Will we eventually run out of graveyards?

Why do we even have graveyards? Embalming chemicals leach out and poison water tables, carbon footprint is horrendous, land is wasted for superstitious nonsense. Just cremate and scatter the ashes.

https://slate.com/technology/2022/10/cemeteries-drinking-tap-water-pollution-aquifers-dead-bodies.html , among others.

I want to be cremated, and then have my ashes condensed into a diamond. I want that diamond to be embedded in the hilt of a sword. I want everybody in my family for generations to be put in the same sword and then in the distant future when the zombies arise, my great great great great grandchild can break the glass and weild the blade honing the power of generations of ancestors in their hand and start lobbing off heads.
- Uhh... Is it too late to change my answer?
- Well, at least you've got dreams
Or just bury people without embalming them first? As a non-American I find it super weird that it’s the norm in the US. Why would you still do that anyway?
- I think the idea is so that the empty meat vessel looks tasty and fresh for the funeral.
- Embalming? WTF?! I guess I should have watched Six feet under to learn something
- It's a legal requirement.
- It has to do with Christianity. Many Christians believe that Christ will come back raising the dead and restoring their bodies
Nah don't cremate. Bury the body with no box and no preservation. Get those nutrients right back into the soil as fast as possible.
- Yes please. This is how I want to be buried. Back to the earth asap.
- Reminds me of something that happened when I was a gravedigger. The indigent get no embalming so we get them in the ground quickly, 2 or 3 days. Even then the smell is powerful sometimes. Anyway, an indigent guys funeral was held up for some reason that escapes me, so they froze him, while his arms were above his head. The story of getting him in that cheap cardboard casket the funeral director told me had me rolling. I don't know how that cheap casket stayed together but when we got it it was in baaad shape. Wish I took a picture.
Fucking bullshit that I can't have my relatives eat my corpse when I'm dead. Land of the free my (glazed and roasted) ass
- If you amputate a bit beforehand you can enjoy some with them.
There are other methods becoming more widely available In the US too such as Aquamation (alkaline hydrolysis) which yields similar remains like ashes you can spread and human composting (https://recompose.life/) which don’t emit fossil fuel emissions.
Not for everyone, sure, but I wanted to be composted. I liked that I would become a cubic yard of nutrient rich soil in about 30 days and will be utilized for forest restoration.
The mushroom shroud that breaks you down is also super cool but was pretty out of my price range.

We're going to the way of Toraja people, do some voodoo magic to make the corpse walk to their grave and then after they decompose just store the skull in a cave nearby.

I highly recommend checking out the catacombs in Paris. It gives you a very clear understanding about what humans do to graveyards when they want the space. There are literally millions of skeletons just thrown down there. Some are stacked in interesting ways, like walls of femurs and piles of skulls. But the vast, vast majority are just heaped into big ass piles of random bones.

Personally, visiting them sold me on the idea of cremation. Otherwise, it's only a matter of time before your graveyard is getting dug up and they're throwing your remains in a pile with some randos.

Yeah fuck randos. They smell.
Being part of a big pile of bones that can freak out tourists is actually convincing me that being buried is better than being cremated.
- of that's an idea youre keen on, you could put it into a... loving will, or equivalent, and your will, anyway dwaath and end of life related documents. also appoint an exuctioner for those that you trust to make those bone post death art poecehappen, or anyway to try their best to make those wishes for coming part of a future grand skellie pyramid arform, or something along those lines, happen.
  yiu never know, it may well be possible to make those dreams sooner, after a nk doubt long on the Future and death, than anticipated., and making some arrangements ahead of time can improve your chances, and possibly be a fun exercise in itself. 'tge order of the good death', has some useful resource on the whole planning and documents thing, espially on a North America context.
  anyway. happy for you future artistic and collective bone combination ambitions for ' your future postmortem bones. rip. ☠️💀🦴🦴💀💀🦴🦴💀☠️👻👻👻👻👻👻🦴👻

Yes, one day the whole world is going to be a big graveyard.

Kinda already is a big graveyard
I've got a bunch of bones out in the yard right now
- I'm doing my part!

The concept is that you get a spot on a graveyard permanently as a muslim, but it is custom to give back the spot when noone is alive, who remembered the deceased relative, so usually in the third or fourth generation.
But why wouldnt a graveyard last "forever"? We have many church graveyards that can be tracked back to early medieval times, so easily a thousand years, in Germany.
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- He's still alive, he's 75 but he's still going strong.
But muslims don't embalm their deceased bodies, right? They also don't use coffins, so eventually the remains will decompose with nothing remains? How long it took for unpreserved buried bodies to completely decompose?
- How long it took for unpreserved buried bodies to completely decompose?
  That is very dependent on the temperature, soil, humidity etc. E.g. a regularly wet, huminose soil at moderate temperatures will decompose anything much quicker than dry desert sand.
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- It's also relatively quick. Most graveyards have a hard limit at around 1 year for allowing tombs and mausoleums to be reopened because that's roughly the amount of time for a body to discompose such that it's not a nuisance when it's reopened. Reopening or exhuming a body too soon runs the risk of being a nasty experience for the gravekeepers. But 6 month to a year, you basically have only dirt and bones. Depending on how dry the environment is. Typical western embalming methods, while very efficient on the short term, like preventing decomposition during the next couple of weeks, won't delay natural decomposition after a month or so.

No, because most people are cremated these days, and over time bones deteriorate. Plus, we can always make new graveyards.

But the big thing is that old graveyards are often “relocated” — the marked graves are dug up and the contents stacked/put closer together with any gravestones or markers stuck closer together above ground.

Eventually even bones decay, unless fossilized, and fossilized bones are just, well, fancy rocks. So it's not like human remains stick around forever.

It's not even THAT long. 30-100 years, depending on the environment

There was a panic here in Vancouver (known for it's out of control real estate market) this year and burial plots were going for like $90,000 IIRC.

Don't be too poor to die.

Well now I'm gonna die with $89,000 just to see what'd happen
- just over the border, more or less (geography isn't neccecarily my subject) , in Washing. State, you know the one, yiu can get ylarrange for your future corpse to undergo a relatively new and novel disposition option known as 'natural organoc reduction', for the comparatively low low price of only.. around 6 to 10 k, alst o checked., includong shrouds, body storage, tests ect.
  That's significantly cheaper than the avarage conventional funeral cknsts, not Jay on van iver, but in the bordering region too., and there's no ongoing upkeep costsas, there might be with a plot. after aroind six weeks, its basically done, if you wnat it that way.
  And, perhaos as or more importantly the novelty can be an important aspect for some people. A burial method that very ffew others, so far, ahve hmade use of (although very much tested, and regulated, and found genuine) , as can the positiveenvironmental aspects be appealing too to aome.
  aTdlr: nyway see www.recompose.life for more details of, one of, the options that could help to circumvent any need to pay any, highly overinflated and likely extortionate, rates for a funeral plot. No buing real death estate required.
- You're just gonna have to rent.