Cryonics offers human beings a chance to return from the dead

A dying 14 year old teenage girl was recently guaranteed her wish by the high court in London to have her body cryogenically frozen in the hope that she can be brought back to life at a later time. Cryonics, if you didn’t know, is the process of preserving the body — or parts of the body — at extremely cold temperatures (think -196°C) with the hopes of reviving it at a later date. Those who submit to the process are essentially hoping to cheat death, and essentially experience a sort of immortality.

According to the Cryonics Institute, as soon as possible after a legal death, a member patient is infused with a substance to prevent ice from forming. They are then cooled to a chilling temperature where physical decay essentially stops. From there the member patient is maintained indefinitely in cryostasis or otherwise stored in liquid nitrogen. There are only three major facilities across the globe - two in the US and KrioRus, a Russian centre on the outskirts of Moscow. While the concept has never become mainstream, the number of people choosing to sign up is steadily increasing every year. There are now nearly 300 cryogenically frozen individuals in the US, another 50 in Russia.