What Happens to a Body During Cremation?

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- Hello deathlings. Today we're returning to where my career began, really, which is describing every visceral, macabre detail of a cremation. If you've never seen one of my videos before and just Googled is cremation right for me? Hi, hello, welcome. Don't worry, I'm actually pretty good at this. This video is the first in what I hope is a series about what happens to an average, everyday corpse both procedurally and scientifically in different postmortem scenarios. Let us begin. Most crematories will require that a person be cremated in some kind of container. You may have your eye on that $5,000 lacquered mahogany Kylie Jenner Burper Casket, but while that style may work for burial it's not a good match for the cremation machine. Cremation-specific caskets are typically pine, plywood, or most commonly, a cardboard alternative container. Which will burn up real nice. Poof. Before a body goes into the cremation machine, jewelry is usually taken off and medical devices like pacemakers, prosthetics, or silicone implants are removed from the body. Why? Because pacemaker batteries can explode and prosthetics and breast implants melt into sticky goo that some poor crematory worker has to scrape up. I think my what happens to breast implants during a cremation video is still my most popular video because, the internet. After all the exploding and melting goodies have been removed from a corpse, a metal tag, a lot like a dog tag, will be put in with the corpse and stay with it from start to finish, so the remains can always be identifiable. This is how we know that we're giving you grandma's remains, not Bob's remains. Who is Bob? You don't know him, which is exactly the point. Now we commence the cremation. Cremation of a body takes place in the first of two chambers. The primary chamber, where the body goes, can reach temperatures of 1800 to 2000 degrees fahrenheit, or 900 degrees Celsius. In this brick and cement lined mini inferno, the soft tissues of the body incinerate and vaporize, reducing to chunks of brittle bone and some ash. This takes one to two hours. But what happens during that one to two hours behind that big metal door? Every 10 minutes or so in the machine, the body undergoes some pretty intense changes on its way to complete cremation. Would you like to know what they are? Gather round the children. Or don't, this is actually pretty intense. About 10 minutes in. Exposed to the flame, the muscles, skin, organs, and fat begin to char, sizzle, and shrink. Fun fact, if the the corpse is incinerated before it's muscle tissue has decomposed too much, it's limbs may contract, hands in a fist, arms bent, head tilted like a boxer. But it doesn't sit straight up, myth. At the 20 minute mark. Most of the soft tissue has burned off the face and skull, save for the cheeks. Ribs are beginning to show, and in the thoracic and abdominal region jets of liquid may spray from tears in the body cavity. This is the liquids in the body aggressively evaporating, and the abdominal organs dehydrate and shrink. After 30 minutes. The calvaria or skull cap is beginning to come apart from the rest of the skull, boiling liquid pours from the fractures, and the facial bones have almost no tissue left on them. The bones of the chest are mostly exposed, with the ribs bending inward and outward, the organs of the abdomen continue to shrink, and the arms and legs are mostly free of soft tissue if not completely consumed by the flames. At the 40 minute mark. The calvaria has completely come off now, exposing a blackened brain, and the bones of the face have mostly disintegrated. The ribs, entirely exposed, twist and bend severely. Abdominal organs like the spleen look like blackened sponges, and the lower part of the arms are all but gone. At 50 minutes. What remains of the internal abdominal organs are shriveled and look spongey, the thighs are nothing but stumps, and the arms are gone. The spinal column is more or less on its own now and is coming apart. At the 60 minute mark and beyond. If the torso hasn't already broken apart, it probably does that now. The skull is nothing but bone fragments, the internal organs are nothing but ash, and the pelvis is consumed by flames. While all that tissue and bone is being burnt in the primary chamber, the gases and particulate created by the cremation go into a secondary chamber where they are subjected to temperatures of around 1700 degrees fahrenheit. This second chamber is to reduce smoke, odor, and emissions before they are released into the atmosphere. After the body is finished burning, the cremated remains are allowed to cool before they are swept by a crematory operator into what looks like a large cookie tray. At this point the remains are nothing but three to five pounds of fragile, inorganic bone fragments and some ash. A powerful magnet is run over the bones and ash to pick up any metal that made it through the cremation, then the cremated remains are ground into the powdery substance we recognize as cremated remains in what's called a cremulator. From there the cremated remains are placed in a container or urn for the cremated individual's friends or family to pick up and do with as they wish. And that's more or less how it's done. From cold corpse to hot bones, those are the basics of cremation. What kind of body disposition scenario, situation would you like to know about? This video was made with generous donations from death enthusiasts just like you. Patrons like, Murray M. Moss, Felicia Kemp Philip Imbesi, Alison Biles, Natalie Cooper, Andrew Redmayne. ♪ Bentham's head ♪
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Channel: Ask A Mortician
Views: 1,195,562
Rating: 4.8836622 out of 5
Keywords: Cremation, Machine, Ashes, Urn, Funeral Home, Crematory, Behind the Scenes, Body, Science, Forensics, Caitlin Doughty, Ask a Mortician
Id: 6TSFX-hFgIk
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 6min 43sec (403 seconds)
Published: Fri Apr 13 2018
Reddit Comments

Nice! Great vid!

👍︎︎ 1 👤︎︎ u/RedditMayne 📅︎︎ Apr 13 2018 🗫︎ replies
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