You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News - Writers of Cracked dot Com [18]
However, while developing its Orion spacecraft, which will begin shuttling nondead astronauts to the international space station in 2015, NASA admitted to testing its landing systems on human cadavers. In fact, NASA’s been using crash test zombies since at least the 1990s, when Department of Defense- sponsored shuttle missions brought the head of a human cadaver along to test the effects of space radiation.
While NASA probably won’t be changing the motto of its space camp to “You’re more useful to us dead than alive,” for anyone reading a book that equates space shuttle exhaust with Anderson Cooper’s pubes, that’s probably not far from the truth.
4. HAVE SEX IN FRONT OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE
Back in 1994, a Polish man named Gunther von Hagens looked at the museum scene and realized something was missing. Namely, terrified, weeping children. Thus was born Body Worlds, an exhibit featuring corpses that had been stripped of their skin and pumped full of plastic to preserve the appearance of every internal organ and viscous fiber. Realizing he’d created an army of terrifying meat monsters, von Hagens decided to pose them in a variety of active positions to make the exhibit fun for the whole family. After 27 million spectators across the world flocked to see his cadavers posed to mimic everyday activities such as javelin throwing, in late 2009 von Hagens decided it was time to just make them bone already.
That’s why, if you die at exactly the right moment and donate your body to a sufficiently shady laboratory, you could pass from this mortal plane directly into the bone zone (medical term). While critics have denounced the exhibit as an affront to God, for those of us who spent the better part of our lives lobbying to have our gift for boning honored with a museum exhibit, there is finally hope.
3. SOLVE A MURDER
Body farms are outdoor research facilities that allow scientists to monitor decomposing corpses as they bloat and waste away in the sun for months on end. Essentially, it’s like summer at the Jersey Shore, except the purpose is to better inform law enforcement about the decomposition process (as opposed to nailing a half-literate hairdresser).
Body farms at the University of Tennessee, Western Carolina University, and Texas State University painstakingly chart the progress of cadavers as they decompose, providing critical information used to analyze homicide victims and helping to bring murderers to justice.
Most of us have a difficult enough time guessing who is the bad guy in a Law & Order episode (hint: It’s the pervy guy they interview first and hastily write off). Turns out that if you want to be the next Jack McCoy, all you have to do is lie around turning into Chester Copperpot.
2. DIE (AGAIN) FOR YOUR COUNTRY
Stepping on a land mine is generally a risky proposition for the living, but the dead are free to throw caution—and their limbs—to the wind. If you’ve ever wanted to be turned into human chili while making a noble sacrifice for your country, just slip a note saying so into your will.
In 2004, Tulane University found itself at the center of a media firestorm when it was revealed that seven people who had entrusted their cadavers to the Tulane science department had been blown up by the army to test land mine-resistant footwear.
A Santa Clara University professor wrote that the army used cadavers from donors who had no idea they would end up in a million bloody pieces thanks to a detonated mine. So if you donate your body and Uncle Sam gets a hankering to make it rain with your insides, you probably won’t have a say in the matter.
1. STAR IN A GEORGE CLOONEY MOVIE
Forget about taking acting classes or fellating midlevel studio executives—starring alongside the sexiest man in Hollywood is just one brain contusion away. That’s because Tilda Swinton isn’t the only pale corpse