from National Geographic

These People Believe Death Is Only Temporary

Transhumanists believe in a future of human immortality. A community in Russia is working to make it happen.

BY DANIEL STONE

Transhumanist and neurobiologist Olga Levitskaya is photographed following an event at the Cosmonaut Museum in Moscow to raise funds for the CyberSuit. Levitskaya is wearing a… PHOTOGRAPH BY GIUSEPPE NUCCI

In a small, white warehouse two hours north of Moscow are 56 dead people who hope to live again. Their bodies are upside down, their blood fully drained from their arteries, as they wait, immersed in negative 196-degree Celsius liquid nitrogen for the next 100 years.

What they’re waiting for is a new life, or a continuation of the one they already lived. Many of the bodies belong to people who reached the end of their life naturally, usually at an advanced age. They made the decision to be cryopreserved before they died, or in some cases, their family signed the paperwork post-mortem and paid the $36,000 to freeze their loved one’s body (or $18,000 for just their head) for the standard term of a century—which can perhaps be extended, to be determined, based on where science leaves us in the 22nd century.

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