Ways People Have Disposed Bodies
Listen, we're not going to judge you- what are we the police... or your parents?- but
you've got a body on your hands and a real pressing need to dispose of it.
Maybe you've been engaging in some cloning shenanigans and discovered that just because
you clone a human being, doesn't mean it comes with a soul.
Maybe you've been 'Weekend at Bernies'ing your dead boss.
Whatever your situation, you're gonna have to get rid of that body pronto before local
law enforcement gets all 'questiony' about the corpse in your basement.
So let's work on getting rid of that little problem of yours.
-Bury It- The phrase “six feet under” exists for
a reason, because historically it's been the best way to dispose of a body without said
body pulling a Britney Spears-esque comeback on you.
Real estate and body disposal have two things in common- location, location, location.
You want to make sure that your dead body isn't going to be turning up anytime soon,
and that means burying it in a place nobody is going to accidentally dig it up, or where
it'll draw unnatural attention.
You might think you need to go remote, and you'd typically be right, but sometimes close
to home is best.
Ever heard of the expression “hide in plain sight”?
Works great for bodies too- especially if you own the land where the body is going to
be hidden.
If you happen to be a property owner then you can pull the same move many serial killers
do, and simply bury it on your own property.
By doing so you can ensure that no work crews are going to accidentally stumble upon your
corpse, though you'll want to make sure that you aren't threatened by eviction anytime
soon, because once the new owners start finding corpses all over the backyard you can bet
the cops are going to come looking for the previous owner.
Also, just as a word of caution, burying corpses in your own basement is a super good way to
make sure they're never found, but also a super good way of ensuring that your house
is haunted as balls.
So, you know, weigh the pros and cons.
Other good places to bury a body would be freshly dug utility ditches such as those
used for sewer lines or utilities.
Because of the danger of severing vital utility lines, nobody is going to go digging in that
spot anytime soon, just make sure you dig the minimum six feet.
Wherever you dig your disposal hole just make sure that the body is deep enough that scavengers
and sniffer dogs won't go poking around, and scatter leaves and twigs to make it less obvious
that there's a fresh grave in the middle of otherwise undisturbed wilderness.
If you're particularly worried about police sniffer dogs- and you should be- you can bury
a decoy by simply killing an animal and burying that, with your dead body six feet below it.
Of course why go through all that trouble when you can just reuse an existing grave-
or make use of a freshly dug one.
It may require careful coordination, but if you plan your murder around the same time
that you know your local cemetery is going to be digging new graves, then simply bury
your victim a few feet past the bottom of a freshly dug grave.
Or maybe visit grandma in the cemetery and give her a friend to spend eternity with.
-Burning- Burning seems like a foolproof method for
dead body disposal, after all we literally cremate people when we choose to not plant
them in the ground for future generations to deal with.
While burning can certainly help dispose of identifying characteristics and things like
DNA, it comes with a rather large set of problems.
First, burning a body isn't going to be like burning garden clippings- burning bodies are
going to smell awful, making neighbors very curious, and give off thick black plumes of
smoke, making the fire department even more curious.
So wherever you decide to burn, your backyard is not going to be a great place for the task.
Then there's the actual burning.
Human bodies are lousy with water, which means that a lot of the body isn't going to burn
as much burn as just blacken, leaving behind a husk that is still very much recognizable
as a human body.
This is why crematoriums burn at a thousand degrees, it's the only way to ensure that
the body is fully cremated into ash- though this often still leaves behind large chunks
of bone which must be ground up.
Then there's the teeth, which are designed by evolution to last for most of your lifetime,
making them incredibly tough.
At best, burning a body may be a good intermediary step, a way to try and cover up your crime
on the way to a real disposal method.
-Acid- This one's a fan favorite, especially if you're
a fan of Breaking Bad.
After all, a chemistry teacher should definitely know what he's talking about when it comes
to flesh dissolving acids.
Well, Walter White was definitely using more than hydrofluoric acid to get rid of his body.
While hydrofluoric acid is great at breaking flesh down, it takes a long time to act and
won't completely break a body down.
Of course that might not be such a big issue if you're just looking to avoid having a body
identified- but if you want to make it disappear completely, it wont' do the trick.
Hydrochloric acid is another good candidate, but it gives off extremely strong fumes that
are sure to give you away- and possibly kill you if you aren't wearing a respirator.
Unless you have no neighbors for a good distance around you, hydrochloric acid in the quantities
you need is going to both pose a serious health hazard to yourself, and alert anybody with
a working nose for quite a distance around your house.
Another problem with our previous two acids is that getting access to large enough quantities
of them to dissolve a body is going to raise some serious red flags in the ensuing police
investigation- especially if you get fingered as a suspect.
Instead, look for an over-the-counter solution, specifically: drain unblocker.
These products are designed to dissolve all the human junk that you shove down your shower-
or toilet- drain, so they're basically a shoe-in for the job.
The sodium hydroxide in the drain unblocker is the active ingredient here, and will leave
behind nothing much more than a shell of a skeleton which can be easily ground up into
dust.
-Woodchipper- A real movie classic, you know we couldn't
leave this one out.
Woodchippers are great for turning big problems into a lot of very little problems.
The downside to woodchippers though is that they turn big problems into a lot of very
little problems.
As in blood, bone, and hair evidence that will come out the other end in a high-speed
blast of prosecution evidence against you in court.
Even going somewhere remote isn't guaranteed to keep you safe from discovery, as the high
speed grinding and shredding will emit a blast of aerosolized blood which will plant DNA
all over your clothes, and curious cops are crazy good at sniffing out DNA evidence.
-Davey Jones Locker- There's perhaps no more classic body disposal
method than to simply chuck it overboard into the briny depths.
First though, we do mean the briny depths- forget about any freshwater lakes or even
worse, a river.
Those places are lousy with curious swimmers and divers, and they are home to so much recreational
and commercial activity that you're practically begging to get caught.
Don't take any chances and just rent yourself a speedboat and pull off a Dexter by dumping
the body overboard far out at sea.
Just make sure that the body is going to, you know, stay at the bottom of the ocean.
As the human body decomposes, it bloats, and this makes it incredibly buoyant, sending
it bobbing back up to the surface.
Same goes for body parts, so when sinking your body you want to make sure that the entire
thing is going to stay down there, and not have a foot or an arm embarrassingly wash
up on a beach a few weeks later.
You should wrap the body tightly with something that will resist both the erosive qualities
of seawater and the nibbling of hungry sea critters, so things like metal wire will work
best.
With the body wrapped tightly, it'll keep limbs from floating away, and the added weight
will help it stay at the bottom.
Doing a bit of research into sea currents couldn't hurt either, as it'll help you identify
places where even if parts of the body break off, they might not wash up near crowded beaches
or at least take a long time to do so.
Also, make sure you're going far out to sea- like past the continental shelf where there's
less chance of discovery.
You might be looking at a trip of a hundred or two hundred nautical miles, but it'll be
worth it to make sure your little accident isn't accidentally discovered.
-Pigs- In 2012 an Oregon farmer was eaten by his
own pigs.
By the time that family came by to check on him, all that was left was his dentures and
small bits of his body.
In 2020, a polish farmer is believed to have suffered a heart attack which caused him to
keel over in his pig pen.
The pigs devoured everything except for some bits of skull and other bone.
Both of these men were believed to have been eaten after they were incapacitated or perhaps
dead from heart attacks, but in 2015 a man was knocked down by his pigs and eaten alive.
The point we're very clearly trying to make here is that pigs are scary good at getting
rid of bodies, given their incredible appetites.
Our sub-point is that you should eat more bacon because if the pigs had it their way,
you'd be the bacon.
When feeding your body to pigs, you'll have to keep an eye out for remaining bone fragments
and things like teeth.
You'll also want to pay close attention to their poop, because large chunks of bone and
those pesky teeth could be passed through the digestive tract and leave behind evidence
to be discovered.
Also, you should probably take care not to become a victim yourself, given how incredibly
dangerous these seemingly placid animals can be.
-Molten Metal- The problem with fire is that normal fire
doesn't burn hot enough to dispose of a body, so naturally one might be tempted to consider
the superheated flames of a modern smelting refinery.
You would be right in assuming that these superheated fires will eradicate a human body,
and you could even pose the body with a thumbs up so you could pay fan service to Terminator
II while you're at it.
If you're in short supply of molten metal, or have no friendly smelter around willing
to give you private access to their industrial facility while asking few questions, you could
try and drop the body into lava, which burns around 1200 C and is more than enough to incinerate
every piece of evidence a body might leave behind.
That might require a bit of a trek to get to the top of a currently active volcano,
in which case we recommend you chop the body up into more manageable pieces and wrap them
in seran wrap.
You can make multiple trips, sticking parts of the body in your bag a few at a time- and
if you freeze the body before you get to chopping you'll avoid much of the mess.
-Promession- If fire isn't your thing, maybe ice is.
Promession is pretty much the opposite of cremation, though might require a bit more
industrial equipment to pull off successively.
While cremating a body reduces it to ash, promession reduces the body to freeze dried
powder.
First the body is frozen and placed in a vat of liquid nitrogen, then once fully frozen
the body is placed on a mechanical device which vibrates the body at incredible speeds.
This disintegrates the fragile and frozen body into a powder, after which the powder
is freeze-dried in a vacuum chamber which sucks out all the water.
What's left is a very manageable powdered mass of ex-human being, which will be impossible
to identify and easily disposed of.
Want to dive deeper into the world of crime?
Then check out The First Ever Crime Has Just Been Committed In Space, or click this other
video instead!
