What is Alcor and why would I need them?

Alcor is a cyropreservation outfit based in Arizona. Cyropreservation is the science of preserving living tissues indefinitely while minimizing damage or deterioration.

Why would anyone need to do that?

Life is the most important thing there is. As the saying goes, if you don't have your health then what do you have. Being the richest man in the world is meaningless if you are dead. Life is what defines humanity and it is our most precious asset.

Society has rationalized that death is a good thing, and this is an incredibly dangerous situation. A 90 year old person will often think that, even though their body is falling apart, they can't enjoy the activities they used to, and they will soon deteriorate to the extent they they die from it, that this is ok because they have lived a long and fulfilling life.

90 years old sounds old today simply because this is how old people can live now. 100 years ago people routinely died in their 30's. Take a moment to think about all the adults you know. Imagine their lives ending when they turned 30. It is a terrible thought because you know their lives should have been longer, filled with a multitude of experiences.

In 100 years from now when medical technology has progressed, living to "only" the age of 90 will be as horrible as living "only" to the age of 30 is now.

The biggest message to take from this train of thought is that death and a "proper" age to die is not fixed in stone. It is simply an artifact of our society's technological knowledge and our ability to keep people alive and give them the rich and fulfilling years that they deserve. Death at the age of 90 is not something accept as inevitable. Death at any age is terrible.

But what can we do. As we get older we seem to age faster than medical science can keep us alive. Sooner or later we're going to get old, fall apart, lose our ability to care for ourselves and die. We might as well just put it out of our minds, enjoy what we can and try not to think about it.

Wrong. That is defeatist thinking. Do not allow yourself to be content with watching yourself fall apart.

If there is no currently available technology that can fix your failing body then you need to wait until it is invented. When your body can no longer sustain itself you need to make one last ditch effort to live and preserve yourself until medical technology advances to the point where you can live again. This is what Alcor does. When you 'die' they preserve you so that in the future you can continue to live your life and will not fall victim to dying at the incredibly young age of 90.

What is this blog?

This blog is a running diary of my experience in going through the signup process with Alcor. This should serve several purposes:

• The Alcor signup process is a significant undertaking and this blog should serve as documentation for anyone thinking about or in the process of signing up themselves.


• As the signup process is not trivial, blogging to steps and stages should help to keep myself motivated so signing up with Alcor moves off my "things I know I need to do but never seem to actually work on" list.


• Honest thoughts and impressions along the way.

Continue reading this blog to find out what Alcor is and how the signup process goes.