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The Cryonics Institute Offers a Chance at Immortality (Video)
Do you want to be frozen after you die, in hopes of being revived a century or two (or maybe ten) in the future? It can cost less than an electric car. That's what the Cryonics Institute (CI) offers. David Ettinger, today's interviewee, is both the son of CI founder Robert Ettinger and CI's lawyer. In this video, among other things, he talks about arrangements that were made for his father's demise, and how they were able to start the cryopreservation process almost immediately after he expired. Is Cryonics the best chance at immortality for those of us likely to die before the Singularity arrives, and gives all of us the tools we need to live forever? David Ettinger obviously thinks so. (This is Video #1 of 2. The second one is scheduled to run tomorrow. It's an interview with CI Director Andy Zawacki, who takes us into the facility where the frozen bodies are stored.)
usually they use a criofluid to suspend the whole system. Essentially your body is made to handle sodium, so they raise the salt content and then freeze you to below activation energy for all destructive reactions. This preserves your body from decay and locks it into a physical and chemical state that's non-destructive; however, resuming biological function is tricky. The reactions in the cells have to start back up again, and the salt levels in your blood need normalization; there needs to be oxygen supply and nutrient; and all macro-biology needs to resume (mainly heart beat and brain activity).
On the other hand, you'll find out immediately after you die if they have figured all of this out and not gone bankrupt. You'll wake up in the future. Medical care and insurance and longevity treatment covered for at least 2 years plus anything related to the cryo better be included, though.
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FYI: You can't be cryogenically frozen until you are legally dead.
How 'dead' do you want the organism to be?
Plenty of organisms can survive nontrivial periods of complete metabolic shutdown, combined with some amount of cellular damage, and rehydrate and go on without significant trouble. Tardigrades are probably the most charismatic ones (survives 10 days of unprotected exposure to spaceflight and looks like an adorable little alien bear!); but extremophilic bacteria are even tougher.
Even humans will (with odds lousy enough that you don't want to try it; but good enough that documentation is available) survive short periods of total circulatory shutdown or longer ones of inactivity in very cold water.
'Resurrection' of an organism in a more advanced state of damage (or an organism for which precise brain configuration is considered important) is likely more fundamentally problematic. Even if you had indistinguishable-from-magic nanobots and the option to rebuild atom by atom, if you don't have somebody's 'correct' neural state on file, there are any number of configurations that would work; but wouldn't be the person you are trying to revive.