So a film is set in the year 2022 it is scarily accurate to this bill which just passed earlier where the use of alkaline hydrolysis to cremate human remains and providing an exemption from emergency rule procedures or requests. This is when they cremate the body with water. Under this bill, a person may use the process of alkaline hydrolysis to cremate human remains only if the person is registered as a crematory authority by the Department of Safety and Professional Services.
Alkaline hydrolysis is a process that uses water, alkaline chemicals, pressure, and heat to reduce human remains for final disposition. The bill places the use of alkaline hydrolysis for cremating human remains under generally the same requirements that apply under current law to conventional cremation.
Now if this doesn’t sound like something you haven’t heard before but sound familiar it’s because in both “The Matrix” and “SOYLENT GREEN” this method is used. Now in the movie “The Matrix” the liquid remains of people are used to feed new born people like NEO in the pods. Now it’s been 20 years since we watched Neo take the red pill and follow the white rabbit beyond the digital frontier into a world of superpowers, sentient machines, and existential crisis.
Leaving the world he’d known behind, Neo discovers he is not really a human being living in the early 21st century. Instead, he is a battery, an energy source for the vast machine civilization ruling the world. The world he knows, the one where he has a job and acquaintances, is little more than a vast simulation meant to keep his mind occupied while his body cranks out juice for an army of robots and computer programs.
But the premise of “SOYLENT GREEN” is about overpopulation but when you see and hear the plot unfolding you see how close to reality this film is now becoming. Forget that the movie was made in 1972 and yes it’s got very dated technology both in how the movie looks, and the tech they have in the actual movie but it’s the idea which is how we can see the movie being like what is happening here with this bill they passed, and notice how the characters are forced to live, how the big corporations run everything and most importantly, how the rich fence themselves off from the poor struggling masses. There is one all too brief scene set in a ‘tree museum’ where the casual indifference to nature is thrown into sharp relief.
The main character is a cop trying to get answers to a mafia style killing of a company executive. The man has been executed to prevent him from reveling the truth about Soylent Green; which we eventually discover is made from humans (the ultimate in recycling). Consequently this film is probably more relevant today than it was when it was released (1972) and even the chilling resolution to rioters and protesters rings true today. At the end Charlton Heston screams “Soylent Green is people” but nowadays a more telling ending would be to shout “its too late, we’re all doomed”
The bill, Senate Bill 228, authorizes a practice called alkaline hydrolysis, or “water cremation,” which liquifies the human body using a mixture of water, heat, and chemical agents, leaving only bones behind. The liquid is then dumped into the sewage system or boiled off, and bones can be crushed and deposited in an urn. The Republican-led Senate passed the legislation without debate over the objection of the Catholic bishops of Wisconsin. “Catholic teaching is centered on the life and dignity of the human person because each person is created in the image and likeness of God,” Kim Vercauteren, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, wrote to the senate health committee. “The heart, mind, flesh, and bones of a human person are all elements of a unique creation, down to the DNA, which must be honored even after death.”
“Our concern is that with alkaline hydrolysis, remains are washed into a wastewater system as though the body created by God never existed,” Vercauteren added. “Wastewater does not honor the sacredness of the body, nor does it allow the grieving to honor the dead after disposition.” Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point, who sponsored SB 228, argued for the measure as a means to promote “consumer choice.” At a hearing for the bill, he said that “Wisconsin funeral directors are receiving more and more requests for flameless or water cremation.” “I believe in allowing consumers choices. And if a consumer chooses flameless cremation, I would like to empower Wisconsin funeral directors the means to fulfill that choice,” Testin said.
Catholic leaders have sternly rejected that reasoning. “Respect and reverence for human bodies must not be sacrificed for a cheaper, quicker disposition,” the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops said two years ago, after attempts to authorize alkaline hydrolysis were introduced in the Lone Star State. “We must treat the remains of all human beings, no matter how long they lived or how they died, with dignity, charity, and respect. Chemical digestion of the human body fails to follow this simple principle,” the bishops said, likening the practice to dumping aborted babies down drains. Clergymen across the United States have similarly spoken out against “water cremation” and other “alternative” disposition methods, including in Missouri, Ohio, and Washington. Around 20 states nevertheless have approved alkaline hydrolysis in recent years.
According to the Cremation Association of North America (CANA), the practice involves a pressurized vat that typically can hold around 100 gallons of liquid. Deceased people placed in the chamber can be heated at up to 302 degrees and bathed in lye, an industrial chemical agent used as a drain cleaner, to induce rapid decomposition.