Categories
Death + Crime Death + Popular Culture Death + the Law

DeathRef’s Guide to ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE Preparedness

Naked Man Killed by Police Near MacArthur Causeway was ‘Eating’ Face Off Victim
Daniela Guzman and Julie K. Brown, Miami Herald (May 28, 2012)

We all knew that it was going to happen sooner or later. The Undead would RISE UP and begin their unstoppable decimation of the Living. Oh the HUMANITY!

Here at the Death Reference Desk we never thought that Miami, Florida would be ground zero for the Zombie Apocalypse but there you have it.

 

In perhaps the greatest understatement of all time, a Miami police official explained how it is that an officer could repeatedly shoot a man who was discovered chewing the face off of another man in the middle of the road:

Sergeant Altarr Williams, supervisor of Miami police’s Homicide Unit, said a man doesn’t have to be armed to be dangerous.

“There are other ways to injure people,’’ Williams said. “Some people know martial arts, others are very strong and can kill you with their hands.’’

Or, maybe just maybe the person is a freaking ZOMBIE!

Your good friends at DeathRef have been preparing for the inevitable Zombie Attack and we’ve assembled an entire section on zombies.

So, make sure that you’ve got everything that you need in your Zombie Apocalypse Survival Kit and listen to these wise words from the late, great Dennis Hopper.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + Technology Death + the Web

Facebook likes Organ Donation

Facebook Users Can Add Organ Donor Status
Hayley Tsukayama, The Washington Post (May 01, 2012)
Facebook has added a unique feature to its social network: you can now tell the world — or just your family members — that you’re an organ donor.

 

Facebook in Organ Donation Push
James Gallagher, BBC News (May 01, 2012)
Three people die every day while waiting for a transplant, NHS says. NHS
Blood and Transplant said the partnership was an “exciting new way” to
encourage donation. Around 10000 people in the UK are on the waiting list
for an organ.

A quick post on a story from yesterday’s news that we at the Death Reference Desk expect many people caught. Facebook, and more specifically Mark Zuckerberg, announced that FB users can now use their Facebook accounts to register as Organ Donors. Here is how it works:

  1. Go to your account and click on Life Event
  2. Click on Health & Wellness
  3. Click on Organ Donor and then enter whatever information you want about being a donor.

If you are in the United Kingdom and want to be an organ, tissue, and/or bone donor but are not yet on the NHS Donor Registry then the UK version of FB enables you to sign up.

I’m a registered organ donor in both America (on my Great State of Wisconsin drivers license) and the UK via the donor registry. I am also now an official Facebook organ donor(!) so you know it’s for real.

Facebook-Organ-Donation-Screenshot-300x242

Two things to say about this move by Facebook. First off, it’s a good idea. The more that people discuss end of life decisions, such as organ donation, before a person is hooked up to a ventilator and unable to communicate is always helpful. Indeed, this new FB Life Event option is being trumpeted as a way for individuals to unequivocally demonstrate their commitment to postmortem organ donation. This is important so that next-of-kin do not block the use of said organs when the time comes for a decision.

Here is my second take. By making this move, Facebook is entering into a world of longer sustainability. For all of FB’s novelty (and sometimes silliness) this organ donation option means that users can now begin managing their end of life planning through Facebook. This is key. Countless other interweb companies have sprung up to manage these end of life issues, especially for deceased FB users, and Death Ref has covered those companies here. Yet Facebook itself hasn’t really ventured into the reality of death, or that its users die.

I fully expect that Facebook central will eventually add a funeral planning option for its account holders. Down the road.

And by attaching a person’s future/inevitable death to a Facebook account Mark Zuckerberg might just create that one internet app that everyone will want in order to plan a funeral.

Thus demonstrating Death Ref’s Rule #1 for any user based technology: Everybody eventually dies.

Including Facebook users.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + Technology Death + the Law Death + the Web Grief + Mourning

Social Media Web Users Keep Dying…Second Verse Same as the First

On the Media: Updating Your Social Media After You Die
WNYC Public Radio (March 23, 2012)
With social media, so much of our interactions with the world now live online, even after we may not be living at all. Brooke talks to James Norris, the founder of the website Deadsocial about prolonging social media relationships after death.

Back in February, I wrote about WNYC’s radio program On the Media and its show on Facebook. That Death Ref post, subtly titled 19,000 Facebook Users Die Each Day. Here is How FB’s Memorialization Mode Works, discussed the current, nonstop discussions about what to do when web users (especially FB users, it seems) die.

The Death Reference Desk has been tracking most of the various suggested ways to maintain postmortem control over social media accounts, Facebook in particular, and you can read those posts here. You should also check out the Death + the Web and the Death + Technology sections.

For this week’s On the Media show, co-host Brooke Gladstone interviewed James Norris about his solution to the social media death problem, a platform called Deadsocial.

A couple of points.

Gladstone asked the most pressing question, which is this: How long lived is any new media solution to human death issues given how quickly computing technology changes?

Norris offers a couple of logical responses, mostly about how Deadsocial would adapt to any future social media platform and that doing so was only ethical.

I’m still skeptical that any of the various dead user related websites/programs will remain relevant into the future but I could be totally wrong. I say I’m skeptical because I know how much technology has changed when it comes to death, dying, and the dead body. Meg’s brilliant post on 19th Century Anti-Premature Burial Device Patents elegantly demonstrates how social concerns about different kinds of postmortem technological fixes radically shift over time.

In fact, I will suggest that most of the current, various dead user inventions, programs, and products are more or less 21st Century versions of 19th Century anti-premature burial devices. The thinking now isn’t so much that people need tools to prevent them from being buried alive (modern embalming and cremation solved that dilemma), rather now we need tools to make sure that we Humans can still exert some control over how our digital selves are buried.

In 50 years time, I fully expect that all of these social media concerns will have been forgotten. Or replaced with other, more pressing technology issues.

A second point about the interview. The Deadsocial system was described as a signaling program which checks on users and notifies other, predetermined people when a person isn’t responding to automated messages. A handful of other programs already do this, namely, Deathswitch. All of these programs are different in their own ways, so I’m not suggesting that any company is ripping anyone else off. What is more interesting, I think, is that these various companies keep inventing ways to notify next-of-kin or friends or all of the Facebook that someone has died.

This was also one of the telegraph’s key uses, from the start. A long forgotten but extremely important social communication technology.

My point is this — we should continue to have these conversations about what happens to computer information when people die but we should also realize that these conversations are finite.

I actually found another section of the same On the Media episode far more compelling as it regards the dead user conundrum. The interview focused on something called the Archive Team:

Most of us think nothing of putting our lives in the cloud; photos in Flickr, videos on YouTube, most everything on Facebook. But what about when those services abruptly go away, taking all of our collective contributions with them? Well Jason Scott operates on the assumption that everything online will one day disappear. He explains to Bob why he and the Archive Team are dedicated to saving user-generated content for posterity.

At least the Achive Team understands the rapidly increasing ephemerality of web based information. Indeed, the Archive Team’s motto says it all: History is Our Future.

More than likely, we will need future Archive Teams of all kinds that simply try to understand why some early 21st Century humans became so obsessed with preserving their technological, social media selves. It will all seem to peculiar and strange.

Not unlike 19th Century devices to prevent premature burials.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture

John Troyer Performs: 150 Years of the Human Corpse in American History

Bristol Live Open Platform (BLOP Festival)
The Arnolfini, Bristol (UK)
Saturday 25 February, 2012 11.00am – 8.00pm
£6.00 / £5.00 concessions

 

Full BLOP Festival Schedule
John Erik Troyer, Ph.D. performs at 2:45pm on February 25

We here at the Death Reference Desk are always full of surprises. So it should come as no shock that I, John Erik Troyer, Ph.D., will perform a short theatrical piece for the upcoming Blop Festival in Bristol, England on Saturday, February 25. The festival is being held at the Arnolfini arts centre.

I hit the stage at 2:45pm sharp!

The performance’s full title more or less sums up what happens on stage:

150 Years of the Human Corpse in American History in Under 15 Minutes with Jaunty Background Music

Not much else to say, really.

Here, however, is a more robust show description:

In 1851 American chemist Thomas Holmes invented the first reliable method for mechanically embalming dead human bodies. Holmes put his embalmed bodies on display in cities across America. Those human corpses attracted so many spectators that riots often erupted near the viewing areas.

 

Death, as nineteenth century humans understood it, would never be the same.

 

In 1972 John Erik Troyer was born, son of a funeral director and an early student of mortuary science. His life-long study of the dead body would eventually help him write a doctoral thesis entitled Technologies of the Human Corpse and assist his becoming a Doctor of Philosophy. This one-man show is a combination of all these things: a meditation on the human corpse, the untimely demise of a self-absorbed thanatologist, and it is all done in under 15 minutes. With jaunty background music.

The story of John Erik Troyer, Ph.D. is a cautionary tale of intellectual labor run amok and a hilarious comedy of necrophilic proportions.

 

Death, as we twenty-first century humans understand it, will never be the same.

That’s that. If you have any questions or would like to, say, book me a national tour (we can start small, you know, just the West Country at first) then here is my contact information:

John Erik Troyer, Ph.D.:
Telephone: 01225 383585
E-mail: john@deathreferencedesk.org
Twitter: @deathref

Finally, here is a video of me doing Modern Dance. The video doesn’t have anything to do with the show on February 25. Per se. But it could. If I get that National Tour! Right now, this is just shameless self-promotion. Straight up.

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Death + the Law Death + the Web

Poor Dead Steve Jobs May Not Own His Dead Image

Who Owns Your Image After You Die?
On the Media (January 13, 2012)

Here’s a really interesting radio story by WNYC’s On the Media about what happens to an individual’s image after he or she dies. A Chinese toy manufacturer wants to create a Steve Jobs action figure. Apple successfully blocked a similar product in 2010 but may not be so lucky now that Jobs is deceased–with his “personality rights” with him.

steve1Add these concerns to the long list of postmortem digital media ownership rights. It also turns out that each state across America has different laws for handling these situations. The main interviewee for the story, Jeff Roberts, does a good job explaining how the state-by-state laws work.

Keep an eye on this story. As more and more of everything shifts to a digital format then the very idea of an “owned image” will be challenged.

Indeed, it’s a situation Steve Jobs helped create.

Categories
Death + Crime Death + Popular Culture

Unexplained Dollhouse Deaths in LONDON

Of Dolls and Murder UK Premier
Horse Hospital in London (November 30, 2011)

 

“Of Dolls & Murder”: The World’s First True Crime Puppet Show
Colin Covert, Star Tribune (September 27, 2011)

 

Of Dolls and Murder
Bruce Goldfarb, Welcome to Baltimore, Hon! (September 25, 2010)

This is a Death Reference Desk post which begins in December 2007.

At that time, I was contacted by Minneapolis based filmmaker and writer Susan Marks about her new documentary film. She was working on a film about the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, located in Baltimore, Maryland. I had never heard of the “Nutshells” (as they’re called by those in the know) but once Susan brought me up to speed on the project, I wanted in.

The Nutshells are an astoundingly detailed set of miniature dollhouse dioramas, some 18 in total, and each of them represents an unexplained death. All of the dioramas were painstakingly created by Frances Glessner Lee, a wealthy woman who went a long ways in founding the field of modern forensic science. All of this during the first half of the twentieth century. Harvard University (where Frances Glessner Lee was based) originally kept the Nutshells but then sold them to the Maryland Department of Health in Baltimore.

Of Dolls and Murder

Here’s the rub: the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death are so exquisitely detailed that police departments still use them today for crime scene investigation training. I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, nothing beats a well built diorama!

This all brings me back to 2007. Susan wanted to interview me about representations of death, dying, and dead bodies in popular culture, film, art, and science. Making a documentary film about the Nutshells was pretty straightforward (more or less) but what Susan wanted to ponder was a bigger question. She wanted to understand how the Nutshells might shed light on the current fascination with all things dead, dying, and CSI.

I have never seen the Nutshells, only photographs, but in those images I was struck by the following thought: We humans aren’t looking at the dead dolls for crime scene clues. No. We humans look at those dead dolls (and the dolls look back) in order to find some kind meaning, if that’s even possible, in death.

The Nutshells aren’t about unsolved deaths. They’re about the human imagination grappling with the postmortem insecurities which surround the dead self.

The finished documentary, Of Dolls and Murder, will premiere in the UK on Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at the Horse Hospital in London.

John Waters narrates the documentary (he’s from Baltimore too…).

I’ll be conducting a Q and A after the Horse Hospital screening.

Keep an eye out for Of Dolls and Murder. I have a hunch that it is going to be much discussed this year and next. It’s already won audience awards all over the world.

Here’s another trailer to sample of the darkness.

 

Categories
Death + Popular Culture Monuments + Memorials

10 Years

This American Life
In this show, we return to people who’ve been on This American Life in the last ten years, whose lives were drastically altered by 9/11, including Hyder Akbar, an Afghan-American teen who moved to Afghanistan after his father was tapped to become governor of Kunar province there.

 

On the Media
Ten years after 9/11, a look at the state of American civil liberties, growing up after the attack, and the evolution of 9/11 humor.

The Death Reference Desk is a website about death, dying, the dead body, memorialization, funerals, and then some. As such, it would seem that Death Ref would have a lot to say about the events on September 11, 2011 to commemorate September 11, 2001.

But what more could possibly be said?

Even now, a week later, on September 18, 2011 I am pulling this post together only because I came across two different radio broadcasts which caught my attention.

It’s telling, I think, that a non-visual medium produced these stories. Both of the broadcasts, by WBEZ’s This American Life and WNYC’s On the Media captured images from the last ten years in a far more evocative manner than any of the television coverage.

In a nutshell, you have to see these radio programs in your head and that takes more work than anything by CNN, FOX, NBC, CBS, or ABC.

There is not much new to say about the events of September 11, 2001 that has not already been said during the last decade.

Check back with the Death Reference Desk in fifty years.

WTC New York photo by Sander Lamme, 1992

Categories
Death + Crime Death + Popular Culture

Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies Store Raided by New York Cops for Copyright Violations

Yes, He Sold Fakes. They Are Supposed to Be Fake.
Jeffrey E. Singer and Corey Kilgannon, The New York Times (August 24, 2011)
Paper imitations of luxury items are traditional at Chinese funerals as gifts for the dead, but a seller of cardboard handbags was arrested on copyright-infringement charges on Tuesday.

Ok ok. So the the Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies store on Mulberry Street wasn’t raided, per se, but one of its workers (Wing Su Mak) was arrested by the New York police for offering to sell cardboard reproductions of high-end consumer goods, including authentic cardboard Burberry and Louis Vuitton handbags.

Two things.

  1. The use of cardboard replicas in Chinese funerals, which go in the casket with the deceased and then are incinerated during cremation, is a long-standing funereal custom. And since this is a long-time tradition it means that the objects people want in the casket also change with the times. Ergo, the cardboard swag.
  2. I have been in the Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies store on Mulberry street and purchased cardboard replicas of items which I proudly display in my office. One of my favorite purchases was the cardboard laptop computer with the Apple computer apple on it.
Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies Laptop. photo by John Troyer in his office
Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies Laptop. photo by John Troyer in his office

Come and get me Coppers!!!

The people at Fook On Sing are also really nice and when I visited the store in April 2011, Wing Su Mak took time to explain why people wanted the newer kinds of objects.

So here is what will hopefully happen in the coming days: The NYPD will say sorry for making a mistake and all charges will be dropped. I can only hope that this entire situation becomes the proverbial ‘teachable moment.’

If not, then look out NYPD. You’re going to have the world of Death Studies Scholars leaping to Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies’ legal defense.

And that, my friends, will be no joke.

Fook On Sing Funeral Supplies Inc photo at top by Adam Elmquist

Categories
Afterlife Death + Biology Death + Popular Culture Death + Technology Defying Death

Cryopreserve Me into the FUTURE!

In Pictures: Frozen in Time
Photographer Murray Ballard catalogues the world of cryonics, which involves freezing a dead person’s body in liquid nitrogen until technology has advanced enough to bring them back to life.

 

Photographer Murray Ballard’s Best Shot
‘This is a cryonics lab. Four whole bodies can be frozen in each vat. But just getting your head done is cheaper’
Kate Abbott, The Guardian (August 15, 2011)

One day, in the future, the people who chose to have either their heads or their whole bodies cryogenically preserved will look back at these photos as the in-between-time in their lives.

So the theory of cryopreservation and eventual reanimation suggests.

I’m still not sold on the idea that cryopreservation will work but I am fascinated by the people who opt for the procedure.

I am also curious what happens when people who died a century (or more) ago find themselves in a world which has moved on without them. That specific problem fascinates me the most.

But we are not here today to discuss the practicalities of cryopreservation. No no. We’re here to discuss photography. It just so happens that a new photography exhibition by Murray Ballard has opened in Bradford, England and it captures how the cryopreservation process appears to the non-cryogenically preserved individual.

Ballard’s images, which can be seen in the articles at the top, show how industrially heavy the cryopreservation process becomes. I was also struck by how low-tech the entire process looks in these photographs.

Robert Ettinger, the man considered to be the ‘father of modern cryogenics,’ recently died and you can read his obituary here. His body was cryopreserved after he died.

And here is a little 1990’s era cryopreservation humor….

Categories
cremation Death + Humor Death + Popular Culture Eco-Death Monuments + Memorials

Praise the Lord and Pass the Cremated Remains Filled Ammunition

Holy Smoke
Planning a loved ones final arrangements can be a challenging responsibility, one you want to do with care and consideration. Allow Holy Smoke to help you create a tribute to your outdoorsman or woman like no other.

So yeah. I had heard about people loading ammunition with human cremated remains and then shooting the ammo but I did not know, until this week, that a company would do it for you.

And based on the reaction of my British friends (I live in England), many people still do not believe it is possible. And/or, the loading of live gun ammunition with human cremated remains is a distinctly American form of memorialization. Not unlike spelling memorialization with a ‘z’ instead of an ‘s’.

Take that Red Coats!

But I digress.

Here at the Death Reference Desk we believe in presenting the full monty when it comes to contemporary forms of postmortem memorials. So a company such as Holy Smoke is due some respect for combining two of America’s great past times: shooting bullets and capitalism. Not necessarily in that order.

But lo, what might you receive when purchasing Holy Smoke’s ammo? Well, their website explains:

Once the caliber, gauge and other ammunition parameters have been selected, we will ask you (by way of your funeral service provider) to send approximately one pound of the decedents ash to us. Upon receiving the ashes our professional and reverent staff will place a measured portion of ash into each shotshell or cartridge. (Please note that our process uses only a portion of the ash from a typical cremation.)

 

Example: 1 Pound of ash is enough to produce 250 shotshells (one case).

Now, I’m not a gun person (even though I grew up in the great state of Wisconsin) so 250 shotgun shells sounds like a lot of ammo. I can’t imagine firing a gun 250 times to remember a person I loved.

Unless, of course, you’re using the Holy Smoke ammunition to defend the human race against the imminent Zombie Apocalypse!

Categories
Death + Humor Death + Popular Culture

Bristol City Council Plans for Zombie Attack

When Zombies Attack! Bristol City Council Ready for Undead Invasion
Local authority reveals ‘top secret’ plan outlining self-defence strategies should zombies invade
Steven Morris, The Guardian (July 8, 2011)

We’ll always have England!

I live and work in Bath, which is a mere 11 miles or so from Bristol. It is safe to say that I have slept better this entire week knowing that Bristol has a Contingency Plan for Handling Zombie Outbreaks in Bristol.

Zombie specialists will of course know that Bristol’s plan is part of a concerted effort by concerned citizens to know what exactly local councils have planned when the undead strike.

We here at the Death Reference Desk have been following these various Zombie developments. You can read those stories here.

And while it’s true that these Council plans are delivered with a wink and nudge a person can never be too prepared.

As long as Bristol has Stokes Croft, the possibility of Zombie attack is imminent.

Indeed, I bet we’ll see Zombies in Stokes Croft before we ever see a Tescos.

Categories
Death + Humor Death + Popular Culture

CDC Prepares Citizens for Inevitable Zombie Apocalypse

Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse
Ali S. Khan, CDC Public Health Matters Blog (May 16, 2011)

Ah, zombies — irrepressible, insatiable, instantly recognizable… and the ultimate marketing tool! Librarians most recently squeeeee!ed over a comic book of zombies and information literacy.

Apparently the delicious braaaaaaaaaaaaaaains of someone (or someone’s kid) from the Centers for Disease Control and Preparedness went ding ding ding! when the rag-tag crew of AMC’s The Walking Dead journeyed to the CDC in hopes of salvation from the zombie plague. Of course, the CDC ended up exploderating, but that’s just fiction… right? Right?

The CDC is taking no chances, unleashing on the internets a guide to Zombie Apocalypse Emergency Preparedness, which (conveniently!) works in a pinch for other natural disasters like hurricanes and floods. I guess tornados and the swelling Mississippi taking out the South just isn’t sexy enough to get people to rustle up an emergency food, water and first aid kit.

If you're ready for a zombie apocalypse, then you're ready for any emergency. emergency.cdc.govWe at DeathRef applaud their efforts. (Dude! It’s the CDC!). But oh, dear hearts — don’t put “Social Media” in the title. We know what you’re trying to do. You’re almost there. Your constant reminders that zombie contingency plans also work for earthquakes quite nearly get in the way of the gag, but we suspect there were stuffy dinosaur overlords in heated board meetings that needed ample assurance this was relevant, useful and no joke.

Overall, well done.