How Do People Afford It?
Contrary to popular belief, cryogenics isn’t just for the rich. Many middle class people have signed up for cryropreservation by taking out a term life insurance policy with the cryonics company listed as the beneficiary. In fact, some cryonics companies require you to have such insurance in place before they will accept you as a future customer. A 35 year old male in good health could get a policy to cover all cryropreservation costs for under $25/month, so it’s actually not as outrageous an indulgence as it might seem at first. What is outrageous is the possibility of waking up a billionaire!
A 401(k) plan for your frozen head
Assuming society doesn’t drastically change in the future, you’re still going to need some type of bartering mechanism to get by in day to day life. If that bartering mechanism is still money, and not, say, dirt, as it was in Kevin Costner’s masterpiece, Waterworld, what then? Well, if you open up a bank account before you’re frozen, you might just wake up a billionaire!
If you stay frozen for 500 years before technology advances to the point where your brain can be thawed and placed on either a robot body or a body regenerated from your DNA, that gives your money a lot of time to take advantage of compounding interest.. If your investments can outpace inflation by a mere 3% per year, when you’re reanimated, you can be rich beyond your wildest dreams. Assume you put $50,000 in the Frozen Head Fund in 2007 when your heart stops and your head is severed. When you’re reanimated in the year 2,507 you’re going to have over $130,000,000,000 in today’s dollars. That would most likely make you the richest person on the entire planet. You’ll be far behind the rest of society in both knowledge and social skills (the equivalent of a modern day caveman), but if you’re the richest person on the planet, will you really care?
Final Thoughts
Whatever you do, don’t die in mysterious circumstances! You’ll most likely be autopsied and your brain would be dissected to determine the cause of death. In that case? Game over. In a similar vein, don’t die in any way that causes serious injury to the brain, such as falling off a high structure, being in a car accident, getting Alzheimer’s disease, etc. To be safe, always wear a helmet, even when just walking down the street. Protecting your brain is what it is all about! Good luck and hope to see you in a thousand years!