Dealing with the dead...

I am not sure if this topic has been dealt with but I truly don't know what to do with the corpse of say a family member or fellow survivalists that died. How should one handle the situation when bugging in and bugging out? As I understand decaying bodies is horrible source of disease and can jeopardize you and your family's health. I believe that the dead should be treated with respect but would that even be possible given the large number of people who will inevitably die?

 

After every major disaster globally there are corpses everywhere, then they are removed by emergency services before posing a real risk. For those of us who are in the towns and cities this will be disastrous. Moving through a city with large amounts of dad people will not only be unnerving but might make you sick. Will this also not attract wild animals and pets who have now become ferral?

 

Already have plans for this!

If you are bugging in a deep pit will be handy, pre dig if you can as it is back breaking work!
If you have relatively safe movement clear your surrounds in circular sweeps asap!
A rope and a few holes in a sheet of roofing iron and a long sturdy stick with a large nail through one end
will aid in rolling and then dragging bodies away!
Lifting them to put in vehicles is way too hard for just one or two people, roll onto a sheet of roofing iron is quick and easy and with a rope loop is easy to drag short distances!
No actual handling needed
Fill pit with timber nearly to top, roll bodies on top, add some liquid fuel to start it then ligh!
Fire will burn slow but hot, soil will keep the heat in, add wood on top and keep burning.
Pit can be used again and again!
Soil will retain heat for a day or two so using the same pit on a daily basis keeping the soil hot will save digging new pits and improve efficiency!

A 2m x 2m x 2m pit could take hundreds of victims and still finish half empty!

Maybe if you care take details of victims where you can and record them, stick in a bit of plastic pipe and bury when it is cooled and you fill with soil!

 

Wow... That is simultaneously interesting and scary.

 

IMO burning bodies is a bad idea for a few reasons
1. it takes a lot of heat and time to do which makes it an inefficient way to deal with the dead when resources are limited
2. to produce this much heat for a long time means lots of wood or fuel needs to be collected and used to burn them
3. the smoke/smell could give away your location

the way that you dispose of a body will depend on your environment. If you have one or two bodies and were in the country you could consider digging a hole to bury them, this is also labor intensive and may not be possible if it is winter and the ground is frozen. IMO the best way, in this case, would be to carry them far away from camp and leave them exposed to the elements. Just like everything else the dies in nature, the remains would be eaten by wildlife and absorbed back into nature. another option is to put them into a lake, river, ocean where they will be eaten by water animals.

the main ways that bodies can be taken care of are
burning
burying
exposure
consumption (by animals)
large pit (mass Grave)

and the option you choose will depend greatly on environment, and what you have avalable to you

 

It really is a tricky situation...
If you burn them there are risks involved in that like corpse remains. Contrary to popular belief some of a body remains after burning (or so I have heard), and this would be horrible because then i would have to clean up the remaining bits. Like you said it uses a lot of resources and makes you vulnerable to discovery.

Burying them is a decent option but that would mean that I would have to dig 1.5m holes or one large one for a number of people and that would be very tedious. Since I live in a town i have thought of designating a specific property with low strategic value into a graveyard. Additionally I have heard that in war times animals can smell mass graves and dig them up so I want to avoid that. I really don't want a pack of feral dogs getting a taste for man flesh.

How far exactly does one have to move dead people in order for them not to be some sort of problem in the future? To close and the wind can blow germs and disease into your sanctuary and you could have that hungry pet problem. Getting them far away also has a lot of problems. If you move them by hand or cart you could fall victim to potential marauders since you will be tired and not focused and your gun will probably not be in your hand. Let's say you have a truck and some fuel... same story different marauders.

I don't want the dead anywhere near possible water sources. I might need them later. I think that people in the country side have more options than us town folks. Less people, less worries. Like you said in some cases nature will sort itself out.

 

I would say that the distance that you move the body is dependent on your situation. obviously the farther away the better but depending on population density in your area you might be restricted in distance. Another option if you are in a town would be to have a designated house (that is unoccupied and at the end of the street possibly) that you would put them in. This would not be my first option but in a pinch it would keep the smell and risk away from the general population while not having to go too far away and risk your saftey

 

That's a great idea. Moving from house to house can also provide concealment and cover should you come under fire.

 

Back in the day when someone died and the family could not afford a coffin the family would break glass in to the grave to keep it from being dug up by animals both two legged and four

 

If you are in a fixed location you should already have a deep pit dug and covered with a small berm all around it to stop water flowing in somewhere suitable.
Depending where you are will determine how you dispose of them, I am in a hot humid zone so burning is the way to go!

The smell of roast pork is so much better than rotten pork just leave the crackling alone

 

Leaving bodies

Absolutely spot on LW, and you're also right about Ebola being one of the few diseases which is more contagious after death... Cholera is the one to watch out for in the immediate aftermath of any disaster and Botulism can last for decades as spores in the ground.
In a separate post LW mentioned using mine shafts dotted around the Devon landscape, good idea. Geographical features such as caves have been used for burial purposes for thousands of years.

 

There is also the option of using something like a crypt for immediate family if there isn't any fear of contagion.

 

Burn and bury in that order

Minimum handling, long handled rake to roll on to ground level sled, carefully drag sled with long rope, roll onto fire and burn to crispy critter then bury in the fire ash's.

Anyone with a base of operations should take the cleanup of bodies around it as a top priority out to as best distance as they can.
A retreat homestead or whatever is not much good if surrounded by rotting corpse's, should probably aim for a 1km dia clean zone.

 

You have your own place, you should have a deep hole ready now.

Negative negative negative, find soloutions mate not problems!

 

A deep hole takes time and effort, better done now with a machine than in an emergency with a shovel.

 

Although I hate terms like sheeple and mass die off I am willing to go out on a limb and say that the vast majority of the UK's population are totally unprepared. This doesn't mean that I expect them all to perish immediately. There will certainly be enough people left in the cities to pose a lawlessness problem and I'm sure that there will be victims of violence.
Now please bear in mind that if you're in a town or city there may be bodies of people that you don't know that you may feel are not your responsibility, many households in cities don't even own a spade or shovel and it may be foolish to attract attention to yourself or expose yourself to possible attack.

 

...and when there are other people around it's tempting to think that corpses can be someone else's problem.

 

If after an event has occurred there are numbers of dead in the neighborhood and empty houses, put the bodies in the house until you have enough then set the house on fire.

 

Still one can not just ignore the problem, birds alone feeding on infected corpse's can spread those infections far and wide, literally nowhere is safe but cleaning up your area can lower the risk of infection dramaticly.
Then there are flies, rats, fox's, pigs, dogs, cats etc that can spread nasties all over the place.
What if your dog eats an infected rat?

Any smart prepper/survivalist will quickly clean up their own area as best they can as it prevents so many other problems.

 

It matters little where they actually die unless you have a force field bubble to exist in the pandemic will come to you.
One can only reduce there risk not eliminate it. To think a few miles of distance is enough in itself is folly!

Dealing properly with the dead is just as essential as eating and drinking.
It is not hi tech but it is grim work that needs to be done properly

In the early morning chill is the best time, use long handled rake to roll onto a sheet of roofing iron or similar, secure with rope if needed, drag to hole, roll in, repeat and repeat. Use long rope to drag, disposable gloves and mask

 

Whatever
So all that panic in disasters around the world about hygiene and cleaning up the bodies is just for show then? Right got it now! no problems

 

Like I said "Whatever"

 

Thought this might be a topic for review with the way the world is going.

Seems to be 2 primary methods of corpse disposal being discussed (bury or burn) and I suppose that is about correct, but how is this affected by location? I mean someone losing a loved one in a city or urban environment won't think of this the same way that someone in a extremely rural or wilderness area will think of it for 2 legged predators.

I have to agree with lonewolf on if the body or bodies aren't your problem (on or in your property) don't fool with them unless you have too. After a TEOTWAWKI or severe SHTF event some bodies will have to be dealt with. In urban environments, I would consider a fuel source for cremation that most don't consider. Old auto tires. They burn hot enough to actually cremate bodies and there will be plenty around.

As long as the SHTF event hasn't destroyed the natural ecosystem there is a 3rd option available for a single or limited use. Scaffolding. Native peoples would place bodies in elevated positions and let nature take it's course. I would consider this more of a method for loved ones than for quick disposal.

On another note. In most parts of the world I would be careful of what pork I ate after a severe SHTF event. Pigs, either hunted or traded for, will always eat a corpse when available and handling the animal can be a source of infection transfer with skinning and processing. If dogs and cats are on the menu, the same goes for them.

For those in areas with a possibility of having numerous bodies within close proximity to your residence or bug in location. You may want to consider having several bags of powdered lime stored away. It's great for gardens but it can also be put on bodies to kill disease and cut down greatly on bad smells. It's also good for dehairing raw hides for leather making.

One other thought for anyone living on or close to the ocean. Bodies can be buried in the ocean and nature will reclaim them quickly (sharks, crabs, etc.) with no harmful side affects to the environment. On the other side of that anyone in the southern USA or in tropical areas where crocodiles, alligators or caimans live, it is not advisable to feed these animals with bodies as they will associate humans with food then and become more dangerous than normal.

Dale

 

IMO Sea burial is the most practical and acceptable in most culture. And beside the sea, particularly deep sea is the perfect place (safe for the environment) to dumb variety of hazardous materials including spent nuclear fuel or other radioactive waste.

eeech.... ooops

 

What food source?

Dumping high grade radioactive material at sea is synonym of salting the sea. Contaminating the sea by dumping radioactive waste into it is simply impossible due to the nature of sea water and planet earth itself.The sea water itself is already radioactive material to the point you can extract uranium from it (albeit not economical to do so). Dumping few hundreds, thousand, or million ton worth of human made radioactive materials is minuscule amount compare to the naturally diluted uranium of sea water.

As for food source, when the last time you eat any bottom feeder from beyond continental shelf? What? you never eat anything from there or never knew anyone who do, than the question regarding contaminating food source is irrelevant

 

Even in the deep sea there is still enough drift to slowly bring our stupidity (nuclear waste) back to us through the food chain. And that's from the dead zones with little movement. Anything dumped deep but in the global currents would be back at us in a year or two. The salinity zones move way faster than most people think. They may be what bites us in the rear still with the amounts of new fresh water entering the system.

Dale

 

Good morning Dale,

We've got a couple of double-wide body bags here. In case of drowning, bodies usually swell up thus the double-wide version of bag.

After a ~ 72 hour situation change and new evaluation, will decide on most appropriate method.

Written notes imperative.

 

It all depends on who is the recently departed . If it is looters we just dispatched then we will pile them up on the back of a side by side and take them to what we call the bottomless hole and drop them in . I don't know anyone that has seen the bottom of that creepy moss draped hole . Considering the amount of disappeared forever people around here . I would be surprised if there was NOT already a few bodies in there . If it just too much trouble to move the bodies then we may leave them for the buzzards . Not very for from our retreat " less than one mile " is a body that someone left in a cave . We call the ghost of this corpse "thumper ". Sadly this person was not even fully grown as the skull has good non cavity teeth . --- Now if it is someone we have respect for we will give them a decent burial .

 

Bear Bait........