X-Message-Number: 15134
From: "Pat Clancy" <>
Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 11:16:36 -0800
Subject: Re: Urban or Rural

david pizer wrote:

> Where is the safest place for patients to be stored for the next 100 to 200

> years, until we can reanimate most of them (if it becomes possible)?  There is
> no move planned in the works for now that I know of, but who knows what might
> happen in the next decade.  Now is a good time to discuss this.
> 


First, I think it will be more like thousands of years (at least), not hundreds.
And second, the safest place would be _space_. I'm not trying to be flippant, 
I really think it would be far safer to put bodies in containers and send them 
on a very long orbit around the solar system, than to trust any hiding place 

on earth. Over long time periods on earth, there is the possibility not only of
damage to the immediate environment (power failure, earthquake, nuclear 
war, glaciers during the next ice age, comet strike, etc.), but that societies 
will change in ways that are inimical to the continued existence of cryo-
preserved bodies. For example, consider a future where the political left 
becomes totally dominant, resurgance of communism etc., and the individual 
is therefore considered of no importance in the scheme of things; in that 
case cryo-preservation would likely be forbidden (it would take resources 
from the all-important needs of the State), and existing preserved bodies 
would be declared Dead and would be destroyed.

On the other hand, we have the technology even now to send vessels into 
long slow comet-like orbits. And with appropriate reflective shielding, you 
wouldn't even need refrigeration to maintain a temperature close to 0*K! (Or 
at least much lower than could be maintained on earth.) Of course there's 
still no guarantee of safety, e.g. against meteors, or against a hostile 
reception committe on the next approach to earth. But I'd much rather take 
my chances out there.

Pat Clancy

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