the.com/cremate
to turn a lifetime into four pounds of ash and a tidy goodbye
means to dispose of a dead body by burning it to ash, typically as a chosen alternative to burial
from From Latin 'cremare,' to burn or consume by fire — the same root that smolders quietly inside 'cremation.' English borrowed it in the 19th century, when the modern practice gained ground, building 'cremate' as a back-formation from 'cremation' rather than the other way around. The Latin word is possibly a distant cousin of 'carbo' (coal, the source of 'carbon'), all clustered around the ancient idea of things turning black and crumbling in the heat.
- furnace heat
- reaches 1400 to 1800 degrees Fahrenheit
- what remains
- mostly pulverized bone, not actual ash
- hidden survivors
- hip replacements and pacemakers must be removed first
- ancient practice
- humans have cremated dead for 20,000 years
- space option
- ashes can be launched into orbit commercially
burning ghat varanasi — hindu cremation site on ganges river where thousands of bodies are cremated annually, particularly manikarnika ghat
mitrovica crematorium kosovo — site where srebrenica massacre victims were cremated by serb forces in 1995 to destroy evidence