Her husband lives next door, and Linda Chamberlain occasionally visits him while going to market. Those who have experienced this activity of Linda are shuddered with fear, as her husband Frederick Rockwell Chamberlain III (November 21, 1935 – March 22, 2012) died of prostate cancer more than a decade ago. However, Linda decided not to bury her husband’s body, but to save it. Linda planned to cryopreserve Fred’s body or to preserve the body of her husband through the Cryonics method. Fred was cryopreserved on March 22, 2012.

Fred’s body is carefully immersed in a large container of liquid nitrogen after cooling it down to minus 196 degrees Celsius. Reports suggest that the bodies of Fred and eight other people have been kept in a 10ft-long chamber made of stainless steel. A total of 170 bodies have been preserved in similar chambers in that same room.

Linda has claimed that the purpose of preserving her husband’s body in this way is to bring him back to life in the future. In fact, Cryonics is an effort to save lives by using temperatures so cold that a person beyond help by today’s medicine can be preserved for decades or centuries until a future medical technology can restore that person to full health. Although cryonics sounds like science fiction, it is purely based on modern science. However, a section of scientists has dismissed this method as nonsense and stupidity.

Dr James Hiram Bedford (April 20, 1893 – January 12, 1967), a Professor of Psychology at the University of California, was the first person whose body was cryopreserved after his legal death way back in 1967. As of 2014, about 250 bodies of US citizens were preserved in this manner. So far, nearly 1,500 people have registered their names for cryopreserving their bodies after their death.

Linda has said: “Legal death only really means that your heart and your lungs have stopped functioning without intervention. It does not mean your cells are dead, it does not mean even your organs are dead.” She believes that a second life is very much possible and she is optimistic about it. Linda is also hopeful that Fred might come back, and that is why she chose the cryonics method to preserve his body.

Both Linda and Fred were curious about the cryonics method. Later, they started believing in this process. In fact, they met in 1970 as a result of their mutual interest in cryonics. Linda has stressed: “Our goals were to start an organisation that could save people’s lives and give them an opportunity to be restored to health and function.” The couple established the Alcor Society for Solid State Hypothermia in California in 1972 mainly to cryopreserve human bodies. The organisation is also known as Alcor Life Extension Foundation. In 2022, CEO of the Foundation Max More told Reuters: “We are saying instead of just disposing of the patient, give them to us. We are going to stabilise them, stop them getting worse and hold them for as long as it takes for technology to catch up and allow them to come back to life and continue living.”

Anyone who wants to preserve her/his body or her/his loved ones can contact Alcor. However, they would have to spend nearly USD 250,000. According to Linda, she is afraid of death, and wants to go on living.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das