Membership
We’re making cryonics accessible to everyone.
Have questions before deciding? Give us a call.
Medical team at your bedside, ready to start the process upon legal death
Whole body or neuro cryopreservation performed at our facilities
Patients are kept in secure, long-term cryogenic dewars at a consistent -196° C
All with the goal of your revival and reintegration into society.
Membership Dues
Dues are based on your age at signup.
$60/yr for each child family member.
Life Insurance
$250k coverage for a person age 25-50.
Insurance purchased from a licensed agent, not Alcor.
We recommend whole or universal life insurance.
How much does cryopreservation cost?
Most people pay for their cryopreservation through life insurance, which is what makes cryonics affordable for the average person. Hence, the actual out-of-pocket cost depends on your age and health and other factors at the time you buy the policy. To determine your own cost you would need to contact a life insurance agent. The minimum life insurance policy coverage (and the amount you would need to pay in cash if you were to get cryopreserved at Alcor today) is $200,000 for whole body cryopreservation or $80,000 for neuro cryopreservation. However, you should get a greater amount of coverage to allow for inflation between now and the time of your cryopreservation.
When will patients be revived?
That depends on when they are cryopreserved, the specific details of how well they are cryopreserved, and how rapidly future medical technologies, particularly molecular nanotechnology, are developed. Cryonics technology is always improving; it is better now than it was in 2000, which was better than it was in 1990, which in turn was much better than the crude methods used on the first cryonics patients in the late 1960s. Eventually a time will come when human suspended animation will be perfected. In other words, it will be possible to routinely turn people “off” and “on” for medical time travel, space travel and other purposes. As progress continues, it will then become possible to recover people who had been preserved at earlier times, when methods were less perfect, so greater degrees of injury resulted.
Some think it will take centuries before patients can be revived, while others think the accelerating pace of technological change might so rapidly transform our world that decades would suffice. Alcor is planning for however long it might take.
Who will revive the patients?
The short answer is “Alcor will revive them.”
The third item in Alcor’s mission statement is: “Eventually restore to health and reintegrate into society all patients in Alcor’s care.”
Reviving the patients is also required by Alcor’s contracts with members: “When, in Alcor’s best good faith judgement, it is determined that attempting revival is in the best interests of the Member in cryopreservation, Alcor shall attempt to revive and rehabilitate the Member.”
Reviving the patients is also a duty of the Alcor Patient Care Trusts: “At such time as Alcor deems that repair and revival of the Patients is feasible, the Trust shall expend whatever amounts of money are necessary to revive the Patients and reintroduce them to society, as long as on-going care of the Patients remaining in biostasis is not endangered. It is the intent of the Trust that such repair and revival proceed in such manner that ongoing Trust earnings reasonably can be predicted to provide for the eventual repair and revival of all Patients.”
The Trust documents also decree that the majority of Trustees have close relatives or significant others in cryopreservation at Alcor.
Financially, the Patient Care Trusts should grow in real value over time — compound interest should eventually produce sufficient assets to cover the costs of revival. At the same time, as technology progresses the cost of reviving patients should decrease over time. Eventually, the increasing funds available in the Trusts should be sufficient to pay the costs of reviving and reintegrating patients into society.
Socially, Alcor is a community. Some members of this community are alive and healthy, while others have been cryopreserved. This community forms an interconnected network of friendships and close ties. At any point in time the healthy members of this network have friends, relatives and loved ones in cryopreservation and will seek to revive them. Once revived, those members will in turn have other friends in cryopreservation, and they will in turn seek to revive them.
The plan is not for “them” to revive us. The plan is that we, the Alcor community, will revive ourselves.
Why haven’t more people signed up for cryonics?
People may refrain from signing up for cryonics because it’s not traditional, it costs money, they’re skeptical of anything they haven’t seen work, they’re afraid of what their friends might think, they live in denial of their own death, they don’t want to think about the subject, they procrastinate, they don’t like life well enough to want more of it, or they are afraid of a future in which they may be alienated from friends and family and a familiar social environment.
Typical Alcor members (if any Alcor member could be called “typical”) tend to be highly educated independent minded people who enjoy life and think cryonics has a reasonable chance of working. They pay for it with life insurance and think the future is likely to work out pretty well. They often have friends or relatives who are Alcor members. They expect Alcor to revive them using nanomedicine and expect to continue their lives with as much passion and joy as today — only with much more amazing technology.
Has anyone ever been revived?
Except for embryos, no human has ever been revived from temperatures far below freezing. Cryonics patients are cared for in the expectation that future technology, especially molecular nanotechnology, will be available to reverse damage associated with the cryonics process.
How soon after legal death must cryonics begin?
Cryonics procedures should ideally begin within the first one or two minutes after the heart stops, and preferably within 15 minutes. Longer delays place a greater burden on future technology to reverse injury and restore the brain to a healthy state, and make it more uncertain that the correct original state can be determined. Exactly when such restoration is no longer feasible is a matter of some debate and could be many hours. The greatest impact of delay is that it degrades the circulatory system, reducing the ability to circulate chemicals that reduce freezing injury. For further information, see the FAQ question “Doesn’t the brain die after 4 to 6 minutes without oxygen?,” the article “Cardiopulmonary Support in Cryonics,” and the “Cases without Cardiopulmonary Support” section of Alcor Procedures.
The most effective way of reducing delays and getting the highest quality cryopreservation is to relocate to cooperative hospice care near Alcor (see the FAQ question “What can I do to optimize my chances of being cryopreserved under good conditions?”).
Can I be cryopreserved before I legally die?
No. Current law does not allow freedom of choice in this matter. Under current law cryopreserved humans are legally dead. Actively making a person legally dead is a crime regardless of what that person’s wishes may be. Alcor must wait for an independent authority to declare that illness or injury has caused the heart to stop, that further medical care is not appropriate, and that therefore legal death has occurred. Only after that determination is made can the cryopreservation procedures legally begin.
What about aging and disease?
There is no point in prolonging life if the result will be illness and debilitation. People are now living longer, healthier lives than their grandparents, and their children will live longer still. Eventually, aging itself will be a treatable, reversible condition as medicine attains full control of the human body at the molecular level. By the time it becomes possible to revive cryonics patients, especially today’s cryonics patients, biological aging as we know it today will not exist. In the 19th century, 30% of people living in Paris died of “consumption.” Today almost no one in the industrialized world even knows what “consumption” is.