Surviving the dead

the lone gunman

the lone gunman

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May 29, 2008
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In light of the Haiti disaster I was thinking how is disease passed from the dead to the living? Is it thru tainted water,insects or is it an airborne thing? They just showed the mass graves being dug for the earthquake victims in Haiti on The news. What if you couldnt bury them? How could you protect yourself from disease?
 
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the lone gunman said:
In light of the Haiti disaster I was thinking how is disease passed from the dead to the living? Is it thru tainted water,insects or is it an airborne thing? They just showed the mass graves being dug for the earthquake victims in Haiti on The news. What if you couldnt bury them? How could you protect yourself from disease?
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just a guess, but most disease from decomposing bodies is going to come from water contamination. insects might provide a secondary vector, via contact with thier (the insects) fecal matter ect.

airbourne diseases tend to rely on a release mechanism, such as coughing, or spores released from fungi (such as anthrax) which take a while to develop, and cause more of a risk if you are digging the dead back up.

annother risk is contact with bodily fluids from the dead, a risk that has caused problems (albeit with dead animal carcasses not human dead) when cremation was used in the Foot and mouth outbreak in the UK a few years ago,
 
burying bodies aas always been a bad idea, because of ground water, and the risk of being dug up by animals.

human bodies should be burnt, not buried. they are disease incubators until they parch out and are isolated, and even then... feeding them fresh to animals like the bhuddists sometimes do is a close second.

next big earthquake that pitches bodies out of cemeteries followed by flood that can't be managed for months, and you just wait....


in the jungles where i have been, they seal the bodies in concrete when possible, because the cadavers are full of TB, Hepatitis, and other goodies alot of times.


burn 'em up, if you are smart.

vec
 
99.9% of all pathological transmission coming from dead bodies will be through water. As vector said, the best thing to do would be to cremate the bodies. Burying bodies is a huge threat to underground water supplies.
 
Certainly water tables would be contaminated fast and insects thrive in such conditions.Burying bodies is a hideous outdated thing anyway. We should all be cremated, not just in the case of natural disasters either. Plant a tree for every corpse and that's the de -forestation probem solved!
 
This is not a direct answer to your question, but rather a comment on Haiti. There is a fact that has not even been mentioned one time during this disaster, and that is that Haiti is fit for human existence for another three or four decades. The island, and surrounding waters are in the process of dying from pollution. This was a fact prior to the earthquake. As for dead bodies, many of the catacombs are still considered toxic to humans despite not having remains interred for a long time. BSE (mad cow) spores have been placed outdoors on earth and survived for years. This fact was disturbing to researchers, since it was expected it would quickly die. I would think that common sense would tell you not to feed sheep remains to cattle, the cause of BSE.
 
jw2n said:
This is not a direct answer to your question, but rather a comment on Haiti. There is a fact that has not even been mentioned one time during this disaster, and that is that Haiti is fit for human existence for another three or four decades. The island, and surrounding waters are in the process of dying from pollution. This was a fact prior to the earthquake. As for dead bodies, many of the catacombs are still considered toxic to humans despite not having remains interred for a long time. BSE (mad cow) spores have been placed outdoors on earth and survived for years. This fact was disturbing to researchers, since it was expected it would quickly die. I would think that common sense would tell you not to feed sheep remains to cattle, the cause of BSE.
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This person knows what he's talking about.

Haiti is not clean. A natural disaster would probably stir up alot of garbage, and make a bad situation worse.

Healthvet
 
If you don't know how to make a funeral pyre for cremation your results will likely be poor/ineffectual.
The method of staking wood for a funeral pyre is the same as is used to create a fire hot enough to calcine gypsum for plaster or limestone for concrete (though both requires a larger stack to get significant quantities...).
In the the interest of brevity; I leave interested individuals to google for the methods and illustrations, themselves.

Enjoy!
 
jw2n said:
This is not a direct answer to your question, but rather a comment on Haiti. There is a fact that has not even been mentioned one time during this disaster, and that is that Haiti is fit for human existence for another three or four decades. The island, and surrounding waters are in the process of dying from pollution. This was a fact prior to the earthquake. As for dead bodies, many of the catacombs are still considered toxic to humans despite not having remains interred for a long time. BSE (mad cow) spores have been placed outdoors on earth and survived for years. This fact was disturbing to researchers, since it was expected it would quickly die. I would think that common sense would tell you not to feed sheep remains to cattle, the cause of BSE.
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Haiti was a corruption ridden land of poverty before the earthquake, but I've not heard any credible source that it's not fit for habitation due to pollution, population or disease. Any pointers?
 
It is not uncommon to have open running sewage in Port Au Prince after a hard rain, and only about 45% of the population had access to potable water before the earthquake. These day-to-day poor sanitary conditions that are now made worse would far outweigh any risk from buried corpses. Besides, burning the dead is bad juju. I think it is best to bury them right away if for no other reason than morale.
 
First, I should state that I am not an eco nut. I try to filter reality from BS when reading or watching documentaries. With this being said, the last info was a scientific documentary on the ecological health of Haiti. This was an in-depth, detailed analysis of the island, soil, water table, and the surrounding ocean. It is all literally in the process of dying, and I stated in my previous post, is expected to support human life for a very few decades. I, fortunately, did not have to pull a tour in Haiti, but many of my fellow soldiers did. Their description of the conditions there reinforce what I have learned on my own. I would assume that the earthquake will aggravate the pre-existing conditions a great deal.
 
It is my understanding that in those accidental deaths, the bodies do not really pose a health risk. The disease risk they face now in Haiti will be due to poor sanitation conditions, from fecal matter, not the bodies.
 
pour lots of American dollars on haiti. that'll sanitize the place. maybe. eventually. one of these days. :rolleyes:
 
saw a documentary on haiti about 6 months ago. was filmed in 1990s in time period when riots were crazy & clinton had to send some troops in.rival factions were killing each other & pigs were eating on dead bodies in the streets.[this was actually filmed]. one gang leader took a coffee can to public water spout.he poured some h2o on himself 'soaped up & then poured remainder of h2o over his head. this is a bath for much of people in port au prince. open sewage was obvious in many areas. goverment is marginal & the gangs run urban areas.area was declared most dangerous in world by u.n.in essence this place is simply a festering sore of humanity.i seriously doubt if enough flammable material is available to burn all the bodies. my conclusion is an earthquake on top of this region simply means write it off as a lost cause. where are the resources available to house & feed three or four huindred thousand people. certainly the country doe'nt have resources to rebuild.
 
the lone gunman said:
What if you couldnt bury them? How could you protect yourself from disease?
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Actually I've heard many catastrophy response experts stating that, despite huge psychological impact (notably smell), dead bodies were actually a low sanitary hazard and that very few disease might be transmitted from dead body to live persons.
Sure water could get contaminated like with any (sorry for bluntness) "dead meat" but no epidemic diseases.
Epidemics like cholera would rather originate from sanitary problems inside the remaining population (lack of proper water, promiscuity)...
 
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