How Will You Deal With The Body Of A Dead Loved One During A Societal Collapse?

Regular burial will not be possible in a collapse situation

Following on from the articles I wrote earlier this week discussing the moral dilemmas we will all face in the event of a societal collapse I have come to the conclusion that most of us think a good deal about the deaths that will follow such an event, but we rarely consider how to deal with the bodies.

I am not talking about the mass of corpses lying in the street, though that will be a concern. I am talking about the death of a family member or one of your survival group.

The World Health Organization has an article about general body disposal in an emergency. It discusses the emergency teams that will comb neighborhoods, the specialists who will deal with the bodies and yet more specialists that will deal with the mental trauma that is caused by viewing such things.

No mention is made of what happens if those teams aren’t around, if they too have been caught up in the calamity that is affecting the rest of us.

They say that there are only negligible health risks posed by corpses piling up in the streets. Really? You can read the article here.

For a real life scenario where there are no specialist teams, and where there are no medical experts waiting to come and help you with the trauma you have suffered Body Disposal Post Collapse would be a good starting point,

Now, back to the point of this article, the death of someone close after a societal collapse.

It’s going to happen, at some point someone in our family or survival group is going to die. Have you considered how you will deal with this?

Although any of the methods mentioned in Body Disposal Post Collapse will work they may not be the best methods of dealing with the body of someone you love. The death of a family member is at the best of times traumatic and not being able to give them the funeral they expected, or deserved is going to make it even more so.

It will be difficult dealing with your grief, and the grief of the rest of the family at the same time as coping with all the life or death issues that a total collapse will force upon us.

You need to consider this before an event takes place.

How you deal with it will depend on your situation. Are you in an apartment? Do you have acres of land? Even the weather will play a part, it’s impossible to dig in frozen ground.

Once again there is no one size fits all answer to this problem, there are too many variables for that. As unpleasant as it is you need to think carefully about your situation and environment and list how you would deal with the issue and the materials that you would need to do so.

Putting together a box for your ‘burial kit’ would be a good idea and means that you are not having to go through piles of preps to find what you need. We all like to think we are tough, but we will be affected, and anything you can do now to lessen the trauma and expedite a speedy solution is worthwhile. Dealing with the situation swiftly and competently will allow the family/group to move on together knowing they have done the best they can in the circumstances they find themselves in.

We all know that children are going to suffer greatly in a collapse. Personally I think that wherever possible they should be involved with proceedings should someone close to them die. To shut them out of it tends to leave them wondering what happened and fearful that they too will one day just vanish without a trace.

It stands to reason that explanation and involvement will not be possible in all cases. Where choices are limited and the arrangements may be as traumatic as the death itself a blatant lie would probably be far kinder to the young ones left behind.

In the sanitized and homogenized world we live in we normally hand the job of dealing with the deceased to others. In a collapse situation that will not be the case. No matter who you are and where you live dealing with a body is something you are going to have to face. Thinking about it before the event won’t take away the grief, but a little forward planning can help greatly in dealing with the aftermath.