Technically Dead
Unearthed: Technology Will Bury Us
Nearly every death that’s occurred in recent past probably went something like this: After dying in the hospital, the body was transported to a mortuary, where an undertaker presented the family with two options—cremation or burial. If they chose cremation, the body was likely taken to an industrial warehouse, placed in the crematory, and reduced to ash. If the family took the burial route, the body was likely embalmed, dressed in their Sunday best, and placed in a lacquered wooden casket, which was later lowered into a concrete vault and buried beneath the preternaturally green grass of a cemetery, the space marked with a headstone. And no one at the funeral thought twice about it.
That’s because, over the past 150 years, mainstream death practices have been reduced to these two options. But it wasn’t always like this: Before the Civil War, death looked fundamentally different. Dying took place in the home and under the care of family, who would prepare the body for burial, dig the grave, and place the body in the ground with nothing but a simple shroud or wooden box surrounding it.
Technology changed all that. Modern medicine took death from the home and into the hospital. At the same time, embalming rose to prominence in the aftermath of the Civil War: As more and more men died far from home, doctors…
