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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Over My Dead Body

Over My Dead Body

by | 92 Comments

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I’ve always been intrigued by mushrooms, but ever since moving to the midwest, three years ago, I’ve been flat-out obsessed. Last year I attended the Telluride Mushroom Festival, a kind of mycological cross between Burning Man and Davos; and this year I’ll be attending the National Morel Festival, from which I hope to report back in a few months.

I’ve also grown a few, as documented earlier on this blog.

I’m in the midst preparing an epic fungi post, but this popped up in the newsfeed:

Just when you thought you had a handle on all the intricacies of modern, eco-friendly burials, a new post-mortem option has emerged. After creating a stir when it was announced five years ago, the Infinity Burial Suit, also known as the Mushroom Death Suit, is almost ready for real-world use.

The suit is embroidered with thread infused with mushroom spores that grow from the body after burial. These mushrooms digest the body as it decomposes and neutralize many of the environmental contaminants found in the body—including pesticides, preservatives, and heavy metals. In other words, wearing this suit will make mushrooms eat your body once it has been buried.

Jae Rhim Lee and Mike Ma, co-founders of the Infinity Burial Suit, met at the Hassno Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University. Lee conceptualized the idea of a burial method that would help reconnect our bodies with the earth. She came up with the idea of an “Infinity Mushroom,” a fungus which would be able to “eat” her body and neutralize its toxins once she died. To test it out, she began “feeding” a group of mushrooms her hair, skin, and nails, and selected the ones that were able to best decompose them.

“We are both responsible for, and victims of, our own pollution,” Lee said in a 2011 TED talk on the Mushroom Death Suit. As a way of handling some of this responsibility, the suit would prevent the toxins in the human body from being released into the environment after death. It would preclude the use of formaldehyde, which is used in many American funerals as a preservative in order to slow the decomposition process. The suit is also intended to help deliver nutrients to plant roots more quickly and efficiently.

Personally, I’m not one of those nonattached Buddhist types who can view her own demise with perfect equanimity, but I have to say that being food for pretty and useful mushrooms does make the outcome more (err) palatable:

mushroom death suit

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

btw, in the realms of the mushroom obsessed, I’m not even close to the most, or worst, or whatever. Last summer I was hanging out in a local graveyard (as mushroom people are wont to do) and saw these:

morel headstone 1

morel headstone 2

Yeah, that’s a headstone carved with morels and another flanked by some wooden morels.

Of course, here in Kalamazoo I routinely spot headstones sporting Wolverines and Spartans, so why the hell not morels? Fly your freak flag proudly!

So would any of you consider being food for shrooms? Also, fess up! How many of you read the headline and thought this was going to be a super-inflammatory Bernie post? :D

Reader Interactions

92Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    Also, fess up! How many of you read the headline and thought this was going to be a super-inflammatory Bernie post? :D

    I still believe that. I’m just trying to figure out how.

  2. 2.

    Felonius Monk

    So if you put on this suit by mistake before you have left this mortal coil, what happens? Is it like flesh eating bacteria or more aptly flesh eating shrooms? Inquiring minds want to know.

  3. 3.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    I want to be a tree.

    And then I want them to cut down my tree and create a wooden puppet in my likeness. I think that may be the secret to immortality if I’m reading my Disney right.

  4. 4.

    Amir Khalid

    Once there is nothing left of you but mushrooms, what happens to the mushrooms? Are they to be, um, harvested for consumption? Or just left to grow wild?

  8. 8.

    scav

    Immigrant mushrooms, coming in, sponsored by big business, taking away all the native mushrooms jobs!

  9. 9.

    Hillary Rettig

    @Felonius Monk: that’s one experiment I would NOT volunteer for. and what’s going on on the outside might not be your worst problem. consider that smart mushroom cultivators wear respirators…

  10. 10.

    Hillary Rettig

    @Amir Khalid: since part of the point is to have the mushrooms digest and concentrate your toxins (silver fillings, etc.) i would assume they wouldn’t be safely edible.

  12. 12.

    Desargues

    Hell yes I’d love to be buried in that suit. It’s the awesomest thing of the year so far.

    But, I’m leaving my body to science.

  15. 15.

    Bobby D

    Seems bizarre. Some combination of fungus, bacteria, invertebrates, etc will “eat” your corpse regardless of whether your meat-sack is entombed in an “infiinity” suit or not. So what’s the point?

    I lived in Illinois for a while, and there were good morels there. But then moved to interior Alaska and holy cow, after a couple horrendous wildfire years the commercial morel seekers invaded town. Apparently a couple years after a burn is a really, really good time/place for morels.

    I enjoy food mushrooms, morels and chantarels, portabella, etc. But I really enjoyed the p. cubensis in my college daze. Of all the psychedelic substances, my fave by far.

  17. 17.

    cmorenc

    Maybe being eaten by shrooms would be better than:
    “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
    the worms play pinochle on your snout
    your tummy turns a slimy green
    pus spurts out, thick as whipped cream”

    – we all thought this little ditty sounded hilarious when we were 6 years old and had so much of life still ahead that death seemed impossibly distant.

  21. 21.

    BruceFromOhio

    So would any of you consider being food for shrooms?

    Absolutely. MrsFromOhio and I have discussed on multiple occasions how to write the last pages of our final chapters, which included being buried in the garden. This is as good as any, and it beats my suggestion to throw me in a dumpster after the wake, and spend the funeral money at the bar instead.

    Also, fess up! How many of you read the headline and thought this was going to be a super-inflammatory Bernie post?

    *raises hand*

    Would love to know more about identifying and safely growing and harvesting mushrooms, esp the psychoactive ones.

  22. 22.

    gelfling545

    My granddaughter’s other grandma passed away last week. Her remains will nourish a tree. I think I would like that option to be my final stage as well. Not “resting” but nourishing life.

  24. 24.

    Germy

    A pharmacist fired by Walmart after reporting safety problems was awarded $31m in damages by a jury Friday.

    ABC News:
    The jury awarded most of the money Thursday based on gender discrimination claims, but also found Wal-Mart’s conduct was retaliation for her complaints about safety issues and/or privacy violations.

    McPadden, 51, said she was confident she would prevail even before the jury announced its verdicts after about three hours of deliberations.

    “I honestly feel the jurors listened intently,” she told The Associated Press. “I really feel they wanted to send a message that the little guy has a voice, that Wal-Mart did something wrong.”

    The Consumerist reports on exactly how you get fired at Walmart.

    In the two years leading up to her dismissal — which Walmart blamed on the pharmacist losing her key to the pharmacy — the plaintiff said that 13 different pharmacy employees either “quit, transferred, or were fired,” and that Walmart either left these positions vacant or replaced these workers with “new inexperienced employees.”

    “This constant turnover, understaffing, and inexperienced staff created a serious threat to the safety of patients and resulted in regulatory violations regarding the safe practice of pharmacy,” reads the complaint.

    In 2011, believing that “too many mistakes were occurring” in the pharmacy and that the lack of properly trained staff presented a public health risk, the plaintiff contacted the Chief Compliance Investigator of the New Hampshire Board of Pharmacy.

  25. 25.

    Cacti

    I had a bad experience once with mushrooms. It involved my buddy’s on-campus apartment, and a very inconveniently timed fire drill.

  28. 28.

    Betty Cracker

    Got my hubby a shiitake mushroom growing kit for Christmas. No corpse required — he just hung a couple of logs from the tiki bar roof frame, drilled holes for the spores and then sealed them with something, wax maybe? We’re hoping for ‘shrooms by Thanksgiving!

    I don’t like the idea of decomposing, so I think I’d prefer cremation. Not that I’ll be around to be made uncomfortable by it — just the thought skeeves me out.

  30. 30.

    Isobel

    I love this idea so much. Put me down as a “hell yes!”.
    Although I would like to think I won’t have to use it for many more years.
    I wonder if they will make them for pets?

  31. 31.

    Hillary Rettig

    @Bobby D: one point is no formaldehyde or other preservatives. eco-friendly. also I suspect they’re selecting mushroom strains that will get the job done well/fast.

    cool that you forage!

  33. 33.

    Hillary Rettig

    @BruceFromOhio: >Would love to know more about identifying and safely growing and harvesting mushrooms, esp the psychoactive ones.

    I’ll probably post some stuff, but am a relative newbie. There are some fantastic groups on FB devoted to these, however. That’s where I’d go to learn.

  40. 40.

    kindness

    Nice idea but it wouldn’t make it through the incineration. I’ve let it be known they can take what ever bio stuff they want then toast me and scatter the ashes in a couple of my sacred spots.

  41. 41.

    Randy P

    I’ve always said I wanted to be cremated, and I’m listed on my drivers license as an organ donor. Although I admit as a science type I like the idea of being used for scientific purposes, for instance at the body farm. But I haven’t actually worked up the courage or the will to seriously explore it.

    I’ve also always wanted to go to Antarctica or to space, but I suppose requiring my loved ones to carry my ashes to either of those destinations would be a little bit of a hardship.

  42. 42.

    Randy P

    Why did the conversation about the Malheur Refuge stop? The news media all lost interest in occupiers and have moved on to covering the legal process of those arrested, but as far as I can tell from what reports I can find, like this one, there are still several armed occupiers there vowing to stay long term and basically not negotiating (they want to be allowed to go without being charged, which the FBI refuses to promise).

    So the disruption in Malheur operations, the potential for vandalism and misuse of government property, is ongoing.

  43. 43.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Felonius Monk:
    The ridiculously powerful human immune system kills the spores dead. We’re so god damn tough our immune system usually kills us before a disease can. It’s one of those cases where you never get to compare with other animals and see all the stuff we’re resistant to. We have mammal privilege.

  44. 44.

    MattF

    My local farmer’s market got a mushroom stand about two years ago, and it’s been a real education– trying things out, getting ten different types of umami flavor… My favorite right now is the royal trumpet— tastes great and just dries out over time, rather than getting icky.

  47. 47.

    opiejeanne

    @Randy P: I’ve been following Les Zaitz and JJMacNab on twitter and have gotten a lot more info from them than the national media, which is covering this event very poorly.

    Meanwhile, no word of Hellboy’s fate. Will he be charged as an accomplice? Are they withholding oats until he talks?

  49. 49.

    MomSense

    @BruceFromOhio:

    There are mycologists at many colleges and state cooperative extension agencies. I would only collect mushrooms if you have an expert guiding you. I’ve looked at photos of some of the mushrooms I’ve found and completely misidentified them. I only photograph them so I haven’t had any fatal mistakes.

  52. 52.

    Scamp Dog

    I think it would be cool to have your body buried somewhere that makes it more likely to fossilize. Thousands of years from now, archaeologists would dig you up and learn about humans from your era. And you might become a famous museum exhibit!

  53. 53.

    MattF

    @MomSense: I knew a mycologist several years ago. She had a bumper sticker on her car that read “Mycologists Have More Fungi.” Really.

  54. 54.

    Germy

    I’m reminded of this poem about a cat:

    Housemate, I can think you still
    Bounding to the window-sill,
    Over which I vaguely see
    Your small mound beneath a tree,
    Showing in the Autumn shade
    That you moulder where you played.
    – Thomas Hardy

  55. 55.

    MomSense

    @MattF:

    I love it. I’ve gotten really into mushrooms lately after discovering some crazy ones on a hiking trail. Now I follow a bunch of mycologists on instagram and have noticed the nerd humor is strong in that group.

  56. 56.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @MomSense: One of my former bosses was into mushrooms (the edible kinds). He said you can learn how to identify them from the spore print pattern and colors they leave on a sheet of paper. He wanted to grow morels, but couldn’t find the kind of oak log he was looking for, IIRC.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  57. 57.

    BruceFromOhio

    @MomSense: Absolutely – have read & heard too many anecdotes about picking and eating the wrong thing. My interest is mostly curiosity, the damned things grow everywhere when conditions are right.

  59. 59.

    sharl

    I really like the concept of the corpse-consuming mushroom suit, but there is something that is irking me mightily:

    These mushrooms digest the body as it decomposes and neutralize many of the environmental contaminants found in the body—including pesticides, preservatives, and heavy metals.

    ~
    Grrrrrrrr…

    Heavy metals may be bio-transportable from the human body into the fungi, but they ain’t gonna cease to be heavy metals in the process. Unless you have a suitable functioning nuclear reactor at hand to bombard the heavy metals with neutrons to convert them to something else (that may be less toxic, if you’re lucky), you’re stuck with them.

    If the mushrooms do offer one or more combinations of metabolic transport and bio-accumulation mechanisms, you’re just gonna end up with toxic mushrooms, which may have to be disposed of as hazardous material, depending on the elemental identity and concentration of the metals.

    I hope that this oversight was the result of sloppy reporting, and not a direct quote from someone regarded as an expert. If the latter, that person should have his/her Badge of Expertise unceremoniously ripped from his/her Robe of Technical Authority.

    Grrrrrrr…

  60. 60.

    dr. luba

    @cmorenc: Not pus, which is your body’s white blood cell’s response to infection, but putrefaction of some sort. Nasty either way.

    I like the idea of cleansing fire and scattered ashes.

  61. 61.

    Keith G

    In January 1983, I met a guy named Tony who aside from having a wonderfully campy personality was the best hunter of psilocybin mushrooms whom I have ever known. We spent a good part of the 80’s as neighbors and often unindicted co-conspirators.

    The blocks of time that we, a small group of friends, spent in universes far from here, are favored memories.

  64. 64.

    Germy

    o.t.

    Dirk Voetberg, on Facebook:
    “With the almost-death of printed media and the ubiquity of Uber, is it any wonder that newspaper taxis are now practically nonexistent?”

  67. 67.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @sharl: The “neutralizing toxins” stuff bothered me too. But their might not (but still might) be lots of woo behind it.

    The stuff sticking out of the ground that we think of as mushrooms are the “fruit”. Most of the organism is below the ground or in the tree or whatever – especially in examples like the honey fungus. If the toxins, heavy metals, etc., stay in the non-fruiting parts of the mushroom, then there may be some “benefit”. Does it? I dunno.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  68. 68.

    Ultraviolet Thunder

    Morels grow in my back yard in Huntington Woods MI (by the Detroit Zoo). Enough for a few omelets in the spring. We have a lot of large spruce trees and they seem to like that.

  75. 75.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Randy P: I agree with @opiejeanne that those are two good people to follow on Twitter. There are a few more that I am following, too.

    Ammon Bundy’s lawyer has released two videos asking the holdouts to surrender.

    Looking at what the community will need to do to recover.

    There are four sad people and two puppies still at the refuge. The people didn’t realize their side wasn’t going to win and that there may be consequences to that. One of them is the computer whiz who gets a video stream going from time to time. It was working last night, but I was feeling too good after a rather wonderful concert to check it out.

  77. 77.

    pamelabrown53

    @Hillary Rettig:
    Do you think that “smart mushroom cultivators” will employ pigs to root them out? Or are pigs only suitable for truffles?
    Obviously, I read/watch too many British murder mysteries.

  78. 78.

    Ol' Froth

    I’ve hunted wild mushrooms for years, and there is nothing like the excitment one feels when you stumble across an entire Smurf village of morels!

  79. 79.

    Zinsky

    My brother-in-law is an avid mushroom hunter. He spends weeks preparing preparing for the harvest season and months afterwords eating them.

  80. 80.

    jharp

    I too am into mushroom hunting. and might have to check out the Morel Mushroom Festival in Boyne City.

    I’m actually heading that was this spring.

  81. 81.

    sharl

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:

    The stuff sticking out of the ground that we think of as mushrooms are the “fruit”. Most of the organism is below the ground or in the tree or whatever – especially in examples like the honey fungus. If the toxins, heavy metals, etc., stay in the non-fruiting parts of the mushroom, then there may be some “benefit”. Does it? I dunno.

    ~
    You got me all curious, and I was just about to dive into academic journal search engines, but fortunately checked Wikipedia first. It turns out that heavy metals do, in fact, concentrate in the “fruiting” part of mushrooms and similar fungi. This became particularly well known to the general public (at least in northern Europe) in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster. And, natch, those heavy metals get transferred to critters that eat the mushrooms:

    Wild boar are particularly susceptible to radioactive contamination due to their predilection for chomping on mushrooms and truffles, which are particularly efficient at absorbing radioactivity. Indeed, whereas radioactivity in some vegetation is expected to continue declining, the contamination of some types of mushrooms and truffles will likely remain the same, and may even rise slightly — even a quarter century after the Chernobyl accident.

    “In the regions where it is particularly problematic, all boar that are shot are checked for radiation,” reports Andreas Leppmann, from the German Hunting Federation. There are 70 measuring stations in Bavaria alone.

  82. 82.

    Snarkworth

    Hmmm. My (as yet unpublished) mystery novel features a mycologist. Bad fungus-related things happen. I just might find a use for the Mushroom Death Suit in the sequel.

  83. 83.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @sharl: Yikes!!

    Very interesting. This seems to be yet another example of Nature being difficult.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  84. 84.

    Hillary Rettig

    @MattF: royal trumpets are awesome. I was in a fancy NYC vegan restaurant a few months ago where they made the most amazing pretend calamari out of them.

    if your farmer friend is figuring out how to grow those, kudos – they’re a bit harder than normal.

  85. 85.

    Hillary Rettig

    @I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: mushies can definitely degrade hydrocarbon type waste, and have been used to remediate oil spills. and you can eat the mushie that results (and they’re often huge).

    some species can also concentrate toxins and radioactive wastes – like Cesium – those you probably don’t want to eat!

  88. 88.

    Hillary Rettig

    @Ol’ Froth: i only found two last year (my first) but this is my year!

    I did find a whole grove of black trumpets so that was wonderful, but even though they’re a prime edible they don’t hold a candle to morels.

  91. 91.

    Ken Pidcock

    Bah. You can cover your body with fungi, algae or dermestid beetles. It’s still bacteria that’ll call the feast. And they’re fine with distributing the toxins.

  92. 92.

    jharp

    @Hillary Rettig:

    I wouldn’t know how to do that but somehow I’ll try to contact you should I make it.

    Sounds like a terrific event. Thanks for letting me know about it.

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