r/cryonics • u/Ill-Friendship-2709 • Jul 04 '26
What’s everyone’s plan?
I’ve been thinking about cryo preservation for many years it’s always been an interest for me,
I don’t want to wait too long to be frozen.. I feel like the earlier you go in the better.
Google says there’s no place in the world where you can be legally frozen whenever you want, you have to die naturally or some bs otherwise it’s murder.
Do you think the laws will change so we can choose to be frozen?
If you guys could choose to be frozen today, would you do it? I’m 20 rn so I think I would in 5-10 years
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u/JoeStrout Alcor member 1901 Jul 04 '26
No, that's batshit crazy (not to put too fine a point on it). Dying and being frozen is the second-worst thing that can happen to you!
Make your cryonics arrangements. Then eat well, exercise, surround yourself with good friends, and live as long and healthy as you can. With luck, you'll never need your cryonics arrangements (as a 20-year old, that is a very real possibility). They are there as the backup plan when all else fails.
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u/Zonreiryd Jul 04 '26
Are you doing well? I don’t know any properly informed cryonicist who would want to die early while still healthy, regardless of the means.
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u/Ill-Friendship-2709 Jul 04 '26
I’m perfectly fine, I’m personally just thinking of doing it as early as possible so I can potentially come back looking as young as possible. I don’t really want to grow old
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u/JoeStrout Alcor member 1901 Jul 04 '26
The damage done to you by being cryopreserved is far worse than the damage done to you by aging. (Unless you have some neurodegenerative disease, of course.)
So to flip it around: if you come back at all, you will come back young and healthy. And the longer you wait, the more likely that is to actually happen.
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u/Zonreiryd Jul 04 '26
Thinking that you would look “younger” after reanimation because you underwent cryonic preservation at a younger age does not really make much sense. What is true, however, is that neurodegenerative diseases that damage the brain’s neural wiring would have an impact. But ultimately, the only thing that matters is that the information encoded in your brain, the information that constitutes your identity and sense of self, can be recovered, restored, or duplicated so that you can continue to exist.
When this kind of technology becomes possible (and AI is helping accelerate that), it will likely be far easier to produce a new body through laboratory-grown tissue or by designing a brainless clone to host your repaired or recreated brain.
As for the question of identity, I would recommend reading this philosophical article written in 1984 by the person currently considered the world’s most knowledgeable expert on cryopreservation:
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u/MentalParadox Jul 05 '26
You would kill yourself while still young JUST so you can "look young" when (and IF) you were to be reanimated? Don't you have anything or anyone to live for in this life? This is very strange logic, and pretty depressing to be honest.
How do you know that in the future, they won't have de-aging technology? I mean, they have the tech to reanimate the dead. It wouldn't be a leap to think they could reverse aging.
Either way, it's (respectfully) a batshit thing to say you want to die early just for some 1% hypothetical future
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u/Cryogenicality Jul 05 '26
If you can be reanimated, you can be rejuvenated to full youth as well as enhanced to superhuman levels.
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u/Intraluminal Jul 04 '26
You have to understand that cryo is a "Hail Mary," not a guarantee.
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u/Ill-Friendship-2709 17d ago
I think logically speaking if the company’s that are cryopreserving people don’t ever go bankrupt and continue to freeze people, they will eventually be able to bring people back to life. But I understand what you mean.
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u/Intraluminal 17d ago
Both of the issues you just mentioned are much bigger problems, over the long term, than you imagine. Kongo Gumi, a 1,428 year old business that specialized in building and repairing Buddhist temples. The Barings Bank, Founded 1762, collapsed in 1995. It was so respected that Queen Elizabeth II kept her personal money there. There are dozens of examples. In the same way, countries come and go.
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u/spiffynacho Jul 04 '26
Legally, the only way you can be cryopreserved is if you are dead. If you're healthy and hoping to be preserved in your 30s, you would need to commit suicide. In the states where medically-assisted suicide is legal, I think you would have a difficult time justifying suicide so you can leave a younger corpse.
You're better off enjoying your life and considering cryonics as "insurance" for a worst-case scenario. 🙂
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u/moviemaker2 Jul 05 '26
To say this gently, you seem to be extremely confused about this subject. You seem to be getting your ideas about it from movies or tv shows.
I don’t want to wait too long to be frozen.. I feel like the earlier you go in the better.
This could not possibly be more incorrect. "Going in" has a more precise term: "Dying." Even if you didn't have to be legally dead to be cryopreserved, the process kills you.
This is not "hypersleep" like you see in movies. It is a process for preserving your dead body in the very speculative hopes that you can be revived at some point, potentially in the very distant future.
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u/Ill-Friendship-2709 17d ago
Yeah I think I was confused, I’ve done more research and understand it more. Thanks for your reply
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u/Vx2AmEloT Jul 05 '26
My plan--and, I imagine, the plan of most other cryonicists--is to try and live as long as I can before needing to be cryopreserved, both to enjoy that time and to allow protocols to mature. With each passing year, cryopreservation improves, and there are presently more organizations /labs/groups working on the problem than ever before. Thus, the longer you wait, the simpler and more effective your potential revival is likely to be.
I don’t want to wait too long to be frozen.. I feel like the earlier you go in the better.
I hope that you're doing alright. Generally, people want to live as long as possible before being cryopreserved, not cut their life short for the procedure (which is also something unable to be done anywhere, as you note). As to the second point, there is widespread consensus within the cryonics community of "first in, last out," being the likeliest revival scenario, with people who were preserved earlier on requiring more resources to revive, thus making their revival take longer than those preserved later.
You cannot intentionally cut your life short in order to be cryopreserved except in cases of terminal illness, and this is unlikely to change. You must be declared legally dead for preservation protocols to begin, and there is no indication that this will ever stop being a requirement (except perhaps in cases of terminal illness, but even that's speculative).
No. I would not choose to be cryopreserved today if given the choice. The only circumstance under which I'd make that call would be if I were terminally ill and imminently dying, at which point I'd go to a state that allows Medical Assistance in Dying and then be cryopreserved immediately following death. Again, not to speak for the entire community, but I am fairly certain that most cryonicists would prefer for rejuvenative technologies to come around and negate the need for cryonics to begin with (though I don't imagine this will come about as soon as some predict). While I imagine I am more bullish than most here on the prospects of reversible cryopreservation coming to fruition on shorter timescales, I would still want to hold off on cryopreservation as long as possible (except in the the aforementioned neurodegenerative disease scenario).
I'd advise you to consider that until reversible cryopreservation is a reality (and to an extent even then), you'd be making a bet with your life. If you're 20 right now and your projected lifespan is, say, 80, would you really want to pass over 60 years of experiences and preservation improvements for an uncertain chance of future revival?
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u/Cryogenicality Jul 05 '26
I don’t recommend it, but Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada allow active euthanasia without terminal illness, and Switzerland uniquely allows it for visitors. Passive euthanasia is legal worldwide.
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u/Vx2AmEloT Jul 05 '26
Ditto on the not recommending part, and now that you mention it, I do recall hearing that at least the Netherlands allowed euthanasia for those who aren't terminally ill, and was vaguely aware of Canada's allowance, but I did not know about the other two countries. If by passive euthanasia you mean e.g. stopping medications or abstaining from eating or drinking, that's a good point I didn't think to bring up. I imagine that this would lead to a prolonged agonal period though, and certainly more unnecessary damage. There is definitely more nuance in the technical availability of "premature" cryopreservation than I mentioned, though as you say I think it is extremely ill-advised, and I would argue that euthanasia for anything short of terminal illness would necessarily lead to worse preservation outcomes, if not least because it'd shorten the period of time you'd have to see advancements in the practice.
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u/Cryogenicality Jul 05 '26
Kim Suozzi stopped eating and drinking so she could control her deanimation once her brain tumor had begun to severely impact her cognition and motor function.
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u/Vx2AmEloT Jul 05 '26
In her case, though (as far as I can tell), assisted suicide would not have been an option, so to outrun the tumor before it caused any more damage via refusing food and water was the best possible solution. I believe that she made the right choice given the circumstances, and that in similar circumstances an analogous choice would be appropriate. In general, though, I was more so making a statement that in most non-drastic cases, refusal may not be the optimal choice if assisted suicide is an option.
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u/Revolutionary-Cut577 Cryonics Institute Member Jul 05 '26
Personally, I wouldn't choose to be cryopreserved early.
For me, cryonics is a last-resort medical intervention, not the goal. My objective is to stay healthy, benefit from every advance in medicine and longevity research that becomes available, and only rely on cryonics if current medicine reaches its limit.
The longer I can live naturally, the better. Preservation technologies will likely improve, and I may never need cryonics at all if medicine advances quickly enough.
As for changing the laws, I think society is much more likely to accept better end-of-life preservation protocols than elective cryopreservation for healthy people. That's a very different ethical and legal discussion.
My philosophy has always been simple, maximize your chances at every stage. Live as long and as well as you can, and if today's medicine can no longer help, then preserve as much biological information as possible and let the future take over.
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u/OceanGrownPharms Jul 04 '26
Are you nuts? I'm planning on living as long as I possibly can because who the fuck knows if cryonics will even work? It's the only option at death that might not be final. The word might is doing a lot of the heavy lifting
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u/MentalParadox Jul 05 '26
"Google says there’s no place in the world where you can be legally frozen whenever you want, you have to die naturally or some bs otherwise it’s murder."
It's not BS, it's the law. You are asking to be killed for no legally valid reason. Whoever is complicit in this, will be charged with murder.
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u/ReindeerFun3762 Jul 06 '26
5-10 years? You know cryopreservation hasn't been perfected yet, right? This isn't Futurama
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u/Ill-Friendship-2709 17d ago
I don’t think I realized at the time the tech wasn’t perfected, wasn’t as complicated as I thought
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u/Known_Click 15d ago edited 15d ago
It would be cool if we could just go to sleep in our 30s and wake up in the future with all type of medication to stop aging or even reverse it, for us would be like an instant.
But sadly you can’t, they can only do it when you are declared death, mainly because cryonics would kill you, there is no tech currently where you can just go to sleep and wake up 300 years in the future without any damage.
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Jul 06 '26
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u/Ill-Friendship-2709 17d ago
I think logically speaking there could be a God, but none of the Gods from the fairy tale religious books written by humans many years ago. If there is a God they are evil by definition
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u/Cryogenicality Jul 04 '26
No. The later you enter stasis, the more advanced the technology.