During the coronavirus pandemic, Alcor has had to curtail in-person tours. We are currently arranging to offer virtual tours. When you book a tour, you will receive a link to view a video of a tour conducted by Dr. Max More, Alcor’s Ambassador & President Emeritus. During this video tour, many of your questions will be answered. However, you will have an opportunity to ask additional questions during or following the virtual tour.
We will likely revise the virtual tour, including creating a more technical version for those with more scientific and technically oriented questions. To help us provide you and other future virtual visitors with a maximally informative and useful tour, please send us your questions. Some of the questions that will be answered include:
Introduction:
- What kind of organization is Alcor?
- How long has it been in operation and what are the highlights of Alcor’s history?
- How many members and patients does Alcor have?
- Is cryonics unique or does it have anything in common with low-temperature surgery or freezing sperm or eggs?
- When was the first person frozen?
Standby, Stabilization, and Transport section:
- How does Alcor know when a member needs to be cryopreserved and how quickly can that happen?
- What procedures do you use to keep human tissues viable until you can cryogenically preserve them? Is it anything like CPR? Or like transporting organs for transplant?
- How soon must Alcor’s team get to the member after legal death? Is there a limit?
- Can you start the procedure before legal death?
Operating Room/Perfusion section:
- Doesn’t ice badly damage human cells? Or do you have a way of preventing that?
- Why do you have a CT scanner in the operating room?
- How does a brain-only or “neuro” case differ from a whole-body cryopreservation?
- Why do many members choose the neuro option?
Patient Care section:
- Are cryonics patients alive? Dead? Something else?
- How long can patients stay cryopreserved?
- Is it true that baseball great, Ted Williams, is one of your patients? Who else do you have who is famous? (Or why can’t you tell me?)
- Would you revive anyone before a solution to the problem of aging has been found?
Post-tour section:
- How much does all this cost, and can I pay for it with life insurance?
- Who will take care of me if I am revived?
- Will I have any money or be able to make an income? Is there any way to take my money with me and my loved ones?
- Can I ask to be revived only if my spouse/siblings/offspring/parents can be revived?
- What will the world be like if I am revived?
- When do you think people will be revived? What technologies will make that possible?
- Won’t there be too many people in the future already?
- What if I want to do this but my spouse/family/friends are against it?
- Why have so few people signed up to be cryopreserved?
- Why would I want to be cryopreserved rather than eaten by worms and bacteria or incinerated in a large oven?
- Is there any tension between cryonics and religions?
Technical questions, probably for a separate, optional section:
- You say you don’t really, literally freeze people, but instead “vitrify” them. What does that mean?
- Is it true that the brain dies after three minutes without oxygen?
- Why is it that we can cryopreserve skin, corneas, eggs, sperm, and heart valves and rewarm and implant them but we cannot yet revive whole humans or human brains?