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Trackerdoc
Join Date: 3/15/2008
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2/4/2010 6:52:32 AM what to do with a body in a dissaster
In the oklahoma city bombing, our morgues were over-run. there were no places to take the bodies. they were covered at first and could not be embalmed due to forensic and morgue issues. bodies start to smell in 90 degree heat and sun. So a small food services company donated the use of his refrigerated trucks. you can put up to forty bodies in a refrigerated truck of good size. He ultimately lost his buisness. most people associated his trucks with the dead bodies and didn't want to use foodtrucks that had formerly held their dead.
there are some different ways to handle a human body after death. from a smell standpoint you could use coffee for a while. Coffee is used to mask many odors besides drugs and have been used in countries where refrigeration is not practical. Burning is an option as well, but documenting them is very important and may not be posible if the situation is very complicated forensically. It takes alot of wood to do it well and other fuels. A mass grave may be your only option. I don't think this is a very nice topic, but I would sure like some input as i think I will likely have to stay in my community as a community leader and doctor and will have to deal with this possibly. what other ideas do you have for body management?
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Urban Medic
Join Date: 3/21/2008
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2/4/2010 9:46:57 AM
Agreed, it's not a nice topic, but it may be necessary.
First of all, measures taken would depend on the number of bodies, resources available. What heavy equipment (think backhoes, etc.) are available, and in the event of a disaster, will fuel be available for it and what would be the ease or difficulty in getting it to the site? If no heavy equipment is available, is the manpower available, as well as any necessities for any decent excavation (weather, clothing, food, water, tools, etc)?
Second of all, where do you do put the bodies? Consider proximity to water sources, carnivores digging up shallow graves, diseases either spread via vermin or bugs, or possibly contracted by the victims depending on the incident. In a book I recently read, a golf course was used as a graveyard as people started dying off after an EMP went off. Burning the bodies is one option, true, but either a mass grave or mass pyre is going to consume resources one way or another. The prioritizing of those resources would most likely dictate the method used as well as what kind of incident it was. If it wasn't something like an infectious agent and all other usual resources and provisions were available, this becomes less of an issue. Refrigerated trailers, fuel, manpower, and other logistical support materiel would most likely be available, even in a natural disaster in an industrialized country. In the event of massive breakdown of services following something like an EMP, or post-natural disaster in a 3rd world nation like Haiti, resources would be available, but at a trickle at best, at least initially. In a nation where armed gangs would seize any kind of supplies (think "Tears of the Sun," or any of several African nations) and hoard them or dole them out piecemeal, well, that's another issue, and a mass grave or mass pyre fueled by either burning tires or oil may be the only way to dispose of huge numbers of bodies.
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Trackerdoc
Join Date: 3/15/2008
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2/4/2010 12:55:14 PM
My physician friend with the international red cross stated that the bodies were not a huge issue except in a serious contagion situation like ebola. the fleas leave them quickly as do most parasites when they get cold and most bacteria die very quickly. body bags were used and in some cases graves were dug and marked so families could come buy later and dig them up for removal to the family grave site. I would agree that a mass grave may be the best option in some situations and the circumstances will certainly dictate. I have several cold storage facilities in the town and I think they might help. sounds like contagion control, social beliefs, odor control and disposal are the keys. I wonder how freezing the bodies would affect zombies and their reanimation?
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Yoink
Join Date: 7/25/2009
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2/4/2010 7:07:41 PM
Ok, Trackerdoc I know you were kidding but in the Book World War Z by Max Brooks, The winter Freeze stopped the Zombies because it froze them solid, but when you thawed them out they go right back too the Brain eating. It is an interesting book if anyone is looking for some good fiction to read.
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Trackerdoc
Join Date: 3/15/2008
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2/5/2010 6:00:40 AM
That exactly what I thought would happen!
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SnakeTracker
Join Date: 3/30/2008
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2/7/2010 7:15:34 PM
Soylent green!
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Urban Medic
Join Date: 3/21/2008
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2/8/2010 2:25:52 AM
But... Soylent Green is... PEOPLE????
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SnakeTracker
Join Date: 3/30/2008
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2/8/2010 4:01:10 AM
What do you do when the dust settles and you've got a mass grave near your house with 300 bodies in it? Tell them you won? Even if that's true in every case, I'm sure it would be hard to sell it in court.
Besides, burying bodies is hard work. Ever planted a rose bush?
There's this pig farm not far from where I live. . .
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Trackerdoc
Join Date: 3/15/2008
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2/8/2010 7:47:22 AM
I had never heard of the movie, but I looked it up and certainly if situations were as overcrowded as they are in that movie, I could see that happening, where they would market food and not tell you it had human protein in it. I don't think I would like to live in a place or time like that. In a disaster, I would like to think that at some point our situation would return to normal. I wasn't thinking just in TEOTWAWKI kind of thing. In that situation, I would hope that I would not have to eat them as my only choice. but if violence were to come to my home, and I were faced with a large toll of bodies, burning them or composting them or burying them would make sense. I like the idea of using pigs. I had forgot that one.
If it were deaths by natural causes, plagues etc and I could, I would try to keep records in most cases for a time when I might have to account for those in my charge, like at a retreat or the like. I just don't think you could leave them out and expect that dogs and the like wouldn't eat them. it is grim, but I am not sure of all the possible ways of dealing with them. Thanks for the movie title, I will see if I can get it.
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SnakeTracker
Join Date: 3/30/2008
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2/9/2010 10:31:08 AM
The pig method is described in detail in the movie, "Snatch". Frightening to think that someone has already worked out the details isn't it.
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Trackerdoc
Join Date: 3/15/2008
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2/10/2010 7:16:07 AM
I don't think I like the idea medically of eating the pigs that ate the humans. I will have to give that some thought as far as disease risk like prions, parasites etc. Plus humans are just not real organic you know. Too much mcdonalds and antibiotics to put them in the food chain for very long. morbid thoughts, but your right,some creative book writer or movie screen writer has thought of is somewhere.
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