natural burial

i've always thought that the way we deal with our dead makes no sense. we take out their organs, pump them full of preservatives, dress them up, put them into expensive and beautiful coffins, and bury them under 6 feet of dirt. but... why?

as a kid i used to want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered (instead of kept in an urn). then my dad told me about the neptune society (tho, thanks to his poor english, i always thought it was lipton society) which gives you the option of scattering your ashes at sea. sounds fun!

in high school i thought maybe it would be cool to be buried under a tree or whatever, something natural. then sometime in college a read stiff by mary roach. she described a bunch of alternative "burials" including promession or cyromation. when you die, they quick freeze your body using liquid nitrogen, then they smash it to pieces. that stuff can now be used as fertilizer! your body is mostly organic anyway, and plants / soil need nitrogen. also, nitrogen is very abundant, and this process creates by little by-product, unlike traditional cremation which creates air pollution in the form of carbon dioxide. so awesome!

but the other day i saw the above video on ted about the decompiculture society. founder jae rhim lee was also worried about the environmental effects of traditional burial so she came up with a new idea: a body eating mushroom suit! when you die, you wear a special outfit that has "infinity" mushroom spores on it. your body is then buried and the mushrooms decompose your body. they also eat up all the random chemicals and stuff in your body, which is really great. apparently our bodies are chock full of poisons and stuff that normal decomposition would have a hard time taking care of. but the mushroon death suit takes care of all that. pretty smart!

but as intrigued as i am by decompifulture i think i still prefer promession. it's faster. not that faster means better, but it also seems... safer. what if the mushrooms don't work? what if wild dogs dig up my body? what if unknowing people stumble upon my body and dig me up and think i'm a cult victim?

anyway, i totally recommend reading stiff by mary roach. but if you don't have the time for a full book, this article pretty much sums up a lot of the stuff covered in the book.

anyone else give any thought as to how they want to be "buried"?