How much does it cost to freeze a body? Cryogenic freezing as a way to prolong life. Holy place

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Max More ordered his brain to be frozen after death, and he is not alone. The correspondent asked him why he made such a decision and tried to figure out how the process of cryopreservation of the human body works.

In 1972, Max More watched the children's science fiction television show Time Slip, in which the characters were frozen in ice. He didn’t pay much attention to it then, but remembered the program much later, when he began discussing future technologies at meetings with friends. “They subscribed to Cryonics magazine and started asking me questions about this topic to gauge how savvy I was as a futurist. And for me everything immediately fell into place.”

Mohr is now president and CEO of Alcor, one of the world's largest cryonics companies. He himself has been a participant in the post-mortem freezing program since 1986, when he chose neuropreservation, in which only the brain is preserved, and not the entire body. “The future, it seems to me, will be good, so I would like to be in it. I want to continue to live, enjoy life and create,” explains More.

Cryopreservation is one of the favorite hobby of futurists. The concept is simple: medicine is constantly improving. In the future, people may learn to treat diseases that are now incurable. Cryonics is precisely what makes it possible to bridge the unfortunate gap between the medical technologies of today and tomorrow.

“We look at what we do as a form of emergency medicine,” says Mohr. “We step in when modern medicine gives up. For example, 50 years ago, if you were walking down the street and someone in front of you fell and stopped breathing, you they would have examined him, decided that he was dead, and that’s all. Now we don’t do that - we are starting to provide help to people who 50 years ago would have been immediately considered dead, as we now know, are actually still amenable to treatment. Principle. "Cryonics is somewhat similar. We just need to stop the deterioration of the condition and allow the problem to be solved with the help of more advanced technologies of the future."

Of course, the cryonics concept is essentially impossible to test. No one has ever tried to revive a person frozen using this technology. Researchers working on the study of suspended animation have found that a living creature can be cooled almost to the point of death and then successfully revived.

But being frozen for decades is a completely different matter. Mohr points to studies that have looked at preserving cells, tissues and even whole worms, but applying that experience to the human body is a challenge. However, regardless of what stage science is currently at, there are already people who want to freeze their bodies in liquid nitrogen in the hope of seeing the distant future.

Death plan

Alcor's clients live in different parts of the world. In an ideal scenario, Mohr explains, the firm has some idea of ​​when the client will die. Alcor monitors customers whose health is poor, and when it looks like their time is about to come, the company sends out a "waiting group." Her task is clear from the name - to wait at the deathbed. "Hours or days can pass. At one point the group was on standby for three weeks," says Max More.

Once the client is declared dead, cryopreservation can begin, and then the work begins. To begin, the waiting team moves the body from the bed to an ice bed and covers it with a layer of crushed ice. Alcor then applies a “cardiopulmonary resuscitator,” which restores blood circulation. After this, 16 different drugs are introduced into the body to prevent the destruction of cells in the body.

The company's website explains: "Because our customers are legally dead, Alcor can use technologies not yet approved for use in traditional medicine."

When the body is cooled and all the necessary drugs are administered, it is moved to the operating room. Next, it is necessary to remove blood and other fluids from the client’s body as thoroughly as possible, replacing them with a solution in which crystals do not form when frozen (a similar liquid is used to preserve organs during transplantation).

The surgeon opens the chest to gain access to the main blood vessels, connects them to a flushing system - and the blood is replaced with medical grade antifreeze. Since the client will be kept in a deep-frozen state, it is very important to avoid the formation of ice crystals in the cells of his body.

After filling the vessels with antifreeze, the company begins gradual cooling of the body, one degree per hour. After about two weeks, his temperature reaches minus 196 degrees. Finally, the client is placed in his final habitat for the foreseeable future - upside down in a refrigerator, often in the company of three others.

This is the ideal scenario. But sometimes things don’t go according to plan - if the client did not notify Alcor about the illness or died suddenly, the freezing process may be delayed for several hours or days.

Recently, a customer committed suicide, and Alcor staff had to negotiate access to the body with the police and coroner. More explains: the more time passes between death and freezing, the more the cells have time to decompose and the patient will subsequently be more difficult to revive and cure.

It seems that there is a lot of risk in this whole process, and the prospects are vague. Mohr readily admits that cryonics does not provide guarantees: “We cannot be sure of anything, any overlap is possible.”

There is nothing attractive about floating in a tank of liquid nitrogen when nothing depends on you. But it's better than becoming food for worms Max More

Alcor and companies like it are still essentially just storing a lot of dead bodies in liquid nitrogen. But the specialist notes that cryonics has an important difference from other futuristic disciplines. "Tissue repair follows the basic laws of physics. It's not a time machine," Mohr says.

Tissue restoration technologies are constantly being improved. But so far no one knows when it will be possible to resuscitate frozen dead people, and whether this is possible in principle. If Mohr is pushed to the wall with the question of when he thinks medicine will be able to revive his clients, he is reluctant to give an estimate of 50-100 years. With a caveat: “But you can’t really guess. We probably don’t even imagine right now what technology will be used for restoration.”

To date, 984 clients have agreed on cryopreservation with Alcor. They pay an annual fee of $770, and when it comes time to freeze, the price can range from $80,000 for brain cryopreservation to $200,000 for whole-body preservation.

Some of that money, Mora said, goes into a trust fund that pays for the operation of the facility and long-term storage of the bodies. The head of the company also notes that many clients take out insurance that covers payment for post-mortem cryopreservation. “This is not a whim for the rich. Anyone who is able to buy an insurance policy can afford it,” says Max More.

Most clients don't really want to think about the cryopreservation process itself, but they consider it a necessary evil, he says. "We don't crave being kept in the cold, in fact the idea makes us sick. There's nothing attractive about floating in a tank of liquid nitrogen when you have nothing to do with it. But it's better than being eaten by worms or turned to ash “Such alternatives are certainly no good,” concludes More.

Would you volunteer for cryopreservation? Write to us.

"Time machines" exist. There are already hundreds of them in the world, or more precisely in the USA and Russia. The Alcor company is based in Arizona, the Crionics Institute operates in Michigan, and is improving its capabilities in the Moscow region. "KrioRus".

The Americans have already accepted more than three hundred “time travelers,” and there are another fifteen hundred applicants on the waiting list.

The Russians, who started later, are quickly closing the gap: now 50 people and 20 animals are housed in dewar capsules. Plus he has dozens of live contracts. In the full sense of the living: in order to get to the future, you have to die.

Set aside dead line

A person cannot live longer than 115 years, suggest scientists from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, who published an article in the journal Nature in October of this year.

Having summarized information about the dynamics of human mortality and the maximum age of centenarians since the beginning of the 20th century, the researchers found that until 1980, the life expectancy of “elders” was gradually increasing. This was due to the use of vaccines, improvements in the quality of medical care and the successful fight against cancer and cardiovascular disease.

The age of the oldest inhabitants of the planet is very close to the century mark, but for two decades there has been no further progress. According to scientists, the chance of meeting a 125-year-old person is negligible.

But there are any number of incentives to try to push back this “line of death.” For example, the exploration of deep space.

The desire for immortality, eternal life is generally inherent in man, confirmation of which can be found in any religion and in world culture. A whole system of views has been formed - immortalism, the essence of which is the desire to push back physical death as far as possible, relying on technical and scientific achievements.

Naturalists are inspired by the example of the Dutchman van Leeuwenhoek, who in the 18th century discovered the phenomenon of anabiosis - the reversible cessation of vital activity by drying or freezing living organisms.

Over time, the hypothesis about the achievability of freezing as the safest and most promising method of life extension became popular and prompted the continuation of scientific research.

Improving technologies for cooling gases to ultra-low temperatures, discoveries in the field of molecular biology, and achievements in practical medicine became the prerequisites for the formation and development of cryonics (from the Greek cryos - cold) - a method of freezing a person or animal, allowing it to be thawed and revived in the future.

"No, all of me will not die"

The father of cryonics, Robert Ettinger, a scientist and author of the acclaimed 1960s book “The Prospects of Immortality,” became the 106th patient of the Cryonics Institute, which he himself founded. There is no mistake here - formally Ettinger died in 2011 at the age of 92, but for cryonicists he, like other deep-frozen time travelers, is not a “body”, not “remains”, but a patient.

Cryonics postulates that death is not an irreversible one-time event, but a long process consisting of several stages. If, after declaring biological death, it is possible to preserve brain cells, it is possible to transfer the patient’s personality to the future, when the level of science and technology will be so high that it will be possible to reanimate a defrosted body or recreate it, at the same time eliminating diseases that are incurable today.

The cryopreservation procedure begins with hypothermia - cooling the body to zero degrees. This helps slow down the biochemical processes occurring in the body, including stopping cell necrosis.

A cryoprotector is introduced through the circulatory system gradually and carefully, so as not to damage the vessels with excessive pressure. Perfusion lasts from four to six hours. The patient is then cooled with dry ice and transported to a cryogenic storage facility, where a dewar container with liquid nitrogen is prepared for him.

Cryonics has not received unambiguous approval in the scientific community. Scientists see one of the problems, for example, as the impossibility of “restarting” the brain and returning the intact personality to life. Some people are confused by the lack of guarantees.

Cryofirms, indeed, do not provide them - without possessing the gift of foresight, it is impossible to imagine how soon it will be possible to obtain tools and knowledge that can return cryopatients to a full life. It is a matter of faith in the method itself and trust in those who are its guides.

An open letter in support of cryonics was signed by 69 scientists around the world. The letter lists experimentally proven arguments for continuing research - for example, that the brain is able to restore activity after long-term storage, that large organs can be cryopreserved without structural damage and successfully transplanted after heating, that the vital activity and structure of complex neural networks can be well preserved during ultra-fast freezing.

Sleeping Beauty's Testament

"I don't want to be buried in the ground. I want to live, and live long, and I hope that in the future there will be a cure for my illness, and a way to wake me up. I need a chance. That is my desire."

Shortly before her death, a fourteen-year-old English woman with terminal cancer asked for her body to be cryopreserved, and the judge approved this decision.

It was not possible to do without the intervention of the justice authorities: the girl’s divorced parents had lived separately for a long time and their views on the daughter’s “afterlife” were diametrically opposed. After the court verdict, the father was forced to come to terms with the fact that the deceased, instead of resting in peace in the local cemetery, would go to await resurrection in the United States.

Officially, the activities of cryofirms today are interpreted as the provision of funeral services. It is possible to use the cryopreservation procedure only when brain death is legally recorded.

Legislators do not share the research interest of cryonicists, and do not take into account the need for the fastest possible response to the fact of a patient’s biological death. In Italy, for example, there is a law adopted back in the 60s of the 20th century, according to which any manipulation of the body of the deceased is prohibited within 24 hours after death is declared.

Formalizing the relationship between the cryogenic company and the patient is a scrupulous and timely process. Contracts for cryopreservation are increasingly being signed not by old people burdened with illnesses, but by completely healthy young people, romantic supporters of progress. Those who are concerned about the possibility of resurrection, already at the last line, are at great risk.

“There were sad stories in our practice,” says Valeria Udalova, general director of the KrioRus company. “A patient from Yokohama came to us at the end of last year. He had cancer in the last stage, and the doctors gave him no more than six months.

The Japanese cryonics community was only involved in cryonics PR, and rather sluggishly, and hardly helped in our communication; more assistance was provided by an Alcor client who lived in Tokyo.

The correspondence proceeded slowly. In February, the patient became very ill - due to pneumonia, death was much closer to him than everyone expected. Realizing this, he, already in the hospital, said that he was ready to sign a contract and asked to send it urgently.

Our broker was one hour late. During this time, the uncle of the deceased, a categorical opponent of cryonics, managed to cremate the body."

With a cool head

You can pay for your freezing, transfer to the dewar and subsequent storage not only at once, but also in installments, through the annual transfer of membership fees. The price of the issue varies significantly - much depends on the list of services ordered and the client’s distance from the cryogenic storage facility. For the family of the already mentioned British patient, who created a legislative precedent, the procedure cost 37 thousand pounds sterling.

The most expensive - about 700 US dollars - is the annual membership in Alcor. Taking into account upcoming procedures, including processing, storage and resuscitation, the amount increases to $200,000. Costs can be reduced to $80,000, limiting ourselves to neuropreservation, that is, preserving not the entire body, but only the head or brain.

Cryonicists believe that this is quite enough. In fact, if we expect that the return to life will take place in a technologically advanced future, reconstructing the old body or creating a new body will not be a problem.

Russian prices are significantly lower: from $12,000 for neuropreservation to $36,000 for full-length cryopreservation. You will also have to pay for cryoprocedures with pets “humanely”. This does not stop loving owners: for example, in the KrioRus storage facilities there are 8 dogs, 8 cats, 3 birds and a chinchilla waiting in the wings.

“The time is not far off,” says Danila Medvedev, Chairman of the Board of Directors of KrioRus, “when cryonics will become a standard procedure and the standard choice of people. You will need to have very compelling reasons to go to a cemetery or crematorium instead of a cryoppositary.”

Elena Poskannaya, portal "Vzglyad" (Ukraine), 11/16/2013.

Many people want a chance at another life. For now, this is a pipe dream, but scientists assure that in the near future humanity will be able to come close to realizing this daring idea.

Biorobot or human

Why live again? Futurologists have no doubt about the answer: in order to have more time, see the world in the future, fly to other planets. Many different ways have already been invented for this. For example, cloning. For now, experiments in this area are prohibited, but in a few decades the situation may change dramatically. To wait for better times, you just need to preserve your DNA.

There is a more fantastic way - to return to earth in another body. It is predicted that in the next 20-30 years a kind of biomatrix, a universal body that does not have its own characteristics, may be created. This biorobot can be transplanted with a preserved brain or transferred genetic information, or even a neural map of the brain recorded on a computer. Then a person will be able to be reborn in a new, more perfect body and continue his life path.

For almost a century, the minds of scientists have been occupied by the possibility of hibernation and cryonics. In the first case, we are talking about immersing a person in long-term suspended animation (a sharp slowdown in all life processes), in the second, about completely freezing the body in liquid nitrogen for subsequent rebirth. It is in this form, according to scientists, that it will be easier for a person to travel in space and conquer other planets. But it is important not just to preserve the body, but to create technologies for its resurrection.

Deadly ice

The interest in cryonics is quite understandable. There are many examples on Earth of how living organisms can survive cold. The champions of survival in ice are amphibians. For example, the salamander, which lives in the permafrost zone, goes into hibernation at temperatures below –6. When the temperature drops, this newt's liver begins to produce glycerol, which prevents the formation of ice crystals that can destroy cells.

The winners of the first prize for survival in extreme conditions are tiny Arctic invertebrates - tardigrades. They are able to completely displace water from their body. The tardigrade decreases in size, curls up, becomes covered with a waxy shell and goes into suspended animation. In this state, it is able to withstand pressure of 6 thousand atmospheres, radiation doses a thousand times higher than lethal, temperatures up to –270 degrees and prolonged heating at a temperature of +100. In fact, this is the only earthly creature capable of surviving in outer space.

And in the human body, low temperatures can also stop all changes for many years, scientists say. But there is a problem: water, of which 60% is in the body, freezes and forms ice crystals with sharp edges that destroy cells. It was partially resolved by replacing the blood with a special xenon solution. However, the body consists of many types of cells, and one cryoprotectant cannot save them all. Therefore, it has not yet been possible to “resurrect” not only the body, but even an individual organ after freezing. Cryonics has only achieved success in the area of ​​freezing and restoring individual cells.

On the issue of ethics

Living people cannot be frozen. According to the law, this is equivalent to murder. That's why cryobiologists take on the recently deceased. But if a person died from a serious illness, how can he come back to life after being frozen? Is it advisable to revive old people in their previous body? There is no answer to these questions. This is the weakest point in the theory of cryonics adherents. None of them can guarantee that in the future the idea will not turn out to be a banal waste. Anyone who has invested in cryonics today certainly supports the science. But at the same time he risks, having paid a lot of money, not to be resurrected.

In order not to lose face, cryonicists assure that in the future special technologies will appear that are still unknown to us. “And then the problems of damage during freezing, which are considered irreversible today, will be easily solved,” says Ben Best, head of the American Cryonics Institute. It is interesting that, supporting the hope of resurrection, cryonicists call their dead and frozen clients “cryopatients,” and the body’s stay in freezing is called “cryosleep.”

The ideas of Western scientists at the Kharkov Institute of Cryobiology and Cryomedicine are considered utopian. “It is not practical to revive a frozen person in the future. Who will be the smartest person by today's standards in 100 years, when the whole world has changed? Why bring something like that back to life?” – Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor Georgy Babiychuk doubts.

A person is not a machine, but a set of information: soul, personal characteristics, life experience, psyche, instincts, memory. Even if one day the body is unfrozen and it suddenly begins to show signs of life, will the person who was previously in this body suit be resurrected? Cryobiologists cannot yet guarantee this.

However, about 2,000 people around the world have already ordered cryopreservation of their bodies or brains (as an economical option) after death. Many celebrities have expressed the desire to “freeze” - for example, Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. In any case, the chance for immortality is not yet available to everyone due to its high price.

3 facts about cryonics

1 As of 2012, 206 frozen bodies were stored in cryogenic institutes (including three Ukrainian citizens, they are in the Russian cryogenic storage facility). Officially, about 2 thousand people are clients of cryofirms.

2 In the USA, freezing the body costs $100 thousand, the brain - about $70 thousand. In Russia, prices are lower - from $12 thousand.

3 The first cryopatient was a psychology professor from California, James Bedford, who died of cancer. He was frozen in 1967 at the age of 74 and remains in cryogenic storage to this day. More than a million dollars have already been spent on maintaining his body.

How it's done

1 After declaring death, doctors inject heparin into the vein to prevent the blood from clotting.

2 A person is put on a ventilator to keep their brain alive.

3 Body temperature is reduced to +3 degrees with the help of ice.

4 The blood is pumped out in a special capsule and replaced with a preservation solution.

5 The body gradually cools to –196 degrees (one degree per hour).

6 The capsule with the frozen body is placed for permanent storage in liquid nitrogen.

Second life for your beloved cat

The only company engaged in freezing bodies and having its own storage facility in the CIS is the Russian KrioRus. You can leave your brain “for safekeeping” here for $12 thousand, your entire body for $36 thousand. You can also freeze your pet in the hope of subsequent resurrection: five dogs, three cats and even two birds (a tit and goldfinch). Prices depend on the size of the animal: for example, a small cat can be cryopreserved for $9 thousand. The company’s website specifically states that the contract for cryopreservation of an animal includes the revival of your pet in the future.

The Dewar flask was created to store the bodies of cryopatients in liquid nitrogen. Does not consume electricity, you only need to maintain the nitrogen level.

Professor James Bedford became the first cryopatient.

Imagine going to sleep 80 years old and waking up young. You weren't really sleeping. You died and were frozen. And half a century later you were not only revived, but also given the body of a 20-year-old. Fantastic? Certainly. But even a hundred years ago, doctors would have been very surprised to see what is commonplace in modern medicine. TASS tells how dead people are frozen in order to give them a chance at a second life.

What is cryonics

Many futurologists believe that in the next 30–50 years, humanity will learn to cope with any causes of death. Doctors will treat and rejuvenate the cells of the body - which means that if a person is injured in a car accident, they will simply restore the damaged organs. People will even stop dying “of old age”: after all, this is actually the name for death that occurs from the natural wear and tear of the body. And cells and organs can be rejuvenated. That is, the people of the future are young, healthy and immortal. Naturally, many of us would like to be in such a future. But most have no chance of living up to it.

Scientists decided: it is impossible to live, but you can preserve your body until better times. The safest way to do this is to freeze it. This is how cryonics appeared - a technology that allows you to “preserve” the body of a deceased person in order to someday revive him. Moreover, to revive, preserving his personality, all his memories, knowledge and experience. Experiments in this area began at the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1967, a person was cryopreserved for the first time, and a few years later, three cryonics companies opened one after another in the United States, and each person had the opportunity to freeze himself after death - you just need to pay.

It is still impossible to experimentally prove that the ideas of cryonicists are feasible: no one has yet learned how to revive people. Although it has already been proven, for example, that if you freeze roundworms alive, then when they “awaken” they will retain conditioned reflexes (if they survive, not everyone succeeds in this). But many scientists consider such experiments inconclusive. “In my opinion, this is a purely commercial exploitation of the dream of an afterlife,” says academician, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Evgeniy Aleksandrov, who heads the RAS commission on combating pseudoscience. “Humanity is unlikely to ever find a cure for all diseases, because this means find a recipe for immortality. And not only do I not believe in eternal life, but I also think that it would be terrible: the evolutionary process would stop.”

Not everyone is so critical of cryonics. The KrioRus company was created in 2006, today it has 250 contracts, and 53 people have already been frozen. The remaining contracts are with people who want to be cryopreserved after death. You can freeze the entire body, or just the head, or even just the brain itself (it is assumed that in the future an organ or part of the body can be attached to a robot or to a “donor” human body). Pets are also frozen - the owners hope that someday they will meet them again.

No one can guarantee clients that they will be revived. But, unlike those who end up in the grave after death, they have a chance to do so.

"Dead" - This is the doctor's signature"

For those who believe in the medicine of the future, death is a very vague concept. “One of the generally accepted signs of death is a direct electroencephalogram, that is, the cessation of brain activity,” says KrioRus CEO Valeria Udalova. “But I myself saw how a person, after the “cessation of brain activity,” was reanimated three times, and the first two times he was talking. In fact, "dead" is the doctor's signature. A person dies when the doctor signs the death certificate. Even if he runs and jumps, he will have to prove that he is alive."

For cryonicists, the point of no return is not biological death, but informational death. This is what they call a state when all connections in the brain are completely destroyed. If you freeze the body until informational death, then there is a chance to revive the person, preserving his personality. If after that, the person may be physically revived, but whether after this he will be his former self - with his psyche, knowledge, memories - is a big question. It is difficult to determine when information death occurs. Sometimes it is not too late to cryopreserve a body even two weeks after the funeral. But to get a better chance of fully preserving the brain, it is better to do this as quickly as possible.

I myself saw how a person, after “cessation of brain activity,” was reanimated three times, and the first two times he was talking. In fact, "dead" is the doctor's signature. A person dies when the doctor signs the death certificate. Even if he runs and jumps, he will have to prove that he is alive

Valeria Udalova

CEO of KrioRus

First, the body of the person being cryopreserved is prepared for freezing. To do this, perfusion is carried out: maintaining a certain body temperature, several solutions are poured into it. These are cryoprotectors - substances that protect against damage during freezing. The goal is to prevent ice crystals from forming in the body, which can damage tissue. “Eggs, flour and sugar can be mixed in different ways and make many different dishes. Cold and cryoprotector can also be mixed in different ways,” says Valeria Udalova. “But there are several absolutely magical recipes. These solutions have been invented for 40 years. But for them to work ", there must also be a certain body temperature."

Perfusion is a complex operation, it is performed by 7–10 people, and it can last up to 12 hours. It is best to do it within 24 hours, and usually the operation is carried out directly in the morgue: it is easier and faster than obtaining permission to remove the body. Cryonics is an absolutely legal technology, and employees of the cryonics company are easily allowed in: just come with the relatives of the deceased and show the contract. There is another option: the client writes a declaration of will in advance, in which he appoints a KrioRus employee as executor, that is, gives him the right to control the fate of his body after death.

Stop time

“This is the place where time stops,” says company employee Ivan Stepin, entering the storage facility. This is an ordinary warehouse where potatoes or pickles could be stored. But instead of jars of cucumbers, there are large white containers. They contain frozen human bodies.

After perfusion, the body is immersed in liquid nitrogen: at a temperature of –196°C, not a single chemical reaction occurs. Bodies are stored in Dewar flasks, essentially thermoses made from special alloys using resin.

The vessels must be as strong as possible: if the inner wall is damaged and nitrogen gets into the gap between the double walls, the pressure inside will change and the container will take off like a rocket.

One such vessel holds the bodies of 12 people. Each is packed in a regular sleeping bag, which you can buy at a travel store. The polypropylene and polyester from which they are made are perfectly preserved in liquid nitrogen. The bodies are positioned vertically, heads down. This is important: the head, and therefore the brain, will be at a temperature of –196°C under any circumstances. Free space is formed in the center of the vessel. Iron vessels with the brains of those who decided to freeze only this organ are placed here (liquid nitrogen also does not harm the gland).

The company undertakes to store the client’s body until the emergence of “revitalizing” technologies, and when they appear, to revive it. It is assumed that this will occur in three stages: removal from freezing, elimination of causes of death, and resuscitation measures. No one yet knows how long the bodies will lie here. After all, before you defrost them, you need to defeat illness and old age. “Why should we try to revive a person at the fourth stage of cancer if we cannot cure him?” says Valeria. “Or why revive a 97-year-old if we cannot rejuvenate him. He will come to life and die in three days. From surprise.”

Life after death

It's one thing to revive a person for the sake of a scientific experiment. It is quite another to assume that in half a century cryonics will be put on stream and thousands of “rebels” will appear on Earth. What will they do in an unfamiliar future? How will we all fit on one planet? Do we have enough resources?

Cryonicists laugh when they talk about the overpopulation of the Earth. They say: people don't need a lot of space. Food is already being printed on a 3D printer. And a human flight to Mars is in the near future. If science can conquer old age, disease and death, then it will definitely conquer other planets.

What you need to know if you want to cryopreserve yourself

• There are four cryogenic companies in the world. Three of them are in the USA, one is in Russia (KrioRus). Cryonic cryopreservation of a patient's body in this company costs $36 thousand, the brain - $12 thousand. Payment in installments is possible.
• Cryonics is an absolutely legal technology. In order to save your body or brain, it is enough to conclude an agreement. This can be done not only by the person himself, but also by his relatives (after the patient’s death).
• According to the contract, KrioRus stores bodies for a hundred years. After this period, the contract is extended for 25 years, and so on ad infinitum (in fact, the contract is unlimited, but it is technically impossible to indicate this in the documents). The body will be stored until the advent of “revitalizing” technologies. But the company undertakes not only to preserve, but also to actually revive it.

Continuation

The most difficult thing will be with the first animated people. After all, such a person will have only one document in his hands: his death certificate. That is, legally it will be a walking dead man. Moral dilemmas also arise: what if after the death and freezing of a person it turns out that he was a murderer, and it will no longer be possible to convict him? What then - to revive him or not?

Cryonicists are confident that people of the future will solve these issues too. They will be able not only to “re-educate” criminals, but also to ensure that people who “fell asleep” at the beginning of the 21st century and “woke up” a hundred years later do not feel lost. Rehabilitation centers will be created for them and will help them adapt to the sudden future.

Do clients of cryogenic companies think about this? Not all of them even knew that they would get a chance at a second life. In Russia, the consent of relatives is sufficient for cryopreservation of the deceased. Most often, they are the ones who enter into a contract with the company. Usually these are young people. “Older people have this picture of the world: I was born, I lived, I did something, and it’s time to die, to make room for others,” says KrioRus employee Ivan.

But it also happens differently: for example, one 84-year-old teacher decided to keep her brain and wrote in the contract that she wanted to come to life as a cyborg. A 23-year-old young man purchased cryonics in installments and now pays a certain amount monthly.

Professor and full member of the Academy of Humanities Igor Vishev is called the founder of the science of immortality: he devoted most of his works to this topic. He is 84, in 2009 he and his wife Olga entered into contracts for brain cryopreservation. The wife died six years ago. “We both wanted to save ourselves, we made this decision together,” he says. “The two of us studied the issue, paid the money. I didn’t think, of course, that my wife would be the first to leave, but it happened.” He knows the founders of KrioRus and is sure: today cryonics is the only way to get a chance to be resurrected.

“I don’t have absolute confidence that this will succeed specifically with my wife - after all, anything can happen,” says the professor. “But I am sure that people will gain immortality.” He is not ready to talk about the timing, but he thinks that this will happen in less than half a century.

The company also freezes pets: they currently have eight dogs, nine cats, three birds and one chinchilla. Some may think that cryopreserving a pet is pointless. But for those who decide to do this, their pets mean a lot. For example, one couple met when they both found a kitten on the street. They subsequently got married, and their entire family life was connected with this animal. When he died, they simply couldn't bury him.

The general director of KrioRus, Valeria Udalova, cryopreserved her dog, friend and mother herself. She believes that one day she will meet her. Valeria's mother knew that she was dying and signed the contract herself. “When we revive her, she will ask: “Am I dead, or what?” I will answer: “Not really.” She will clarify: “What year?” And then... Surely she will sew herself dresses, such as were fashionable in those days her student years, in the 50s: fitted, with flared skirts. And then she wants to fly to Mars.”

Bella Volkova, Olga Makhmutova