Happy Death Club

‘There’s a freedom found in decomposition, a body rendered messy, chaotic and wild,’ observes Doughty.

‘Humans are so focused on preventing ageing and decay – it’s become an obsession. And for those who have been socialised female, the pressure is relentless. So decomposition becomes a radical act

The field of cryonics is aggressively male-dominated, and they tend to really hate the (predominantly female-led) death acceptance movement, who they refer to as ‘Deathists’.19

Nederland, North Colorado founding an annual carnival named ‘Frozen Dead Guy Day’. This includes coffin races, a parade of decorated hearses, ‘Frozen Dead Guy’ lookalike competitions, tours of the shed where the frozen body is still stored, and all manner of ice and snow activities.

what pairs better with a good red than a mushroom dish? In 2008, Korean artist Jae Rhim Lee introduced the world to the mushroom body suit (or the Infinity Burial Suit).14 The stylish black catsuit is implanted with mushroom mycelium which consumes flesh and neutralises bodily toxins.

The average adult cremation releases approximately 190kg of CO2 into the atmosphere while more than 300kg of mercury is released every year due to the cremation of people with dental fillings12, and – to make things even more complicated – pacemakers have to be dug out or they explode in the ovens.

Here in the UK, and in several other European countries, we try to ameliorate this problem by re-using graves. In Germany and parts of Italy, your loved one’s grave is only rented for a varying number of years.

People have long struggled with reconciling the grief rituals around death with the practical realities that we’re all just meat.

good death means a good life. A life not full of unfulfilled dreams, or plans for the future that will never be realised.

spent nearly a year researching this book. In the process, I travelled to half a dozen different countries, visited twenty-three museums, conducted nearly forty inter views, and read more than a hundred books.