“Sky burial is a funeral practice in which a corpse is placed on a mountaintop to decompose while exposed to the elements, or to be eaten by scavenging animals.” (CW: there are some potentially upsetting photos on that page.)
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Pretty good episode of Radiolab on this topic that also touches on the question of "What happens if the vultures don't show up"?
https://radiolab.org/podcast/corpse-demon
My first thought. I think about that episode surprisingly often!
This dovetails nicely with my own death plan which is to walk into the woods behind my house and become one with the earth
This was one of the topics I failed to guess in the Wikipedia Catfishing game, linked right here on KDO recently. Coincidence?
same! kinda hoped I wouldn't revisit this concept... I'm okay with dying but I'm squeamish with the idea of a "sky burial"
Check the via link at the top of the post... 😊
This would be a fantastic subject for a mystery or horror movie.
@kottke
Sky burials almost became a thing of the past:
- How a common painkiller triggered a collapse in vulture populations
- Why that collapse may have caused 500,000 additional human deaths
https://climate.uchicago.edu/insights/how-losing-vultures-led-to-500000-human-deaths/
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