Top 10 Best Ways to Handle the Dead

What is the best way to handle the dead? Eat, bury, or burn?
The Top Ten
Plastination

As perhaps the ultimate bid for immortality, plastination is a technique used in anatomy to preserve bodies or body parts.

Taxidermy

Taxidermy is the act of mounting or reproducing dead animals for display (e.g., as hunting trophies) or for other purposes of study.

Mass grave

A mass grave is simply a singular location in which multiple human remains are interred. Mass graves are common as a result of wars, plagues, famine, and disasters, when health concerns become an issue and it would be unwise to wait for each body to be identified and given the proper rites.

Exposure

Exposure is not typically practiced intentionally in the West today. More often, it results from an accident where someone dies in an isolated location and the body goes unnoticed for a period of time. However, there are people who dispose of bodies in this manner on a regular basis.

Dissolution

Dissolution is a tried-and-true favorite of those who really want to make certain that remains are never found: simply dissolve the body in a strong solvent, such as lye or hydrochloric acid. Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple.

Cryonics

Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans and animals who can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future.

Cremation

Good enough for the Vikings and the Jedi.

Cannibalism

Also known as anthropophagy, cannibalism has been recorded throughout history and continues to be practiced even today. Specifically, it is the act of humans eating other humans.

Mummification

The Egyptians are perhaps the best-known adherents of this process, although they are far from the only ones. In mummification, a corpse has its skin and organs preserved, by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme cold, very low humidity, or lack of air. The oldest mummy found to date was a decapitated head that dates back to 6000 BC, while the earliest Egyptian mummy dates back to about 3300 BC.

Dismemberment

Dismemberment involves cutting, tearing, pulling, wrenching, or otherwise removing the limbs of some creature. It is typically committed after death for a specific purpose, but on occasion has been the cause of death.

The Contenders
Burial

Burial is the act of interring a person or object in the ground and is probably the simplest and most common method of disposing of a body.

Space burial

In the late years of the 20th century, it became the vogue to be "buried in space," that is, to have a small part of the cremated remains placed into a capsule (about the size of a tube of lipstick) and launched into space using a rocket. Since 2004, there have been about 150 space burials.

Aquamation

Aquamation is the most environmentally friendly way of disposing of human bodies. The process involves the rapid disintegration of the human body into high-quality fertilizers.

Entombment

Entombment is the act of placing human remains in a structurally enclosed space or burial chamber.

Burial at sea

Burial at sea is the term used for the procedure of disposing of human remains in the ocean.

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