christian, Jewish or your Muslim Josh, they generally frown
(26:08):
upon it because or outright prohibited, depending on which religion
it is. Yeah, Islam prohibits it. Yeah, they like they
want you buried that day the same day you die,
preferably right. So Um in Judaism, Chuck Uh, I don't
think it's actually restricted. I think you can if you
want to. But the m among Orthodox and conservative Jews,
(26:30):
the memory of the Holocaust sure still understandably smarts to
the point where they're like, why would you want to
be cremated? This is you know, that's it's there's legacy
is still around. So there's a lot of there's a
lot of Jews who don't want to be cremated, even
though their religion doesn't prohibit it, right understandably, Um, Protestants,
actually is where you're gonna be find some more open
(26:53):
minds to cremation. They don't, you know, have any literature
that says you should do this, but they're definitely more
understanding about it than other really, right. And we talked
about the Catholic Church having a problem with it because
of its association with subversiveness towards the church. But in
the sixties the Catholic Church said, hey, we've never really
prohibited it. You can't get cremated if you want, and
(27:16):
apparently they gave it a boost. The Hula Burger people
really catered for the Catholics in the sixties. I found
Canna says that of Catholics are cremated now, so that's
quite a boost. I would say. Um. The Mormons also,
they're not big on cremation, although they don't prohibit it.
And in countries where um it's traditional, they're like, yeah,
(27:37):
please go ahead. But the Orthodox Eastern Orthodox Church says nay,
yeah yet, good point. Thanks, Um, where are we now
with some can we talk about finally what you can
do with your remains? I think it's high time to
you not what you can do with your remains, because
you clearly can't do anything. But that's not what you
can do if your remains, but what your friends and
(27:58):
family can do with your remains. And sometimes they like
to um, keep you in and urn and then they
have these little cemetery like buildings called a columbarium. And
they just told ashes from what I understand, yeah, it's
like a vault. So some people choose that that cost
him dough. Obviously, go ahead and tell us about your hero.
(28:19):
I know you want to mention that who Hunter t Yeah?
Uh yeah, he was mixed with fireworks and shot out
of a cannon, a hundred and fifty three foot cannon
also called a memorial tower, and apparently it's it was
an organization called Heavens Above Fireworks that did this, and
every anybody can do it. And Johnny Depth paid for
(28:40):
the whole party, right, Yeah, And from what I saw
it was if it was this British company, he would
have paid about the equivalent of three thousand U S.
Dollars for a large fireworks display. That's what they charged.
Don't mention money. Actually I did see the average cremation
cost is about six d bucks. Yeah, and the average
funeral I saw five grand in this article, it's ten grand. Decided,
(29:03):
let's say somewhere between five and ten dollars. But back
to things you can do. We would be remiss um
if we didn't mention to our NERD friends that Gene Roddenberry,
the creator of Star Trek fame, was everyone knows this.
He was shot into space. So was Timothy Learry. Oh yeah,
that's right, by the same company, Celestis. And they're still
in business as far as I know. I bet they are.
(29:25):
And then you got life, Jim. If we've talked about
I think again on the webcast. You can take your
cremated remains and have them compressed into a synthetic diamond.
You can have your remains mixed into paint, and I
guess that's not so much you can have, but you
can probably just do that. It depends. Like there's there's
(29:46):
there's actually a guy who does something called um Ash
portraits and he he does it just with the person's ashes,
but he'll also mix it in with oil or whatever. Interesting,
but he does portraits of the deceased. All right, change
my mind. I want to be remembered as dogs playing poker.
That would be pretty off, That's what that would be
(30:06):
really cool. Uh what else can you do? Um? You can, Oh,
you can become part of the coral reef. I know
there's companies that do that. There's a company called Eternal Reefs.
I think is the big one. This is pretty obvious name,
don't you know. And and what they actually they make
different sized reefs and what they do is they mix
your remains in with cement and like so the big one,
(30:28):
it can accommodate up to four family members. So if
your family went down in a plane and you just
feel like showing out for one, you know, coral reef
they've got you cover. It's like seven grand uh huh,
and it's pretty big size and it's cool looking. I
mean it looks like an artificial reef, and then you
take it out and dump it overboard. Fish live amongst
your your family members, who I really really hope loved
(30:50):
scuba diving exactly. Do you remember Keith Richards a couple
of years ago, he's still alive, well now, his dad
passed away, and he said that he snorted his father
with cocaine and then I mean apparently said the Center interview.
Then that came out and he was like, no, no, no,
no no, I was just kidding around. I of course
I didn't snort my father. I think he snorted his father.
(31:10):
I think he did too. The Sound like Um episode
where this these people snort the remains of this girl. Yeah,
I remember that one. I do have some stats for you, though,
what people seem to like to doty percent to keep
the ashes at their home, thirty seven percent bury the ashes.
Do the scatter very popular? I thought it'd be more
(31:32):
popular than that though. The most popular one is water
scattering and number two is scattering somewhere on family property.
Not really three percent are put in the columbarium. And
you might notice, Josh that adds, Yeah, there's one percent
that go on claimed, so sad. It is sad, and
(31:53):
I apparently the people who own crematoriums find it sad too,
because even though after a set period of time and
stay that regulate this kind of stuff, which did we
say the Federal Trade Commission regulates mortuaries, there's no federal
oversight for any crematorium comes out of the state. Um
but in states where there are regulations, they still say
(32:13):
you can throw these out after a set period of time.
But most crematoriums, the up and up ones will hang
onto these things for decades because again it's a small box.
But I mean, they don't want to just throw it away.
It's and it's only one percent, So I don't imagine
they're like overflowing with unclaimed remains. I would hope not.
But since you did mention the scattering, we should talk
(32:34):
about some of the laws about scattering, because you can't
just scatter anywhere. No, the National Park Service has no
official stance on scattering remains. They leave it up to
each individual park, but most of the park say unless
there's like a grave area, like it designated grave area,
you can't scatter ashes here. Well, it also said they
(32:57):
kind of turned a blind eye, like they know it
os on and I'm sure some ashes in Yosemite Park
are like how are you going to tell the difference
between that and like fire ash or dirt or whatever. Um,
But state parks they say, actually, the National Forest Service
doesn't regulate anything on their land. So that's where you
(33:17):
would probably want to go, like avoid the National park
and just stay in the National Forest or go to
your state park that was a beloved state park, because
they're a little more lax than the national parks, right them.
If you want to do water scattering or ocean scattering, Um,
the e p A says you've gotta be three miles
away from the coastline, right, very prudish. California is like
that's way too much. Um, they still have restriction, but
(33:39):
it's five feet right yeah, pretty close. Um. And people
don't always follow regulations, right. Yeah. So you want to
tell about the Cubs fan, Yeah, this is kind of
a nice story. Um, Steve Goodman died of lukemi in
die hard Cuvees fan sadly did not get to see
the Cubs winn World Series. As likely neither will you,
(34:03):
and I um. And four years later he his buddy
snuck in before opening day and threw the ashes into
the wind out over the field. Nice. Pretty cool. That
is pretty cool. Did you ever hear of Graham Parsons story?
His body was stolen right yeah, his friends, Um, he
said that he wanted to be cremated and scattered on
cap rock in Joshua Tree National Park. Right. Um and
(34:26):
his parents found out he was dead and had his
bodyship back for a private funeral, and his friends found
out that they weren't going to be invited, so they
stole him and uh took him out to Joshua Tree
and opened the casket through some gasoline on him and
set him on fire five gallons of gas right, and
it didn't work because we've said what it takes. So
(34:48):
he was half cremated by the time the cops showed up.
He's sort of melty and just like Georgia. Back then,
there was nothing about there were no penalties for stealing
a corpse, so they got them for theft of a casket.
I think that was Did you see that movie? Johnny
Knoxville played the guy that his buddy It's not very good.
I did stay in the hotel though. Actually I meant
(35:08):
to mention that in the Root sixty six. Yeah, the
Joshua tree in not in his room though. And before
we move on from Scattering josh we have to mention,
because we like to mention our movies, the excellent, excellent
scene from The Big Lebowski, the scattering scene in the
end of when all of them just blew back all
over them John Codman. Uh, it was Steve assuming that died, right,
(35:29):
I think, and he he threw him out in the window,
back in their face over the ocean. It was good.
It was very good. Uh, Chuck. If I am dead
and I'm being cremated and I'm part of se of
the population, what country am i am? Uh? Sweden, Switzerland, Switzerland,
(35:50):
I've been cremated and I am part of just a
meager three percent of the population. What country am in? Ghana?
That's right, That's right? And in between are actually higher
than that Hong Kong is. Places like the Czech Republic
in Singapore and the UK are sort of mid to
high seventies. China and the the Netherlands are about half and uh,
(36:15):
Italy as far as European countries was I'm sorry Ireland
was six percent, in Italy was seven percent, and I
bet that has something to do with the Catholic thing,
I would think, so for sure, the US is about
thirty right, yeah, thanks for a large Protestant population and Hindu.
And there's also pet cremation. Yeah, if you if you
(36:37):
want to get into a burgeoning industry that went from
pretty much nothing to uh it's a three billion dollar industries.
The latest that get into pet cremation and the people
at um Matthews Crematorium supply they make pet cream cremators too.
They did humans and pets and animals too. Apparently there's
(37:01):
different types. So when you could fit a horse in
two and one are made for like dogs or something, right,
you know I would support or I would I would
be more likely to go into one of those because
they say that some of the pet only crematoriums are
a little um dodgy. Yeah, they're totally unregulated. Yeah, so
they're just like burning your pets together and you don't
(37:22):
know that the ashes you get and if you're serious
enough about your pet to get your pet cremated, then
you probably want your pets ashes, right, so you can
handle cremation at home just dig a shallow hole in
your backyard to serve as a fire break, and do
your neighbor is a favor and shave your pet first
before you set it on fire. We buried my animals
growing up, my pets. Yeah, we have. I think at
(37:45):
my old house we probably had like four or five
pets buried out in the woods. But we lived on
like two acres in the woods. It wasn't like in
a neighborhood. You didn't set any fire. No, no, no, no.
Well that's it for cremation. Um. Thanks for joining us
for that one, right, Chuck. I think we've covered pretty
much everything in there. Um. But if you want it's
a good, good article, high caliber how stuff Works article,
(38:08):
not like the rest of these sninkers. Just type in
cremation in the search bar the jazzy search bar at
how stuff works dot com. Jazzy. I'm just Chinese stuff.
We've been getting lots of suggestions. By the way, I
like ubiquitous search bar, and it's pretty good. It's not everywhere, though,
I mean, I guess it is everywhere, but it's Yeah,
you're right, so uh, I guess it's time for listener mail. Yeah, buddy,
(38:31):
I got a couple of today, A couple of short ones. Um.
The first one is from the Soniccast and it's a
little old, but I promise this guy would read it.
This is from Mark and Eastern m D. I know
you guys won't read this on a podcast. Those are
usually the ones I read, but I just thought i'd
write to tell you what happened to me this morning.
In my frantic rush to get my daughter Ellie to
(38:53):
a summer camp on time, I had to run out
of the house without having breakfast. That caused me to
have to stop at a fast food joint get one
of those gross, greasy breakfast sandwiches. You would think it's
bad enough, but it gets worse. As I drive from
the driveway, I pushed play on the iPad and start
listening to the show and Saunas, where I started hearing
about butt funk Chuck's sweating out gallons of fluid and
(39:16):
having to visualize a naked Vigo Mortensen fighting in a
sauna made my otherwise gross sandwich and greasy potato things
one for the books. By the way, the podcast that
I queued up next was all about Taste Buds, so
now I know how I was able to taste my
sandwich in the first place. Thanks a lot, guys. That's
from Mark. If you do happen to read this on
the on the air, would you would make Ellie and
(39:38):
Lydia's day? And those are his daughters. Hey, Ellien, Lydia.
So Mark, that is for you, my friend. And then
this one I didn't you think about, but it's kind
of fitting. Do you remember when I told you about
the little girl in Kent, Washington who named her Beta
Fish Chuckers Jr. I saw this one. Chuckers Jr. Is
no more. Monday night, I put Chuckers Jr. Inside his
(39:59):
small bowl so I could clean his bowl in the morning.
Yesterday morning, I went to make my breakfast in front
of his bowl as usual. But I to make my breakfast,
I thought she had might make his, which would be
pretty cute. I felt something sticky on my foot and
I looked down into my horror. I saw Chucker's junior
stuck to my foot, all dried out, and now it's horrible.
(40:19):
Apparently Beta's had been known to jump out of their bowls,
and I guess Chucker's junior jump pretty far because his
bowl was a good foot away from the edge of
the counter, yet he still ended up on the floor.
My theory is that he probably flopped around or something
onto the floor. Um, can't you just let the little
girl think special? Yeah, you're right, Chucker's junior special. Katie. Also,
(40:40):
I found out that the bowl that he was in
had only a centimeter from the time. Where is she from, Liberia? Yeah,
she's from Kent, Washington. Um, she said, you're usually supposed
to leave about an inch between the top of the thing.
I guess to make it harder to jump out. It's
the same thing, right, one centimeter equals one inch. I
think so and so degrees below she She ends with this,
(41:02):
at least Chuckers Jr. Died a healthy fish. That's from Katie,
age thirteen in Kent, Washington. Well thanks for your optimism, Katie. Yeah, Kent.
I'm sorry about your breakfast sandwich, although I'm hungry now.
It wasn't Kent, it was Marked. She was from Kent. Yeah,
that's sor right, Mark. Sorry about your breakfast sandwich, KNT.
I have no idea who you are. If you have
(41:23):
a really cool cremation story, we want to hear about it,
So wrap it up in an email and send it
to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
more on this and thousands of other topics, does it
how stuff works dot Com. Want more how stuff works,
check out our blogs on the house. Stuff works dot
(41:44):
Com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chucker's bryant
(00:20):
with a full beard. Actually, yeah, do you know what
that would smell like if it caught fire? It would
smell like mayonnaise. It's it's smell worse than mandaise ever did.
Jerry's in there like she doesn't like the smell of
burning hair or mannix um. Burning mayonnaise would be particularly
bad if you had hair on top of your burning
(00:42):
hairy mannaise the worst thing you can burn, So chuck.
Hopefully that will never happen while you're alive. It could
possibly happen um after you're deceased, if you're cremated. Like
a fellow named Ralph White, who you know about? I've
never heard of the guy you have to chuck. Do
you remember that horrid webcast we used to have. Yes,
there's a guy. He was the president past president of
(01:04):
the Adventurers Adventurers Club and not to be confused with
the one from South Park. This guy UM was a
real life adventure and he he was I think he
was like a a cameraman for UM a skydiving show
called rip Chord National Geographic. He was there when they
discovered the Titanic Buddies with the Jim Cameron. Yeah he was.
(01:26):
He was second director I think on Titanic. Yeah, who
was Jim Cameron was also in that club, the little
Club in l A. That's right. Yeah, I'll bet Ralph
White got Jim Cameron in. And are we calling him
Jim Now? I didn't realize we were on that that
friendly basis Jim or Jimmy. Well, anyway, Ralph White was
had a pretty cool post not post mortem. He had
(01:46):
a very cool posthumous story and that was he was
cremated and his friends were so dedicated and loyal to
him that, Um, whenever they go on to travel now
they take about a tenth about a teaspoon or of
the teaspoon, some very small amount of Ralph White's cremated
remains and scatter and wherever they go. Pretty cool. Yeah,
(02:07):
I think he's in the whaling wall in Jerusalem. Um,
he's in Lake but call. He went on a space
flight and Ralph Whites. Posthumous adventures kind of illustrate all
the wonderful things you can do with a cremated body,
which is one of the reasons why people choose to
be cremated. It's highly portable, right, absolutely, and it's nothing new, Chuck.
(02:28):
Cremation has been going on for a very long time,
hasn't it. Yeah, we won't get into I mean, there's
we could rattle off every country and when they started,
but we really could because of this fine, fine article
written by a freelancer, right, Michelle Kim. I've never heard
of this person before, but it was a really great article. Um.
But it has been around since prehistoric times. China has
(02:49):
been doing it since eight thousand BC. That's more than
ten thousand years ago, more than ten thousand years ago.
One part of the history I did find interesting though
and fitting since we did our Freemason cast was the
Freemasons during the French Revolution kind of push for cremation
because it was the whole not anti religion, but just
sort of mixing it up with religion. You know. They
were anti Catholic Church, well, very much against the Church,
(03:11):
and they were saying, if you have yourself cremated, it's
kind of like sticking your thumb up because well, because
Catholic said, you can't get cremated for a long time. Yeah, well,
it kind of contradicts the whole resurrection thing. You know,
the body's kind of gotta be intact. It's like the
one thing we can't do. You know. We can rise
from the dead, but if you're sorry, yeah, and you
(03:34):
you don't want to come back and find that you're
nothing but asses, because you're gonna be ticked off, right right. Uh.
The actual creamator, the cremation chamber, which I like to
call the cremator even though it's not. It sounds like
a crib star product from the Adventures of Pete and Pete.
It does. It was invented in the late eighteen hundreds
by Professor Brunetti, and uh, it started in Earnest in
(03:57):
the United States in Pennsylvania in eighteen seventies six. Yeah,
when Pennsylvania isn't non licensed state still, which I thought
was interesting. Is it really Well, there's a little bit
of a scandal that we'll talk about later that Um. Apparently,
the the crematory business, you either have fine upstanding people
or like some of the earth ye running these places, right, Yeah,
(04:19):
let's talk about how this works, all right. Yeah, well
I got a step for you real quick though. As
far as it's popularity, Um, in n three point six
percent of bodies were cremated, and just a few years
ago that numbers at and they expected to be half right. Well,
there's a lot of a lot of reasons why right,
I mean, we're running out of land. Um. There's a
(04:42):
lot of people who think that burials aren't so green,
which is true. Yeah, um, yeah, because they use like,
you know, really nice woods and metals, and you have
to pour cement lining the bodies and balms, so it's
going to eventually leak out all of those things. Right.
We'll talk later about whether or not cremations green and
the spoilers it's not. Sort of is, but it's not.
(05:05):
Well it's not green, but it's definitely not green. It's
not brown either, it's not black. It's somewhere between. So chuckers,
you're ready to talk. Yeah, Like, just the actual process
is pretty gruesome. Um. Initially, they store the body in
a cool room just to keep it nice and fresh
for the cremation. Um. It's usually examined by a coroner
(05:28):
and they have to like sign off and say this
is good to go, because you can't exhume the body
later on if you need to. No accidental death that
hasn't been fully vetted, like I imagine, they wouldn't cremate
like someone that was had any kind of relation to
a crime or anything like that, at least not for
a long time. Uh. And then what happens is they
(05:49):
remove some things from your body. If you have the
following pacemaker, breast implants, silicon breast implants, prothesis, or cancer seeds,
the little radioactive seeds that they inject into a tumor
and then be shoot with like a laser or a
radio frequency generator. Yeah, none of this stuff is good
(06:10):
for for cremation, so they remove that from your body.
But there's some things that can't be removed. Well, they
could remove it, but they tend not to. Easy fillings,
mercury fillings, jewelry, and glasses like some people want, like
you would be buried with your glasses on. They want
you cremated with your glasses, right. But in some countries,
I didn't look this up, so I don't know what
(06:31):
countries there are laws against anybody who's cremating a body
from touching anything on the body. Right, you gotta do
it how you get it right, that's what they say
on the shirts. So you can buy, they can get shop. Uh.
And then they put the body once it's been removed,
these things into a flammable box like a pine or
cardboard box or one made of hairy mannaise. They slide
(06:55):
it into the incinerator is already preheated, by the way, yes,
to at least eleven hundred degrees fahrenheight, which is five
degrees celsius. I think off the top of my head. Um,
and that's hot, chuck, it's gotta be hot. But that's
not like you don't just put the body in and
then it just burns. It just catches fire. Right now.
(07:16):
They actually shoot a column of flame at the torso
like a jet engine. Yeah, basically, So once the body's
in what's it called the retort. Uh, it's called a retort.
They slide it in there on the old metal rollers
and uh. Families. Sometimes you can watch this process through
the window if you want, and if your Hindu, and
if it's a Hindu cremation, you can actually push go right, Yeah,
(07:39):
I guess to start the column of flame. Right you
just like so long? Yeah, so here aunt Tina. Uh
so the door is sealed up obviously, Um, like you said,
they aim at your torso and then this is what happens.
This is the gruesome part um as you would expe
(08:00):
when you have a jet engine jet flame shot at
your torso, it ignites the container initially. Obviously, your body
starts to dry out all that water that's in your
body pretty quick. Yeah. I would imagine your soft tissue
tightens up, it burns up, and it vaporizes. Your skin
discolors and blisters and splits, just like a broad Worth
(08:23):
on a girl. Yeah, exactly. The muscle chars, it flexes,
and your limbs actually can extend like your limbs are moving.
I looked all over the place to find the discussions
about this stuff about like a body sitting up. That's
the closest thing I saw was does a body sit up?
I think it was a wicky answer so that it
has zero credibility. But if you're if your muscles are
(08:45):
contracting or tightening or doing anything like, yeah, your arms
can go up. And I mean imagine the people eight
and eight thousand BC in China, they're like, wait, they're
not dead. Yeah. At a goldfish, I tried to flush
one time and I put him in and he started
swimming again. And then I put him back in the
tank and he just floated. So it was just like
the water most and those Well, now I didn't flush
(09:08):
it like I would when I put him in the toilet.
He started moving every single time. It was weird. That
is weird. I'm pretty convinced he was dead though, are
he was by the time I froze him in a
block of ice. And you'll find out when you get
to the the heaven. That's right. Um, So your muscles have
charred and tightened, and your limbs are flailing about and
your bones obviously you're the last thing to go, and
they are calcified and then kind of just flake off
(09:31):
and crumble into little bone bits. Yeah, and chuck. Uh.
The bones that are or the stuff that is left
are the charred bones that are really doesn't take a
whole lot, I think to pulverize them, but it does
take an extra step and they actually do hold their shape.
So you go from a body in a box to
like a charred skeleton is what it ultimately comes down
(09:52):
to and you either rake or sweep the remaining like
bone material into something called the cremulator cremulate, and that
is the that's a grinder that grinds up everything and
pulverizes into this fine, grainy actually coarse grainy powder. Yeah.
They described it as like um ash is sort of
(10:13):
a weird word because it's not like a like a
charred ash from your fire. It's it's more like gravel,
they said, like little tiny bits of gravel because it's
pulverized bone. Right, um. And it usually takes about two
to three hours, depending on the kind of uh crematory.
I guess whatever machine you put it in. Yeah, there's
different kinds, right, and how big your bones are too,
(10:36):
that has something to do with it too. But also UM,
I found that it depends on the level of well,
there's there's something called the um enter Tech four. You
should go on to Matthew's crematorium dot com. They have
specs and it's just weird because these guys are like
selling their crematorium uh, and here's all the specs for them.
(10:59):
This thing is like state of the art. Interchech four
is um and it burns a body and no more
than seventy five minutes. Really, that's pretty good. That must
have been the modern ones that they say are all
like automated. Now, well they also sell them ones that
burn a body in four hours. So it's like low
end to high end. Okay, you know what I mean.
Pay for what you get um. And at the end
(11:19):
of this whole process, you're gonna end up with about
three to nine pounds of ash. And that's actually that's
where it depends on your bones. They say it doesn't
matter like how fat you are because that I think
that burns away pretty easily. Yeah, I would think. So
it's like your bone structure. Bones tough to burn, I guess. So,
so chuck these things. We said that they are preheated
to about eleven degrees, right, but they get up to
(11:42):
about two thousand. So you can't just build this thing.
You can't build an inner chech or whatever you're building
out of um regular brick or cment or something like that.
I think it explode the first time you tried to
do this. So these specialized composite brick material and actually
over time the interior will be eaten away by the
(12:03):
heat and the expansion and contraction will actually lose surface.
So apparently what's recommended is after UM the bricks lose
about half of their width, they have to be replaced. Yeah,
and it sounds kind of crude, But the way it's
described in the article, and the way I've heard it
described is it's it's sort of like a pizza oven. Yeah,
they're made of similar things. Cooka pizza, cooka body, cookade body.
(12:26):
So these things go for a two and fifty thou
something like that. UM, and they use natural gas or
propane or um propane accessories or diesel. I've seen UM.
But they used to burn coal, and I imagine that
was a real pain in body back in the sixties.
(12:46):
I think they were still using coal. I gotta keep
stoking that fire, right. Another thing I thought was cool
was UM And I started thinking too, when you when
you burn a fire, obviously you see ashes kind of
floating all over the place, and I thought, well, surely
they've got a you know, account for that when you're
burning a body, and they do. They ignite a second
flame in a side chamber, and that burns off dust
(13:08):
that's trying to escape the retort, and some of them
even shoot water out the top to make sure none
of the dust escapes out of the top of the plume.
I guess it's called what scrubbing, wet scrubbing? What what
else do we do? Oh? That was the a fluorid thing, right,
descrubbing the inside of the and carbon sequestion sequestration. Yeah,
(13:29):
my brain is getting too full these days, I do
we need to stop doing the show. And after it's
all done, you can actually get remains cremated remains. And
I found that they say that you shouldn't call them creamines.
That's what the the c A n A says. Why
they just say it's sort of a crude thing that
people non industry people say, let's just shorten it. And
(13:50):
they're like, they think it's disrespected, So we won't say
the word cremains. But you can have your cremated remains
mailed to you via USPS if you want. But that's
it in the United States eights. You can't do it
via FedEx or ups or you can't if they know
what's in the box. Um and I couldn't find out
why there's no explanation on ups IS or FedEx this site.
(14:12):
They just say you can't. We won't ship that. They
also won't ship a disinterred body. Well, thank goodness for that,
I guess. But um, the only thing I could the
only suggestion I could find why they wouldn't do this,
You can't ensure cremated remains. Oh yeah, that's probably it,
which I imagine they ensure everything somehow, And they do
want to get hit with a lawsuit, right because people
(14:34):
get mad when you lose their Yeah. Probably so. The
other cool thing about the USPS, though, is that they
make sure to point out that it's got to be
a sift proof box. You don't want like ashes leaking
out the side, and you have to have like somebody's
got a sign for it. Right. So usually if you
don't get an urn or whatever, when when you get
your created remains, um, the crematorium will have them in
(14:55):
like basically a plastic bag inside maybe a plastic line
designed to hold this kind of thing, right yeah, and
there may be just like very small remnants of other
people with your remains. Like they did the best job
they can. They burn one body at a time. Um,
like you know, if you're on the up and up,
as a good cremator should be. But inevitably when you're
(15:17):
talking about ash and you're sweeping it out, there might
be a little bit of Joe mixed in with Harry,
if you know what I mean. Well, I know what
you mean, so chuck it. Also, I guess the industry
standard is, just like you don't want to switch babies
in the hospital, at the other end of life, you
don't want to switch cremated remains of dead people. Right.
(15:37):
So apparently they'll stick a tag in your mouth like
a metal disc, or they'll put it somewhere on your
person so that when you're when you're melted down, this
thing is still there so you can be identified. Um,
You've got paperwork that goes with you from the moment
you come to the crematorium to the moment you leave.
That's supposed to be with you every step of the way. Um,
(15:59):
And there's basically all of this is supposed to avoid
a mix up, Right, You're supposed to. It doesn't always,
especially when the crematorium operator or owner isn't on the
up and up, as you said, And there's been plenty
of examples of that, haven't there been. Yeah, I was
a little alarmed to find out how little regulation goes
on in some states. Yeah, only until the Tri States
(16:22):
Tri State crematorium Candle of I think two to Uh.
Did Georgia close its loopholes and now all crematoriums have
to be licensed by the state. Yeah, in Georgia. But
and and I actually got a different number here she said,
twenty three of the fifty states license, I've actually got
only eight do not license, is what I found. Oh well,
(16:43):
that's that's that's bettering. But if you look all of these, um,
the examples in this article are in the two thousands,
So I wonder if that caused like a state expansion
or crematorium regulation reform. So, because if you what happened
in Georgia will tell you a sec But if you
see this on the news and you're in like Pennsylvania,
(17:05):
they don't want that kind of news hitting their state.
So I would imagine it probably spurred some some action
Pennsylvania and Budd we'll talk about the Georgia guy first,
very Brent Marsh Yeah, pleaded guilty and apologized. Yeah he
uh he owned a CREMATORI um in noble Georgia, and
(17:25):
neither Chuck Nora, I know where that is, so don't
ask um. I think it's a probably in the north
west because it's where Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama come together,
which is why you call it tried state crematorium. He
was serving all three states, UM and in all three
states the bodies of the beloved deceased were basically half
(17:47):
buried out in the backyard because the cremator broke down
and they just never got it fixed. Yeah, the incinerator
broke and so I think three hundred and thirty six
bodies in total were found and UM I found they
originally they could only charge him with accepting money and
(18:07):
fraud for services not rendered. Yeah, there was no there's
no law in the books. They hit him with some
other stuff though I think it must have come out
after this article. He was actually charged with UM almost
eight hundred counts of theft and abuse of a corpse.
So they actually charging with stealing these corpses. You don't
want to go to prison within an abuse of a
corpse wrap on your head. They'll find out about that. Yeah,
(18:29):
And he was sentenced to eight thousand years in prison
and UM plea bargain that down to twelve years. Somehow
did you say eight thousand years? That was almost a spit.
Take that. Yeah, you were drinking your deep drink and
you almost fitted out. Uh so, yeah, eight thousand down
to twelve, which is pretty good deal for him. Um
(18:50):
there was a thirty six million dollar settlement from fifty
eight funeral homes that sent bodies to the sky, So
they sued the funeral homes and then they brought a suit,
an eighty million dollar civil suits settlement against um, this
guy and his father's estate. And they probably don't have
that kind of dose, so they're probably gonna do what
it happens when that happens, which is you go after
(19:11):
the insurance company. Oh yeah, the Georgia farm. But the
guy didn't even get around to having the incinerator fixed.
He does, he's got three bodies in his backyard. But yeah,
so he's uh, he's in jail right now as far
as yeah, almost for eight thousand years. And you said
Pennsylvania didn't want that to happen, Probably it did. In
(19:34):
two thousand five. What happened there there was a guy
who ran a crematorium and he had a he had
a deal with the local women's hospital to cremate the
remains of pre term babies. Basically aborted fetuses. This guy's
job was to incinerate him. It's probably not a fun
contract to sign. Even if that's the way you make
(19:54):
your money, you can't feel great about like closing that deal, right, Yeah, yeah,
you don't go out for a big fat st Um
the authorities, I guess we're tipped off. And they went
into his garage and found in boxes the remains of
three hundred fetuses. Actually nineteen of them were post term really,
so they were born children. Um that he was supposed
(20:18):
to cremate and he didn't. But they can only get
them on nineteen counts because they're unborn, so he couldn't.
They weren't technically human beings under the eyes of the loss,
so he didn't get anything for those, But for the
nineteen he he got in some trouble, but he set
in his body. I don't know, but he had him
in boxes in his garage to which is apparently the
m O of the shady crematorium operator. Yeah. I hope
(20:40):
they did the book at him. Oh yeah, I'm sure
they did. That makes me angry. Uh, can't you tell
how angry at him? Um? And like Elsinore, California, josh
In two thousand three, a a dodgy owner was selling
body parts for a medical research like heads yeah too people, Yeah,
which means that he was cutting these heads off. Oh yeah,
and he was sentenced to twenty years in prison. And
(21:03):
did I say just say prison? And then in Mississippi, Uh,
there was a really nice guy named Mark Sieep who
was mixing human remains together, giving out wrong ashes, dumping
them into trash bends and he was found guilty and
put in jail too. Yeah did you say that, um
Marie Brent Marsh was giving people wood, ash and cement.
(21:25):
I didn't mention that, but yeah, that's what he did,
because I mean, it's not like he was just like,
oh I got nothing and they burned up entirely. He
was like, here's some cement and an urn. Thanks for
the money. Yeah. I understand that guy's incinerator burning and
maybe not having the money to fix it, but I
bet you anything he may have made enough money to
get it fixed after that and was like, hey, I'm
kind of onto something here. We don't actually have to
(21:47):
do this as pure profit exactly, So Chuck, before we
get into things that you can do with um the
remains of a loved one, right, can we talk about
it whether or not it's green. I got a couple
of stats here that I think are important. So a
lot of people are like, a natural burial or a
regular burial is not very green, and it's expensive to
(22:08):
between like seven and ten grand. But then they also say,
you know, I don't want to go entirely green, which
is bio cremation, which is alkaline hydrosis. We talked about
that before, and what you can do with the dead body. Remember,
it turns you into oil that's poured down the drain.
That's pretty awesome, it is. So this has to be
something in between though, right for the conscientious person who
(22:30):
maybe kind of believes in and afterlife and wants to
do more with this body that do you believe in afterlife?
It's a vague noise. I wonder where you endure trying
to believe. It's like a tick sucking like a hot
dog pack. So in two thousand nine, Reuters just doing
this article on biocremation, they were talking about how green
(22:50):
is regular cremation, and it's not green at all like
you think about it. You're using tons of natural gas,
not tons OF's hyperbolic, but you're using a lot of
natural gas or diesel or whatever. You're using a lot
of electricity. It takes both. Um, So apparently it releases
a standard cremation releases about eight hundred and eighty pounds
(23:11):
of CEO two just one body, and that's the big enemy.
And it uses enough energy to basically power a five
hundred mile road trip, so not not one and the same,
like these are two separate things. So it uses the
energy to get you across country five miles and it
depending on the size of your country, and it releases
(23:32):
eight hundred and eighty pounds of CEO two into the air.
I wonder what that compares to footprint wise to standard burial.
I think it's I think I don't know, and I
think it's just entirely different ways. Where I think maybe
a natural or a regular traditional burial is more it's
more polluting, like directly polluting into the into the ground
(23:55):
and the kind of thing, and it's using up resources,
where um, a cream nation has less of an impact
over time, but immediately it's a lot of input. It
requires a lot of input. Gotcha, that's my concept of it, right.
I wouldn't mind being burned, but I like the um.
Which country was it where they like burn you on
top of the wood by like the banks of the river.
(24:17):
That's India. Yeah, I like that. That's what how I
would want to go. Well, buddy, if you live in
India and you're a Hindu, that's exactly how you have
to go. That was a perfect segrete of religion. And
I guess so. Uh you said Hindu is a mandate cremation. Yeah,
They're the only only religion that does. Yeah, and it's uh,
it's called um. I'm gonna go ahead and give it
a whirl here. Uh antem sandcar? Which is last? Right?
(24:40):
You wanna hit the other one? Uh? Antsd? Yeah? Antist?
I think? Which is last sacrifice? Yeah? And that is
those are one of the sixteen life rituals. I guess
it would be the last one. Actually, I'll probably be
corrected there. Maybe one after that the whole rebirth and
all that. Maybe, but the the I guess the smoke
(25:01):
um gets the body to the next life. I bet
it's one of the last four. I bet it is.
I'll wager on that. Uh. And they yeah, like you said,
it's their Hindu. So they say you dispose of this
body and it ushers you and helps you be reborn
into the next life when you're cremated. And while Hinduism
is the only religion that mandates you have that's how
you that's how your body is disposed of. Um, Sikhism
(25:25):
and Jainism are both kind of strongly adorse it, although
they don't require it. Right And Um, you were saying
that they cremate people in India along the banks of
the river. Most of their cremations from what I understand
our open air cremations idea, there's a city called Varanasi,
which is apparently is the holy city to be cremated
(25:45):
in and you are cremated out and open along the
banks of the Ganges. Yeah, that's nice. But they do
have an electric crematorium. But since there's a billion people
who live in India and all of one electricity, this
place that suffers power. Man, that's sad. If you are
a Christian, Jewish or your Muslim Josh, they generally frown
(26:08):
upon it because or outright prohibited, depending on which religion
it is. Yeah, Islam prohibits it. Yeah, they like they
want you buried that day the same day you die,
preferably right. So Um in Judaism, Chuck Uh, I don't
think it's actually restricted. I think you can if you
want to. But the m among Orthodox and conservative Jews,
(26:30):
the memory of the Holocaust sure still understandably smarts to
the point where they're like, why would you want to
be cremated? This is you know, that's it's there's legacy
is still around. So there's a lot of there's a
lot of Jews who don't want to be cremated, even
though their religion doesn't prohibit it, right understandably, Um, Protestants,
actually is where you're gonna be find some more open
(26:53):
minds to cremation. They don't, you know, have any literature
that says you should do this, but they're definitely more
understanding about it than other really, right. And we talked
about the Catholic Church having a problem with it because
of its association with subversiveness towards the church. But in
the sixties the Catholic Church said, hey, we've never really
prohibited it. You can't get cremated if you want, and
(27:16):
apparently they gave it a boost. The Hula Burger people
really catered for the Catholics in the sixties. I found
Canna says that of Catholics are cremated now, so that's
quite a boost. I would say. Um. The Mormons also,
they're not big on cremation, although they don't prohibit it.
And in countries where um it's traditional, they're like, yeah,
(27:37):
please go ahead. But the Orthodox Eastern Orthodox Church says nay,
yeah yet, good point. Thanks, Um, where are we now
with some can we talk about finally what you can
do with your remains? I think it's high time to
you not what you can do with your remains, because
you clearly can't do anything. But that's not what you
can do if your remains, but what your friends and
(27:58):
family can do with your remains. And sometimes they like
to um, keep you in and urn and then they
have these little cemetery like buildings called a columbarium. And
they just told ashes from what I understand, yeah, it's
like a vault. So some people choose that that cost
him dough. Obviously, go ahead and tell us about your hero.
(28:19):
I know you want to mention that who Hunter t Yeah?
Uh yeah, he was mixed with fireworks and shot out
of a cannon, a hundred and fifty three foot cannon
also called a memorial tower, and apparently it's it was
an organization called Heavens Above Fireworks that did this, and
every anybody can do it. And Johnny Depth paid for
(28:40):
the whole party, right, Yeah, And from what I saw
it was if it was this British company, he would
have paid about the equivalent of three thousand U S.
Dollars for a large fireworks display. That's what they charged.
Don't mention money. Actually I did see the average cremation
cost is about six d bucks. Yeah, and the average
funeral I saw five grand in this article, it's ten grand. Decided,
(29:03):
let's say somewhere between five and ten dollars. But back
to things you can do. We would be remiss um
if we didn't mention to our NERD friends that Gene Roddenberry,
the creator of Star Trek fame, was everyone knows this.
He was shot into space. So was Timothy Learry. Oh yeah,
that's right, by the same company, Celestis. And they're still
in business as far as I know. I bet they are.
(29:25):
And then you got life, Jim. If we've talked about
I think again on the webcast. You can take your
cremated remains and have them compressed into a synthetic diamond.
You can have your remains mixed into paint, and I
guess that's not so much you can have, but you
can probably just do that. It depends. Like there's there's
(29:46):
there's actually a guy who does something called um Ash
portraits and he he does it just with the person's ashes,
but he'll also mix it in with oil or whatever. Interesting,
but he does portraits of the deceased. All right, change
my mind. I want to be remembered as dogs playing poker.
That would be pretty off, That's what that would be
(30:06):
really cool. Uh what else can you do? Um? You can, Oh,
you can become part of the coral reef. I know
there's companies that do that. There's a company called Eternal Reefs.
I think is the big one. This is pretty obvious name,
don't you know. And and what they actually they make
different sized reefs and what they do is they mix
your remains in with cement and like so the big one,
(30:28):
it can accommodate up to four family members. So if
your family went down in a plane and you just
feel like showing out for one, you know, coral reef
they've got you cover. It's like seven grand uh huh,
and it's pretty big size and it's cool looking. I
mean it looks like an artificial reef, and then you
take it out and dump it overboard. Fish live amongst
your your family members, who I really really hope loved
(30:50):
scuba diving exactly. Do you remember Keith Richards a couple
of years ago, he's still alive, well now, his dad
passed away, and he said that he snorted his father
with cocaine and then I mean apparently said the Center interview.
Then that came out and he was like, no, no, no,
no no, I was just kidding around. I of course
I didn't snort my father. I think he snorted his father.
(31:10):
I think he did too. The Sound like Um episode
where this these people snort the remains of this girl. Yeah,
I remember that one. I do have some stats for you, though,
what people seem to like to doty percent to keep
the ashes at their home, thirty seven percent bury the ashes.
Do the scatter very popular? I thought it'd be more
(31:32):
popular than that though. The most popular one is water
scattering and number two is scattering somewhere on family property.
Not really three percent are put in the columbarium. And
you might notice, Josh that adds, Yeah, there's one percent
that go on claimed, so sad. It is sad, and
(31:53):
I apparently the people who own crematoriums find it sad too,
because even though after a set period of time and
stay that regulate this kind of stuff, which did we
say the Federal Trade Commission regulates mortuaries, there's no federal
oversight for any crematorium comes out of the state. Um
but in states where there are regulations, they still say
(32:13):
you can throw these out after a set period of time.
But most crematoriums, the up and up ones will hang
onto these things for decades because again it's a small box.
But I mean, they don't want to just throw it away.
It's and it's only one percent, So I don't imagine
they're like overflowing with unclaimed remains. I would hope not.
But since you did mention the scattering, we should talk
(32:34):
about some of the laws about scattering, because you can't
just scatter anywhere. No, the National Park Service has no
official stance on scattering remains. They leave it up to
each individual park, but most of the park say unless
there's like a grave area, like it designated grave area,
you can't scatter ashes here. Well, it also said they
(32:57):
kind of turned a blind eye, like they know it
os on and I'm sure some ashes in Yosemite Park
are like how are you going to tell the difference
between that and like fire ash or dirt or whatever. Um,
But state parks they say, actually, the National Forest Service
doesn't regulate anything on their land. So that's where you
(33:17):
would probably want to go, like avoid the National park
and just stay in the National Forest or go to
your state park that was a beloved state park, because
they're a little more lax than the national parks, right them.
If you want to do water scattering or ocean scattering, Um,
the e p A says you've gotta be three miles
away from the coastline, right, very prudish. California is like
that's way too much. Um, they still have restriction, but
(33:39):
it's five feet right yeah, pretty close. Um. And people
don't always follow regulations, right. Yeah. So you want to
tell about the Cubs fan, Yeah, this is kind of
a nice story. Um, Steve Goodman died of lukemi in
die hard Cuvees fan sadly did not get to see
the Cubs winn World Series. As likely neither will you,
(34:03):
and I um. And four years later he his buddy
snuck in before opening day and threw the ashes into
the wind out over the field. Nice. Pretty cool. That
is pretty cool. Did you ever hear of Graham Parsons story?
His body was stolen right yeah, his friends, Um, he
said that he wanted to be cremated and scattered on
cap rock in Joshua Tree National Park. Right. Um and
(34:26):
his parents found out he was dead and had his
bodyship back for a private funeral, and his friends found
out that they weren't going to be invited, so they
stole him and uh took him out to Joshua Tree
and opened the casket through some gasoline on him and
set him on fire five gallons of gas right, and
it didn't work because we've said what it takes. So
(34:48):
he was half cremated by the time the cops showed up.
He's sort of melty and just like Georgia. Back then,
there was nothing about there were no penalties for stealing
a corpse, so they got them for theft of a casket.
I think that was Did you see that movie? Johnny
Knoxville played the guy that his buddy It's not very good.
I did stay in the hotel though. Actually I meant
(35:08):
to mention that in the Root sixty six. Yeah, the
Joshua tree in not in his room though. And before
we move on from Scattering josh we have to mention,
because we like to mention our movies, the excellent, excellent
scene from The Big Lebowski, the scattering scene in the
end of when all of them just blew back all
over them John Codman. Uh, it was Steve assuming that died, right,
(35:29):
I think, and he he threw him out in the window,
back in their face over the ocean. It was good.
It was very good. Uh, Chuck. If I am dead
and I'm being cremated and I'm part of se of
the population, what country am i am? Uh? Sweden, Switzerland, Switzerland,
(35:50):
I've been cremated and I am part of just a
meager three percent of the population. What country am in? Ghana?
That's right, That's right? And in between are actually higher
than that Hong Kong is. Places like the Czech Republic
in Singapore and the UK are sort of mid to
high seventies. China and the the Netherlands are about half and uh,
(36:15):
Italy as far as European countries was I'm sorry Ireland
was six percent, in Italy was seven percent, and I
bet that has something to do with the Catholic thing,
I would think, so for sure, the US is about
thirty right, yeah, thanks for a large Protestant population and Hindu.
And there's also pet cremation. Yeah, if you if you
(36:37):
want to get into a burgeoning industry that went from
pretty much nothing to uh it's a three billion dollar industries.
The latest that get into pet cremation and the people
at um Matthews Crematorium supply they make pet cream cremators too.
They did humans and pets and animals too. Apparently there's
(37:01):
different types. So when you could fit a horse in
two and one are made for like dogs or something, right,
you know I would support or I would I would
be more likely to go into one of those because
they say that some of the pet only crematoriums are
a little um dodgy. Yeah, they're totally unregulated. Yeah, so
they're just like burning your pets together and you don't
(37:22):
know that the ashes you get and if you're serious
enough about your pet to get your pet cremated, then
you probably want your pets ashes, right, so you can
handle cremation at home just dig a shallow hole in
your backyard to serve as a fire break, and do
your neighbor is a favor and shave your pet first
before you set it on fire. We buried my animals
growing up, my pets. Yeah, we have. I think at
(37:45):
my old house we probably had like four or five
pets buried out in the woods. But we lived on
like two acres in the woods. It wasn't like in
a neighborhood. You didn't set any fire. No, no, no, no.
Well that's it for cremation. Um. Thanks for joining us
for that one, right, Chuck. I think we've covered pretty
much everything in there. Um. But if you want it's
a good, good article, high caliber how stuff Works article,
(38:08):
not like the rest of these sninkers. Just type in
cremation in the search bar the jazzy search bar at
how stuff works dot com. Jazzy. I'm just Chinese stuff.
We've been getting lots of suggestions. By the way, I
like ubiquitous search bar, and it's pretty good. It's not everywhere, though,
I mean, I guess it is everywhere, but it's Yeah,
you're right, so uh, I guess it's time for listener mail. Yeah, buddy,
(38:31):
I got a couple of today, A couple of short ones. Um.
The first one is from the Soniccast and it's a
little old, but I promise this guy would read it.
This is from Mark and Eastern m D. I know
you guys won't read this on a podcast. Those are
usually the ones I read, but I just thought i'd
write to tell you what happened to me this morning.
In my frantic rush to get my daughter Ellie to
(38:53):
a summer camp on time, I had to run out
of the house without having breakfast. That caused me to
have to stop at a fast food joint get one
of those gross, greasy breakfast sandwiches. You would think it's
bad enough, but it gets worse. As I drive from
the driveway, I pushed play on the iPad and start
listening to the show and Saunas, where I started hearing
about butt funk Chuck's sweating out gallons of fluid and
(39:16):
having to visualize a naked Vigo Mortensen fighting in a
sauna made my otherwise gross sandwich and greasy potato things
one for the books. By the way, the podcast that
I queued up next was all about Taste Buds, so
now I know how I was able to taste my
sandwich in the first place. Thanks a lot, guys. That's
from Mark. If you do happen to read this on
the on the air, would you would make Ellie and
(39:38):
Lydia's day? And those are his daughters. Hey, Ellien, Lydia.
So Mark, that is for you, my friend. And then
this one I didn't you think about, but it's kind
of fitting. Do you remember when I told you about
the little girl in Kent, Washington who named her Beta
Fish Chuckers Jr. I saw this one. Chuckers Jr. Is
no more. Monday night, I put Chuckers Jr. Inside his
(39:59):
small bowl so I could clean his bowl in the morning.
Yesterday morning, I went to make my breakfast in front
of his bowl as usual. But I to make my breakfast,
I thought she had might make his, which would be
pretty cute. I felt something sticky on my foot and
I looked down into my horror. I saw Chucker's junior
stuck to my foot, all dried out, and now it's horrible.
(40:19):
Apparently Beta's had been known to jump out of their bowls,
and I guess Chucker's junior jump pretty far because his
bowl was a good foot away from the edge of
the counter, yet he still ended up on the floor.
My theory is that he probably flopped around or something
onto the floor. Um, can't you just let the little
girl think special? Yeah, you're right, Chucker's junior special. Katie. Also,
(40:40):
I found out that the bowl that he was in
had only a centimeter from the time. Where is she from, Liberia? Yeah,
she's from Kent, Washington. Um, she said, you're usually supposed
to leave about an inch between the top of the thing.
I guess to make it harder to jump out. It's
the same thing, right, one centimeter equals one inch. I
think so and so degrees below she She ends with this,
(41:02):
at least Chuckers Jr. Died a healthy fish. That's from Katie,
age thirteen in Kent, Washington. Well thanks for your optimism, Katie. Yeah, Kent.
I'm sorry about your breakfast sandwich, although I'm hungry now.
It wasn't Kent, it was Marked. She was from Kent. Yeah,
that's sor right, Mark. Sorry about your breakfast sandwich, KNT.
I have no idea who you are. If you have
(41:23):
a really cool cremation story, we want to hear about it,
So wrap it up in an email and send it
to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For
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