Thankfully, I had eaten my breakfast. I hope anyone reading this has finished whatever meal they might be eating too – this is not a pleasant subject.
I see Belgium have submitted plans to the EU to allow undertakers to dissolve bodies instead of burying or cremating them. They would apparently pressurize the corpses and then dissolve the bodies in some sort of caustic soda and then, the utterly horrible bit, the resulting ‘liquid’ would be flushed into the sewage system. Yuck!
This has happened in Belgium of course, because of a land shortage for burials and the pollution which comes from cremations, but I see that this ‘process’ is already underway in some US states, specifically Maine, Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Oregon, and Maryland.
However, for those worried that the traditional urn containing the ashes of their dead relatives might now be a thing of the past, fear not. The article goes on to say that the ‘liquid’ following the dissolving bit can be strained and the resulting mush can be dried out and put in an urn in the normal way. ‘Way to go’ as they say in the US or should it be, ‘what a way to go’?
My mind went into overdrive when I read the article. What for instance would I now do if I was staying in a London hotel and got up in the middle of the night for a drink of water? In days past, if I didn’t have a mini-bar, I used to think long and hard about drinking from the tap in the bathroom, as I knew that London tap water had been through the sewage system seven times on average before it came gurgling out through the hotel pipes. The ‘system’ as they call it means that in a worse- case scenario, the water I would be drinking had been drunk and ‘passed’ 7 times through someone else’s body – probably not the same body, but bodies nonetheless and I don’t mean dead ones!
But now, in addition to knowing I was drinking someone else’s purified urine (or worse), I would be wondering what that little bit of grit was. Was it a he or a she? What did they die of? And what was the gritty bit? Yuck again!
If however they introduce this body disposal system in France, of course, they’ll take it to the extreme as they always do. Over here, unlike in the UK, unless things have changed, you can buy virtually any type of caustic soda or acid – off the shelf in your local DIY store. Indeed, I have a great collection in my garage – sulphuric, hydrochloric, nitric etc etc. You name it and want to dissolve it – I’ve got it.
I can just see some old guy who’s been wanting rid of his nagging, domineering wife turning to this ‘disposal system’ and when the Gendarmes arrive to question him about the reported disappearance of his wife, he’ll just say he thought she’d died in her sleep and she’s now dissolved - in accordance with the law. It’s a brand new twist on ‘dissolving a marriage’.
J, be afraid – be very afraid!
The picture by the way, is of the acid drum which the notorious ‘Acid Bath Murderer’, a certain John George Haigh, used to dissolve his victims. Read the gruesome story at the URL below:
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