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Recovering bodies in war
azstrummer — (archived)

Your comment might be a good time to take a look at this bizarre concept of leaving no dead body behind even if it means peril to the still living soldiers. I'm pretty sure I've read of incidents where additional casualties resulted from troops going back to retrieve surely deceased comrades.

Now of course if there's any chance of someone being alive, the proper thing to do is to attempt a lifesaving mission but there's something very barbaric about this need to preserve and protect a lifeless husk. Obviously there's an emotional attachment but I think it's a concept our society needs to move away from during our continued evolution.

I'm ok with people retaining some spiritual connection to a soul if that's what gets them through the week but it sure seems the religions that put some value to carting a corpse around and insisting that its preservation is required for the afterlife to be fulfilled are mired in the Dark Ages.

About the space death issue, let me put it "mildly". If an astronaut's family has that much of a hangup about how their dead body should be dealt with in an extended mission, then those people are probably not emotionally mature enough to deal with their relative being in a perilous occupation. The decision needs to go out of their hands and into that of the crew who would have to sleep knowing this possibly rotting corpse is hanging in a locker next to them. "Burial at sea" is completely appropriate. A solo reentry of the body to the atmosphere of the planet they're approaching sounds like the ultimate funeral pyre.

Art

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