It’s not science fiction – the small country town of Holbrook, 500km southwest of Sydney on the Hume Highway, is set to host Australia’s first cryonic facility.
The ABC is reporting Greater Hume Shire Council has voted 8 to one in favor of the facility, which will be built by Southern Cryonics.
Its ten investors, all cryonics supporters, have each put in $50,000 to get the project up and running.
Previously if Australians wanted to be frozen after death, they had to travel to the US or Russia.
The new facility will allow the frozen bodies to be stored in a warehouse on the outskirts of town until advances in medical technology allow for them to be revived.
Not your usual tourist attraction
So how much will it cost you to be brought back from the dead?
The procedure is estimated at $90,000, but most of this will go into investment funds to ensure no further payments are required.
And why have these city slickers chosen Holbrook (best known for its Submarine Museum pictured) as the location?
Its position on a major highway, reasonably safe from natural disaster and potential attack, was a key factor – and it’s across the road from the cemetery.
“We needed somewhere that was zoned for both cemetery use and mortuary use,” company Secretary Matt Fisher said.
Life after death?
Mr Fisher, a 34-year-old software developer, is one of the project’s investors, alongside 65-year-old Phil Roades, Executive Director of the Cryonics Association of Australasia and a former bio-medical researcher.
Mr Roades already convinced both of his parents to have their brains frozen after their deaths last year. “I twisted their arms basically,” he said. “Someone who only freezes their brain is possibly only doing it to preserve the information that’s in their brain.”
Mr Fisher also persuaded his father to undergo the same procedure, telling Lateline: “Well, it was the most I could possibly do to keep him around.”
The town is now on the hunt for a builder. A job to die for?
