Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies

by Caitlin Doughty

Space programs like NASA have been pondering this inevitability, although they won’t talk about it publicly. (Why are you hiding your space corpse protocol, NASA?)

There’s the smallest of small possibilities that if Lisa’s body was sent out into space in a small, self-propelled craft like an escape pod, which then departed our solar system, traveled across the empty expanse to some exoplanet, survived its descent through whatever atmosphere might exist there, and cracked open on impact, Lisa’s microbes and bacterial spores could create life on a new planet. Good for Lisa! How do we know that alien Lisa wasn’t how life on Earth started, huh? Maybe the “primordial goo” from which Earth’s first living creatures emerged was just Lisa decomposition? Thanks, Dr. Lisa.

Abuse of corpse laws exist for a reason, however. They protect people’s bodies from being mistreated (ahem, necrophilia). They also prevent a corpse from being snatched from the morgue and used for research or public exhibition without the dead person’s consent. You’d be surprised how often this has happened throughout history.

In the United States, there is no federal law that stops the ownership, buying, or selling of human remains. Well, except if the remains are Native American. In that case, you’re out of luck (and rightfully so). But otherwise, whether you’re able to sell or own human remains is decided by each individual state. At least thirty-eight states have laws that should prevent the sale of human remains, but in reality the laws are vague, confusing, and enforced at random.

Come closer, deathlings.

They might decide to skip the custom orders and go for a natural burial, straight into the ground in an unbleached cotton shroud.

It is my sincere belief that you are never too young to ask the hard questions about cannibalism.

Amazing fact: cannibalism is not against the law. It’s not criminal to eat human flesh, but acquiring the human flesh (even if the dead person wanted you to eat them) is breaking the law. The laws you’re breaking are . . . wait for it. . . . remember these? Welcome back, abuse of corpse laws! It’s considered desecration and mutilation to eat a dead body.

land? One architect who designs these multistory cemeteries said, “If we have already agreed to live one on top of the other, then we can die one on top of the other.” Touché.