Freezing a dead body to preserve it, in order to retain the potential superpowers is not a new concept. Marvel’s Captain America accidentally turned into the modern day hero because he spent some 70 years frozen in ice. He also discovers some supervillains in Civil War, frozen in a coma-like state, ready to be re-awakened if need be and wreak havoc. However, this idea might be making its way into reality after all. The super-rich of the world are looking to be frozen for preservation, and re-awakened. The superpower being conserved is the money, which might increase or decrease according to the situation they are revived in.
A quest to achieve the impossible? Not so much.
The rich want to keep getting richer, and one way to do that is by avoiding taxes. Cryonics is now catering to a loophole to make this dream come true. BNN Bloomberg reports that one way people are doing this is by making a ‘revival trust.’ It is a play on the dynasty trust, which exempts those applicable from taxes levied on owning estates more than $13.6 million. People are accepting different forms of revival too, since a revived person is considered different from an actual person. One person says that they’ll take the ‘revived’ label simply if their consciousness is “uploaded to a computer.” (The very premise of the Amazon Prime Series, Upload.)
The number one feeder of this new dream to be revived after death (to reap money) is Alcor Life Extension Foundation. There are at least 224 bodies already being preserved in the facility. 1418 are recorded to have also booked their spots here. Surprisingly, Alcor Life has been running since the 70s. The company also offers to freeze heads. Some believers of the revival fad are of the opinion that preserved heads can grow full bodies later on.
The road to revival is yet to be laid down
Immortality is yet to be achieved by mankind. No science has been discovered that makes corpse revival possible, which is the grey area that surrounds cryonics. Freezing a body is possible, but longer periods of preservation can destroy human tissue and organs, as ice crystals develop. The challenge to bring back a dead human body into its original function is an immense one, as there are no guarantees about it. A revived person may not have the identity, memory or traits that they had in the past. But despite the sheer uncertainty of the future, it seems to be a risk members at cryonic facilities have considered, given their numbers.
Private space travel is possible, aging is being prevented, and so many more bizarre things becoming a reality for the ultra rich. Having immense financial and legal power does not seem to sate them. Making the impossible a reality seems to be on the agenda for a lot of these moguls. For example, entrepreneur Bryan Johnson is using the plasma of his teenage son to look younger. His goal is, as many news outlets say, to live forever.
Mindsets like these show how detached from the world this tiny section of humanity is. Because as they dream of a possible life after death, on Earth, the rest of the world is busy toiling away at work to live their (numbered) days. It reminds the rest of the common folk that a person would need an unfathomable amount of money to dream of such things first, let alone believe in them.
