Rich People Freeze Themselves, and Fortunes, for Future Revival

Sharing of the story and the questions it presents. – Molly

“Estate attorneys are creating trusts aimed at extending wealth until people who get cryonically preserved can be revived, even if it’s hundreds of years later. These revival trusts are an emerging area of law built on a tower of assumptions. Still, they’re being taken seriously enough to attract true believers and merit discussion at industry conferences.

“The idea of cryopreservation has gone from crackpot to merely eccentric,” said Mark House, an estate lawyer who works with Scottsdale, Ariz.-based [Alcor Life Extension Foundation](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-12-19/see-inside-alcor-life-extension-s-cryogenics-facility-in-arizona), the world’s largest cryonics facility with 1,400 members and about 230 people already frozen. “Now that it’s eccentric, it’s kind of in vogue to be interested in it.”

By one estimate, about 5,500 people are planning for cryogenic preservation. House estimates he’s worked with about 100 such people.

He and others are trying to answer questions that at times seem more like prompts in a philosophy class.

Can money live indefinitely?

Are you dead if your body is cryonically preserved?

Are you considered revived if you have only your brain?

And if you’re revived, are you the same person?”

[Read more of the story here. ](https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-tax-report/rich-people-freeze-themselves-and-fortunes-for-future-revival?utm_source=reddit.com&utm_medium=taxdesk)

I read a [good sci fi novel about the this topic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryoburn) a while back. The premise is:

1.) A singular planet has aggregated all if these *Contracts*(i.e. the frozen people and their financial trusts) into a couple of companies and it’s the planets biggest Industry.

2.) The diseases they suffered from were often cured a long time ago but with no living relatives left to make the revival call, the scammy companies have no motivation to uncorked them and lose the trust assets. They bleed the trusts dry THEN the people are revived and kicked out onto the streets.

3.) Theses ‘Time Travelers’ have no immediate living family and no modern education. Their existence is not unique and their era is well documented so society has no purpose for them. They just aggregate into larger and larger homeless camp. Sad.

I get the idea and why to do this but what they don’t understand yet is that they’ll wake up in a world that is not their own. A world where everyone they knew died, a world that has cultures different than theirs and a world that has laws that they’ll probably hate and will be unable to accept.