Wealthy 'Cryonauts' Put Assets on Ice

Carl Bialik writes "'You can't take it with you. So Arizona resort operator David Pizer has a plan to come back and get it,' the Wall Street Journal reports. Pizer is one of about about 1,000 members of the "cryonics" movement who plan to put their bodies on ice soon after death so that in the future, medical advances can save them. A small, wealthy subset of these cryonauts is exploring ways to leave their money to themselves. 'With the help of an estate planner, Mr. Pizer has created legal arrangements for a financial trust that will manage his roughly $10 million in land and stock holdings until he is re-animated,' the Journal reports. 'Mr. Pizer says that with his money earning interest while he is frozen, he could wake up in 100 years the richest man in the world.'"

Comments

STTNG

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Reminds me of the Star Trek Next Generation episode where they wake up people who were frozen. The doc cured them, and one guy wanted to check on his stocks. They thought he was nuts, because why would you need stocks when you could just ask the replicator for anything you wanted?

Re:STTNG

[MBGMorden]

Unfortuneatly for our "real" situation makers of everything from candy bars to bath soap would cry foul if replicators were ever invented. "Pirates" would be trading templates for items all over the place, but the technology would be villified beyond belief.

Re:You don't have to be rich.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

Perhaps rich people are the ones worrying about preserving their assets for the future, but I don't want people to get the impression that you have to be rich to be a cryonicist.

Maybe not, but the OP has a point: if and when you wake up, will it do you much good to wake up a) broke, and b) without a marketable skill? You'll be about as useful to the new society as a buggy driver is to ours. Worse, you'll probably have a huge medical bill--while you've paid for the suspension (although how can they guarantee the rate?) you couldn't have possibly paid for the cure that will bring you back, as they can't at this point know how expensive it'll be to give you the cure, since it doesn't exist.

Really, that sounds great. You might wake up someday, but you'll be broke, jobless, a relative idiot, nowhere to live, no friends or family, and maybe will have a crushing medical bill. Thanks, but I think I might prefer to stay dead.