The 5 Creepiest Death Rituals From Around the World

[dtewi]

vaio said:

#1.

Space Burial

 

What Is It?

Space burial is obviously a fairly modern death ritual, unless there was some ancient, burly fellow who could throw things really fucking high. But it is no less insane, especially seeing as it costs about the equivalent of a small Eastern European nation's GDP to perform.

Yes, You can purchase your own space burial, though the cost depends on just how far out into space you want to end up. You can have your ashes sent into low orbit for a while for as low as $695, but getting a spot on a deep space Gemini Module can run up to $60,000.

 

The first one of these was performed back in 1997, from an aircraft carrying a modified Pegasus rocket, which contained ashes of 22 people (including Timothy Leary and Gene Roddenberry). The rocket blasted into orbit 11 kilometers above the Canary Islands, of all places, whereupon it will remain aloft in the heavens for eternity.

Oh, wait, no. It re-entered the atmosphere in 2002 and was immediately burned to a crisp.

Dear God, Why?

This has been a symbolic gesture for deceased who had an interest or career in space (though an expensive symbolic gesture, especially considering you still have to have the body cremated ahead of time). But in Timothy Leary's case, he actually requested it, possibly out of a simple desire to make disposal of his remains as absolutely inconvenient for the world as possible.

 

Though we do have to give credit to Clyde Tombaugh (the man who for 70 years successfully hoodwinked the world into believing Pluto was a real planet) because his space burial will let him go down as having traveled further than any other human. A bit of his remains were stuck aboard the New Horizons spacecraft, launched by NASA in 2006 and headed for the "planet" Pluto.

 

Tombaugh is somewhere around Saturn by now, and will make it to Pluto in the summer of 2015. At that point the craft will likely be intercepted by an alien life form, who will likely interpret the inclusion of a dead person's ashes as a symbolic declaration of war.

There's a Futurama reference here...

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