Something you never touched on is the possible trauma of reanimation, such as waking up to horrific nerve damage all over your body and feeling like you are submerged in acid. There was a good movie from 2016 called ReAlive that touched upon this, it's about a man who becomes something of a celebrity after being the first human to ever be reanimated, as he acclimates to his new life he accidentally finds out that he wasn't the first person to be reanimated - he was just the first to be reanimated successfully.
TBF, I would just assume by the time we can unfreeze people we’d have much better mental health care systems. Society’s already reached peak dystopia in that regard.
I was once a paying member of Alcor and actually was trained to be part of their standby teams (never had to take part in a preservation though). From a morality point of view, everyone I interacted with had understood the at best this was a long-shot of actually being revived. Most had the attitude of, well I'm already dead, so what is the worst that can happen? How one would adjust to a radically different society is a good call out. But most cryonicists are futurists and science fiction aficionados, so they might have an easier time adjusting. Anyway, nice well-balanced video.
Check out the book series called the bob verse. Computer Engineer dies in Las Vegas convention, sold a company and bought one of these cronic lottery tickets. He wakes up several hundred years in the future and I'll leave the rest for you to enjoy but try the audiobook excellent and I think it's about three or four books long lots of fun lots of humor you'll enjoy it
"What's the worst thing that could happen" *there are things worse than death I assure you.* Imagine if you will experiencing infinite eternities in a realm of pure physical & psychological torture.
I have always found Cryonics as a modern form of mummification, but instead of preparing the body to go to heaven, they prepare the body to go to the future.
@@ZGryphon you don’t know that with certainty. Nothing about what cryonicists are trying to do violates the laws of physics. There are complex medical, research, and logistical hurdles, but it’s not impossible.
What a cool way to think about it. Everytime I think about cryonics, I think about how future people will treat the preserved. I hope people of the future will know better and not grind them up and put them in food or paint this time lol
@@alexnoyle I don't know with certainty that someone isn't going to ring my doorbell right now and hand me a briefcase containing a million dollars in cash, either. There's nothing in the laws of physics that says that can't happen... but we both know it won't.
I've actually read all of Alcor's public case reports, and I can definitely say a large number of them are actually rather depressing. To have any chance at a hypothetical future revival, cryopreservation needs to begin immediately at time of death, and be done perfectly. The number of times this actually happens is super low. To the point, even if we had sci-fi level medical technology and knew how to revive people from cryonic suspension, things have gone so wrong for most of these people that nothing could be done for them.
So it is immediately AFTER death, and not seconds before? Because I had always thought it had to be done prior to death. Like... let's say I die of cancer. First, I have to be kept frozen until there is a cure for it. It also likely has to be able to cure stage 4, meaning immediate cures, since I'm not going to die of stage 1. But on top of that, the doctor has to get my heart and brain working again? If it's right before death, I always thought it'd be easier to warm someone up from. The blood wasn't drained yet from the brain, and the heart was pumping until frozen, so I'd think it'd be easier to jump start. Either way, unless someone cured like 90% of cancers and other death sentences, it's all in a scifi theory. EDIT: After watching, I learned the doctors do try and get around this by waiting for death and then immediately restarting the heart, pumping blood with machines and using machines to make the person breathe. I still believe this is likely too late for someone critically ill to be brought back unless they had all damage from a disease reversed (which is next to impossible right now) but at least it makes more sense now. I just think it should be a form of euthanasia offered to people in states where it's legal.
My OB hit my son's head during my c section, yanking him out roughly and damaging his brain in the process. He had a seizure seconds after birth and his heart stopped. He was rushed to a "cooling" bed, where they kept him (specifically his head) extremely cold. 50 degrees f. He went on to make a full recovery, the cooling thearpy saved his life and stopped the damage. The specialized nurses who ran the program called it a "reset button" for the brain. While not exactly "frozen" cooling/cold thearpy is not only here but being actively used. Still loved the video and your channel! Just thought I'd give you a first hand account.
Surely someone old considering Cryonics is fully aware of how knackered their body is. I can see how preserving your consciousness makes sense but mechanically most people are a mess half way through their life. Great video btw.
From what I can understand, the hope is that by the time they’re able to revive you, the problems that old age brought you would also be able to be solved. At least that’s the theory.
@@peggedyourdad9560 The heads in futurama are become some cryonics organizations, Alcor in particular (CI doesn't... not sure about KrioRus... the Russian cryo organization or Tomorrow Biostasis, the EU one) freeze just your head if you opt for that. They'll freeze your whole body if you prefer. We're already cloning some organs, so cloning your whole body besides your head should be more than doable. Though Alcor did think by the time cryonics works even cloning will be old/primitive technology by comparison.
I remember a creepy sci fi short story. It’s told from the point of view of a “grave” robber who loots suspended animation chambers, after civilization has collapsed. While the robber is breaking into the chamber the sleeping person wakes up and is killed by the robber. What I took away from the story is that you can’t expect the future to be better - it could well be worse!
@@Dragonfyre. I’m sorry but I dont remember the name of the story, or the author. What made it really good is that it took place hundreds of years after civilization collapsed and was told from the point of view of someone (the robber) who knew nothing of the old world.
I want to know who pays for the revival since you have no idea of what it will cost to actually revive someone or to repair the issues that made the person expire? What keeps the family of the person on ice from taking their inheritance? What happens if the Cryogenics company goes bankrupt do they dispose of the bodies or transfer them to another company or facility? Why would a family want grandpa back to take the things people now own since their passing? Just a few questions I've NEVER seen asked or answered.
You're a very materialistic person, aren't you? I can see you're one of those people who just sees family as people you can get stuff from when they die. Maybe the family would want their beloved grandfather back and not be worried about having to give him back his things?
The answers to all those questions are easily available except the first one because of the endless variables. The key is to arrange the details before you die. Alcor won't even accept you unless a plan is in place.
There is likely a massive amount of paperwork and contracts involved in all of that. Signing away rights like power of attorney and control to certain aspects of the funds etc. When it comes to money and death, there is an entire industry of people who diligently work to worry about all those little details to ensure they can even get a little bit of that juice.
I think the current state of cryonics is plenty ethical. However, the problem I find with cryonics is that you are freezing cells in hopes of bringing them back to life; the theory being that it's been used for sperm and egg donations. The sperm and egg cells in question we're not deceased when Frozen and where in fact still alive, wholel I've not done much research on the matter I believe the same is true with the hamsters in the experiment referenced. When humans are cryogenically frozen after death, the problem lie in the fact that they are in fact already dead. I think if humans were cryogenically frozen while still alive that someday the technology would become such that we could revive them and cure them of whatever ailments may have put them in an "deathy" state, but this matter becomes far more ethically muddled. For example, if one were to be diagnosed with cancer and wished to be cryogenically frozen until a cure could be found that would not put their life at risk the way current cancer treatments do, I believe we could cryogenically freeze this still living person and bring them back at the time the cure has been discovered, but to freeze someone and risk their death, should they not be able to be revived, is something that I feel a medical board of ethics would greatly disapprove of.
Imo bringing back cryopreserved dead is unlikely to work in centuries so it would be more likely this idea of curing the sick with future tech could work better with just slowing the metabolism to near zero in a fridgerated enviroment, this would be better since you would not be technically dead since your brain is getting blood and this means that your electric signals would be more likely to be preserved or returned when you would be woken up.
To be completely honest, I personally think that in it's current state, cryo conservation should be viewed more like a type of burial than a medical procedure.
AND let's not forget how far ethics and morals have shifted just within our "generation" or lifetime guidelines... I'm a bicentennial baby... SO since 1976, I've seen some pretty big "Paradigm Shifts" as things go... Okay, so you freeze today and the world goes on around your "rigid state"... Someone actually achieves Artificial Sentience... on top of just the directly program driven algorithms of Artificial Intelligence... SO the robot KNOWS what their purpose is... AND a robot can be built for ANY (as disgusting as it can get for illustration here) purpose... What do you do when you get awakened to a world where a pedophile is no longer considered a monster? He or She is just a sexuality and should be sequestered (for the children's sakes) in the "Bot farm" where all the bots function on an 8 to 15 year old (roughly) level... so he or she can live out a reasonable life and not actively cause any "real humans" any physical or psychological harm... AND since the 'bots are designed for this engagement, they can "memory dump" the psychological trauma at the same time they're being retro-fitted and rebuilt... and basically "no harm = no foul" SO there's nothing explicitly wrong with being a pedo'... only in lying about it. What the f*** does someone from OUR era do with that??? You might not WANT to know what the future beholds... It might not expressly be "evil" but you're going to struggle with the very concept to a degree that you might be "better off" if you'd died outright before then.,, ...AND think about the cautious, conservative, and very private reservations of our elders as we've known them... How much worse would it get to drag them on into newer and newer generations??? I'd think that could get pretty bad. ;o)
@@OleJanssen yeah it's a burial option because the amount of time and money that would need to be dedicated to even have basic functions come back is so large that pretending it's realistic to be brought back when being frozen with our current tech is a sad hope
Two things to know: 1) When the body or the brain is vitrified, the internal stresses on it are pretty major. In the industry, it's referred to as "meatglass", and is particularly prone to cracking right through if knocked or even just a rapid change in temperature. Cracked. Right through the head. 2) The whole bodies are stored hanging upside down with the head in a bucket. That way, if the power goes out or the liquid N2 starts escaping and vapourising, the last of the liquid runs down into the bucket and at least the head stays frozen the longest. I have a friend who worked on the Timeship for a while many years ago. (A long-planned and never Actually built rival to Alcor)
Imagine you're in heaven enjoying the afterlife immensely, but then you get unfrozen and sent back to life on Earth in a global-warmed climate crisis hell! Famine, drought, war, financial collapse...
I got morbidly fascinated by this topic for a while more than 20 years ago after reading Peter James's novel 'Host'. He did a LOT of research for it, and the science and processes were very well described/explained in the book. I still re-read it every now and then: it's well worth a read if this subject interests you!
Fun fact: the microwave oven was discovered during those hamster experiments. Tom Scott interviewed the lead researcher here on his YT channel not too long ago.
I have acquaintances who knew someone who was a proponent of this and was cryopreserved when she died. I made the mistake of reading the case report, and it was one of the most horrific things I've ever read. It took me from thinking cryonics is a "maybe" to a "no way". Especially because so many of the flaws in the process were on full display, such as the struggle for Alcor representatives to get permission to begin the preservation process -- bear in mind that she actually lived close to Alcor's facilities. Even if there were no delays, and I'm sure she understood what could have gone wrong, I felt more like I was reading about a corpse people are pretending is still alive get desecrated. I like to read and hear about weird medical stuff, but this was different. Do not consider cryonics without reading the case reports and being okay with what could happen to your body whether you can be brought back to life or not, and that you will essentially make yourself into a very expensive, energy-intensive, and legally (and almost certainly actually) dead test subject. Consider that your friends and family may be able to read what was done to your body in awful detail if you do not care about your own corpse.
Read the detailed case report of ANY major medical procedure, and it's likely to be gruesome detail. Though granted, difficulties that seem like they ought to be avoidable (like getting cooperation from the hospital, coroner, etc.) are particularly tragic. However, you don't know that those difficulties mean your acquaintance is gone. It takes hours for the synapses to degrade so much they can't be read out - and that's the key criteria; whether an advanced AI scanning the brain can figure out what was connected to what, and NOT whether the cells are still viable. As long as the connectome is intact, she's not gone and may be revived one day. And in the end, what would have happened in the ground (or in a cremation furnace) is far more gruesome, even if you don't have to read a detailed report about it.
@@joestrout3331 She was found unconscious in her home after having suffered cardiac arrest, pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital, and it took several hours for Alcor to even begin decapitating her and filling her head with coolant. Decomposition had already started. She’s dead. Even if she had been preserved perfectly, the method by which you suggest she could one day be revived sounds more like an AI would create someone or something similar to her, but it wouldn’t be her. Unless you are suggesting that as long as a person’s connectome can be preserved well enough, far in the future it can be copied and reimplemented as software or hardware and “run”, and that brings the same exact person back to life? Is a person, their life, and their consciousness in this worldview things that pop in and out of existence provided certain conditions are met? It’s interesting to think about and makes for great Sci-Fi, but it doesn’t sound very scientific. That wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it wasn’t presented as this rationalist, scientific idea. Honestly, unless you believe whatever will be revived or recreated is a new entity and not a true revival, the way consciousness is conceived of here is this nebulous, non-physical thing not far off from a soul or spirit. I never knew her personally, so I don’t know if she believed she could be revived like that. It sounds like an uncommon thing to really believe in rather than hope for, even among the cryogenics crowd. Perhaps she accepted she would likely be actually dead forever, but hoped at least something could be learned from her case. I do not judge her if she believed the former, but for me, I feel like it’s healthier to just admit she is not coming back. If there is an afterlife, perhaps I will meet her there when I, like all living things, one day die. And if there is no afterlife, then I’m not going to care one way or the other anyway.
I really enjoy how he tells us about the weather. There always seems to be a pause, like he's looking out some window to check. "In a currently... average cloudy Southeastern corner..." I like it a lot!
Literally every time I see one of your videos it peaks my interest no matter the subject matter you do a great job at making thought provoking and truly interesting content and it’s honesty what I’ve needed for like the last year and I appreciate it a lot
I remember a Larry Niven story where they were called ‘Corpscilces’ and when they were eventually solved they were an underclass of indentured servitude as the money put away had long been used up
The concept shows up frequently. I spent the entire video recalling the story "Heads" by Greg Bear, wherein the preserved remains have become something of an afterthought to a facility studying other aspects of cryogenic science, and the prospect of reviving one of the clients prompts a violent response from parties who would prefer old secrets remain in the grave.
That doesn't make any sense. Even a modest investment grows a lot with time. If you left $10k in the market and were frozen for 100 years it would be worth over $55 million dollars, they should be rich as fuck when they are revived.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 not necessarily as markets can collapse or investments go bad or the bank closing/being bought and accounts being thrown into chaos.
For me it's not really that much of an ethical problem. As stated in the video, they agreed to the procedure. While the feelings of the family are something to consider, it's not their body. And if we were able to unfreeze and "start up" bodies i think we should do it. Great stuff to think about, very good video! :D
Just today I explained to my sister how James Lovelock invented the microwave to heat up frozen hamsters (however, he didn't commercialize it). You uploading this video today is a funny coincidence.
@@wtrdawnlord he didn't invent the microwave oven as we know it, but he did create a similar system to be used in his research. According to him, that was before a microwave oven existed.
@@memeju1ce To summarize the story: During WW2 a scientist (Percy Spencer) working on radar technology noticed a chocolate bar in his pocket melting and realized that microwaves could be used to heat up stuff. Later on when James Lovelock was trying to reanimate frozen hamsters he had the idea to use a magnetron (which creates the microwaves) heat up the hamsters and a box made of some metal mesh (resulting in a Faraday cage) to keep the waves in. This setup is basically a microwave oven. The development of the microwave ovens as we know it today was independent of that. They became publically available a few years after this story. But there were also commercally available microwave ovens to be used in restaurants or hotels, but they were about the size of a fridge. So James Lovelock is not 'the' inventor of the microwave oven, but he still managed to build one before they really were a thing.
A good way to get an idea of the damage that the ice crystals do to cells in living tissue is to think about the difference between fresh fruit and veg compared to frozen, then thawed. When it's fresh, it's still crispy because the cell membranes and cell walls that give the plant its rigidity are intact and, well, giving it rigidity. But when you freeze it, the ice crystals pierce the cells like microscopic daggers, shredding the cell wall (among other things) to bits. So when you thaw out those frozen veggies, they're all soft and floppy and have no more rigidity because of this damage. And likewise, freezing a human would cause similar damage by way of microscopic ice daggers tearing apart the cell from within (and without).
Flash freezing reduces the size of those ice crystals resulting in less cells that get damage to cell membranes. I'm not sure about the specifics in the application to human tissues, but that would be an interesting experiment.
@@austin6ish That was tested in the 1950s with hamsters, where it worked, but it was considered impractical for humans because of the square cube law making cooling everything down fast enough to be a near impossible task.
I want to say thank for all the enjoyable broadcast on both your your networks. Sometime back I committed to a in monthly fee to you after hit and miss donation's. I had a severe stroke causing a lapses in funds to you, I just saw your thanks you supporters. Was I ever recognized as a supporter, I'd really like to see. I've gotten better and am looking forward to resuming support, as I enjoy your broadcast and highly respect your intelligence.
I'm reminded of the game "Soma" where the guy goes in for a brain scan and wakes up many decades into the future. He discovers his "real" self has died of cancer many years ago and he's inside a robot body. He struggles to understand what he has become and the concept of the "real" self. For example, when he transfers to a new robot body, he discovers he wasn't moved, he was copied. The old body still has a copy of his consciousness and would wake up confused later. Does he turn off the old robot and preserve one "true" self?
Hell yes. One of the few games that I played that branded its tale inside my head. The questions that formed when I played were trying. I don't think I've played a game about existential horror that has even come close to the quality of that game and it's story.
Such a fascinating subject... Filled with hope and wishful thinking! In truth people of future will be far too busy with their own lives, and the issues they face, than to worry about bringing sick dead people back to life! Well, they might be tempted to bring back Elvis, but I'm pretty sure Jo Ordinary will be left in the freezer... Or just switched off and forgotten about.
Ira Glass of "This American Life", an NPR weekly show, profiled the guy who was doing cryrogenic preservation back in the 70s. A grisly and horrific tale for sure. He was reopening the capsules and putting more bodies in there then refreezing. Needless to say, it didn't end well for either the frozen folk or the owner of the company. I think you touched on the guy who did this. Very disturbing show.
i tend to just look at Cryonics as a "burial" method. Like the cryonically "preserved" are dead, and if the concept of Cryonics is what gave these people enough peace to die easily than, I have to say it did its job. Death is a scary thing, I cannot blame someone for seeking comfort. Even if I think it is a huge waste of money.
I think its not that morally wrong (though still it is profiting from peoples fear of death) but i think its so wierd to think you can "preserve" a body to be revived later while having no idea how to revive them and therefore having no idea what is necessary to prepare the body. Let alone people whos body already is already not able to stay alife at the point of preservation. I mean... what are the chances you accidentally did everything right 50-100 years before knowing what you have to do for this to work?!
You start your post with the idea that it's not going to work and that it's making money off or fear of death. How can you be sure it won't work? DNA was discovered in 1869, 1953 the double-helix DNA was discovered, thats 84 years, what will the science be in 300? Chance is better than no chance at all, and I think we can all agree with that.
Disagree. I think it's entirely wrong, morally or otherwise, to profit off people's fear of death. I have yet to hear any argument that convinces me it's anything other than wrong..
Yeah, the odds seem pretty high that your body will either be damaged to the point of being unrevivable, you'll suffer permanent brain damage in the process, or you'll be alive but still old so won't have gained much lifespan.
The scariest thing to me is that if somehow your consciousness can be fully replicated digitally, you probably won't have the choice of continuing to exist in that state or not indefinitely.
@@joestrout3331 Unless the people of the future are supremely more concerned about theoretical ethics than we are, they'd be storing your consciousness like any other program or data. Chrome doesn't have the option to uninstall itself if it is dissatisfied with its existence. It lives in memory and storage to be used when you feel like using it. That could be a copy of your consciousness, in the future.
In his long life, my grandfather witnessed the invention of the lightbulb and a man on the moon. The speed of technological advances accelerates to the point that we would hardly be able to grasp the everyday lives of our adult great-grandchildren. EDIT: VylBird set me straight on the dates so grandpa could never have seen both. Another family legacy debunked :-) That leaves me scrambling… off the cuff, I’ll say from the first car to a man on the moon. Doesn’t sound as good as the light bulb though. Thanks VylBird :-))
I actually helped build that place, I was the project manager for the general contractor that built Alcor out as well as doing any tenant improvements they have done. Pretty interesting place
I think I would rate this a 3.5 on the mortality scale out of 10. There's informed consented and the technology has improved immensely as has the practice itself. Ultimately the cost of the process is what makes me wary. Its a way for people to maybe feel better about their own mortality.
I feel like this would be an interesting movie premise: a guy is dying of a terminal illness and wishes to be cryogenically frozen. Then, maybe like 10 years later, his family decides it's time to thaw him out and revive him, and the movie follows his disoriented struggle to acclimate to another chance at life that he didn't (couldn't) ask for. His brain being totally preserved but thrown for a loop because he was revived suddenly
Love that Denis Leary song Asshole - John Wayne's not dead, he's frozen And as soon as we find a cure for cancer We're gonna thaw out the Duke, and he's gonna be pretty pissed off…
Good ending. My thought was also "this is one big cope" I'm not sure why many of us think we're so special we shouldn't die. But i guess that survival instinct is very strong
Fun Fact: the cemetary at 12:20 is around 4 miles from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, topic of another Plainly Difficult episode! Chatsworth is just on the other side of the hills.
The microscopy lab I used to work in had done their own in house testing to see what time frame you had to get tissues into fixative to preserve very fine molecular structures - such as tight cell junctions. Especially since perfusion (pumping fixative through an animal while it is anaesthetised) was no longer acceptable. They figured that 5 min was about the limit and after that structures were already starting to break down. Didn't matter so much if you were looking at larger structures but you would still want your tissues into fixative as soon as possible. Edit to add: so you would likely want to move quick when someone dies if you want to preserve sensitive tissues
The key is to get the body, especially the brain, temperature lowered as soon as possible to slow down the metabolic processes. As far as the vitrification process, the cool down is controlled by computer at one degree per hour. Once the body/brain is at the glass stage, meaning solid with no crystallization, it is placed in a sleeping bag and then lowered into liquid nitrogen.
@@thewickedchicken82 oh I understand that. What I meant by my comment was; if fixative times are so short how could such sensitive tissues within the body be preserved when cooling times (to create the right shape ice crystals - forgive me it's been a while) are so slow? Surely tissues would already be actively degrading by the time they were cooled?
@@blackhellebore89 Assuming that the patient had a standby team at the ready, and that the hospital or facility was cooperative, the body would have been cooled down as soon as legal death was declared. The body is placed in a circulated ice bath for rapid cooling. When the full computer controlled vitrification process begins, the body is already cold enough to adequately slow the metabolic processes, greatly reducing decay. Until people can be legally suspended while alive, it's never going to be perfect. Cryonics is an exercise in optimism. Future technology will hopefully be able to address any reasonable damage. Stem cell and nano technologies will likely have advanced enough to repair damage at the cellular level, as well as organ replacement if needed. The purpose of cryonics, which research continues to improve, is to deliver into the future the best preserved specimens as possible.
I actually want to be cryogenically frozen, but I don't want to be revived normally. I want to be a cyborg, because that may happen before an actual full revival.
There seems to be a conflation of two very different issues. There is a great deal of difference between preserving a dead body and bringing that dead body back to life.
As far as suspended animation goes, I’m fairly certain I remember the Ancient Greeks talking about Balsam being used to keep Hector barely alive after his defeat by Achilles. I could be completely wrong though
I have always wondered if the people could ever even be brought back to life and survive that process. The whole theory around cryoprotectants makes sense for some process's (like the embryo stuff) but I don't know if it would really work for a human body. I mean think about it, could a regular human survive right now if you inject that crap into their veins and body or would they scream in pain as their body rejects that foreign substance flowing their their body like lava. Imagine waking up to that feeling. Now I know in practice they drain your blood out and put this stuff in its place so theoretically they would reverse this process upon reanimation. But even then if they drain all this glycol stuff out and put fresh blood in your body there is still going to be remnants and traces of this chemical soup in your body, organs and veins. I just can't see how any human body would deal with that properly without causing huge issues. I mean maybe if they did like a week long "Wakeup" process where they flush your body of all the chemicals and fluids and reintroduce blood while warming your body back up and whatnot but I just don't see all of this happening without some major shit going wrong. It's always been an interesting discussion to have but I don't think we will ever see it happen unless some incredible advancements are made in multiple parts of life. This isn't even considering the whole "curing death" part of why they died either.
It's worse than that, your brain is dying every second it goes without oxygen. So if you're not frozen when they remove your blood, you only have a couple mins before your brain dead from a lack of oxygen anyways. Just because the cells don't crystalize when they are frozen doesn't mean the brain is still viable. You could be "revived" as totally brain dead. I don't understand how they could replace your blood with anything unless they can replace it, and freeze you in a few minutes to prevent your brain from dying.
You said everything I was thinking. Maybe they keep you sedated like a medically induced coma for the first week. Maybe in the future there will be new pain treatments
The only way I can imagine the whole thawing and wake up process is to first flush out these chemicals and replace them with blood while simultaneously warming up the body. A heart lung machine then animates the body while treatment is given or surgery performed to fix the problem(s) that led to the person's death. And then it's a waiting game to see if someone is still in there .... My guess is they'll never wake up.
It's... not entirely impossible. It doesn't violate any laws of physics. It requires tremendous advances in cellular biology, computational biology, medical imaging, neurology, nanotechnology and a lot more fields. But it doesn't violate any fundamental laws. So it's possible that revival might be possible, even enough time for scientific advancements. Centuries, perhaps. The counterargument is obvious though: If you get the preservation, you're almost certain to stay dead. If you don't get the preservation, you are very certain to stay dead. And as you won't have any use for your money after you die anyway, what are you risking?
Please do a video on the pcp/pbb mixup in Michigan USA in the 1970s. The chemical PBB was accidently given to cows as a nutritional supplement and lead to a massive poisoning of the state population thru mostly milk. 😳
I'd give it a shot if I had the money. A one in a million shot is better than zero, and being digitally reanimated via a brainscan sounds neat. Alas, I'll probably just have to take my chances with the Angel Of Death like most everyone else.
@@alexnoyle Yeah, I remember reading that some time ago. Unfortunately I can't afford that either, but if my circumstances change I might look into it.
I'd give it a zero on the ethical scale if it was an option. If I can write a will that remands my corpse to science, or education, or the crematorium, or the graveyard, why is it different to will my body to the cryo tank? And financially, grave plots are expensive and, at least in some cases, "eternal" plots aren't guaranteed past a certain time-frame. Plus, should I escape this life with any wealth, I'm free to bequeath it as i see fit. I really don't see a fundamental difference between cryogenic preservation and any other posthumous directives. As long as it isn't directly harming someone else we should indulge the dying in their final wishes.
Agreed. At worst it's just an option for what to do with your remains. It's a weird form of modern mummification where we're trying to preserve the body.
A cryogenics technician is moving a frozen head from an old, outdated tank to a new, state of the art tank. The technician has the frozen head held in his ice block tongs while another technician watches. Suddenly the first technician sneezes and drops the head on the concrete floor. A big chunk of the brain area is knocked off. "You moron!" the second technician shouts. "Look what you did. Now we both are in a sh!t load of trouble." First technician;..."Look, we can just glue it back together and place it in the tank . Nobody will be the wiser for around a thousand years."
Anybody else read "The First Immortal" by James Halperin? It dives into a lot of the issues (past, present, and projected); including a deeply unsettling method of cloning people who didn't make it or get frozen, then basically grooming a genetically identical child to be your new bride 🤢 (which the narrative plays imo depressingly straight and happy ending-ish 🤮) Um, that's not to say I wouldn't recommend it, but just be alert that it does not handle consent as a thing like at all, as I recall
Good point and a crazy idea to imagine me in my current life, having my great great great great great grandfather being revived again, and how he would fit into our family and current society! Wow!
@21:30 I'd like to imagine John leaning to the side of his monitor towards the window passing critical judgement on the current state of the _Southeastern Corner of London UK_ weather before announcing it in the video - Hence the short pause his speech 😁
On the question about if you were frozen would you even want to thaw out in a future where everyone and everything you knew was dead or gone? It worked out pretty good for Fry in Futurama.
@@mbryson2899 like Tom said. We're already in that world. I love the reference tho, Idiocracy is one of my all time favorites. The weird thing is I don't remember the movie ever going to theaters or having any advertising? It was just on Comedy Central one night.
This made me think of the first time I saw Sleeper. I was 8 years old and the whole scene of him reanimating and where he’s being told what year it is with no sound and only that crazy jazz music is absolutely hysterically funny.😂
Cryonics sends chills through the body, quite literally, but that aside, nah, when I pop my clogs, don't freeze me, just throw me in a hole and let me rot... :P
If the body is dead already before being frozen, doesn't that kinda defeat the whole idea? Edit: after further thought, if your frozen after death you don't really have anything to lose anymore so, if you have the money why not try?
Well, partly it depends on if there is any family or not. cryonics is a bit like those TV preachers who get old people to give them their remaining life savings in order to secure their position in heaven... it is the individual's money yes, but they are still getting scammed out of it and it means that money would not be available to surviving family.
Personally, I hope that I can afford to be cryopreserved before I hop off this mortal coil. My body's ailments have seen me unable to live the life I deserve, so hopefully, by putting my head on ice, I can get a chance to live in a world without my body holding me back. And as an added bonus I can talk about and potentially operate what would be considered obsolete or even ancient equipment and technology as a museum worker. Could you imagine how useful someone able to actually drive a car would be to vintage car collectors in a time when self-driving was considered normal for decades/centuries/millennia
This would be something I would consider. I mean yeah, the thought of us having a finite lifetime on this earth and then it’s lights out forever doesn’t sit well with a lot of people. But for me, I’m just genuinely curious how far the human race can go. Think about it. From the Mayans, to today where we are driving cars with mobility far more than even rulers of millenniums ago had. From early language and writing, to being able to communicate with almost anyone in the world in an instant. And soon, we will even be stepping on other worlds. It’s amazing how far we have advanced. And I’ll be damned if I don’t get the chance to see just how much further it can go, from a technological standpoint. I wanna see what we’re capable of. I wanna see what we are going to do centuries in the future. Millenniums. I want to know what’s possible.
You will still die, nothing can't prevent death from taking place, and after death, you will face Jesus, who will judge your entire life that you lived on earth. If you have rejected His love for you, you will spend eternity in hell which is much worse than any nightmare or horror movie you have seen it's your choice eternity is too long to be wrong
Thanks PD. Interesting Video. One of the Most Famous People to be Frozen is Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams. I Believe he is in Scottsdale Arizona Alcor Facility.
Something you never touched on is the possible trauma of reanimation, such as waking up to horrific nerve damage all over your body and feeling like you are submerged in acid. There was a good movie from 2016 called ReAlive that touched upon this, it's about a man who becomes something of a celebrity after being the first human to ever be reanimated, as he acclimates to his new life he accidentally finds out that he wasn't the first person to be reanimated - he was just the first to be reanimated successfully.
Flatliners
TBF, I would just assume by the time we can unfreeze people we’d have much better mental health care systems. Society’s already reached peak dystopia in that regard.
I’m glad you use movies as realistic problems we might face… 😂
@@Kombat_Wombatthe whole concept of this is just based on sci Fi, movies are a good place to start for some obvious "what if's"
You get an insurance policy that covers the cost. You don't fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I was once a paying member of Alcor and actually was trained to be part of their standby teams (never had to take part in a preservation though). From a morality point of view, everyone I interacted with had understood the at best this was a long-shot of actually being revived. Most had the attitude of, well I'm already dead, so what is the worst that can happen? How one would adjust to a radically different society is a good call out. But most cryonicists are futurists and science fiction aficionados, so they might have an easier time adjusting. Anyway, nice well-balanced video.
That's how I think of it. If I have the means and I am already dying, I might as well give myself a tiny chance of seeing the future.
Check out the book series called the bob verse.
Computer Engineer dies in Las Vegas convention, sold a company and bought one of these cronic lottery tickets.
He wakes up several hundred years in the future and I'll leave the rest for you to enjoy but try the audiobook excellent and I think it's about three or four books long lots of fun lots of humor you'll enjoy it
Cool story bro 🥱 somehow I don't believe it and call it story
@@terencehill2320 paying member?
If you had $300,000 laying around then you wouldn't need to work for the company much less afford it.
"What's the worst thing that could happen"
*there are things worse than death I assure you.*
Imagine if you will experiencing infinite eternities in a realm of pure physical & psychological torture.
I have always found Cryonics as a modern form of mummification, but instead of preparing the body to go to heaven, they prepare the body to go to the future.
The future is real, heavens not.
@@alexnoyle In either case, they're not going to get there.
@@ZGryphon you don’t know that with certainty. Nothing about what cryonicists are trying to do violates the laws of physics. There are complex medical, research, and logistical hurdles, but it’s not impossible.
What a cool way to think about it. Everytime I think about cryonics, I think about how future people will treat the preserved. I hope people of the future will know better and not grind them up and put them in food or paint this time lol
@@alexnoyle I don't know with certainty that someone isn't going to ring my doorbell right now and hand me a briefcase containing a million dollars in cash, either. There's nothing in the laws of physics that says that can't happen... but we both know it won't.
I've actually read all of Alcor's public case reports, and I can definitely say a large number of them are actually rather depressing. To have any chance at a hypothetical future revival, cryopreservation needs to begin immediately at time of death, and be done perfectly. The number of times this actually happens is super low. To the point, even if we had sci-fi level medical technology and knew how to revive people from cryonic suspension, things have gone so wrong for most of these people that nothing could be done for them.
Me too, I've followed Alcor since the 80s when you had to actually write to them for updates 🤣. Some of the early case studies are pretty horrific
So it is immediately AFTER death, and not seconds before? Because I had always thought it had to be done prior to death.
Like... let's say I die of cancer. First, I have to be kept frozen until there is a cure for it. It also likely has to be able to cure stage 4, meaning immediate cures, since I'm not going to die of stage 1. But on top of that, the doctor has to get my heart and brain working again?
If it's right before death, I always thought it'd be easier to warm someone up from. The blood wasn't drained yet from the brain, and the heart was pumping until frozen, so I'd think it'd be easier to jump start.
Either way, unless someone cured like 90% of cancers and other death sentences, it's all in a scifi theory.
EDIT: After watching, I learned the doctors do try and get around this by waiting for death and then immediately restarting the heart, pumping blood with machines and using machines to make the person breathe. I still believe this is likely too late for someone critically ill to be brought back unless they had all damage from a disease reversed (which is next to impossible right now) but at least it makes more sense now. I just think it should be a form of euthanasia offered to people in states where it's legal.
Seems to me a much easier and cheaper way is to have some of your cells frozen when you're still alive and kicking.
This was solved centuries ago people! Frankenstein was real! High voltage is the key to reanimated population.
In slight defense of Alcor, I believe most people fund their preservations with life insurance.
My OB hit my son's head during my c section, yanking him out roughly and damaging his brain in the process. He had a seizure seconds after birth and his heart stopped. He was rushed to a "cooling" bed, where they kept him (specifically his head) extremely cold. 50 degrees f. He went on to make a full recovery, the cooling thearpy saved his life and stopped the damage. The specialized nurses who ran the program called it a "reset button" for the brain. While not exactly "frozen" cooling/cold thearpy is not only here but being actively used. Still loved the video and your channel! Just thought I'd give you a first hand account.
Did you sue?
That long dramatic pause in describing the weather in a corner of southeast London had me on the edge of my seat!
Surely someone old considering Cryonics is fully aware of how knackered their body is. I can see how preserving your consciousness makes sense but mechanically most people are a mess half way through their life.
Great video btw.
So Kieth Richards is out then huh...
Heads in jars from Futurama then? That seems to make more sense.
From what I can understand, the hope is that by the time they’re able to revive you, the problems that old age brought you would also be able to be solved. At least that’s the theory.
@@peggedyourdad9560 The heads in futurama are become some cryonics organizations, Alcor in particular (CI doesn't... not sure about KrioRus... the Russian cryo organization or Tomorrow Biostasis, the EU one) freeze just your head if you opt for that. They'll freeze your whole body if you prefer.
We're already cloning some organs, so cloning your whole body besides your head should be more than doable. Though Alcor did think by the time cryonics works even cloning will be old/primitive technology by comparison.
If they had the tech to actually revive someone from this then obviously those future people could address their health.
I remember a creepy sci fi short story. It’s told from the point of view of a “grave” robber who loots suspended animation chambers, after civilization has collapsed. While the robber is breaking into the chamber the sleeping person wakes up and is killed by the robber. What I took away from the story is that you can’t expect the future to be better - it could well be worse!
DOH!!
What’s the name?
@@Dragonfyre. I’m sorry but I dont remember the name of the story, or the author. What made it really good is that it took place hundreds of years after civilization collapsed and was told from the point of view of someone (the robber) who knew nothing of the old world.
@@Sashazur :(
@@Dragonfyre. If I had to guess I would say the author was Harlan Ellison.
I want to know who pays for the revival since you have no idea of what it will cost to actually revive someone or to repair the issues that made the person expire? What keeps the family of the person on ice from taking their inheritance? What happens if the Cryogenics company goes bankrupt do they dispose of the bodies or transfer them to another company or facility? Why would a family want grandpa back to take the things people now own since their passing?
Just a few questions I've NEVER seen asked or answered.
You're a very materialistic person, aren't you? I can see you're one of those people who just sees family as people you can get stuff from when they die. Maybe the family would want their beloved grandfather back and not be worried about having to give him back his things?
The answers to all those questions are easily available except the first one because of the endless variables. The key is to arrange the details before you die. Alcor won't even accept you unless a plan is in place.
There is likely a massive amount of paperwork and contracts involved in all of that. Signing away rights like power of attorney and control to certain aspects of the funds etc. When it comes to money and death, there is an entire industry of people who diligently work to worry about all those little details to ensure they can even get a little bit of that juice.
They have yet to hear one complaint from an active participant.
@@matthewnorman2951 and more importantly, none of them have yet sued...and as long as they never bring them back, they'll never be able to...
I think the current state of cryonics is plenty ethical. However, the problem I find with cryonics is that you are freezing cells in hopes of bringing them back to life; the theory being that it's been used for sperm and egg donations. The sperm and egg cells in question we're not deceased when Frozen and where in fact still alive, wholel I've not done much research on the matter I believe the same is true with the hamsters in the experiment referenced. When humans are cryogenically frozen after death, the problem lie in the fact that they are in fact already dead. I think if humans were cryogenically frozen while still alive that someday the technology would become such that we could revive them and cure them of whatever ailments may have put them in an "deathy" state, but this matter becomes far more ethically muddled. For example, if one were to be diagnosed with cancer and wished to be cryogenically frozen until a cure could be found that would not put their life at risk the way current cancer treatments do, I believe we could cryogenically freeze this still living person and bring them back at the time the cure has been discovered, but to freeze someone and risk their death, should they not be able to be revived, is something that I feel a medical board of ethics would greatly disapprove of.
Imo bringing back cryopreserved dead is unlikely to work in centuries so it would be more likely this idea of curing the sick with future tech could work better with just slowing the metabolism to near zero in a fridgerated enviroment, this would be better since you would not be technically dead since your brain is getting blood and this means that your electric signals would be more likely to be preserved or returned when you would be woken up.
To be completely honest, I personally think that in it's current state, cryo conservation should be viewed more like a type of burial than a medical procedure.
AND let's not forget how far ethics and morals have shifted just within our "generation" or lifetime guidelines...
I'm a bicentennial baby... SO since 1976, I've seen some pretty big "Paradigm Shifts" as things go...
Okay, so you freeze today and the world goes on around your "rigid state"...
Someone actually achieves Artificial Sentience... on top of just the directly program driven algorithms of Artificial Intelligence... SO the robot KNOWS what their purpose is... AND a robot can be built for ANY (as disgusting as it can get for illustration here) purpose...
What do you do when you get awakened to a world where a pedophile is no longer considered a monster? He or She is just a sexuality and should be sequestered (for the children's sakes) in the "Bot farm" where all the bots function on an 8 to 15 year old (roughly) level... so he or she can live out a reasonable life and not actively cause any "real humans" any physical or psychological harm... AND since the 'bots are designed for this engagement, they can "memory dump" the psychological trauma at the same time they're being retro-fitted and rebuilt... and basically "no harm = no foul" SO there's nothing explicitly wrong with being a pedo'... only in lying about it.
What the f*** does someone from OUR era do with that???
You might not WANT to know what the future beholds... It might not expressly be "evil" but you're going to struggle with the very concept to a degree that you might be "better off" if you'd died outright before then.,,
...AND think about the cautious, conservative, and very private reservations of our elders as we've known them... How much worse would it get to drag them on into newer and newer generations??? I'd think that could get pretty bad. ;o)
@@OleJanssen yeah it's a burial option because the amount of time and money that would need to be dedicated to even have basic functions come back is so large that pretending it's realistic to be brought back when being frozen with our current tech is a sad hope
@@gnarthdarkanen7464 This sounds like some weird nonce fiction fantasy, seek help.
Two things to know:
1) When the body or the brain is vitrified, the internal stresses on it are pretty major. In the industry, it's referred to as "meatglass", and is particularly prone to cracking right through if knocked or even just a rapid change in temperature.
Cracked.
Right through the head.
2) The whole bodies are stored hanging upside down with the head in a bucket. That way, if the power goes out or the liquid N2 starts escaping and vapourising, the last of the liquid runs down into the bucket and at least the head stays frozen the longest.
I have a friend who worked on the Timeship for a while many years ago. (A long-planned and never Actually built rival to Alcor)
Creepy!!!! Meatglass sounds like a good band name!
holy cow, I heard "Inherent Issues with the concept" right as I was reading this lmao
Imagine you get unfreezed but then you just wake up in the afterlife
That would be a waste of money
Talk about delayed gratification🤣
Imagine you get unfreezed but it's today.
Imagine you're in heaven enjoying the afterlife immensely, but then you get unfrozen and sent back to life on Earth in a global-warmed climate crisis hell! Famine, drought, war, financial collapse...
Which afterlife?
Plenty of different versions of the concept exist...
I got morbidly fascinated by this topic for a while more than 20 years ago after reading Peter James's novel 'Host'. He did a LOT of research for it, and the science and processes were very well described/explained in the book. I still re-read it every now and then: it's well worth a read if this subject interests you!
thanks looks like it be a good read🙂
It's a scam
@@stellviahohenheim lol no shit she said it's fiction
do you have any clue what morbid means?
@@psychwardsandSCENE literally using it when talking about dead people. Dolt.
Fun fact: the microwave oven was discovered during those hamster experiments. Tom Scott interviewed the lead researcher here on his YT channel not too long ago.
I don't care what tom Scott said that is not how the microwave was discovered
@@billmadison2032 oh it’s probably my terrible memory if I got that wrong. Maybe it was first commercial microwave?
*The first (and forgotten) use of microwaves for heating.
That's not the story I heard. I heard an engineer working near military radar noticed the increase in temperature
When he was working on the radar he realized that it melted the chocolate in his pocket
I have acquaintances who knew someone who was a proponent of this and was cryopreserved when she died. I made the mistake of reading the case report, and it was one of the most horrific things I've ever read. It took me from thinking cryonics is a "maybe" to a "no way". Especially because so many of the flaws in the process were on full display, such as the struggle for Alcor representatives to get permission to begin the preservation process -- bear in mind that she actually lived close to Alcor's facilities.
Even if there were no delays, and I'm sure she understood what could have gone wrong, I felt more like I was reading about a corpse people are pretending is still alive get desecrated. I like to read and hear about weird medical stuff, but this was different.
Do not consider cryonics without reading the case reports and being okay with what could happen to your body whether you can be brought back to life or not, and that you will essentially make yourself into a very expensive, energy-intensive, and legally (and almost certainly actually) dead test subject. Consider that your friends and family may be able to read what was done to your body in awful detail if you do not care about your own corpse.
Read the detailed case report of ANY major medical procedure, and it's likely to be gruesome detail. Though granted, difficulties that seem like they ought to be avoidable (like getting cooperation from the hospital, coroner, etc.) are particularly tragic.
However, you don't know that those difficulties mean your acquaintance is gone. It takes hours for the synapses to degrade so much they can't be read out - and that's the key criteria; whether an advanced AI scanning the brain can figure out what was connected to what, and NOT whether the cells are still viable. As long as the connectome is intact, she's not gone and may be revived one day.
And in the end, what would have happened in the ground (or in a cremation furnace) is far more gruesome, even if you don't have to read a detailed report about it.
@@joestrout3331 She was found unconscious in her home after having suffered cardiac arrest, pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital, and it took several hours for Alcor to even begin decapitating her and filling her head with coolant. Decomposition had already started. She’s dead.
Even if she had been preserved perfectly, the method by which you suggest she could one day be revived sounds more like an AI would create someone or something similar to her, but it wouldn’t be her. Unless you are suggesting that as long as a person’s connectome can be preserved well enough, far in the future it can be copied and reimplemented as software or hardware and “run”, and that brings the same exact person back to life? Is a person, their life, and their consciousness in this worldview things that pop in and out of existence provided certain conditions are met?
It’s interesting to think about and makes for great Sci-Fi, but it doesn’t sound very scientific. That wouldn’t be so much of a problem if it wasn’t presented as this rationalist, scientific idea. Honestly, unless you believe whatever will be revived or recreated is a new entity and not a true revival, the way consciousness is conceived of here is this nebulous, non-physical thing not far off from a soul or spirit.
I never knew her personally, so I don’t know if she believed she could be revived like that. It sounds like an uncommon thing to really believe in rather than hope for, even among the cryogenics crowd. Perhaps she accepted she would likely be actually dead forever, but hoped at least something could be learned from her case. I do not judge her if she believed the former, but for me, I feel like it’s healthier to just admit she is not coming back. If there is an afterlife, perhaps I will meet her there when I, like all living things, one day die. And if there is no afterlife, then I’m not going to care one way or the other anyway.
@@joestrout3331
You people are just like a religion.
@@airysquared good stuff here. agree - if the techs dont witness the death and immediately begin the process then the deceased should be disqualified
Bruh, I don't care about what my family thinks as I'm to busy being dead.
I really enjoy how he tells us about the weather. There always seems to be a pause, like he's looking out some window to check. "In a currently... average cloudy Southeastern corner..." I like it a lot!
Literally every time I see one of your videos it peaks my interest no matter the subject matter you do a great job at making thought provoking and truly interesting content and it’s honesty what I’ve needed for like the last year and I appreciate it a lot
I appreciate it, thank you!
I remember a Larry Niven story where they were called ‘Corpscilces’ and when they were eventually solved they were an underclass of indentured servitude as the money put away had long been used up
I vaguely remember that story, didn't remember it was Niven.
The concept shows up frequently. I spent the entire video recalling the story "Heads" by Greg Bear, wherein the preserved remains have become something of an afterthought to a facility studying other aspects of cryogenic science, and the prospect of reviving one of the clients prompts a violent response from parties who would prefer old secrets remain in the grave.
I remember similar. Thanks for reminding me of the author
That doesn't make any sense. Even a modest investment grows a lot with time. If you left $10k in the market and were frozen for 100 years it would be worth over $55 million dollars, they should be rich as fuck when they are revived.
@@bobbygetsbanned6049 not necessarily as markets can collapse or investments go bad or the bank closing/being bought and accounts being thrown into chaos.
Thank you for not having music playing in the background, it's really less distracting.
For me it's not really that much of an ethical problem. As stated in the video, they agreed to the procedure.
While the feelings of the family are something to consider, it's not their body.
And if we were able to unfreeze and "start up" bodies i think we should do it. Great stuff to think about, very good video! :D
Just today I explained to my sister how James Lovelock invented the microwave to heat up frozen hamsters (however, he didn't commercialize it).
You uploading this video today is a funny coincidence.
he *what* now?
@@memeju1ce yeah, he casually invented microwave technology to heat up hamsters
@@wtrdawnlord he didn't invent the microwave oven as we know it, but he did create a similar system to be used in his research. According to him, that was before a microwave oven existed.
@@memeju1ce To summarize the story: During WW2 a scientist (Percy Spencer) working on radar technology noticed a chocolate bar in his pocket melting and realized that microwaves could be used to heat up stuff. Later on when James Lovelock was trying to reanimate frozen hamsters he had the idea to use a magnetron (which creates the microwaves) heat up the hamsters and a box made of some metal mesh (resulting in a Faraday cage) to keep the waves in. This setup is basically a microwave oven. The development of the microwave ovens as we know it today was independent of that. They became publically available a few years after this story. But there were also commercally available microwave ovens to be used in restaurants or hotels, but they were about the size of a fridge.
So James Lovelock is not 'the' inventor of the microwave oven, but he still managed to build one before they really were a thing.
It's his birthday tomorrow (26th) and he'll be 103.
I'm 62 and I am unwilling to change the trajectory of my life. Not even the stars live forever.
A good way to get an idea of the damage that the ice crystals do to cells in living tissue is to think about the difference between fresh fruit and veg compared to frozen, then thawed. When it's fresh, it's still crispy because the cell membranes and cell walls that give the plant its rigidity are intact and, well, giving it rigidity. But when you freeze it, the ice crystals pierce the cells like microscopic daggers, shredding the cell wall (among other things) to bits. So when you thaw out those frozen veggies, they're all soft and floppy and have no more rigidity because of this damage. And likewise, freezing a human would cause similar damage by way of microscopic ice daggers tearing apart the cell from within (and without).
Flash freezing reduces the size of those ice crystals resulting in less cells that get damage to cell membranes. I'm not sure about the specifics in the application to human tissues, but that would be an interesting experiment.
@@austin6ish That was tested in the 1950s with hamsters, where it worked, but it was considered impractical for humans because of the square cube law making cooling everything down fast enough to be a near impossible task.
@pyropulse it's more like the extra time needed to cool down a body creates ice crystals in the inner parts of our body which causes massive damage
Fortunately cryonics patients (unlike veggies) are vitrified, not straight-frozen.
frozen fruit tastes good though
I want to say thank for all the enjoyable broadcast on both your your networks. Sometime back I committed to a in monthly fee to you after hit and miss donation's. I had a severe stroke causing a lapses in funds to you, I just saw your thanks you supporters. Was I ever recognized as a supporter, I'd really like to see. I've gotten better and am looking forward to resuming support, as I enjoy your broadcast and highly respect your intelligence.
I'm reminded of the game "Soma" where the guy goes in for a brain scan and wakes up many decades into the future. He discovers his "real" self has died of cancer many years ago and he's inside a robot body. He struggles to understand what he has become and the concept of the "real" self. For example, when he transfers to a new robot body, he discovers he wasn't moved, he was copied. The old body still has a copy of his consciousness and would wake up confused later. Does he turn off the old robot and preserve one "true" self?
Soma was a really good tale on existentialism and the question of what "I" actually is.
Hell yes. One of the few games that I played that branded its tale inside my head. The questions that formed when I played were trying.
I don't think I've played a game about existential horror that has even come close to the quality of that game and it's story.
@@monkey_man70-1 Are you still running? I just saw monkey_man70-2 walk out the door. (flips power switch)
I would watch a documentary several hours long on these topics. So fascinating.
not hourS long, but very in depth and super interesting look into cryonics and other immortalists ruclips.net/video/IZ2YEESTQUI/видео.html
None of this fancy rubbish for me, just scatter my remains over Disneyland. Also, I don't want to be cremated.
"DAD! THERE'S A FINGER ON SPACE MOUNTAIN!"
"Relax, sweety. That's just Dave."
Feeding the gators?
😂
Such a fascinating subject... Filled with hope and wishful thinking!
In truth people of future will be far too busy with their own lives, and the issues they face, than to worry about bringing sick dead people back to life!
Well, they might be tempted to bring back Elvis, but I'm pretty sure Jo Ordinary will be left in the freezer... Or just switched off and forgotten about.
Ira Glass of "This American Life", an NPR weekly show, profiled the guy who was doing cryrogenic preservation back in the 70s. A grisly and horrific tale for sure. He was reopening the capsules and putting more bodies in there then refreezing. Needless to say, it didn't end well for either the frozen folk or the owner of the company. I think you touched on the guy who did this. Very disturbing show.
Denial in death can be extreme if you have enough money.
i tend to just look at Cryonics as a "burial" method. Like the cryonically "preserved" are dead, and if the concept of Cryonics is what gave these people enough peace to die easily than, I have to say it did its job. Death is a scary thing, I cannot blame someone for seeking comfort. Even if I think it is a huge waste of money.
We aren't as durable as tardigrades sadly.
Or as objectively adorable. _IT HAS TOESIES!_
But more durable than Bitcoin...
On the other hand we can survive snails...yeah snails eat tardigrades...
That’s what cryoprotectant is for
i thoroughly enjoy this channel. i learn a lot. i also enjoy the weather updates
Glad you like them!
Man, that guy's gonna be pissed when he wakes up and that bitcoin is worth less than when Satoshi gave it to him.
I think its not that morally wrong (though still it is profiting from peoples fear of death) but i think its so wierd to think you can "preserve" a body to be revived later while having no idea how to revive them and therefore having no idea what is necessary to prepare the body. Let alone people whos body already is already not able to stay alife at the point of preservation.
I mean... what are the chances you accidentally did everything right 50-100 years before knowing what you have to do for this to work?!
You start your post with the idea that it's not going to work and that it's making money off or fear of death.
How can you be sure it won't work? DNA was discovered in 1869, 1953 the double-helix DNA was discovered, thats 84 years, what will the science be in 300?
Chance is better than no chance at all, and I think we can all agree with that.
Disagree. I think it's entirely wrong, morally or otherwise, to profit off people's fear of death. I have yet to hear any argument that convinces me it's anything other than wrong..
Yeah, the odds seem pretty high that your body will either be damaged to the point of being unrevivable, you'll suffer permanent brain damage in the process, or you'll be alive but still old so won't have gained much lifespan.
@@mattsadventureswithart5764 cryonics providers are not for profit institutions
We don’t know how good preservation needs to be that’s why the goal is to give every patient the best preservation we can. To give them the best shot.
The pause you take before telling me the weather in your corner of London always has me on the edge of my seat
I took the habit of looking out my window and nod in agreement every time he pauses, as I, too, live in south london hahaha
Absolutely fascinating Plainly Difficult, excellent episode as always!!!🙏👍👻
Well John as always thanks again for another awesome history lesson. Keep up the hard work Brother
Larry Niven termed them “corpsicles”. His novel A World Out Of Time discusses the issue of waking up in an unfamiliar future. It’s rather good!
The scariest thing to me is that if somehow your consciousness can be fully replicated digitally, you probably won't have the choice of continuing to exist in that state or not indefinitely.
Why wouldn't you have the choice?
@@joestrout3331 Unless the people of the future are supremely more concerned about theoretical ethics than we are, they'd be storing your consciousness like any other program or data. Chrome doesn't have the option to uninstall itself if it is dissatisfied with its existence. It lives in memory and storage to be used when you feel like using it. That could be a copy of your consciousness, in the future.
Jack Lovelock is an amazing scientist - Tom Scott interviewed him recently. Over 100 years old and (At the time of Toms interview) sharp as a tack.
What video?
you wrote this comment and he died one day later wtf
In his long life, my grandfather witnessed the invention of the lightbulb and a man on the moon. The speed of technological advances accelerates to the point that we would hardly be able to grasp the everyday lives of our adult great-grandchildren.
EDIT: VylBird set me straight on the dates so grandpa could never have seen both. Another family legacy debunked :-)
That leaves me scrambling… off the cuff, I’ll say from the first car to a man on the moon. Doesn’t sound as good as the light bulb though. Thanks VylBird :-))
@pyropulse so, no flying cars?
@pyropulse
You are ignoring a lot of new inventions and tecnologies in your list.
Manned moon landing: 1968
Enclosed electric lightbulb: 1840
Your grandfather must have had quite the lifespan.
@@vylbird8014 ha! Thanks for that - my father has been lying to me all these years!
I actually helped build that place, I was the project manager for the general contractor that built Alcor out as well as doing any tenant improvements they have done. Pretty interesting place
Also, there are a lot of just heads cryod, in a large vertical tube about 9ft tall and maybe 4ft in diameter
I think I would rate this a 3.5 on the mortality scale out of 10. There's informed consented and the technology has improved immensely as has the practice itself. Ultimately the cost of the process is what makes me wary. Its a way for people to maybe feel better about their own mortality.
I’ve always wanted to at least hear you talk about The 1955 Le Mans disaster, a gruesome event that wiped out whole families and war veterans
I think he covered it already but if not, it will be interesting. Some documentaries are already made about that event.
dope video and rad little rig you play on the outro
Thank you!
I feel like this would be an interesting movie premise: a guy is dying of a terminal illness and wishes to be cryogenically frozen. Then, maybe like 10 years later, his family decides it's time to thaw him out and revive him, and the movie follows his disoriented struggle to acclimate to another chance at life that he didn't (couldn't) ask for. His brain being totally preserved but thrown for a loop because he was revived suddenly
Love that Denis Leary song Asshole - John Wayne's not dead, he's frozen
And as soon as we find a cure for cancer
We're gonna thaw out the Duke, and he's gonna be pretty pissed off…
The cryonics episode of Star Trek TNG was one of my favs! Friggen L.Q. "Sonny" Clemens... 🤣🤣
Good ending. My thought was also "this is one big cope"
I'm not sure why many of us think we're so special we shouldn't die. But i guess that survival instinct is very strong
'Between 2 and 4' is the best way to say 3
WHEN WILL YOU DO A VIDEO ABOUT THE SURFSIDE CONDO COLLAPSE IN FLORIDA?????
14:03 the Ren & Stimpy fan in me heard “must, save, the Braaaiiinnn!!!” when you said that 😂
Fun Fact: the cemetary at 12:20 is around 4 miles from the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, topic of another Plainly Difficult episode! Chatsworth is just on the other side of the hills.
Yes! Thanks for posting this! Knowledge is the route of power
You're so welcome!
The microscopy lab I used to work in had done their own in house testing to see what time frame you had to get tissues into fixative to preserve very fine molecular structures - such as tight cell junctions. Especially since perfusion (pumping fixative through an animal while it is anaesthetised) was no longer acceptable.
They figured that 5 min was about the limit and after that structures were already starting to break down. Didn't matter so much if you were looking at larger structures but you would still want your tissues into fixative as soon as possible.
Edit to add: so you would likely want to move quick when someone dies if you want to preserve sensitive tissues
The key is to get the body, especially the brain, temperature lowered as soon as possible to slow down the metabolic processes. As far as the vitrification process, the cool down is controlled by computer at one degree per hour. Once the body/brain is at the glass stage, meaning solid with no crystallization, it is placed in a sleeping bag and then lowered into liquid nitrogen.
@@thewickedchicken82 oh I understand that. What I meant by my comment was; if fixative times are so short how could such sensitive tissues within the body be preserved when cooling times (to create the right shape ice crystals - forgive me it's been a while) are so slow?
Surely tissues would already be actively degrading by the time they were cooled?
@@blackhellebore89 Assuming that the patient had a standby team at the ready, and that the hospital or facility was cooperative, the body would have been cooled down as soon as legal death was declared. The body is placed in a circulated ice bath for rapid cooling. When the full computer controlled vitrification process begins, the body is already cold enough to adequately slow the metabolic processes, greatly reducing decay. Until people can be legally suspended while alive, it's never going to be perfect. Cryonics is an exercise in optimism. Future technology will hopefully be able to address any reasonable damage. Stem cell and nano technologies will likely have advanced enough to repair damage at the cellular level, as well as organ replacement if needed. The purpose of cryonics, which research continues to improve, is to deliver into the future the best preserved specimens as possible.
"Have you guys figured out the cure for 17 stab wounds?"
"Well we're up to 15!"
"Carol!!!!!"
I actually want to be cryogenically frozen, but I don't want to be revived normally. I want to be a cyborg, because that may happen before an actual full revival.
Plus, machine gun arms.
That's an exciting prospect. Maybe terrifying, but you know, the alternative is just dying so i go with exciting.
Alex murphy?
l would like it too, but like not be revived untl the year 3000 and we live in the Futurama universe😁
@@sergiokaminotanjo not me thinking you were going to reference jonas brothers instead 😭
There seems to be a conflation of two very different issues. There is a great deal of difference between preserving a dead body and bringing that dead body back to life.
How would it legally be about the revival
As far as suspended animation goes, I’m fairly certain I remember the Ancient Greeks talking about Balsam being used to keep Hector barely alive after his defeat by Achilles. I could be completely wrong though
This something I'd 100% be interested in doing just to see where we end up
Then do it! Look me up in 100 years and we'll hang out.
I have always wondered if the people could ever even be brought back to life and survive that process. The whole theory around cryoprotectants makes sense for some process's (like the embryo stuff) but I don't know if it would really work for a human body. I mean think about it, could a regular human survive right now if you inject that crap into their veins and body or would they scream in pain as their body rejects that foreign substance flowing their their body like lava. Imagine waking up to that feeling. Now I know in practice they drain your blood out and put this stuff in its place so theoretically they would reverse this process upon reanimation. But even then if they drain all this glycol stuff out and put fresh blood in your body there is still going to be remnants and traces of this chemical soup in your body, organs and veins. I just can't see how any human body would deal with that properly without causing huge issues. I mean maybe if they did like a week long "Wakeup" process where they flush your body of all the chemicals and fluids and reintroduce blood while warming your body back up and whatnot but I just don't see all of this happening without some major shit going wrong. It's always been an interesting discussion to have but I don't think we will ever see it happen unless some incredible advancements are made in multiple parts of life. This isn't even considering the whole "curing death" part of why they died either.
It's worse than that, your brain is dying every second it goes without oxygen. So if you're not frozen when they remove your blood, you only have a couple mins before your brain dead from a lack of oxygen anyways. Just because the cells don't crystalize when they are frozen doesn't mean the brain is still viable. You could be "revived" as totally brain dead. I don't understand how they could replace your blood with anything unless they can replace it, and freeze you in a few minutes to prevent your brain from dying.
You said everything I was thinking. Maybe they keep you sedated like a medically induced coma for the first week. Maybe in the future there will be new pain treatments
The only way I can imagine the whole thawing and wake up process is to first flush out these chemicals and replace them with blood while simultaneously warming up the body. A heart lung machine then animates the body while treatment is given or surgery performed to fix the problem(s) that led to the person's death. And then it's a waiting game to see if someone is still in there .... My guess is they'll never wake up.
It's... not entirely impossible. It doesn't violate any laws of physics. It requires tremendous advances in cellular biology, computational biology, medical imaging, neurology, nanotechnology and a lot more fields. But it doesn't violate any fundamental laws. So it's possible that revival might be possible, even enough time for scientific advancements. Centuries, perhaps.
The counterargument is obvious though: If you get the preservation, you're almost certain to stay dead. If you don't get the preservation, you are very certain to stay dead. And as you won't have any use for your money after you die anyway, what are you risking?
Got Jesus?
Please do a video on the pcp/pbb mixup in Michigan USA in the 1970s. The chemical PBB was accidently given to cows as a nutritional supplement and lead to a massive poisoning of the state population thru mostly milk. 😳
No one knows how to preserve a body for future reanimation like **checks notes** a TV repair man
your outtro is pretty awesome... ngl
I'd give it a shot if I had the money. A one in a million shot is better than zero, and being digitally reanimated via a brainscan sounds neat. Alas, I'll probably just have to take my chances with the Angel Of Death like most everyone else.
You can pay for it with life insurance FYI
It can be paid for with life insurance. Depending on how old you are, a whole life policy for $200,000 can be reasonable.
@@alexnoyle Yeah, I remember reading that some time ago. Unfortunately I can't afford that either, but if my circumstances change I might look into it.
Love your little weather reports at the end... 👍
I'd give it a zero on the ethical scale if it was an option. If I can write a will that remands my corpse to science, or education, or the crematorium, or the graveyard, why is it different to will my body to the cryo tank? And financially, grave plots are expensive and, at least in some cases, "eternal" plots aren't guaranteed past a certain time-frame. Plus, should I escape this life with any wealth, I'm free to bequeath it as i see fit. I really don't see a fundamental difference between cryogenic preservation and any other posthumous directives.
As long as it isn't directly harming someone else we should indulge the dying in their final wishes.
I'm donating my body when I kick the bucket. I wonder if they will put me in cadaver farm, or autopsy practice!!!
Agreed. At worst it's just an option for what to do with your remains. It's a weird form of modern mummification where we're trying to preserve the body.
The ultimate "But I don't want to go on the cart!"
A cryogenics technician is moving a frozen head from an old, outdated tank to a new, state of the art tank.
The technician has the frozen head held in his ice block tongs while another technician watches. Suddenly the first technician sneezes and drops the head on the concrete floor. A big chunk of the brain area is knocked off.
"You moron!" the second technician shouts. "Look what you did. Now we both are in a sh!t load of trouble."
First technician;..."Look, we can just glue it back together and place it in the tank . Nobody will be the wiser for around a thousand years."
“Glycerol (Glisser-roll) is my jam”? Fantastic!
Anybody else read "The First Immortal" by James Halperin? It dives into a lot of the issues (past, present, and projected); including a deeply unsettling method of cloning people who didn't make it or get frozen, then basically grooming a genetically identical child to be your new bride 🤢 (which the narrative plays imo depressingly straight and happy ending-ish 🤮)
Um, that's not to say I wouldn't recommend it, but just be alert that it does not handle consent as a thing like at all, as I recall
I thought you said "my immortal" that Harry Potter fanfic
Loving the acieed at the end there bro : )
Thank you
Thank you for this
Thank you
Good point and a crazy idea to imagine me in my current life, having my great great great great great grandfather being revived again, and how he would fit into our family and current society! Wow!
Just don't forget to get your bone-itis cured before you awaken and amass power.
LOL, you win the internet!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mr Music!!! Nice outro track bruv 🥳
Thank you
The "preservation of your whole body" Thumbs Up needs to be made into a t-shirt
@21:30 I'd like to imagine John leaning to the side of his monitor towards the window passing critical judgement on the current state of the _Southeastern Corner of London UK_ weather before announcing it in the video - Hence the short pause his speech 😁
There's a guy named Bob, we'll be making him into an AI someday but his head's on ice right now
Thank you!
This video played after Fascinating Horror and I'm happy to have another dark history fix lmao definitely subscribed
I wouldn’t want to live forever. I believe there is a much better place than this worldly hell.
You're objectively wrong for subjective reasons. 😜
Emo poetry much?
No one can live forever, you would simply live longer.
Digging that acid groove on the gear outro!
☮️❤️🎵🌍🤗🏁
Dodging death? More like dodgy death.
Nice acid jam at the end 🙂 respect!
On the question about if you were frozen would you even want to thaw out in a future where everyone and everything you knew was dead or gone?
It worked out pretty good for Fry in Futurama.
Or you could wake up in the world of "Idiocracy."
@@mbryson2899 Unlike every other morning?
@@TomDufall Lamentably true these days. 😣
@@TomDufall you beat me too it. I was gonna say "were not in the world of Idocracy already?"
@@mbryson2899 like Tom said. We're already in that world. I love the reference tho, Idiocracy is one of my all time favorites. The weird thing is I don't remember the movie ever going to theaters or having any advertising? It was just on Comedy Central one night.
This made me think of the first time I saw Sleeper. I was 8 years old and the whole scene of him reanimating and where he’s being told what year it is with no sound and only that crazy jazz music is absolutely hysterically funny.😂
Cryonics sends chills through the body, quite literally, but that aside, nah, when I pop my clogs, don't freeze me, just throw me in a hole and let me rot... :P
What about taxidermy? Could prop you up on the couch!!!!
Sounds pretty chill.
If the body is dead already before being frozen, doesn't that kinda defeat the whole idea?
Edit: after further thought, if your frozen after death you don't really have anything to lose anymore so, if you have the money why not try?
Major obstacle for sure. They are banking on future science solving death AND motivated in reviving you.
Well, partly it depends on if there is any family or not. cryonics is a bit like those TV preachers who get old people to give them their remaining life savings in order to secure their position in heaven... it is the individual's money yes, but they are still getting scammed out of it and it means that money would not be available to surviving family.
@@neeneko this ☝️☝️
You could, instead, donate your money to make the world a better place instead of a final idiotic and selfish act.
@@neeneko If your family members want you to die to take your inheritance than they don't deserve a single cent...
I agree with your scale, since it appears to be voluntary.
I did not know you were a trap DJ!
The fact you had to clarify that bitcoin isn’t the dark side you’ll be discussing is darkly humorous.
Personally, I hope that I can afford to be cryopreserved before I hop off this mortal coil. My body's ailments have seen me unable to live the life I deserve, so hopefully, by putting my head on ice, I can get a chance to live in a world without my body holding me back. And as an added bonus I can talk about and potentially operate what would be considered obsolete or even ancient equipment and technology as a museum worker. Could you imagine how useful someone able to actually drive a car would be to vintage car collectors in a time when self-driving was considered normal for decades/centuries/millennia
*BUT IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK*
You got me here😅
😂
Keep up the good work, i enjoy your content.
Glad you enjoy it!
This would be something I would consider. I mean yeah, the thought of us having a finite lifetime on this earth and then it’s lights out forever doesn’t sit well with a lot of people. But for me, I’m just genuinely curious how far the human race can go. Think about it. From the Mayans, to today where we are driving cars with mobility far more than even rulers of millenniums ago had. From early language and writing, to being able to communicate with almost anyone in the world in an instant. And soon, we will even be stepping on other worlds. It’s amazing how far we have advanced. And I’ll be damned if I don’t get the chance to see just how much further it can go, from a technological standpoint. I wanna see what we’re capable of. I wanna see what we are going to do centuries in the future. Millenniums. I want to know what’s possible.
You will still die, nothing can't prevent
death from taking place, and after death,
you will face Jesus, who will judge your
entire life that you lived on earth. If you
have rejected His love for you, you will
spend eternity in hell which is much worse than any nightmare or horror
movie you have seen it's your choice
eternity is too long to be wrong
Thanks PD. Interesting Video. One of the Most Famous People to be Frozen is Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams. I Believe he is in Scottsdale Arizona Alcor Facility.
I sure hope they don't forget to pay the electric bill.
love the synth outro!
Gonna be great waking up in a thousand years just to realize it's just the Walt Disney and Elon Musk types to hang out with