May 12, 2018 • 43 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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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Y s K Selex, I've chosen How Cremation Works. It
came out back in August of two thousand and ten,
and at the time, death was a very hot topic.
So please forgive us if we seem a little irreverent,
a little overenthusiastic when we're talking about this. But it's
a really interesting episode and I still stand by it today.
(00:23):
I hope you enjoy. 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. Chuckers Bryant
(00:45):
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 Mandaid's ever did.
Jerry's in there like she doesn't like the smell. Burning
here or manx um burning Manis would be particularly bad
if you had hair on top of the burning. Harry
(01:07):
Manse 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. There's a
guy he was the president past president of the Adventurers
(01:29):
Adventurers Club and not to be confused with the one
from South Park. This guy, Um was a real life
adventure and he was I think he was like a
cameraman for UM a skydiving show called rip Chord National Geographic.
He was there when they discovered the Titanic. Ye Buddies
with the Jim Cameron, Yeah he was. He was second
(01:52):
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 Camer
run in probably And are we calling him Jim now?
I didn't realize we were on that friendly basis Jim
or Jimmy. Well, anyway, Ralph White was had a pretty
cool post not post mortem. He had a very cool
posthumous story, and that was he was cremated and his
(02:16):
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 a tenth of a
teaspoon some very small amount of Ralph White's cremated remains
and scatter him wherever they go. Pretty cool. Yeah, I
think he's in the whaling wall in Jerusalem. Um, he's
in Lake Bacall. He went on a space flight. And
(02:39):
Ralph White's 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, and it's nothing new, Chuck. 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
(03:01):
could because of this fine, fine article written by a freelancer, right,
Michelle Kim. I've never heard of this person before, but
was a really great article. Um, but it has been
around since prehistoric times. China has 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.
(03:22):
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. No, they were anti Catholic Church, well, very
much against the Church, and they were saying, if you
have yourself cremated, it's kind of like sticking your thumb
up the because well because Catholic said you can't get
(03:43):
cremated for a long time. Yeah, well it kind of
contradicts the whole resurrection thing. Yeah, you know, like 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 your bird sorry, yeah, and you
you don't want to come back and find that you're
nothing but ashes, because you're going to be ticked off,
(04:03):
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 the United States in Pennsylvania in
eighteen seventy six, when Pennsylvania is an non licensed state, still,
(04:28):
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 come of the earth, yeah,
running these places. Right, Yeah, 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
(04:51):
ninety three point six percent of bodies were cremated, and
just a few years ago that numbers at thirty 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 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
(05:14):
woods and metals, and you have to pour cement lining
the bodies, embalms, 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 well it's not green, but
it's definitely not green. It's not brown either, it's not black.
(05:35):
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 and they have to like sign
off and say this is good to go, because you
(05:56):
can't exhume the body later on if you need to.
So 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 remove some things from your body.
If you have the following pacemaker, breast implants, silicon breast implants, prothesis,
(06:25):
or cancer seeds, the little radioactive seeds that they inject
into a tumor and then shoot with like a laser
or a radio frequency generator. Yeah, none of this stuff
is good 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 each
fillings mercury fillings, yeah, jewelry and glasses like some people want,
(06:49):
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
countries there are laws against anybody who's cremating a body
from touch anything on the body, right, right, you gotta
do it how you get it right, that's what they
say on the shirt. So you can buy I think
in the gift shop. Uh. And then they put the
body once it's been removed, these things into a flammable
(07:12):
box like a pine or cardboard box or one made
of hairy man. They slide it into the incinerator is
already preheated, by the way, yes, to at least degrees fahrenheight,
which is five degrees celsius. I think, off the top
of my head. Um, and that's hot, chuck, it's gotta
(07:33):
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, 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,
It's called a retort. They slide it in there on
the old metal rollers and uh families. Sometimes you can
(07:55):
watch this process through the window if you want, and
if you're hinder you and if it's a Hindu cremation,
you can actually push go right. Yeah, I guess to
start the column of flame, right you just like so long? Yeah?
So here ant tina Hindu. Uh So the door is
(08:16):
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 expect 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.
(08:37):
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 on a grill. Yeah, exactly.
The muscle chars, it flexes, and your limbs actually can
extend like your limbs are moving. I looked all over
(08:57):
the place to find the discussions of 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 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, They're
(09:20):
like yeah. At a goldfish, I tried to flush one
time and I put him in and he started swimming again,
and then I'd put him back in the tank and
he just floated. So it was just like the water
most and those well, no, I didn't flush 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
(09:41):
by the time I froze him in a block of ice?
You'll find out when you get to 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 and crumble into little bone bits, yeah,
and chuck. Uh. The bone that are uh or the
(10:01):
stuff that is left are these charred bones that are
really it 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 to. And you either
rake or sweep the remaining like bone material into something
(10:22):
called the cremulator clemulator, 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 a weird word because
it's not like like charred ash from your fire. It's
it's more like gravel, they said, like little tiny bits
(10:43):
of gravel because it's pulverized bone. Right, um. And it
usually takes about two to three hours, depending on the
kind of uh creamatory I guess whatever machine you put
it in. Yeah, there's different kinds, right, and how big
your bones are to that has something to do with
it too. But also um, I found that it depends
(11:05):
on the level of Well, there's there's something called the
um Entertech 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 him. And this thing is like
state of the art. Intertech four is um and it
(11:27):
burns 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 the 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 of this whole process, you're gonna
end up with about three to nine pounds of ash.
(11:48):
And that's actually that's where it depends on your bones.
They say it doesn't matter like how fat you are,
because I think that burns away pretty easily. Yeah, I
would think. So it's like your bone structure. Yeah, bones
tough to burn, I guess. So, so chuck. These things.
(12:34):
We said that they are preheated to about degrees right,
but they get up to about two thousand. So you
can't just build this thing. You can't build an inner
tech or whatever you're building out of UM regular brick
or somement or something like that. I think it explode
the first time you tried to do this. So they
specialized composite brick material. And actually, over time the interior
(12:58):
will be eaten away by the 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, cookad body, cooka body. So these
(13:23):
things go for a two fifty thousand 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 generated body. Back in the sixties. I think they
(13:43):
were still using coal. 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 that's trying to escape the retort,
(14:07):
and some of them even shoot water at the top
to make sure none of the dust escapes out of
the top of the plume. I guess it's called wet scrubbing.
Wet scrubbing. What else do we do? Oh, that was
the a fluoride thing, right, keepscrubbing the inside of the
and carbon sequestion sequestration. Yeah, my brain is getting too
full these days. I too. We need to stop doing
(14:29):
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 cremaines. 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 they're like, they think it's disrespected,
so we won't say the word cremains. But you can
(14:51):
have your cremated remains mailed to you via USPS if
you want, but that's it in the United States. Yeah,
you can't do it via FedEx or up Yes, 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 fedexercite. They just say you can't, we
won't ship that. They also won't ship a disinterred body. Well,
(15:15):
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 want to get hit with a lawsuit, right
because people get mad when you lose their Yeah. Probably so.
The other cool thing about the USPS, though, is that
(15:36):
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 cremated remains, Um, the crematorium will have them
in like basically a plastic bag inside maybe a plastic
line box designed to hold this kind of thing, right, Yeah,
(15:59):
and they're maybe just like very small remnants of other
people with your remains. Like they do 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
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
(16:20):
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. So
apparently they'll stick a tag in your mouth like a
metal disc, or they'll put it somewhere on your person
(16:40):
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 of the moment you leave. That's
supposed to be with you every step of the way. Um,
and there's basically all this is supposed to avoid a
mix up, right, You're supposed to It doesn't always, especially
(17:03):
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 tri
state crematorium scandal of I think two. Did Georgia close
(17:26):
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, that's
that's cuttering. But if you look all of these, um,
the examples in this article are in the two thousands.
(17:48):
So I wonder if that caused like a state expansion
and crematorium regulation reform. I would say 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, they don't want that kind of news.
Hitting their state, so I would imagine it probably spurred
some some action Pennsylvania, Bud I did. We'll talk about
(18:11):
the Georgia guy first, Mary Brent Marsh, Yeah, pleaded guilty
and apologized. Yeah, he he owned a CREMATORI UM in
Noble Georgia, and 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
(18:33):
come together, which is why you call it try state crematorium.
He was serving all three states, UM, and in all
three states the bodies of the beloved deceased were basically
half 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 d and thirty
(18:54):
six bodies in total were found and UM I found
the Originally they could only charge him with accepting money
and fraud for services not rendered. Yeah, there was no
there was 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
almost eight hundred counts of theft and abuse of a corpse,
(19:18):
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,
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 you were drinking your deep drink and
(19:41):
you almost fit it out. Uh So yeah, eight thousand
down to twelve, which is pretty good deal for him.
Um 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
(20:04):
have that kind of does, so they're probably gonna do
what happens when that happens, which is you go after
the insurance company. Oh yeah, the Georgia farm. But the
guy didn't even get around to having the incinerator fixed.
He didn't have eighty millions. 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.
(20:26):
That's a long sentence. You said Pennsylvania didn't want that
to happen. Probably it did. In 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.
(20:47):
It's probably not a fun contract to sign. No, even
if that's the way you make your money, you can't
feel great about like closing that deal, right, yeah, yeah,
you don't go out for a big fat steak um
the thor and he's 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
(21:09):
post term really, so they were born children um that
he was supposed to cremate, and he didn't. But he
could 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
(21:29):
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
they threw 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? In Lake Elson or California,
Josh in two thousand three, a a dodgy owner was
selling body parts for medical research, like heads to people,
(21:53):
which means that he was cutting these heads off. Oh yeah,
and he was sentenced to twenty years in prison and
does say just say Prisson. And then in Mississippi, Uh,
there was a really nice guy named Mark Seep who
was mixing human remains together, giving out wrong ashes, dumping
them into trash bends. And he was found guilty and
(22:15):
put in jail to Yeah did you say that, um Marie,
Brent Marsh was giving people wood, ash and cement. I
didn't mention that, but yeah, that's what he did. Yeah,
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 guys incinerator burning and
maybe not having the money to fix it, But I
(22:36):
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
do this 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
(22:57):
stats here that I think are important. Yeah. So a
lot of people are like, a natural burial or a
regular burial is not very green, and it's expensive to
between like seven and ten grand. But then they also say,
you know, I don't want to go entirely green, which
is biocremation is alkaline hydrosis. We talked about that before.
What you can do with the dead body, Remember, it
(23:17):
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 maybe
kind of believes in and afterlife, wants to do more
with this body that do you kind of believe in
afterlife it's a vague knowledg. I wonder where you end up.
You're trying to believe it's like a tick sucking like
(23:39):
a hot dog pack. God. So, in two thousand nine,
Reuters just doing this article on biocremation. They were talking
about how green is regular cremation, and it's not green
at all, Like you think about it. You're using tons
of natural gas, not tons, it's hyperbolic, but you're using
a lot of natural gas or diesel or whatever. You're
using a lot of electricity oowth um. So apparently it
(24:03):
releases a standard cremation releases about eight hundred and eighty
pounds of c O two just one body, and that's
the big enemy. And it uses enough energy to basically
power a five hundred mile road trip. Really so not
not one and the same, Like these are two separate things.
So it uses the energy to get you across country
(24:24):
five miles and its depending on the size of your country.
And it releases eight d 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, man, I think it's just an entirely different ways,
where I think maybe a natural or a regular traditional
(24:46):
burial is more it's more polluting, like directly polluting into
the into the ground and that kind of thing, and
it's using up resources, where um, a cremation 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,
(25:07):
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. That's India. Yeah, I
like that. That's how I would want to go. Well, buddy,
if you live in Indian and you're a Hindu, that's
exactly how you have to go. That was a perfect
seguated religion. And I guess so. Uh you said Hindu
is a mandate cremation. Yeah, they're the only only religion
(25:29):
that does. Yeah, and it's uh, it's called um. I'm
gonna go ahead and give it a whirl here, uh
antim sankar which is last right? Nice? You want to
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
(25:49):
be the last one. Actually, I'll probably be corrected there
maybe one after that, the whole rebirth and all that. Maybe,
But though the I guess the smoke gets the body
to the next life. I bet it's one of the
last four. I bet it is a 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
(26:09):
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 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
(26:31):
in India along the banks of the river. Most of
their cremations from what I understand, our open air cremations.
I like that idea. There's a city called Varanasi, which
is apparently is the holy city to be cremated 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
(26:52):
live in India and all of the one electricity this
place suffers power outages. Man, that's sad. If you are
a Christian, Jewish or your Muslim Josh, they generally frown
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.
(27:15):
So Um in Judaism, Chuck, I don't think it's actually restricted.
I think you can if you want to. But the
among Orthodox and conservative Jews, 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
(27:35):
know this, 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 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 religions, right,
(27:57):
And we talked about the Catholic Church having a them
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 apparently they gave it a boost. The Hula Burger
people really catered to the Catholics in the sixties. I
(28:19):
found Canada 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,
please go ahead, But the Orthodox Eastern Orthodox Church says nay,
(28:39):
yeah yet good point. Thanks. Um, Where are we now
(29:17):
with some Can we talk about finally what you can
do with your remains? I think it's high time to
not what you can do with your remains, because you
clearly can't do anything. But it's not what you can
do with your remains, but what your friends and family
can do with your remains. And sometimes they like to
um keep you in and urn and they have these
little cemetery like buildings called a columbarium, and they just
(29:40):
hold ashes from what I understand, like your urn. Yeah,
it's like a vault. So some people choose that that
cost him dough. Obviously, go ahead and tell us about
your hero. I know you want to mention that who
Hunter t Yeah, yeah, he was mixed with firework and
shot out of a cannon, a hundred and fifty three
ft cannon also called the Memorial Tower. And apparently it's
(30:03):
It was an organization called Heavens Above Fireworks that did this,
and every anybody can do it, and Johnny Depth paid
for 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.
As Susan mentioned money. Actually I did see the average
(30:24):
cremation cost is about six bucks. Yeah, and the average
funeral I saw five grand in this article, it's ten grand.
Decided we'll say somewhere between five and ten thousand dollars.
Let's 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
(30:45):
was everyone knows this. He was shot into space. So
was Timothy Leary. 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. And then you get 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
(31:08):
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 there's actually a guy who does something
called ash portraits and 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.
(31:30):
I want to be remembered as dogs playing poker. That
would be pretty all. That's what I want to would
be 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 well they
actually they make different sized reefs and what they do
(31:53):
is they mix your remains in with cement and like,
so the big one, it can accommodate up to four
family members. So if your family went down in a
plane and just feel like showing out for one, you know,
coral reef, right, 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. Yeah,
(32:14):
fish live amongst your your family members. Who I really
really hope loved 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 this interview. Then that came out and he was like, no, no, no,
(32:34):
no, no no, I was just kidding around. I of course
I didn't snort my father. I think he snorted his father.
I think he did too. The sounds 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 burry the ashes.
(32:59):
Do the scatter popular? I thought it'd be more 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
(33:19):
go unclaimed. So sad. It is sad, and I apparently
that people who own crematoriums find it sad too, because
even though after a set period of time and states
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
(33:39):
in states where there are regulations, they still say 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 person and it's only one percent, so I don't
imagine they're like overflowing with unclaimed remains. I would hope not.
(34:00):
But since you did mention the scattering, we should talk
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 parks say unless
there's like a grave area, like it designated grave area,
(34:23):
you can't scatter ashes here. Well, it also said they
kind of turned a blind eye, like they know it
goes on, and I'm sure some ashes in Yosemite Park
are like how are you going to tell the difference
between that and like a fire ash or dirt or whatever. Um.
But state parks they say, actually, the National Forest Service
(34:44):
doesn't regulate anything on their land. So that's where you
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.
The 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,
(35:06):
that's way too much. Um, they still have restriction, but
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 Cubbies fans sadly did not get to see
(35:28):
the Cubs winner World Series as likely neither will you
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. 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
(35:51):
cap rock in Joshua Tree National Park, right. Um, and
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, right and uh took him out to Joshua
Tree and opened the casket through some gasolene on him
and set him on fire five gallons of gas right
(36:13):
and it didn't work because we've said what it takes.
So 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.
(36:34):
It's not very good. I did stay in that hotel though,
Actually I mentioned meant to mention that in the room
sixty six. Yeah, the Joshua tree in cool. 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 the thing when
all of them just blew back all over them. But
(36:56):
John Coodman, it was Steve assuming that died, right, I think,
and he he threw him out in the window back
in their faces over the ocean. It was good. It's
very good, Uh, Chuck. If I am dead and I'm
being cremated and I'm part of of the population, what
country am I am? Uh, Sweden, Switzerland, Switzerland. I've been cremated,
(37:20):
and I am part of just a meager three percent
of the population. What country am I 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 Italy, as
(37:45):
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 they think 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 want to
(38:06):
get into a burgeoning industry that went from pretty much
nothing to uh it's a three billion dollar industries the
latest stat get into pet cremation. And the people at
um Matthews Crematorium supply they make pet cream cremators too.
They do humans and pets and animals too. Apparently there's
(38:30):
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
(38:51):
know that the ashes you get and if you're serious
enough about your pet to get your pet cremated, and
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 firebreak, 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, you know, we have I think
(39:14):
in 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 on 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,
(39:37):
not like the rest of these stinkers. Just typing 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
Ubiquity 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
(39:58):
mil Yeah, buddy. I got a couple of today, A
couple of short ones. Um. The first one is from
the Sonic cast and and it's a little old, but
a promise this guy would read it. This is from
Mark in 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
(40:19):
you what happened to me this morning and my frantic
rush to get my daughter Ellie to 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
(40:42):
Chuck's sweating out gallons of fluid and 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
(41:03):
happen to read this on the on the air, would
you would make Ellie and Lydia's day? And those are
his daughters, Hey, Ellie and 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. Chucker's Junior is no more. Monday night, I
(41:26):
put Chuckers Junior inside his 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 that it's horrible. Apparently Beta's had
(41:49):
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 something onto the floor. Um,
can't you just let the little girl think her Beta
fish is special? Yeah, you're right, Chucker's Junior special. Katie. Also,
(42:10):
I found out that the bowl that he was in
had only a centimeter from the centimeter. 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 she she ends with this. At least Chucker's junior
(42:32):
died a healthy fish. That's from Katie Thirt 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. Oh. Yeah, that's
all right though, Mark, sorry about your breakfast sandwich. Can't.
I have no idea who you are. If you have
(42:52):
a really cool cremation story, we want to hear about it,
so wrap it up in an email and send it
to stuff podcast how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home
(43:14):
page
Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
Y s K Selex, I've chosen How Cremation Works. It
came out back in August of two thousand and ten,
and at the time, death was a very hot topic.
So please forgive us if we seem a little irreverent,
a little overenthusiastic when we're talking about this. But it's
a really interesting episode and I still stand by it today.
(00:23):
I hope you enjoy. 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. Chuckers Bryant
(00:45):
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 Mandaid's ever did.
Jerry's in there like she doesn't like the smell. Burning
here or manx um burning Manis would be particularly bad
if you had hair on top of the burning. Harry
(01:07):
Manse 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. There's a
guy he was the president past president of the Adventurers
(01:29):
Adventurers Club and not to be confused with the one
from South Park. This guy, Um was a real life
adventure and he was I think he was like a
cameraman for UM a skydiving show called rip Chord National Geographic.
He was there when they discovered the Titanic. Ye Buddies
with the Jim Cameron, Yeah he was. He was second
(01:52):
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 Camer
run in probably And are we calling him Jim now?
I didn't realize we were on that friendly basis Jim
or Jimmy. Well, anyway, Ralph White was had a pretty
cool post not post mortem. He had a very cool
posthumous story, and that was he was cremated and his
(02:16):
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 a tenth of a
teaspoon some very small amount of Ralph White's cremated remains
and scatter him wherever they go. Pretty cool. Yeah, I
think he's in the whaling wall in Jerusalem. Um, he's
in Lake Bacall. He went on a space flight. And
(02:39):
Ralph White's 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, and it's nothing new, Chuck. 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
(03:01):
could because of this fine, fine article written by a freelancer, right,
Michelle Kim. I've never heard of this person before, but
was a really great article. Um, but it has been
around since prehistoric times. China has 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.
(03:22):
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. No, they were anti Catholic Church, well, very
much against the Church, and they were saying, if you
have yourself cremated, it's kind of like sticking your thumb
up the because well because Catholic said you can't get
(03:43):
cremated for a long time. Yeah, well it kind of
contradicts the whole resurrection thing. Yeah, you know, like 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 your bird sorry, yeah, and you
you don't want to come back and find that you're
nothing but ashes, because you're going to be ticked off,
(04:03):
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 the United States in Pennsylvania in
eighteen seventy six, when Pennsylvania is an non licensed state, still,
(04:28):
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 come of the earth, yeah,
running these places. Right, Yeah, 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
(04:51):
ninety three point six percent of bodies were cremated, and
just a few years ago that numbers at thirty 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 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
(05:14):
woods and metals, and you have to pour cement lining
the bodies, embalms, 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 well it's not green, but
it's definitely not green. It's not brown either, it's not black.
(05:35):
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 and they have to like sign
off and say this is good to go, because you
(05:56):
can't exhume the body later on if you need to.
So 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 remove some things from your body.
If you have the following pacemaker, breast implants, silicon breast implants, prothesis,
(06:25):
or cancer seeds, the little radioactive seeds that they inject
into a tumor and then shoot with like a laser
or a radio frequency generator. Yeah, none of this stuff
is good 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 each
fillings mercury fillings, yeah, jewelry and glasses like some people want,
(06:49):
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
countries there are laws against anybody who's cremating a body
from touch anything on the body, right, right, you gotta
do it how you get it right, that's what they
say on the shirt. So you can buy I think
in the gift shop. Uh. And then they put the
body once it's been removed, these things into a flammable
(07:12):
box like a pine or cardboard box or one made
of hairy man. They slide it into the incinerator is
already preheated, by the way, yes, to at least degrees fahrenheight,
which is five degrees celsius. I think, off the top
of my head. Um, and that's hot, chuck, it's gotta
(07:33):
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, 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,
It's called a retort. They slide it in there on
the old metal rollers and uh families. Sometimes you can
(07:55):
watch this process through the window if you want, and
if you're hinder you and if it's a Hindu cremation,
you can actually push go right. Yeah, I guess to
start the column of flame, right you just like so long? Yeah?
So here ant tina Hindu. Uh So the door is
(08:16):
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 expect 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.
(08:37):
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 on a grill. Yeah, exactly.
The muscle chars, it flexes, and your limbs actually can
extend like your limbs are moving. I looked all over
(08:57):
the place to find the discussions of 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 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, They're
(09:20):
like yeah. At a goldfish, I tried to flush one
time and I put him in and he started swimming again,
and then I'd put him back in the tank and
he just floated. So it was just like the water
most and those well, no, I didn't flush 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
(09:41):
by the time I froze him in a block of ice?
You'll find out when you get to 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 and crumble into little bone bits, yeah,
and chuck. Uh. The bone that are uh or the
(10:01):
stuff that is left are these charred bones that are
really it 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 to. And you either
rake or sweep the remaining like bone material into something
(10:22):
called the cremulator clemulator, 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 a weird word because
it's not like like charred ash from your fire. It's
it's more like gravel, they said, like little tiny bits
(10:43):
of gravel because it's pulverized bone. Right, um. And it
usually takes about two to three hours, depending on the
kind of uh creamatory I guess whatever machine you put
it in. Yeah, there's different kinds, right, and how big
your bones are to that has something to do with
it too. But also um, I found that it depends
(11:05):
on the level of Well, there's there's something called the
um Entertech 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 him. And this thing is like
state of the art. Intertech four is um and it
(11:27):
burns 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 the 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 of this whole process, you're gonna
end up with about three to nine pounds of ash.
(11:48):
And that's actually that's where it depends on your bones.
They say it doesn't matter like how fat you are,
because I think that burns away pretty easily. Yeah, I
would think. So it's like your bone structure. Yeah, bones
tough to burn, I guess. So, so chuck. These things.
(12:34):
We said that they are preheated to about degrees right,
but they get up to about two thousand. So you
can't just build this thing. You can't build an inner
tech or whatever you're building out of UM regular brick
or somement or something like that. I think it explode
the first time you tried to do this. So they
specialized composite brick material. And actually, over time the interior
(12:58):
will be eaten away by the 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, cookad body, cooka body. So these
(13:23):
things go for a two fifty thousand 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 generated body. Back in the sixties. I think they
(13:43):
were still using coal. 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 that's trying to escape the retort,
(14:07):
and some of them even shoot water at the top
to make sure none of the dust escapes out of
the top of the plume. I guess it's called wet scrubbing.
Wet scrubbing. What else do we do? Oh, that was
the a fluoride thing, right, keepscrubbing the inside of the
and carbon sequestion sequestration. Yeah, my brain is getting too
full these days. I too. We need to stop doing
(14:29):
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 cremaines. 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 they're like, they think it's disrespected,
so we won't say the word cremains. But you can
(14:51):
have your cremated remains mailed to you via USPS if
you want, but that's it in the United States. Yeah,
you can't do it via FedEx or up Yes, 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 fedexercite. They just say you can't, we
won't ship that. They also won't ship a disinterred body. Well,
(15:15):
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 want to get hit with a lawsuit, right
because people get mad when you lose their Yeah. Probably so.
The other cool thing about the USPS, though, is that
(15:36):
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 cremated remains, Um, the crematorium will have them
in like basically a plastic bag inside maybe a plastic
line box designed to hold this kind of thing, right, Yeah,
(15:59):
and they're maybe just like very small remnants of other
people with your remains. Like they do 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
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
(16:20):
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. So
apparently they'll stick a tag in your mouth like a
metal disc, or they'll put it somewhere on your person
(16:40):
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 of the moment you leave. That's
supposed to be with you every step of the way. Um,
and there's basically all this is supposed to avoid a
mix up, right, You're supposed to It doesn't always, especially
(17:03):
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 tri
state crematorium scandal of I think two. Did Georgia close
(17:26):
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, that's
that's cuttering. But if you look all of these, um,
the examples in this article are in the two thousands.
(17:48):
So I wonder if that caused like a state expansion
and crematorium regulation reform. I would say 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, they don't want that kind of news.
Hitting their state, so I would imagine it probably spurred
some some action Pennsylvania, Bud I did. We'll talk about
(18:11):
the Georgia guy first, Mary Brent Marsh, Yeah, pleaded guilty
and apologized. Yeah, he he owned a CREMATORI UM in
Noble Georgia, and 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
(18:33):
come together, which is why you call it try state crematorium.
He was serving all three states, UM, and in all
three states the bodies of the beloved deceased were basically
half 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 d and thirty
(18:54):
six bodies in total were found and UM I found
the Originally they could only charge him with accepting money
and fraud for services not rendered. Yeah, there was no
there was 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
almost eight hundred counts of theft and abuse of a corpse,
(19:18):
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,
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 you were drinking your deep drink and
(19:41):
you almost fit it out. Uh So yeah, eight thousand
down to twelve, which is pretty good deal for him.
Um 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
(20:04):
have that kind of does, so they're probably gonna do
what happens when that happens, which is you go after
the insurance company. Oh yeah, the Georgia farm. But the
guy didn't even get around to having the incinerator fixed.
He didn't have eighty millions. 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.
(20:26):
That's a long sentence. You said Pennsylvania didn't want that
to happen. Probably it did. In 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.
(20:47):
It's probably not a fun contract to sign. No, even
if that's the way you make your money, you can't
feel great about like closing that deal, right, yeah, yeah,
you don't go out for a big fat steak um
the thor and he's 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
(21:09):
post term really, so they were born children um that
he was supposed to cremate, and he didn't. But he
could 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
(21:29):
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
they threw 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? In Lake Elson or California,
Josh in two thousand three, a a dodgy owner was
selling body parts for medical research, like heads to people,
(21:53):
which means that he was cutting these heads off. Oh yeah,
and he was sentenced to twenty years in prison and
does say just say Prisson. And then in Mississippi, Uh,
there was a really nice guy named Mark Seep who
was mixing human remains together, giving out wrong ashes, dumping
them into trash bends. And he was found guilty and
(22:15):
put in jail to Yeah did you say that, um Marie,
Brent Marsh was giving people wood, ash and cement. I
didn't mention that, but yeah, that's what he did. Yeah,
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 guys incinerator burning and
maybe not having the money to fix it, But I
(22:36):
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
do this 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
(22:57):
stats here that I think are important. Yeah. So a
lot of people are like, a natural burial or a
regular burial is not very green, and it's expensive to
between like seven and ten grand. But then they also say,
you know, I don't want to go entirely green, which
is biocremation is alkaline hydrosis. We talked about that before.
What you can do with the dead body, Remember, it
(23:17):
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 maybe
kind of believes in and afterlife, wants to do more
with this body that do you kind of believe in
afterlife it's a vague knowledg. I wonder where you end up.
You're trying to believe it's like a tick sucking like
(23:39):
a hot dog pack. God. So, in two thousand nine,
Reuters just doing this article on biocremation. They were talking
about how green is regular cremation, and it's not green
at all, Like you think about it. You're using tons
of natural gas, not tons, it's hyperbolic, but you're using
a lot of natural gas or diesel or whatever. You're
using a lot of electricity oowth um. So apparently it
(24:03):
releases a standard cremation releases about eight hundred and eighty
pounds of c O two just one body, and that's
the big enemy. And it uses enough energy to basically
power a five hundred mile road trip. Really so not
not one and the same, Like these are two separate things.
So it uses the energy to get you across country
(24:24):
five miles and its depending on the size of your country.
And it releases eight d 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, man, I think it's just an entirely different ways,
where I think maybe a natural or a regular traditional
(24:46):
burial is more it's more polluting, like directly polluting into
the into the ground and that kind of thing, and
it's using up resources, where um, a cremation 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,
(25:07):
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. That's India. Yeah, I
like that. That's how I would want to go. Well, buddy,
if you live in Indian and you're a Hindu, that's
exactly how you have to go. That was a perfect
seguated religion. And I guess so. Uh you said Hindu
is a mandate cremation. Yeah, they're the only only religion
(25:29):
that does. Yeah, and it's uh, it's called um. I'm
gonna go ahead and give it a whirl here, uh
antim sankar which is last right? Nice? You want to
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
(25:49):
be the last one. Actually, I'll probably be corrected there
maybe one after that, the whole rebirth and all that. Maybe,
But though the I guess the smoke gets the body
to the next life. I bet it's one of the
last four. I bet it is a 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
(26:09):
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 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
(26:31):
in India along the banks of the river. Most of
their cremations from what I understand, our open air cremations.
I like that idea. There's a city called Varanasi, which
is apparently is the holy city to be cremated 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
(26:52):
live in India and all of the one electricity this
place suffers power outages. Man, that's sad. If you are
a Christian, Jewish or your Muslim Josh, they generally frown
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.
(27:15):
So Um in Judaism, Chuck, I don't think it's actually restricted.
I think you can if you want to. But the
among Orthodox and conservative Jews, 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
(27:35):
know this, 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 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 religions, right,
(27:57):
And we talked about the Catholic Church having a them
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 apparently they gave it a boost. The Hula Burger
people really catered to the Catholics in the sixties. I
(28:19):
found Canada 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,
please go ahead, But the Orthodox Eastern Orthodox Church says nay,
(28:39):
yeah yet good point. Thanks. Um, Where are we now
(29:17):
with some Can we talk about finally what you can
do with your remains? I think it's high time to
not what you can do with your remains, because you
clearly can't do anything. But it's not what you can
do with your remains, but what your friends and family
can do with your remains. And sometimes they like to
um keep you in and urn and they have these
little cemetery like buildings called a columbarium, and they just
(29:40):
hold ashes from what I understand, like your urn. Yeah,
it's like a vault. So some people choose that that
cost him dough. Obviously, go ahead and tell us about
your hero. I know you want to mention that who
Hunter t Yeah, yeah, he was mixed with firework and
shot out of a cannon, a hundred and fifty three
ft cannon also called the Memorial Tower. And apparently it's
(30:03):
It was an organization called Heavens Above Fireworks that did this,
and every anybody can do it, and Johnny Depth paid
for 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.
As Susan mentioned money. Actually I did see the average
(30:24):
cremation cost is about six bucks. Yeah, and the average
funeral I saw five grand in this article, it's ten grand.
Decided we'll say somewhere between five and ten thousand dollars.
Let's 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
(30:45):
was everyone knows this. He was shot into space. So
was Timothy Leary. 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. And then you get 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
(31:08):
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 there's actually a guy who does something
called ash portraits and 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.
(31:30):
I want to be remembered as dogs playing poker. That
would be pretty all. That's what I want to would
be 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 well they
actually they make different sized reefs and what they do
(31:53):
is they mix your remains in with cement and like,
so the big one, it can accommodate up to four
family members. So if your family went down in a
plane and just feel like showing out for one, you know,
coral reef, right, 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. Yeah,
(32:14):
fish live amongst your your family members. Who I really
really hope loved 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 this interview. Then that came out and he was like, no, no, no,
(32:34):
no, no no, I was just kidding around. I of course
I didn't snort my father. I think he snorted his father.
I think he did too. The sounds 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 burry the ashes.
(32:59):
Do the scatter popular? I thought it'd be more 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
(33:19):
go unclaimed. So sad. It is sad, and I apparently
that people who own crematoriums find it sad too, because
even though after a set period of time and states
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
(33:39):
in states where there are regulations, they still say 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 person and it's only one percent, so I don't
imagine they're like overflowing with unclaimed remains. I would hope not.
(34:00):
But since you did mention the scattering, we should talk
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 parks say unless
there's like a grave area, like it designated grave area,
(34:23):
you can't scatter ashes here. Well, it also said they
kind of turned a blind eye, like they know it
goes on, and I'm sure some ashes in Yosemite Park
are like how are you going to tell the difference
between that and like a fire ash or dirt or whatever. Um.
But state parks they say, actually, the National Forest Service
(34:44):
doesn't regulate anything on their land. So that's where you
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.
The 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,
(35:06):
that's way too much. Um, they still have restriction, but
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 Cubbies fans sadly did not get to see
(35:28):
the Cubs winner World Series as likely neither will you
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. 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
(35:51):
cap rock in Joshua Tree National Park, right. Um, and
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, right and uh took him out to Joshua
Tree and opened the casket through some gasolene on him
and set him on fire five gallons of gas right
(36:13):
and it didn't work because we've said what it takes.
So 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.
(36:34):
It's not very good. I did stay in that hotel though,
Actually I mentioned meant to mention that in the room
sixty six. Yeah, the Joshua tree in cool. 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 the thing when
all of them just blew back all over them. But
(36:56):
John Coodman, it was Steve assuming that died, right, I think,
and he he threw him out in the window back
in their faces over the ocean. It was good. It's
very good, Uh, Chuck. If I am dead and I'm
being cremated and I'm part of of the population, what
country am I am? Uh, Sweden, Switzerland, Switzerland. I've been cremated,
(37:20):
and I am part of just a meager three percent
of the population. What country am I 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 Italy, as
(37:45):
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 they think 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 want to
(38:06):
get into a burgeoning industry that went from pretty much
nothing to uh it's a three billion dollar industries the
latest stat get into pet cremation. And the people at
um Matthews Crematorium supply they make pet cream cremators too.
They do humans and pets and animals too. Apparently there's
(38:30):
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
(38:51):
know that the ashes you get and if you're serious
enough about your pet to get your pet cremated, and
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 firebreak, 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, you know, we have I think
(39:14):
in 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 on 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,
(39:37):
not like the rest of these stinkers. Just typing 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
Ubiquity 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
(39:58):
mil Yeah, buddy. I got a couple of today, A
couple of short ones. Um. The first one is from
the Sonic cast and and it's a little old, but
a promise this guy would read it. This is from
Mark in 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
(40:19):
you what happened to me this morning and my frantic
rush to get my daughter Ellie to 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
(40:42):
Chuck's sweating out gallons of fluid and 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
(41:03):
happen to read this on the on the air, would
you would make Ellie and Lydia's day? And those are
his daughters, Hey, Ellie and 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. Chucker's Junior is no more. Monday night, I
(41:26):
put Chuckers Junior inside his 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 that it's horrible. Apparently Beta's had
(41:49):
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 something onto the floor. Um,
can't you just let the little girl think her Beta
fish is special? Yeah, you're right, Chucker's Junior special. Katie. Also,
(42:10):
I found out that the bowl that he was in
had only a centimeter from the centimeter. 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 she she ends with this. At least Chucker's junior
(42:32):
died a healthy fish. That's from Katie Thirt 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. Oh. Yeah, that's
all right though, Mark, sorry about your breakfast sandwich. Can't.
I have no idea who you are. If you have
(42:52):
a really cool cremation story, we want to hear about it,
so wrap it up in an email and send it
to stuff podcast how stuff works dot com. For more
on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff
works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out
our blogs on the how stuff works dot com home
(43:14):
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