【海外の反応】死んだら冷凍保存で生き返れる？Redditで語られる人体冷凍保存のガチ現実

Ooooo hi, you have stumbled across my absolute favorite niche hyper-fixation topic.

First off, yes there are people that are frozen. There are several institutes across the United States that will do this, like Alcor, and have been doing it since the 60s. You have to join a membership and then pay them ungodly amounts of money. Depending on your location and proximity to one of the sites, you will either have to make arrangements with a local funeral home or else one of these institutions will make arrangements to come collect you once you pass. Because you have to pass away before you can be frozen, unlike in the movies.

Once you pass away, your blood is drained and your body is filled with an antifreeze. This is because freezing expands cells and damages them heavily. People have been being frozen since the '60s and many of the early ones did not undergo this process. Science and experience tells us now that when these people are unfrozen, they pretty much just melt into goop due to all the damage.

Once you are filled with antifreeze, you are then cooled. The antifreeze will actually turn your cells into an almost glass-like state called vitrification. It does not completely prevent all damage but it greatly minimizes it. Then you are stored head-down in a giant cryovat full of liquid nitrogen with several other people. You can also opt to just freeze your head because many believe the brain is the most important part.

We have not successfully revived an entire human yet. We have revived single cells (This is how we freeze sperm and eggs and still use them to make viable babies) And we have frozen organs such as a heart and a kidney and successfully revived them. However, we have not successfully unfrozen and revived any organ systems or an entire animal. We have to not only figure out how to solve what killed them, but then how to bring the body back to life, and undo all of the damage caused by freezing.

Robert Ettinger, the so-called Father of Cryonics, wrote a delightful book called The Prospect of Immortality back in the 60s to talk about not only the science of it, but the morality behind it. For example if you could frozen and then revived in 200 years, who's responsible for you? Where do you live? Did someone hang on to all of your money and your stuff for you? Are we going to start overpopulating the world if we start bringing back the dead? And the whole book is punctuated by the fact that Robert Ettinger is a cheeky little fellow, doing things like suggesting the study of cryonics is more important than the space race which was happening at the time. It's written in that so very hopeful futuristic midcentury attitude that I find so intriguing.

Anyway I digress. I'm happy to blather on about this all day because it is something that has absolutely fascinated me for many years and I study it like my life depends on it.

And no, I would never in a million years freeze myself. I want to spend my eternity returned to the earth rather than frozen upside-down in a vat.

Very much “future tech will sort it out” wishful thinking.

There are people who are cryogenically frozen. As yet, however, science/medicine has never reanimated an actually-dead human, frozen or not. They are merely hoping that one day it can happen AND it will work after they've been frozen.

And, that always starts the argument of "what is dead"?

The freezing part is possible. It’s the thawing that’s the issue. As of now, we have no way to thaw out a human body safely, much less resuscitate them of whatever killed them in the first place. 

The term "crogenic sludge" does not give me much hope.

But I would love to be a Bob.