“We’re classified as a cemetery but I’d like to think of us as more of a hospital… caring for patients that are metabolically challenged,” says Ben Best, who was the President and CEO of the Cryonics Institute during the making of this short documentary. Brooklyn Underground Films’ We Will Live Again follows Best through the facility where he says almost 100 human bodies and several pets are pending revival in “50 to 100 years,” when the future will be “kinder and gentler.” Andy Zawacki attends these bodies — preserving the freshly-dead. He performs mechanic chest compression to keep the circulation going long enough to pump sufficient antifreeze solution through the body. The “patients” are then wrapped in a sleeping bag and lowered head-down into the tower-like cryostats. Retired founder of the cryonics movement Robert Ettinger lives nearby, sad about the science of cryonics having not progressed fast enough.
“What we’re doing is not in conflict with religion,” Ben Best points out. Some people seem to not get it, he says. “As if there is an 11th Commandment that says ‘Thou Shall Not Freeze.'” Ettinger agrees. “Heaven can wait.” He says the worms in your future grave can wait too. And there you have it. The somewhat speculative science of preservation and future reanimation is theoretically not in conflict with some people’s literal beliefs in divine dogma and its historical instances of resurrection (for VIPs only.)
