If you could live forever, would you be glad? Throughout history, money has allowed the elite to buy anything but salvation from death. Many super-rich people realize that they have spent their lives amassing wealth, but they have very little time to enjoy it. As a result, many of them are absolutely obsessed with finding a way to cheat death. The quest for eternal life is highly relevant today - especially in technology centers such as Silicon Valley.
As technology continues to grow at a frantic pace, many of the elite are absolutely confident that eternal life will someday be possible, and they are determined to stick around long enough to be part of this revolution.
One way some super-rich people are trying to extend their lives in the future is through the new science of cryogenics. Some of them freeze their entire body, while others only their brains …
The super-rich are freezing their brains for £ 80,000 ($ 100,000) in hopes of being reborn in just 200 years.
Cryogenics, which involves deep freezing the body down to -196 ° C (-321 ° F), is increasingly seen as a way to defeat death.
There are several companies currently performing this kind of “service” around the world. In total, several hundred people have already been frozen, several thousand more have signed up and are awaiting death.
And although no one has ever been successfully “brought back”, there is a very fervent belief that someday in the future it will be possible to return to life again and “experience a completely new life” …
One businessman believes that he will wake up in the future and experience a whole new life after transplanting his head onto another person's body.
Promotional video:
The Briton, who wanted to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the topic, says he "couldn't think of anything more exciting."
One of the largest cryogenic companies is The Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. She already stores 149 bodies, and in total more than 1000 "organs".
When death approaches, Alcor technology must be at hand to begin the freezing process …
Only after death has been officially announced can technicians begin packing the body in ice, attaching a “cardiopulmonary resuscitator” to get blood circulation.
They then inject 16 different drugs to protect the cells from crystallization.
There are currently 149 dead “patients” at the Alcor facility, including US baseball legend Ted Williams and the youngest person ever cryopreserved, Matheryn Naovaratpong, aged two, from Thailand.
Of course, this technology will never be available to everyone because it is very expensive.
So will we ever be able to have a small minority of "super-rich immortals" who rule over everyone else?
Probably not, but that won't stop the elite from continuing to strive for eternal life.
Cryogenics is one method, but it is not the only one. Transhumanists like Ray Kurzweil are absolutely convinced that Singularity will soon allow humans to live indefinitely, while Russian billionaire Dmitry Itskov wants to rip our brains out and put them in robots …
Inventor and futurist Ray “The Singularity is Nearby” Kurzweil, now Google's chief engineering officer, and Russian news tycoon billionaire Dmitry Itskov want to take our minds from analog to digital.
Kurzweil believes in a future in which tiny nanobots will float through our bloodstream, repairing and augmenting us at the molecular level, until our dependence on them makes us more machines than humans. Itskov has a less subtle approach: he wants to rip our brains out of our bodies and put them in robotic avatars - and he wants to be able to do that by 2025.
To you and me, all this talk may seem like it comes from a madhouse, but these wealthy elites really do believe it.
And in places like Silicon Valley, huge amounts of money are poured into the search for eternal life …
Larry Ellison, the eccentric co-founder of the Oracle software conglomerate, donates hundreds of thousands of dollars to life extension therapy each year. “I don't understand how anyone can be here and then not be here,” he says. We're not sure if Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and informal technology adviser to U. S. President Donald Trump, actually transfused blood from young people in search of eternal youth, but he definitely beats old age. “I've always had this really strong feeling that death was a horrible, horrible thing,” he told the Washington Post, reflecting on the millions of dollars he has donated to research on aging.
Without a doubt, there are ways to extend our lives. Proper nutrition and regular exercise are a few of them. But very few people ever step over 100 years old, and the maximum age that anyone gets to 120.
We are here only for a limited time, and this is what the greatest thinkers have always struggled with throughout the history of mankind. And despite all our advanced technology, we still haven't figured out a way to cheat death, although the smart ones in Silicon Valley will inevitably give it their best chance. Many of them will believe in cryogenics, transhumanism, or put their brains into robots, but eventually they will find that their faith has been lost.
