[Introduction to New Wisdom]Those “frozen people” frozen in -196°C liquid nitrogen tanks are waiting to start their second life.
“Currently, there are hundreds of dead people in the United States, including baseball legend Ted Williams, whose bodies are frozen in liquid nitrogen in the hope that future technology will allow them to be resurrected.”
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Frozen people are no stranger to us. They have appeared in science fiction movies such as “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Interstellar”.
Even Silicon Valley tycoon Peter Thiel has signed an agreement to freeze himself after death in anticipation of future resurrection.
this morning,This topic instantly sparked discussion on Reddit and once again attracted a large number of netizens’ attention..
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These “legally dead” people are refrigerated in liquid nitrogen tanks at about minus 196 degrees Celsius, hoping to press the pause button on life and wait for resurrection one day in the future.
What is happening to these frozen people now?
Nearly 200 frozen people cost up to US$220,000
Robert Ettinger, known as the “Father of Cryonics”, mentioned “cryonic resurrection” in his book The Father of Cryonics published in 1962.
In his view, death is a gradual process that can be reversed if the body is flash-frozen quickly enough.!
In January last year, euronews reported that 199 humans “legally declared dead” in the United States and nearly 100 pets were kept in tanks filled with liquid nitrogen.
These “patients” are only “legally dead”, not biologically dead. They believe cryonics could be their savior.
The Alcor Life Extension Foundation, a refrigeration institution located in Arizona, USA, has built a huge infrastructure to provide refrigeration technology.
Here, the walls are covered with portraits of frozen people. These include the famous programmer Hal Finney (who died of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2014), and the famous baseball star Ted Williams (who died of heart disease complications in 2002).
One of them, Matheryn Naovaratpong from Thailand, lost her life when she was only about 2 years old.
Max More, honorary chairman of the foundation, said, “She was the youngest patient to die from brain cancer. Her parents are both doctors, and the little girl had multiple brain surgeries, but unfortunately they didn't work.” .
According to Alcor, for those participating,Once a person is legally declared dead, the cryopreservation process begins. At this point, their organs are still viable.
The cryotherapy team is often on call for up to a week before a patient dies. They would act quickly to move the patient into an ice bath and replace their blood with organ preservation fluid.
Once a patient arrives at Alcor's Arizona facility, cryoprotectants, or chemicals, are released into the patient's bloodstream to prevent ice crystals from forming and damaging organs.
Then,They cooled the human body to minus 320.8 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 196 degrees Celsius)and store it in a tank filled with liquid nitrogen.
The problem is that so far, no cryonics organization knows how to revive preserved patients. However, Alcor, a non-profit organization founded in 1972, firmly believes that “resurrection is possible”!
For these frozen people, the cost of preservation is also high.
The cost of whole-body preservation is said to be US$220,000 (approximately 1.58 million), the cost of preserving the brain alone was $80,000. Most members pay using insurance funds. Some people even choose to freeze their pets.
The Cryonics Institute, another major company, has 2,180 members worldwide, and there are also smaller companies in Europe, China and Russia.
Other companies are cheaper than Alcor, but their packages often don't include the services of a medical on-call team to begin the “cryonics” process immediately after death.
Frozen for 57 years, the world's first frozen man embarks on an immortal journey
January 12, 1967 Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley James Hiram Bedford, becoming the world’s first frozen man. It has been 57 years, but he is still lying in the liquid nitrogen tank.
It was originally planned to use advanced technology to revive it 50 years later, in 2017, but the reality is very cruel.
Bedford, 73, died of stomach cancer, which spread rapidly to his lungs in the hours after his death. A team of doctors and other enthusiasts completed the first stage of freezing in just 7 minutes.
He was put on an artificial respiration machine to keep oxygen flowing to his brain, while dimethyl sulfoxide was injected into his veins to replenish his blood and protect his organs from freezing.
After completing this work, the team placed the body into an insulated container filled with liquid nitrogen a few days later.
However, Bedford's journey into the freezer has been a rocky one. By 1970, due to poor performance of the human incubator, he was moved to a new facility. Supposedly, the only way to check if the incubator is still frozen is to monitor the tubes for frost.
But in 1976, the facility was also unable to maintain the maintenance required to continue freezing. So Bedford's son Norman used a U-haul truck to pick him up from a commercial refrigeration company in Emeryville.
Later, Bedford was moved from one cryopreservation facility to another, and finally in 1991, the cryonics company Alcor took over his remains, where they are still stored today.
How to freeze?
Freezing technology sounds like it just freezes the human body, but this process is much more complicated than simple freezing and thawing.
After the patient is declared legally dead, the body is immersed in an ice bath by a medical team on standby. The deceased's blood is then replaced with cryoprotectant, which reduces the risk of crystals forming in the body after death.
During this process, mechanical CPR equipment is used to ensure blood circulation and medications are administered to protect cells from damage.
Maintaining blood pressure is critical to survival, as is the organ donation process. This can prevent the patient from regaining consciousness, or blood clots can form. strictly speaking,Technically speaking, these people's bodies are not “frozen” but “vitrified”.
So, why not freeze?
The reason is that once the body cools below zero, instead of crystallizing, the solution becomes thicker and thicker. It's like a glass block that holds all the cells in place without any internal structural changes, so it doesn't cause any damage.
Scientists said, “At about minus 110 degrees, the body becomes very solid, without any biochemical activity, and certainly no neurological activity. So at that time, whether you wait a day or a hundred years, you will and start Always the same.”
The body is gradually cooled and stored in a special container filled with liquid nitrogen at a temperature of -196°C (or around -321°F) to prevent the body from decaying. The bodies are then kept indefinitely until science advances to the point where they can be resurrected.
Alcor CEO Mohr said science is moving in the right direction, but not at the pace he would like.
Earlier last year, scientists at the University of Minnesota successfully thawed a mouse organ and transplanted it for the first time in history.
The cryonics industry relies on the assumption that one day, death will be reversible. Not only does it need to be able to bring people back to life, but it also has to be able to cure the cause of death.
1000 years later
But the technology of bringing back the dead also brings many problems.
The first is the issue of patient identity.If a person is really resurrected 1,000 years later, who is he?
If Queen Elizabeth II was cryogenically preserved and resurrected, would she become queen again? Do you have a claim on everything that has been passed down to your heirs?
Moreover, if a person wakes up hundreds of years or even 1,000 years later, how to integrate into a completely unfamiliar world will be a very big challenge.
Moreover, how to ensure that companies that implement freezing will still exist hundreds of years from now is also a very uncertain issue.
Alcor protects the future of its patients through a Patient Care Trust, which acts as an independent entity to manage and protect cryopatient funds.
There are very strict rules on fund management, and no more than 2% of the funds can be withdrawn each year.
Alcor CEO Moore said that based on his experience, registered patients are people with a very strong “adventurous spirit.”
Hot discussion among netizens
The most heated question among netizens is, is it possible to resurrect the dead?
However, many optimistic netizens believe that although resurrection from the dead is impossible now, just like 100 years ago, no one would believe that they could talk to anyone on earth in real time at any time. Resurrection from the dead may be easier to achieve than teleportation.
“But humans have been living on the earth for so many centuries, and they still haven't figured out what aging and death are. There's a reason for this.”
After a BBC program about freezing people, the first thing many netizens were curious about was: “How is the pay in this job?”
“But the souls of those who have died will laugh at this idea in heaven.”
References:
https://x.com/CreepyOrg/status/1756713957971091540?s=20
https://www.reddit.com/r/StrangeEarth/comments/1aoct0y/there_are_currently_hundreds_of_deceased_people/