Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
This is a topic that I've spent some time thinking about. I live in a large East Coast city, and any extended loss of infrastructure is going to result in a lot of dead bodies. We live and die by tractor trailers delivering food to grocery stores, and our patchwork grid staying up.
If we can afford to spend the firewood or accelerant, burning. A corpse won't burn that well on its own. Similar would be filling an abandoned house full of corpses and lighting it up.
If we can afford to spend the manpower, mass graves, preferable with a layer of lime. This is going to depend on how organized we are, and can we find a nearby field that we don't really need for crops. Yes, I totally plan to plant potatoes in the neighborhood football field if it comes down to it.
This is a topic that I've spent some time thinking about. I live in a large East Coast city, and any extended loss of infrastructure is going to result in a lot of dead bodies. We live and die by tractor trailers delivering food to grocery stores, and our patchwork grid staying up.
If we can afford to spend the firewood or accelerant, burning. A corpse won't burn that well on its own. Similar would be filling an abandoned house full of corpses and lighting it up.
If we can afford to spend the manpower, mass graves, preferable with a layer of lime. This is going to depend on how organized we are, and can we find a nearby field that we don't really need for crops. Yes, I totally plan to plant potatoes in the neighborhood football field if it comes down to it.
You reminded me of my time when I was posted in Sarajevo as part of the peacekeeping force. During the siege, they buried people in the olympic stadium from the winter olympics in 1984.
I remember vividly driving a Humvee past the stadium and other fields around town, including soccer fields and any other open space, and the rows of markers where the thousands of people who died during the siege were buried when the inhabitants couldn't leave city limits to plant them in the regular graveyards.
Something to think about, it was a very haunting image and I remember it vividly all these years later.
You reminded me of my time when I was posted in Sarajevo as part of the peacekeeping force. During the siege, they buried people in the olympic stadium from the winter olympics in 1984.
I remember vividly driving a Humvee past the stadium and other fields around town, including soccer fields and any other open space, and the rows of markers where the thousands of people who died during the siege were buried when the inhabitants couldn't leave city limits to plant them in the regular graveyards.
Something to think about, it was a very haunting image and I remember it vividly all these years later.
Thanks you for sharing the reality of the dead for those left alive.
I still remain at I will do nothing for any dead just laying.... If it is winter time, then in Spring you will be found stinking, and the varmints will have mostly eaten every part of a body by then..... The bugs will have the rest.
The only way I could see this as a health hazard is if there were thousands of bodies in about the same place.
I won't be where ever that is anyway... In Spring sometimes i trip over dead deer, and or Moose, or what's left of them... it isn't any big deal so why should a human body be?
And IF there is still some assemblance of order, for a fact I am not touching any body anywhere. And again that would mean assemblance of order has means to bulldoze a mass grave and bury everything.
And that means it's none of my bee's wax.
IMO a body left on the ground isn't a bad way to let it be... The elements will clean it up quickly.
Maybe modern people don't know what happens.
Drop dead and the body begins to degrade that moment. Organs begin to break down, acids form gasses and flesh begins to break down and fail.
Gasses will burst thru the skin, and once air makes common contact places with little flesh like skulls which also have large openings begin to decay quickly, and any moving air begins to dry the body which looses water and other fluids in a few days left in the open.
During this time the body gasses out and the smell stops. All the while critters and bugs are eating any parts they want. With in a few weeks there is nothing left but sinew and bone.
Now the bone can take thousands of years to decay if nothing else happens, but left in the wild critters will come and eat the bone over around 3 years time max.
A dead body in my woods isn't any big deal...... I find antler chewed and bones chewed all the time....
You reminded me of my time when I was posted in Sarajevo as part of the peacekeeping force. During the siege, they buried people in the olympic stadium from the winter olympics in 1984.
I remember vividly driving a Humvee past the stadium and other fields around town, including soccer fields and any other open space, and the rows of markers where the thousands of people who died during the siege were buried when the inhabitants couldn't leave city limits to plant them in the regular graveyards.
Something to think about, it was a very haunting image and I remember it vividly all these years later.
I just cried a little. What an image you painted with words. Wow and thank you.
If epidemic or contagion is a risk, any bodies I find that pose threat to myself, my water supply or my food supply will be burned or buried. Dead bodies in themselves do not cause epidemics, but if the victim died of a communicable disease or is a potential carrier, then their body does pose a risk... if only as a tainted food supply for critters and bugs, which could then become vectors and reservoirs of the disease even if the disease organisms don't last long in a dead human body.
Plague, cholera, typhoid, anthrax, ebola, etc... all highly contagious, all potentially communicable through contaminated water or animals/insects. Not taking any chances.
Otherwise, for disaster or misfortune, I agree with Mac... let 'em lay. One way or another they'll get taken care of, and you aren't putting yourself at risk (physically or legally).
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
