Given the ubiquity of the phenomenon known as death, it is no surprise that people throughout the ages have gone to great lengths not only to describe it, but also to prescribe the proper way to approach it. This was the impetus behind a host of ancient funerary texts, including the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Bardo Thodol, and the lesser known Ars Moriendi, a medieval Christian book whose Latin title translates to "the Art of Dying Well."
If a philosopher were to attempt a guide to dying and the afterlife now—that is to say, in an age when death is increasingly described in some futurist circles more as a terminal illness than as the finality of finalities—where would he or she begin? To answer this question, I decided to go on a search for modernity’s antidote to death. That quest brought me to a non-descript building tucked away in a light-industrial area in Scottsdale, Arizona.
The building belongs to Alcor Life Extension Foundation, and behind the several inches of Kevlar and reinforced concrete that make up its walls, Alcor is home to 129 patients who are cryopreserved in vats of liquid nitrogen, waiting for the day when technology has advanced to the point that they can be revived to roam the Earth once more.
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-art-of-not-dying-or-being-frozen-until-you-can-come-back
