Category Archives: Cryonics

It was a warm day for a heist, at least by Moscow standards, which matters if youre allegedly stealing frozen human bodies.

On Sept. 7, a 61-year-old physicist and a team of men working for her snipped the locks on a gate leading to Europes only cryonics storage center. Valerija Udalova, who specializes in thermodynamics, wore a trench coat as she pointed the workers to a corrugated metal warehouse on the outskirts of the city.

Using a welding torch, they cut through a wall of the building owned by KrioRusa firm that deep-freezes the brains and bodies of wealthy people in the hope that scientists in the future will bring them back to life.

One by one, they drained liquid nitrogen from the massive fiberglass vats, sending plumes of white vapor into the air, according to video footage and Udalovas own account. Then they loaded dozens of corpses onto a truck with a crane and tried to drive away with them.

Police quickly stopped Udalovaonly for her to strike again successfully two months later, according to the firms co-founder, 42-year-old Danila Medvedev.

But Udalova is no common crook. Shes a co-founder of KrioRus and Medvedevs ex-wife, who was allegedly ousted as general director of the firm last year, Medvedev said.

The alleged body snatching has sparked a bizarre feud between the former Russian power coupletwo shrewd and brilliant entrepreneurs, who both claim theyre legally entitled to the companys 50 brains and 26 bodies, according to interviews with both co-founders, along with a former co-worker and court documents.

The story has unfolded like a sci-fi novel, a crime caper and telenovela rolled into onewith Medvedev swiping back a load of brains amid murky laws, and the former lovebirds going to great lengths to seize control of the company.

She was holding these patients hostage, Medvedev said, adding that clients have suffered. We were really surprised and upsetand then some crazy things happened.

Medvedev believed so much in cryogenics, he had his own grandmothers brain frozen.

Medvedev says his ex raided the warehouse to boost the body count of a new cryogenics company, which she launched after being booted as director of KrioRus. It was a cunning move in the niche industry, where the more brains and corpses you have, the better your reputation and credibility, he said.

They were used as a weapon in gaining control, he said. Its clear what shes doing is really a textbook case of personality disorder.

But Udalova insists shes still the director of KrioRus and simply wanted to move the bodies to a better storage facility. She says taking them was absolutely legal even though her ex briefly managed to convince cops otherwise.

He doesnt respect anybody; he doesnt respect the law, she said. He thinks he is the emperor of the galaxy.

But the two werent always at each others throats. When they met at a transhumanist meeting in Moscow in 2005, both were passionate about the concept of eternal life.

They bonded over the movement, which advocates immortality through technological enhancement such as anti-aging devices and artificial intelligence.

Medvedev, then 24, was attracted to Udalova's mind and her go-getter personality. Udalova, then 44, was fit and charismatic with a degree from the renowned Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. She was a dog person, who played in a rock band and looked younger than her age.

Valerija Udalova and Danila Medvedev, the co-founders of KrioRus pose with a container used to cryopreserve bodies in liquid nitrogen in 2016. The duo, once married, are now at feuding over the ownership of the company and frozen bodies.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Vlada Krassilnikova/Getty Images

Medvedev, who had a background as an investment banker, was bookish and bright with reddish chin scruff. He was confident in the business world but a bit naive with women, which may have been part of his charm.

Despite their age gap, they could talk for hours about science, the future and ridding the world of death. She had a good imagination and she was smart. She was always willing to go on any discussion trajectory, Medvedev said of their early days together. She was very open-minded.

As they began dating, he saw in her more than a romantic partner. She would get down to business, [saying] Lets do this event or start this project. She was always up to it, and that was what I wanted and needed.

They founded KrioRus in May 2006 and eventually moved in together. Initially the firm froze only a few people and pets in vacuum-sealed cylindrical containers known as dewars. The so-called patients were stored upside down at -320 degrees Fahrenheit with liquid nitrogen, which halts molecular and atomic activity, effectively stopping time.

The companywhich now charges $36,000 for full-body preservation, and $15,000 for just a braindoesnt guarantee clients can be brought back to life. It provides preservation for a future date, presumably when advanced medical technology makes it possible.

As the theory goes, a deep-frozen brain will retain a persons personality, memories and feelings. That data could then be transferred into a new healthy body, or uploaded into a computer once the technology exists.

On the job, the couple were a good team at first. Medvedev believed so much in cryogenics, he had his own grandmothers brain frozen, he told me. Udalovas late dog, Alice, became the companys first canine client. We had to run it as a sort of garage operation, like activism science slash business, said Medvedev.

KrioRus soon grew to 25 full-body patients and 50 neuropatientssevered heads stored in stockpot-sized containersand roughly 20 cats, dogs and birds.

The pair had different strengths professionally. Medvedev, whos fluent in English, was a public relations whiz and handled some project management. Udalova had a deep understanding of the science and maintenance of the bodies, and was in charge of sales.

In 2009, Udalova became general director of the company, which by then had started to attract rich and prominent clients. Meanwhile, the couple emerged as leaders in Russias transhumanist movement.

But as the firm gained notoriety, Medvedev says Udalovas poor people skills became his burden. There were a lot of things really wrong about how Valerija approached people and how she communicated with others, he said. I was always making excuses for her and thinking its my job to protect herand to explain to everybody else that shes a nice person.

For her part, Udalova says she grew frustrated with her then-partners lack of leadership skills. He is a very bad manager and a bad director. He didnt want to manage projects, he wanted to do public relations. He wanted glory, he wanted power, she said. He is a very good propagandist but not a leader.

KrioRus soon grew to 25 full-body patients and 50 neuropatientssevered heads stored in stockpot-sized containersand roughly 20 cats, dogs and birds. Clients were largely Russian, including the former director of a well-known museum along with doctors and lawyers, with bills generally footed by their loved ones.

In 2016, Bloomberg Businessweek published a feature about KrioRus, noting it had grown far more rapidly than either of its American competitors, and garnering the firm international attention.

But at home Udalova had a controlling streak, according to Medvedev. She was always trying to limit my communications with others regardless of whether it was romantic or friendly or professional, he said.

Medvedev had never been in a long-term relationship before her, and he sometimes second-guessed himself about whether her demands were unreasonable. I didnt really have much experience to compare to her, he said. I wasnt prepared that somebody might be manipulative.

Danila Medvedev founded KrioRus with Udalova in 2006. Their business relationship evolved into a romantic one, but over time it deteriorated with Udalova calling him a "bad manager" and "not a leader."

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Alexey Sazonov/AFP via Getty Images

Tension over power dynamics soon bubbled up. She would get angry at situations when I would question her authority, he said.

The couple stopped being able to talk openly and once, after a blowout, Udalova disappeared for days without contact, he said. The on-again, off-again nature of their romance weighed on Medvedev. In 2017, they separated but continued to work together. (The couple were never legally married, though they referred to each other as husband and wife.)

Udalova said their age difference led to the separation, and hinted other women may have played a role. I am 20 years older and there are so many temptations around, she said. Danila is very narcissistic. After many years of being in love, I began to notice his flaws. This hastened our parting.

She added, He loves only himself. Maybe girls, too, but thats another story.

She seized the brains of 50 patientsincluding Medvedevs own grandmas brainand took them to a secret location.

For months, the pair remained civil at work and mostly managed to avoid day-to-day interaction. Both told me their breakup was not related to the feud over frozen remains.

But in 2019, Medvedev started making moves to get her booted as director.

He claims she was unproductive and indecisive about raising money, and that the company needed a change. I discussed this with other owners of the company and we decided we should change the directorbut it turned out she had different ideas, he said.

Others werent happy with her performance, either. At a shareholders meeting in 2019, she presented a grim financial report, according to Dmitry Kvasnikov, who formerly worked at KrioRus as a business development manager.

She squandered all the money in the company, he said. Its not that she stole it, she just mismanaged it. She was not competent enough to allocate the money properly.

Around that time, most of the companys shareholders voted her out as director but she refused to accept it, Kvasnikov said. Sixty percent wanted to remove her. But before they could sign the papers she took them so they couldnt.

He added, I dont think she is inherently bad; she is just misguided. She doesnt want to work with anyone who doesnt agree with her.

Udalova contends she handled the firms finances well, considering the challenges of the unusual field. I managed the company's money properly. Cryonics is difficult to develop. I think no one but me could develop cryonics in such difficult conditions, she said. Yes, indeed, Danila made an attempt to fire me, but it was illegal.

As support for her leadership appeared to wane, Udalova made a bold move. She seized the brains of 50 patientsincluding Medvedevs own grandmas brainand took them to a secret location in late 2019, according to Medvedev and Udalova.

She also transferred some of KrioRus assets to a new company, muddying the waters legally, Medvedev said. To police and to the courts, it becomes a little more complicated than if you just take something and run with it, he said. It becomes a gray area.

Udalova contends she moved the brains for the better of the companys clients.

It is better for cryopatients not to be in the dirty hands of a mediocre manager who thinks only about his own gain, she said.

But the firms full-body patientswhich were heavier and harder-to-transportremained untouched.

When Udalovas term as director expired in September 2021, she was not voted back as director, according to Medvedev. (Company documents show her term as director expired in June 2021.)

Udalova, however, insists she still holds the position, citing tax documents that appear to list her as the current director.

Either way, they both agree on what happened next. On Sept. 7, Udalova and her workers cut through the wall of the storage center in Moscow, drained the dewars to lighten them, then tried to drive off with the 25 frozen full-body corpses.

As the alleged heist unfolded, the son of the land owner alerted Medvedev, who called police. Medvedev, who claims he personally owns the cryogenic equipment, presented cops with paperwork.

Police determined Udalova had no grounds to take the bodies and the trucks were quickly detained by cops, according to the Russian media outlet vc.ru.

A video soon surfaced showing authorities apparently escorting Udalova off the property. Russian police stop transhumanist who tried to steal frozen human corpses, the science news site biohackinfo.com proclaimed in a headline.

Inside the building a bare-bones structure surrounded by treeshe found the severed heads of patients Udalova had taken in 2019.

When I asked Udalova why she went to such extreme measures to take the bodies, she laughed. She said the warehouse was only about 210 square feet and that the corpses needed to be moved to an upgraded facility. Medvedev had previously locked all doors, and didnt give us keys, she said, forcing her to cut through the wall of the warehouse.

Excuse me but Danila is not the owner of the building. He is not the owner of the dewars or the cryonics patients, she said. KrioRus is the owner and, as a director, I decided that this place is too small.

It was necessary [and] absolutely legal, she said.

Not long after her run-in with cops, police told Medvedev they couldnt press charges. Russian law forbids the ownership of human bodiesa rule enacted to combat illegal organ transplantsmaking it difficult to arrest her for theft, Medvedev said. The police didnt want to get into this because its not clear how its regulated, Medvedev said. You cannot say she stole bodies because you cannot actually own them.

The fight shifted instead to a battle over the high-priced cryogenics equipment used by the company, which Medvedev claimed to own. But in a memo to police and prosecutors, Udalova wrote that the dewars never belonged to Medvedev, or any other legal entity or individual, according to the document. (Law enforcement in Moscow didnt return a request for comment)

The bodies were eventually returned to the warehouse but the brains Udalova took in 2019 remained at large, and police suggested Medvedev take her to civil court, he said.

Then, somehow, things got weirder.

On Sept. 16, two hulking men allegedly threatened Medvedev outside his apartment, he said. [Udalova] and her boyfriend sent Chechen bandits to my apartment, trying to scare me into giving up control, Medvedev said. The situation spun out of control.

The menacing men, who he said were captured in footage, allegedly warned him to back down from the fight over the company, he said.

Udalova insists the stunt was staged and that she wasnt involved. I think they are actors because they are so stereotypically Chechen, like in the movies They had long black beards with evil eyes, she said.

She added, I didnt do it. Maybe one of my fans did it, but I dont know anything about it."

If the harassment was supposed to frighten Medvedev, it only emboldened him.

With no help from cops, he took matters into his own hands.

In late September, he and a team of novice investigators tracked down a piece of land owned by Udalova in Tver, roughly 2.5 hours by car from Moscow. Inside the building a bare-bones structure surrounded by treeshe found the severed heads of patients Udalova had taken in 2019, he said.

The KrioRus facility after it had been ransacked. Employees found white mist from the liquid nitrogen leaking out and containers broken open.

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/KrioRus

It was a half-complete building with 50 percent of the walls still missing, no doors, no windows, no gates standing there basically in the middle of a forest, he said.

There was nothing to stop him from enacting cowboy justice, and simply snatching them back, he said. We took the dewars with the neuropatients and moved them to Moscow, he said.

Udalova fired back two months later. This time, she seized the 25 full-body patients shed failed to take on Sept. 7. She moved them to a cryogenics facility in Sergiev Posad, roughly 45 miles from Moscow in late November, according to Medvedev and Udalova. It was all of the companys bodies, minus one stored separately in a dry ice container.

In the process, Medvedev claims she damaged the dewars and possibly the corpses. The temperatures of the human remains likely dropped when they were taken off the liquid nitrogen, potentially causing them to deteriorate, he said.

Udalova contends they werent hurt. I graduated from a very famous Russian physics institute and my specialization was thermodynamics, so I understand very well what we can [do] with bodies, she said. We did a lot of work to stabilize them.

Hans Bozler, a cryogenics expert who teaches ultralow temperature physics at the University of Southern California, compared removing the bodies to taking meat off ice. A deterioration would be highly accelerated within minutes, said Bozler. Its the same as taking out a steak out of the freezer, letting it thaw and refreezing it.

But their dispute is likely moot, he said. Freezing a brain in liquid nitrogen would wipe out the organs synapses, zapping away almost any chance of reviving it, he said.

Youre taking something thats already been destroyed and worrying about it being more destroyed, said Bozler, who is a Professor Emeritus of Physics. Its hard to take [the claim] seriously because it exists in a world of nonsense.

Medevev and Udalova are taking it seriously, and have taken the battle to civil court. Medevev claims she iced him out of the firms meetings and withheld financial information, according to court papers. In November, the Moscow Arbitration Court ruled in his favor; she has filed an appeal.

Ultimately, he plans to prove Udalova committed fraud by forging the signatures of shareholders to remain director, and to get her charged criminally, he said.

We feel that for what she did Valerija deserves to go to jail, he said. Without getting into an open confrontation with violence and guns and explosions, I want this situation to be resolved over the next 3 to 5 months. (Udalova denies she forged signatures.)

That might involve getting creative. He also plans to set up a new storage facility, then snatch back the full-body patients Udalova still has in her possession, he said.

The uncharted fields of tech and science are ripe for scandals like the one playing out at his company, he said. KrioRus is just the tip of the iceberg, Medevev said. People can be greedy, they can attack each other, try to sabotage projects and steala lot of that happens in fields like artificial intelligence, nanotechnologies and aging research.

Its the same as taking out a steak out of the freezer, letting it thaw and refreezing it.

He said power-hungry visionaries like Udalova often go unchecked because few people are knowledgeable enough to serve as watchdogs or whistleblowers against them. There is something in cryonics which attracts psychopaths, he said. They can have very easy access to power over the relatives of patients.

Its not healthy but [psychopaths] do also come with qualities that allow them to succeed, he said.

Udalova, for her part, believes shes fighting to save the field of cryonics from a nefarious force. She has no plans to back down. Really, I dont know where this conflict will be in one year, she said.[But] I am absolutely right.

She worries about the impact the dispute will have on transhumanisms reputation. She fears it will make the industry look wild and its leaders unhinged. To avoid similar disputes in the future, she said non-profits should spearhead the developing field instead of private firms.

[Medvedev] is really bad for cryonics because a lot of people can see this conflict, she said. He has slandered KrioRus.

Asked how she wants the feud with her ex to end, she thought for a moment.

We need to transport Danila to Mars, she said, with a straight face. I ask, please, Elon Musk: Take Danila to Mars.

Go here to read the rest:

Russian Cryonics Couple Danila Medvedev and Valerija Udalova's Bad Breakup Led to Heist Of Frozen Brains - The Daily Beast

If you have seen the recent Marvel movie, Captain America: Civil War, then you will remember those 10 words that turned Bucky Barnes into the deadly Winter Soldier.

To us, these are just random words strung together that dont mean anything. But to Bucky, those words are fragments of his past, his memories, and Im going to help explain them.

Longing (e)

Its the first of the trigger words, but its meaning is more difficult to understand. We can assume that it can relate to his longing to go back in the past before he fell from the train or the longing he feels from the memories before hes transformed into the Winter Soldier.

Rusted (p)

Rusted is one of the words that seems to have no meaning. It could potentially relate to the state of the facility he was kept in or an item from his past, but at this point, we can only guess.

Seventeen (), Nine (), One ()

These three numbers are not all together, but they all connect to have one meaning. They form the date 1917, the year Bucky was born.

Daybreak ()

The word daybreak wouldnt seem to have any significant meaning to Bucky. Daybreak introduces a new day, so we can assume that it might relate to Buckys new life as the Winter Soldier after the fall from the train or the beginning of something big to come.

Furnace ()

When we hear the word furnace, we often think of fire and heat. Both would be helpful when melting an enhanced super soldier after cryogenics, or cryonics, or falling from a train into the snow.

Benign ()

The seventh trigger word is an ironic one. Benign means gentle and harmless, but the Winter Soldier is a lethal assassinwho has the capability of killing a man with nothing but the pinky finger of hismetal arm.It could relate to his views on Steve Rogers or even what he wishes he could be.

Homecoming ( )

Many thoughtson this trigger word areaboutthe new Spiderman: Homecoming movie coming out in 2017. My thoughts went to the scene of Captain America: The First Avenger when Cap led the missing troops home, Bucky at his side. That moment was when Steve proved himself to be worth something, and as his best friend, it made Bucky feel proud.

Freight car ( )

As the last of the trigger words, this one holds the most significance and is the most obvious. As we all know, Bucky Barnes fell from a freight car into the snow. It was the last time he saw Steve, the last moment he had before becoming the Winter Soldier. This last word completes the trigger words and turns our beloved Bucky into the deadly weapon Hydra made him to be.

If you have any other theories on Buckys trigger words, feel free to leave a comment!

Like Loading...

Visit link:

Buckys 10 Trigger Words Explained - Bucky's Metal Arm

The new series Severance, which streams its first two episodes Friday on Apple TV+, is the latest entry in a genre one might call the uncanny office. Think of it as the mirror image of classic satires like The Office or Office Space, which present the American white-collar workplace as a banal exercise in oppressive mundanity. The uncanny office is equally skeptical of its corporate setting, but takes a more surreal approach, juxtaposing fluorescent lights and mindless jargon with some kind of tonal curveball. The contrast is, in part, comedic; it also helps draw out the already sinister undertones of professional conformity.

The Marvel series Loki takes place inside the Time Variance Authority, an uncanny office where functionaries use Infinity Stones as paperweights. Over three seasons on Comedy Central, Corporate used generic multinational Hampton DeVille as a catch-all for everything from streaming services to Big Pharma, contrasting its characters small-scale ennui with their employers massive reach. And back in 2009, the cult sitcom Better Off Ted outlined the inner workings of Veridian Dynamics, a faceless company whose projects in development include a cryonics chamber and a scented lightbulb.

Severance, not to be confused with Ling Mas pandemic novel of the same namean uncanny office classic in its own rightoffers a new, allegorical twist on this familiar concept. Created by Dan Erickson and largely directed by Ben Stiller, Severance stars Adam Scott as Mark S., a soft-spoken middle manager at a company called Lumon Industries. Or rather, part of him is: In the procedure that gives Severance its name, Marks primary self has been severed from his work self, with one half of his personality retaining no knowledge or memory of the other. Marks innie, Lumons infantilizing term for its on-the-clock employees, has no idea what his life is like the other 16 hours a day; Marks outie has no idea what he actually does in exchange for his paychecks.

We learn all this through the eyes of Helly R. (Britt Lower), the latest employee of Lumons Macro Data Refinement division, or MDR for short. Helly doesnt know this when she wakes up facedown on a conference room table, but shes been brought on to replace Petey (Yul Vazquez), Marks former work bestie whos suddenly vanished from the windowless basement where severed employees spend their days.

Like many shows with mysteries to tease and worlds to build, Severance is at its best in its pilot, a hypnotic hour that draws the viewer in with a menacing, perfectly curated vibe. When Helly, or rather Hellys innie, first comes to, shes a blank slate, with no idea where she is or what shes doing there. Her only guidance is a disembodied voice she soon understands to be Marks. It doesnt take long for the existential horror of her new life to set in. As an innie, Helly doesnt experience the recreation or rest that make a dead-end job slightly more bearable. Her entire life consists of sitting in a cubicle, staring at numbers on a computer screen, and sorting them into boxes. In this Marxian parable, the MDR employees are about as alienated from the means of production as a worker can possibly get: Whatever data theyre refining has been encrypted to the point where they have no idea what theyre looking at or even why theyre looking at it. Mark simply instructs Helly to look for numbers that are somehow scary and shell know what to do. Uncanny indeed!

Working with cinematographer Jessica Lee Gagn and production designers Nick Francone and Jeremy Hindle, Stiller renders Lumon as an exaggerated version of an everyday setting thats already more eerie and artificial than wed like to admit. Theres an endless parking lot, blanketed in snow. From there, drones like Mark proceed to a gray-and-steel lobbya generic atrium apart from the giant statue of Lumon founder Kier Egan, who looms over everything much like Lokis trio of Time-Keepers. Then the elevator takes them down to the severed floor, an endless maze of bright white hallways. Somewhere between the surface and the subterranean desks, the outie clocks out and the innie punches in.

Helly may be our introduction to Lumon and the concept of severance, but Mark is the only character we see travel from one state of being to the next. Helly, sardonic jokester Dylan (Zach Cherry), and uptight stickler Irving (John Turturro) exist primarily as innies; so do the members of other severed departments like Optics and Design, captained by the avuncular Burt (Christopher Walken). Supervisors Milchick (Tramell Tillman) and Harmony (Patricia Arquette, reuniting with Stiller after her transformative turn in Escape at Dannemora) arent severed at all, giving them an extra form of leverage in the already skewed power imbalance between boss and underling.

Mark actually takes us from Lumons headquarters to the bland, Lumon-subsidized townhouse where he livesand gives us an idea why anyone would voluntarily split themselves in two. A couple of years before the events of Severance, Mark lost his wife. Severance is his way of lessening the pain by exactly a third. You cant grieve what you cant remember youve lost for eight hours a day. As a result, Scott gives a remarkable dual performance. Both sides of Mark have aspects of the same personality, but the original is jaded and bitter, the newer version curious and naive. The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent, but for now, Scott gets two full roles to his colleagues one.

Over nine episodes, all of which were screened for critics in advance, Severance remains mysterious, but doesnt act like a mystery box. Sure, Erickson and his writers work to create suspense, as does Apple TV+ by opting for a weekly release after this initial drop. What happened to Petey? Why does Harmony live next door to Marks outie, disguising herself as a nurse? What is Lumon up to thats so important its invented an invasive medical procedure to protect its secrets? As compelling as the vibes may be, Severance does need a story with momentum to structure them around.

But Severance is less interested in scattering bread crumbs around its plot than creating arresting images to evoke its themes. Lumons employee handbook is written like religious scripture, complete with commandments like render not my creation in miniature (an edict against mapping the basements labyrinthine layout). Whenever innies violate protocol, theyre sent to a place called the Break Room, where theyre forced to repeat an apology ad nauseam until its determined they meant it. Two characters on a mental health walk encounter a room filled, for no discernible reason, with baby goats. Its the promise of these bizarre, unpredictable interludes, much more than the hope of concrete answers, that kept me pressing Play.

In part, that disinterest stemmed from the inevitable pacing issues that come with spinning an addictive hook into a multiseason mystery. (The Severance cast has enough star power to be a limited series, but the slow drip of information indicates early on that Erickson has no intention of wrapping things up so soon.) As a puzzle, Severance can drag, especially compared to denser, faster shows like Yellowjackets.

But as a metaphor, Severance is so strong that its soft spots are easy to ignore. At first blush, the titular concept is work-life balance taken to the extreme. Yet the further Severance goes, the more resonance it acquires. As the innies awaken to their plight, they start to work together and share information, a higher-stakes version of organizing their workplace. Characters debate the personhood of innies and the obligations that come with bringing a life into the world without its consent, issues that go beyond the professional and into the deeply personal. And of course, there are the ethical questions of what we owe to our jobs, and they to us. Severance is a simple concept with complex applications, the seed of any good work of speculative fiction.

The uncanny office gains part of its power from how cultish postwar American capitalism can look to anyone outside its beating heart. As the economy shifts away from stable, centralized work and toward ad hoc, one-off gigs, that audience only grows by the day. But as alien as even the regular office job can already seem, it also speaks to deeper, justified anxieties about all kinds of work, not just pencil-pushing. How much control should corporations have over our lives? How often is whats sold to us as freedom just another form of exploitation? Dystopia is all around us, but Severance distills it into potent, streamlined form.

Read more here:

Severance Offers a Surreal, Allegorical Twist on Work-Life Balance - The Ringer

#Roommates, everyday technology advances in so many ways to make our lives more efficient and convenientbut a U.S. lab is hoping to bring your deceased loved ones back among the living through the world of technology. A national cryonics lab currently has 200 heads and bodies frozen because they are hoping that advanced technology will provide the ability to bring them back to life.

@TheSun reports, the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, which is a cryonics lab located in Scottsdale, Arizona, is currently keeping the heads and bodies of 200 people frozen in the hope that they will someday be brought back to life through the magic of advanced scientific technology. For about $200,000 the company will freeze an entire dead body and for $80,000 you can have a head frozen courtesy of the cryonics process. The bodies are stored in deep freeze temperatures for decades (and sometimes even centuries,) as they are packed in ice, frozen and the blood in the body is replaced with a cryoprotectant solution to stop the ice crystallization process.

Alcor then preserves the bodies by gradually lowering their temperature and storing them in large vessels of liquid nitrogen at -196 C. However, its important to know that, according to experts regarding a successful cryonics procedure, its best to begin the freezing process within 60 seconds of when the human heart stops beating.

The Alcor Life Extension Foundation was founded back in 1972 after Linda and Fred Chamberlain met at a cryonics conference in early 1970.

Speaking about their initial goals for the company, Linda stated Our goals were to start an organization that could save peoples lives and give them an opportunity to be restored to health and function. If wed known how hard it was going to be, we might not have tried to do it. But once you get started, something about saving lives, you cant give up.

Want tea directly in your text inbox? Hit us up at 917-722-8057 or click here to join!

Read more from the original source:

U.S. Cryonics Lab Currently Keeping The Heads And Bodies ...

An experiment half a century ago created an industry that specializes in freezing the dead. Many scientists think the chance of reviving them is slim.

(Inside Science) -- Early in the 1960s, a group of enthusiasts advanced the concept of freezing humans as soon as they die, in hopes of reviving them after the arrival of medical advances able to cure the conditions that killed them. The idea went into practice for the first time 50 years ago.

On Jan. 12, 1967, James Bedford, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California, became the first person to be "cyropreserved." A small team of doctors and other enthusiasts froze him a few hours after he died fromcancer.*

A few days later the team placed the body into an insulated container packed with dry ice. Later still, Bedford was immersed in liquid nitrogen in a large Dewar container. Fifteen years on, after a series of moves from one cryopreservation facility to another, his body found a home at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona, where it still resides.

By current standards of cryonics, the procedure was remarkably untidy and disorganized. Nevertheless, a visual evaluation of Bedford's condition in 1991 found that his body had remained frozen and suffered no obvious deterioration.

"There's no date set for another examination," said R. Michael Perry, care services manager at Alcor.

But as promoters of cryopreservation celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bedford's death and freezing -- known to some as "Bedford Day" -- they emphasize improvements to the freezing and preservation procedures that Bedford's experiences advanced.

The community is also undergoing a significant change in its expectations for reviving frozen patients. Rather than planning for a Lazarus-like resuscitation of the entire body, some proponents of the technology focus more on saving individuals' stored memories, and perhaps incorporating them into robots.

Beyond the cryopreservation community, however, an aura of scientific suspicion that surrounded Bedford's freezing remains.

"Reanimation or simulation is an abjectly false hope that is beyond the promise of technology and is certainly impossible with the frozen, dead tissue offered by the 'cryonics' industry," neuroscientist Michael Hendricks of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, wrote in Technology Review.

Scientists aren't the industry's only critics.

Families of individuals designated for freezing -- including Bedford's own family -- have gone to court to protest or defend loved ones' decisions to undergo freezing.

In a more recent case, in 2011, a Colorado probate judge upheld a contract that Mary Robbins had signed with Alcor over objections from Robbins' children. And last year the High Court of England upheld a mother's right to seek cryonic treatment of her terminally ill 14-year-old daughter after her death, despite the father's wishes.

Public reaction to the technology reached its nadir in New England in 2002, when court documents revealed that Boston Red Sox baseball icon Ted Williams was frozen in the Alcor facility, with his head severed from his body. Williams' son John Henry, who arranged the process, was himself frozen after he died of leukemia.

Politics has also impacted the technology's progress. In 2004, for example, Michigan's state government voted to license a facility called the Cryonics Institute, located in Clinton, as a cemetery. That move, reversed eight years later, prevented the institute from preparing bodies for cryopreservation on its own, because applying such procedures to a dead body required the services of a licensed funeral director.

The cryonics industry flatly disagrees with its critics.

Alcor asserts on its website that "[t]here are no known credible technical arguments that lead one to conclude that cryonics, carried out under good conditions today, would not work." The company adds: "Cryonics is a belief that no one is really dead until the information content of the brain is lost, and that low temperatures can prevent this loss."

Certainly the controversies have not discouraged candidates for cryopreservation.

Worldwide, more than 250 individuals are now housed in cryonic facilities, at a minimum per-person cost of about $28,000 in the U.S.

Russia's KrioRus company offers a cut-rate level starting at $12,000, with the condition that it stores several human bodies and assorted pets and other animals in communal Dewar containers. Individual contracts can specify the length of storage. At present, the U.S. and Russia are the only countries with facilities that offer human cryopreservation.

The first attempt at cryopreservation did not go particularly smoothly.

Bedford died before all preparations for his cryopreservation were complete. So instead of draining his blood and replacing it with a customized antifreeze solution to protect the body's tissues from freezing damage, the team simply injected the antifreeze into Bedford's arteries without removing the blood.

The team then surrounded the body in dry ice, and started it on a series of transfers from one container to another that ended up in a Dewar container in Alcor's facility.

Because of those difficulties, cryonics experts feared that the body had suffered serious damage. But the examination in 1991 quelled those concerns.

"We were really relieved that he was not discolored," Perry recalled. "And corners of the ice cubes [around him] were still sharp; he had stayed frozen all the time."

In recent years, cryonics promoters have borrowed from medical advances in such fields as cryobiology and nanobiology.

To prevent ice crystals from damaging cell walls in the frozen state, cryopreservationists replace the body's blood supply with mixtures of antifreeze compounds and organ preservatives -- a technique developed to preserve frozen eggs for fertility treatments.

Another emerging approach accounts for the separation of Ted Williams' head and body. Based on studies of roundworms, promoters of cryonics argue that freezing can preserve the contents of individuals' brains even if their bodies can't be revived. That opens the possibility of downloading cryopreserved personalities into a robotic future body.

Hendricks disagrees. "While it may be possible to preserve these features in dead tissue, that is certainly not happening now," he pointed out in Technology Review.

Scientists such as Barry Fuller, a professor of surgical science and low temperature medicine at England's University College, London, emphasize that even preserving body parts in such a way that they remain viable on thawing remains a distant dream.

"There is ongoing research into these scientific challenges, and a potential future demonstration of the ability to cryopreserve human organs for transplantation would be a major first step into proving the concept," he told The Guardian. "But at the moment we cannot achieve that."

Nevertheless, Perry expresses optimism about a timeline for the revival of frozen humans.

"We think in terms of decades," he said. "Sometimes we say fifty to a hundred years."

David Gorski, a surgeon at Wayne State University Medical Center in Michigan, takes a darker view.

"Fifty years from now," he said, "it's likely that all that will remain of my existence will be some scientific papers and a faint memory held by my nieces and nephews and maybe, if I'm lucky, a few of my youngest readers."

*Editor's note: An earlier version of this story stated that James Bedford died from liver cancer that had spread to his lungs. The information was taken from a publication produced by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. It was brought to our attention that other sources claim Bedford died of kidney cancer. Inside Science is unable to authoritatively confirm the cancer type and we have edited the story to remove the disputed information.

Follow this link:

Preserving Bodies in a Deep Freeze: 50 Years Later ...

Slowing or stopping of life without death

Suspended animation is the temporary (short- or long-term) slowing or stopping of biological function so that physiological capabilities are preserved. It may be either hypometabolic or ametabolic in nature. It may be induced by either endogenous, natural or artificial biological, chemical or physical means. In its natural form it may be spontaneously reversible as in the case of species demonstrating hypometabolic states of hibernation or require technologically mediated revival when applied with therapeutic intent in the medical setting as in the case of deep hypothermic circulatory arrest (DHCA).[1][2]

Suspended animation is understood as the pausing of life processes by exogenous or endogenous means without terminating life itself.[3] Breathing, heartbeat and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means.[4] For this reason, this procedure has been associated with a lethargic state in nature when animals or plants appear, over a period, to be dead but then can wake up or prevail without suffering any harm. This has been termed in different contexts hibernation, dormancy or anabiosis (this last in some aquatic invertebrates and plants in scarcity conditions).

In July 2020, marine biologists reported that aerobic microorganisms (mainly), in "quasi-suspended animation", were found in organically-poor sediments, up to 101.5 million years old, 68.9 metres (226 feet) below the seafloor in the South Pacific Gyre (SPG) ("the deadest spot in the ocean"), and could be the longest-living life forms ever found.[5][6]

This condition of apparent death or interruption of vital signs may be similar to a medical interpretation of suspended animation. It is only possible to recover signs of life if the brain and other vital organs suffer no cell deterioration, necrosis or molecular death principally caused by oxygen deprivation or excess temperature (especially high temperature).[7]

Some examples of people that have returned from this apparent interruption of life lasting over half an hour, two hours, eight hours or more while adhering to these specific conditions for oxygen and temperature have been reported and analysed in depth, but these cases are not considered scientifically valid. The brain begins to die after five minutes without oxygen; nervous tissues die intermediately when a "somatic death" occurs while muscles die over one to two hours following this last condition.[8]

It has been possible to obtain a successful resuscitation and recover life in some instances, including after anaesthesia, heat stroke, electrocution, narcotic poisoning, heart attack or cardiac arrest, shock, newborn infants, cerebral concussion, or cholera.

Supposedly, in suspended animation, a person technically would not die, as long as he or she were able to preserve the minimum conditions in an environment extremely close to death and return to a normal living state. An example of such a case is Anna Bgenholm, a Swedish radiologist who allegedly survived 80 minutes under ice in a frozen lake in a state of cardiac arrest with no brain damage in 1999.[9] [10]

Other cases of hypothermia where people survived without damage are:

It has been suggested that bone lesions provide evidence of hibernation among the early human population whose remains have been retrieved at the Archaeological site of Atapuerca. In a paper published in the journal LAnthropologie, researchers Juan-Luis Arsuaga and Antonis Bartsiokas point out that primitive mammals and primates like bush babies and lorises hibernate, which suggests that the genetic basis and physiology for such a hypometabolism could be preserved in many mammalian species, including humans.[15]

Since the 1970s, induced hypothermia has been performed for some open-heart surgeries as an alternative to heart-lung machines. Hypothermia, however, provides only a limited amount of time in which to operate and there is a risk of tissue and brain damage for prolonged periods.

There are many research projects currently investigating how to achieve "induced hibernation" in humans.[16][17] This ability to hibernate humans would be useful for a number of reasons, such as saving the lives of seriously ill or injured people by temporarily putting them in a state of hibernation until treatment can be given.

The primary focus of research for human hibernation is to reach a state of torpor, defined as a gradual physiological inhibition to reduce oxygen demand and obtain energy conservation by hypometabolic behaviors altering biochemical processes. In previous studies, it was demonstrated that physiological and biochemical events could inhibit endogenous thermoregulation before the onset of hypothermia in a challenging process known as "estivation". This is indispensable to survive harsh environmental conditions, as seen in some amphibians and reptiles.[18]

Lowering the temperature of a substance reduces chemical activity by the Arrhenius equation. This includes life processes such as metabolism. If cryonics are ever perfected, it would then be a form of long-term suspended animation.[19]

Emergency Preservation and Resuscitation (EPR) is a way to slow the bodily processes that would lead to death in cases of severe injury.[20] This involves lowering the body's temperature below 94 degrees Fahrenheit, which is the current standard for therapeutic hypothermia.[20]

In June 2005, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh's Safar Center for Resuscitation Research announced they had managed to place dogs in suspended animation and bring them back to life, most of them without brain damage, by draining the blood out of the dogs' bodies and injecting a low temperature solution into their circulatory systems, which in turn keeps the bodies alive in stasis. After three hours of being clinically dead, the dogs' blood was returned to their circulatory systems, and the animals were revived by delivering an electric shock to their hearts. The heart started pumping the blood around the body, and the dogs were brought back to life.[21]

On 20 January 2006, doctors from the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston announced they had placed pigs in suspended animation with a similar technique. The pigs were anaesthetized and major blood loss was induced, along with simulated - via scalpel - severe injuries (e.g. a punctured aorta as might happen in a car accident or shooting). After the pigs lost about half their blood the remaining blood was replaced with a chilled saline solution. As the body temperature reached 10C (50F) the damaged blood vessels were repaired and the blood was returned.[22] The method was tested 200 times with a 90% success rate.[23]

The laboratory of Mark Roth at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and institutes such as Suspended Animation, Inc are trying to implement suspended animation as a medical procedure which involves the therapeutic induction to a complete and temporary systemic ischemia, directed to obtain a state of tolerance for the protection-preservation of the entire organism, this during a circulatory collapse "only by a limited period of one hour". The purpose is to avoid a serious injury, risk of brain damage or death, until the patient reaches specialized attention.[24]

Read the original here:

Suspended animation - Wikipedia

"The Beautiful Place"

By Lee Gowan

Published by Thistledown Press

$24.95 ISBN 978-1-77187-208-9

Saskatchewan born-and-raised writer Lee Gowan has penned a thick new novel "The Beautiful Place" and its a beautiful thing. Gowans three previous novels have garnered much attention ("Make Believe Love" was shortlisted for Ontarios Trillium Award), and his screenplay, "Paris or Somewhere," was nominated for a Gemini Award.

Currently the program director of the Creative Writing and Business Communications department at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies, this award-winning author is giving readers something completely different with "The Beautiful Place," which delves into the sci-fi world of cryonics; the realistic world of failed marriages, 21st century parenting and dementia; and the ever-precarious world of art and art making.

What Gowan has done is ingenious: hes imagined an ongoing life for Philip Bentley, Sinclair Rosss protagonist in "As for Me and My House." Gowans tri-provincial sequel to that prairie classic is told from the perspective of the minister-turned-artists grandson, also known as Bentley. The younger Bentley a fired, semi-suicidal cryonics salesman, writer and father of two daughters from different wives is approached by a beguiling woman named Mary Abraham who met Jesus in a dream and walked with him to a desert well and met Buddha under a tree by a river.

Abraham has also dreamed about the younger Bentley, and shes on a mission, as hes one of few who know where the cryonics company, Argyle, keeps the frozen bodies of the deceased. He must reveal this location so she can extract her late husbands disembodied head, because he posthumously told her he wished to be buried and that it was [her] duty to get him underground.

The younger Bentley must also try to appease his wise-cracking ex-wife and finance their rebellious 23-year-old daughters New York art school, plus figure out his own place in the world as the grandson of a famous painter (whose body is also in The Beautiful Place). Bentley himself doesnt believe in cryonics a longshot gamble at eternal life even though he was Argyles sales manager.

Its complicated, but, Gowan adeptly directs this cast of disparate characters with their strange plights, and the often witty dialogue reveals why hes such a revered writer. Upon the birth of a daughter, Bentleys wife says: She looks like a live roast. Another character says urologists always have such lovely personalities. Speaking of his wifes TV-star ex, the protagonist says: He wishes he were indigenous; he wishes he were gay. And its a hoot to read that Philip Bentley lived beyond Rosss novel and became an artist with pictures hanging in the Vancouver Art Gallery next to Emily Carr.

This book is a complex weaving of the real and the impossible, of hope and grief, and of dreams and hard realities. Though the protagonist believes The point of existence ... was to vanish with as little trace as possible. Stay out of the frame, this shimmering and beautifully-organized novel will ensure that its author, Lee Gowan, will not disappear within the lexicon of Canadian literary writers.

This book is available at your local bookstore or from the Saskatchewan Publishers Group http://www.skbooks.com.

Read more from the original source:

Delving into the sci-fi world of cryonics - SaskToday.ca

The latest research on Cryonics Technology Market concisely segments the industry based on types, applications, end-use industries, key regions, and competitive landscape. Also, the report provides a detailed evaluation of the gross profit, market share, sales volume, revenue structure, growth rate, and the financial position of the major market players. The scope of development for new entrance or established companies in the Cryonics Technology business was also highlighted in the report.

In the report, a concise presentation has been included concerning the product or service. Moreover, the various trends and affecting factors of the Cryonics Technology Market. These variables have helped decide the behavior of the market during the forecast period and empowered our specialists to make effective and precise predictions about the market future.

Key Features of Cryonics Technology Research Report:

Request for Sample Copy of Cryonics Technology Market with Complete TOC and Figures & Graphs at https://www.in4research.com/sample-request/60683

The study also involves the important Achievements of the market, Research & Development, new product launch, product responses, and regional growth of the most important competitors operating in the market on a universal and local scale.

Top players Covered in Cryonics Technology Market Study are:

For more Customization in Cryonics Technology Market Report: https://www.in4research.com/customization/60683

Cryonics Technology Market Segmentation

Cryonics Technology market is split by Type and by Application. For the period 2018-2026, the growth among segments provides accurate calculations and forecasts for sales by Type and by Application in terms of volume and value. This analysis can help you expand your business by targeting qualified niche markets.

Market Segmentation by Type:

Market Segmentation by Applications:

Regions covered in Cryonics Technology Market report:

Get Sample ToC to understand the CORONA Virus/COVID19 impact and be smart in redefining business strategies. https://www.in4research.com/impactC19-request/60683

Research Objective Cryonics Technology Market Research:

The report is useful in providing answers to several critical questions that are important for the industry stakeholders such as manufacturers and partners, end-users, etc., besides allowing them in strategizing investments and capitalizing on market opportunities.

Key Target Audience:

To Buy the Full Report, Connect with us athttps://www.in4research.com/buy-now/60683

For More Details Contact Us:

Contact Name: Rohan

Email: [emailprotected]

Phone: +1 (407) 768-2028

Browse More Articles

Specialty Drug Distribution Market 2021: Comprehensive Research Including Top Companies, Latest Trends and Challenges Forecast by 2026

2021-2026 Weatherproof Sealant Market: Analysis by Business Growth, Development Factors, Applications, and Future Prospects

Gluten Free Protein Bar Market Report 2020-2026: Current Scenario for Business Opportunities, Drivers and Trends

Click Fraud Software Market Report 2020-2026: Current Scenario for Business Opportunities, Drivers and Trends

Continued here:

Cryonics Technology Market Overview by Industry Dynamics, Regional Analysis and Forecast 2021 to 2026 Industrial IT - Industrial IT

Immortality could also be cause for alarm. An uploaded brain, in a sense, will have beaten death, which raises basic psychological and philosophical questions. We can say that death is at the root of consciousness, normative law and human existence, Kauffman says. The loss of death is likely to radically alter who or what the being or creature is.

Theres no guarantee that this being would be the same one who first entered into the cryogenic process, either. As de Grey says, the question remains of whether scanning the brain and uploading it into a different substrate is revival at all, or if youd be creating a new individual with the same characteristics.

Regardless of who or what that ghost in the machine turned out to be, programming in a digital suicide option would likely be necessary just in case the experience proved too overwhelming or oppressive. I think theyd have to decide in advance what the escape hatch would be if it didnt work out, Callahan says. Is it that the company is authorised to kill you, or are you left to do it yourself?

Despite the unknowns, some would still be willing to give such an existence a shot. If the option was complete oblivion and nothingness or uploading my mind into a computer, Id like to at least try it, Kowalski says. It could be pretty cool.

--

Join 500,000+ Future fans by liking us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and Instagram.

If you liked this story,sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called If You Only Read 6 Things This Week. A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

Read the original here:

If cryonics suddenly worked, wed need to face the fallout ...

Human and pet preservation by freezing

Cryonics Institute (CI) is an American Non Profit Foundation that provides cryonics services. CI freezes dead humans and pets in liquid nitrogen with the speculative hope of restoring them with technology in the future.[1][2]

The Cryonics Institute was founded by the Father of Cryonics Robert Ettinger on April 4, 1976, in Detroit, Michigan, where he served as president until 2003. Ettinger introduced the concept of cryonics with the publication of his book The Prospect of Immortality published in 1962.[3][4][5] Operations moved to the current location in Clinton Township, Michigan in 1993.[6]

The Cryonics Institute has 188 people cryopreserved in tanks of liquid nitrogen with Robert Ettinger the 106th who is cryopreserved along with his mother and wives.[7][8][9][10][11]

The cryonics procedure performed by the Cryonics Institute begins with a process called vitrification where the body is perfused with cryoprotective agents to protect against damage in the freezing process. After this, the body is cooled to -196C over the course of a day or two days in a computer-controlled chamber before being placed in a long-term storage container filled with liquid nitrogen. The Cryonics Institute calls their storage units cryostats, and each unit contains up to eight people.[citation needed] The process can take place only once the person has been declared legally dead. Ideally, the process begins within two minutes of the heart stopping and no more than 15.[12][13][14]

The Cryonics Institute provides services including Human Cryostatis, DNA/Tissue Freezing, Pet Cryopreservation, and Memorabilia Storage.[15][16]

Continue reading here:

Cryonics Institute - Wikipedia