Robert Ettinger, “the father of cryonics”, at his home in Clinton Township, Michigan, April 2010
In 1962, Robert Ettinger – the “father of cryonics” published a book called , in which he promoted the idea that future technological advances could be used to bring people back from a frozen state.
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In the 1970s, he and his colleagues founded the , a not-for-profit organisation that offers cryopreservation of the human body after death. “Clearly, the freezer is more attractive than the grave, even if one has doubts about the future capabilities of science.” said Ettinger, . “With bad luck, the frozen people will simply remain dead, as they would have in the grave. But with good luck … the likely prize is so enormous that even slender odds would be worth embracing.”
If Ettinger ever succeeds with his ambition to be reanimated in the future, he may awaken to an awkward situation – he is currently frozen at the Cryonics Institute alongside both his first and second wives.
Client storage demonstration, Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona
It costs a minimum of about $200,000 to have your full body preserved and stored at . Having just your head preserved comes in at around $80,000. Most people use their life insurance to pay for such procedures.
After being preserved, full-body clients are wrapped in a kind of sleeping bag, then placed head down in tanks of liquid nitrogen. This is to make sure that if liquid nitrogen levels were to drop, the head would be the last organ to suffer damage. The tanks are designed to last several months without supervision, but tend to be checked and topped up weekly.
Freezer, Le Chalet de Preuil, Pays de la Loire, France
Raymond Martinot and his wife Monique Leroy have become two of France’s most famous corpses. In the 1970s, Martinot bought a chateau where he prepared a large freezer unit in the cellar (pictured).
He intended to have his body cryopreserved upon his death, believing that medicine would have developed enough by 2050 to bring him back to life. When Monique died of ovarian cancer in 1984, she was cryopreserved and placed inside the freezer.
In 2002, Martinot died of a stroke, and his son – Remy – followed his wishes to be preserved and stored alongside his wife. Both bodies remained in the freezer while his son began a long legal battle with the French courts to keep them there. Under French law a corpse must be buried, cremated or formally donated to science. However, in 2006, Remy discovered that the freezer temperature had risen from -65 °C to -20 °C for several days. He told French press that he had no choice but to cremate the bodies of his parents as a result.
Instructions upon death
People who have signed up to become a member of a cryonics facility often wear jewellery with instructions in case they die unexpectedly.
This necklace includes details of how to begin the first stages of cryopreservation. The inscription says to inject 40,000 IU of heparin into the body upon death and to continue cardiopulmonary resuscitation, while using ice to cool the body to 10 °C. This man also carries a memory stick with details of where to send his body, his final testimony and his cryonics paperwork.
Bigfoot dewar being filled with liquid nitrogen, Alcor Life Extension Foundation, Scottsdale, Arizona
In Alcor’s patient care bay, newly preserved members are placed into giant thermos-like cylinders called dewars. Each dewar, which can hold several bodies or heads, is filled with liquid nitrogen and stored at Alcor’s facility in Scottsdale, Arizona. There are security measures in place to protect the dewars from natural and artificial threats.
Alexander Pulver, cryobiologist, Voronezh, Russia
This is Alexander Pulver, a cryobiologist and signed-up member of Moscow-based cryonics facility . Pulver conducts cryopreservation experiments with rats to see how they react to low temperatures. When the photographer, Murray Ballard, visited him at his home laboratory in Voronezh, Russia, in 2009, Pulver claimed to have recently managed to cool a rat down to -10 °C, stopped its heart beating, and brought it back to life.
Portraits of people currently in cryostasis #2 at the Cryonics Institute, Clinton Township, Michigan, December 2012
These are of some of the people currently lying frozen at the Cryonics Institute in Michigan. The Cryonics Institute claims to offer the world’s most affordable price – $28,000 – for whole body preservation. In April, the group had 1273 members signed up for future cryopreservation, together with 137 frozen residents and 120 pets or DNA samples from pets .
Grampa Bredo’s Tuff Shed, Nederland, Colorado, March 2007
This is the shed that holds Bredo Morstoel. After Morstoel died in 1989, he was packed with dry ice and shipped to facility in California, where he was placed in liquid nitrogen. Four years later, he was moved to Nederland, Colorado, to be stored privately in a Tuff Shed (pictured) owned by his grandson Trygve Bauge.
Years later, Bauge was deported and Morstoel’s continued upkeep was taken on by his daughter, Aud. Things took another turn for the worse when Aud was evicted from her home and subsequently moved back to Norway.
Before she left, she convinced the Nederland city council to allow her father, known locally as “Grampa Bredo”, to stay in the country. Members of the community now deliver 725 kilograms of dry ice to his hut every month to keep his temperature at about -51 °C. Each March, the town holds a festival in honour of Grampa Bredo called . The celebration includes events such as a frozen salmon tossing, coffin races and “icy turkey bowling”.
Matthew Sullivan mixing cryoprotectants at Suspended Animation, Boynton Beach, Florida
Cryopreservation research company was founded in 2002. Its goal? To research and develop the equipment, procedures and personnel to allow the stabilisation and transport of human cryopreserved people. The research has since expanded into other areas of medicine, after discovering that it has a broader application in critical care medicine and the transport of organ and tissues for transplant.
Here, standby team member Matthew Sullivan mixes cryoprotectants – chemicals that are used to protect biological tissue from damage caused by freezing.
Comfort, Texas, December 2012
Comfort is a sleepy town in Texas, less than an hour’s drive from San Antonio. It has been chosen by architect Stephen Valentine as the site on which to build Timeship – the world’s largest structure dedicated to life extension research (see “Ark of the immortals: The future-proof plan to freeze out death“). Timeship’s main building is designed to hold cryogenically preserved DNA, tissue, organs and whole human bodies. There will also be a research facility, conference centre and butterfly reserve.
When the project first arrived in Comfort there was a lot of speculation, says Patti Miles, Comfort’s head librarian. “But since Stephen’s become part of the community we’ve learned a lot.”
She says the Comfort community is progressive and intelligent. “After people stopped listening to the rumours, they became more open to what was being planned. Most people seem happy to see the community growing in areas that it wasn’t before – it means that their children can stay here,” she says. “There are probably going to be some people who are against it because they object to cryogenics in its entirety, but I think as the project progresses, they’ll agree that there’s enough room here for everyone.”
