Dying UK girl convinces judge to let her body be frozen

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is an interesting origin for a Traveller character, just taking from this real life example.
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/11/17/dying-uk-girl-convinces-judge-to-let-her-body-be-frozen.html

Now what happens to a character like this that is revived in the Traveller era? Lets say these patients are buried on Titan, where the temperature is low enough to maintain their cryonic state indefinitely, and then events happen such as the Interstellar War, there is much chaos that follows and those bodies are forgotten about for a time, until they are eventually rediscovered in the year 1102 Imperial. There was also a World War I vet who died in 1966, he is the oldest cryonics client ever! So basically any character who died from 1966 to the present could end up in a Traveller setting. What do you think of the adventure possibilities for this?

 

[Rick]

They're frozen only after they have already died. Please show me in any of the OTU books where there is a drug, procedure or process to 'cure' being dead.

I'd say the only adventure possibility would be a frozen zombie outbreak on Titan. :twisted:

 

[Spartan159]

Tech Level 14+ Autodoc?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

They're frozen only after they have already died. Please show me in any of the OTU books where there is a drug, procedure or process to 'cure' being dead.

I'd say the only adventure possibility would be a frozen zombie outbreak on Titan. :twisted:

There are different levels of dead. If you have all the information that was in one's brain, then a person could theoretically be brought back to life. Tech Level 16 has Matter Transporters.

The world Darrian 0607 A463955-G Poor, Non-agricultural G Darrian Subsector, Spinward Marches, has tech level 16. You know how a transporter works, there are two parts the scanner, which breaks down the object into its atomic components, and the replicator which reassembles them. So we put a computer between the two parts of this, we have two scanners, one to break down the frozen dead body, the other to break down healthy human cells, the computer substitutes the health human cells for the frozen dead cells it has just scanned and then reassembles the human body putting the health human cells in its place. The cellular arrangements and connections in th human body, particularly of the brain is what makes a person who he is. those cellular arrangements and connections are the information representing the memories and personality of that deceased person, and since all the cells are now alive, so is he or she. That is the theory of how a frozen dead person might be brought back to life in the Traveller setting.

 

[Rick]

Tech Level 14+ Autodoc?

Possibly, if the unproven freezing techniques used today actually worked. That's a big 'if', positively monumental in fact. Otherwise, the time delay is somewhat beyond the 15 mins required.

 

[Rick]

They're frozen only after they have already died. Please show me in any of the OTU books where there is a drug, procedure or process to 'cure' being dead.

I'd say the only adventure possibility would be a frozen zombie outbreak on Titan. :twisted:

There are different levels of dead. If you have all the information that was in one's brain, then a person could theoretically be brought back to life. Tech Level 16 has Matter Transporters.

The world Darrian 0607 A463955-G Poor, Non-agricultural G Darrian Subsector, Spinward Marches, has tech level 16. You know how a transporter works, there are two parts the scanner, which breaks down the object into its atomic components, and the replicator which reassembles them. So we put a computer between the two parts of this, we have two scanners, one to break down the frozen dead body, the other to break down healthy human cells, the computer substitutes the health human cells for the frozen dead cells it has just scanned and then reassembles the human body putting the health human cells in its place. The cellular arrangements and connections in the human body, particularly of the brain is what makes a person who he is. those cellular arrangements and connections are the information representing the memories and personality of that deceased person, and since all the cells are now alive, so is he or she. That is the theory of how a frozen dead person might be brought back to life in the Traveller setting.

You say alive, I say living vegetable. See, I don't think that assembling the hardware required and switching it on would make a dead person alive again - the brain is more than just the hardware, the electrical impulses that travel along the neural pathways are our memories and thoughts; in cases where a person has effectively died for a few minutes, the brain is often either badly damaged (permanent memory loss and altered personality) or completely non-functional. If your idea was correct, reviving people would be a doddle, 100% success rate - as it is, it isn't that easy at all.

 

[Condottiere]

Theseus's paradox.

You could make a brain recording or data dump, or at our level of technology, Google glass that records everything you saw, and reintegrate that when the body is revised, and presumably the brain and cells regenerated, but is it still the same person?

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

They're frozen only after they have already died. Please show me in any of the OTU books where there is a drug, procedure or process to 'cure' being dead.

I'd say the only adventure possibility would be a frozen zombie outbreak on Titan. :twisted:

There are different levels of dead. If you have all the information that was in one's brain, then a person could theoretically be brought back to life. Tech Level 16 has Matter Transporters.

The world Darrian 0607 A463955-G Poor, Non-agricultural G Darrian Subsector, Spinward Marches, has tech level 16. You know how a transporter works, there are two parts the scanner, which breaks down the object into its atomic components, and the replicator which reassembles them. So we put a computer between the two parts of this, we have two scanners, one to break down the frozen dead body, the other to break down healthy human cells, the computer substitutes the health human cells for the frozen dead cells it has just scanned and then reassembles the human body putting the health human cells in its place. The cellular arrangements and connections in the human body, particularly of the brain is what makes a person who he is. those cellular arrangements and connections are the information representing the memories and personality of that deceased person, and since all the cells are now alive, so is he or she. That is the theory of how a frozen dead person might be brought back to life in the Traveller setting.

You say alive, I say living vegetable. See, I don't think that assembling the hardware required and switching it on would make a dead person alive again - the brain is more than just the hardware, the electrical impulses that travel along the neural pathways are our memories and thoughts; in cases where a person has effectively died for a few minutes, the brain is often either badly damaged (permanent memory loss and altered personality) or completely non-functional. If your idea was correct, reviving people would be a doddle, 100% success rate - as it is, it isn't that easy at all.

How do you suppose a Darrian Transporter works? I suppose tearing someone apart atom by atom would qualify as killing someone, doesn't it?

 

[Spartan159]

Just out of curiosity, where are these Darrien Transporters anyway? I thought matter transmission was a lot higher than TL G.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Just out of curiosity, where are these Darrien Transporters anyway? I thought matter transmission was a lot higher than TL G.

The Classic Book Worlds has a technology table which lists matter transporters as Tech Level 16, and the Spinward Marches supplement lists Darrian as Tech Level 16, due to various artifacts left over from before its fall. I assume some working transporters may be found. Since the word "Transporter" is used and not teleporter, I assume they work in a war similar to the ones in Star Trek. If there is a transporter to be found, that is where one may be dug up.

 

[Rick]

Just out of curiosity, where are these Darrien Transporters anyway? I thought matter transmission was a lot higher than TL G.

The Classic Book Worlds has a technology table which lists matter transporters as Tech Level 16, and the Spinward Marches supplement lists Darrian as Tech Level 16, due to various artifacts left over from before its fall. I assume some working transporters may be found. Since the word "Transporter" is used and not teleporter, I assume they work in a war similar to the ones in Star Trek. If there is a transporter to be found, that is where one may be dug up.

Yes, TL16 would be the very first stage at which matter could be transported over distance and still retain its form at the other end; an apple would look like an apple, a burger would look like a burger. However, I would guess the stage at which living matter would be transported and still retain all cognitive function, with no loss of knowledge, skills or personality would be a great deal higher - transporting a lump of basic matter across a distance does not equate to being able to do the same with a living being. Classic 'Secrets of the Ancients' indicates that their form of living being teleportation (circumvention) would be available at TL 25; the fact that the Ancients TL is higher than 35 would seem to indicate that the other forms of living being teleportation would be higher still.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Just out of curiosity, where are these Darrien Transporters anyway? I thought matter transmission was a lot higher than TL G.

The Classic Book Worlds has a technology table which lists matter transporters as Tech Level 16, and the Spinward Marches supplement lists Darrian as Tech Level 16, due to various artifacts left over from before its fall. I assume some working transporters may be found. Since the word "Transporter" is used and not teleporter, I assume they work in a war similar to the ones in Star Trek. If there is a transporter to be found, that is where one may be dug up.

Yes, TL16 would be the very first stage at which matter could be transported over distance and still retain its form at the other end; an apple would look like an apple, a burger would look like a burger. However, I would guess the stage at which living matter would be transported and still retain all cognitive function, with no loss of knowledge, skills or personality would be a great deal higher - transporting a lump of basic matter across a distance does not equate to being able to do the same with a living being. Classic 'Secrets of the Ancients' indicates that their form of living being teleportation (circumvention) would be available at TL 25; the fact that the Ancients TL is higher than 35 would seem to indicate that the other forms of living being teleportation would be higher still.

Sounds like tech level inflation. The difference between tech level 25 and tech level 16 is the same as tech level 15 and tech level 6. The problem is there is not much happening from tech levels 16, 17, 18, and 19, they are basically the same tech level and its hard to tell the difference between them if there is not much change between one tech level and the next. I think they are just padding the tech levels above common levels to make it sound impressive. I really don't think Star Trek is tech level 25! I also don't think there is likely to be 9 tech levels of prototyping, such as having useless laboratory curiosity for 9 tech levels and no noticeable improvements. I would also note that a 3-d printer counts as a "matter transporter" under your definition, since you can't really transport living things with that either.

 

[Rick]

Sounds like tech level inflation. The difference between tech level 25 and tech level 16 is the same as tech level 15 and tech level 6. The problem is there is not much happening from tech levels 16, 17, 18, and 19, they are basically the same tech level and its hard to tell the difference between them if there is not much change between one tech level and the next. I think they are just padding the tech levels above common levels to make it sound impressive. I really don't think Star Trek is tech level 25! I also don't think there is likely to be 9 tech levels of prototyping, such as having useless laboratory curiosity for 9 tech levels and no noticeable improvements. I would also note that a 3-d printer counts as a "matter transporter" under your definition, since you can't really transport living things with that either.

You were the one that started mentioning what Traveller mentioned about Teleportation, you can hardly cry foul now! As to 3d printers, they do not create something that is like the original, it is basically a 3d model of an object in plastic, hardly the same thing. Even in Star Trek there is a difference between the personnel transporters (living beings) and cargo transporters (non-living). Speaking of Star Trek, it is not Traveller - trying to apply a circumstance from outside the OTU to a Traveller situation is futile; some things that Traveller has at a low TL, Star Trek or BSG or B5 has at a high TL and so on (I could use the argument that the Vorlons, with a higher TL than most Traveller races, also haven't invented an effective teleporter). And then there's also the argument that Star Trek only invented the transporter because they didn't have the budget originally to have a shuttle set, model and landing sequence, so a very bad example to use really.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Sounds like tech level inflation. The difference between tech level 25 and tech level 16 is the same as tech level 15 and tech level 6. The problem is there is not much happening from tech levels 16, 17, 18, and 19, they are basically the same tech level and its hard to tell the difference between them if there is not much change between one tech level and the next. I think they are just padding the tech levels above common levels to make it sound impressive. I really don't think Star Trek is tech level 25! I also don't think there is likely to be 9 tech levels of prototyping, such as having useless laboratory curiosity for 9 tech levels and no noticeable improvements. I would also note that a 3-d printer counts as a "matter transporter" under your definition, since you can't really transport living things with that either.

You were the one that started mentioning what Traveller mentioned about Teleportation, you can hardly cry foul now! As to 3d printers, they do not create something that is like the original, it is basically a 3d model of an object in plastic, hardly the same thing. Even in Star Trek there is a difference between the personnel transporters (living beings) and cargo transporters (non-living). Speaking of Star Trek, it is not Traveller - trying to apply a circumstance from outside the OTU to a Traveller situation is futile; some things that Traveller has at a low TL, Star Trek or BSG or B5 has at a high TL and so on (I could use the argument that the Vorlons, with a higher TL than most Traveller races, also haven't invented an effective teleporter). And then there's also the argument that Star Trek only invented the transporter because they didn't have the budget originally to have a shuttle set, model and landing sequence, so a very bad example to use really.

Still that is a huge spread, 9 tech levels between the first prototype of something to something that finally works as advertised. The Classic Book 3: Worlds and Adventures has two technological tables on page 14 and 15, it lists "matter transport" at tech level 16, at the time this book was published in 1977, the only Star Trek that existed was the classic television series, it was understood back then that "matter transport" means you can transport both living and nonliving objects, the only transporters you actually saw in the series was personal transporters. The Next Generation introduced the concept of cargo transporters, and even then they sometimes were used to transport people. It was just that the personal transporters were not of the proper dimensions to transport bulk cargo, that was the main difference. Now what would an early transporter look like?

The early ones would require a direct line of site, you have a dematerializer/transmitter and a receiver/materializer, they are two chambers. One steps into the dematerializer/transmitter and one closes the door. the dematerializer dematerializes everything in that chamber, and in the process destroys whatever objects were within while extracting positioning information of every atom in there, an x-ray laser that transmits all the positioning information to the receiver/materializer which then receives the information and rematerializes every object that was in the dematerializer chamber including air. the subject of the transportation then opens the door to the chamber and steps outside. This is what I would regard as a tech level 16 Transporter.

Tech level 17 has two transporter chambers that go in both direction, the dematerialize is also the materializer, the transmitter is also a receiver, this reduces the amount of equipment one needs to bring aboard starships and space stations.

Tech level 18 allows one to beam down to a planet's surface without a receiver being in position, one still requires a direct line to site to beam down, beaming up is still not possible, one requires a separate transporter to beam back up to a ship, but one can't beam inside of a ship without a receiver, one can bam somebody onto the outside of the ship's hull, one can beam into space, materialization occurs at the focus point of the transporter beam.

Tech level 19 is the same as tech level 18, but now you can beam up as well as beam down, you don't need a receiving chamber in either direction, but their is a chance of misbeaming, such as beaming into a solid object unless one end of the transporter beam is at a receiving platform. Direct line of site is still required.

Tech level 20, it is now possible to beam through unshielded ship's hulls and the walls of space stations and a certain distance though rock, a matter of a few meters at most!

 

[Rick]

You might want to re-read the section in the classic 'secrets of the ancients' book. They give 3 types of matter transportation: digitising an object, transmitting by a data stream, then re materialising at the other end (which might be similar to the postulated quantum teleportation idea), the same, but by energy stream transfer (possibly similar to the Stargate idea), or sidestepping the whole system by having a series of paired portals where you physically step from one point to another (connecting 2 points in space, similarly to a wormhole or folded space, but with no actual distance between the 2 points).

Considering that we are already part way towards quantum teleportation as a communications device, this might be the first form of matter transporter to be developed - I would think at TL16, basic raw materials could be transported, no complex structures or molecules and no living beings, then as the TL increased, more efficient forms of data compression would be developed, enabling more complex forms to be transported (think of it like the development of digitising a picture - it has taken decades to get to the point where we can compress a complex picture down into something that can be sent quickly by email, etc) and more data to be sent at the same rate. I think it would be a gradual process; not an all or nothing, one step to full instant teleportation of everything.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

You might want to re-read the section in the classic 'secrets of the ancients' book. They give 3 types of matter transportation: digitising an object, transmitting by a data stream, then re materialising at the other end (which might be similar to the postulated quantum teleportation idea), the same, but by energy stream transfer (possibly similar to the Stargate idea), or sidestepping the whole system by having a series of paired portals where you physically step from one point to another (connecting 2 points in space, similarly to a wormhole or folded space, but with no actual distance between the 2 points).

Considering that we are already part way towards quantum teleportation as a communications device, this might be the first form of matter transporter to be developed - I would think at TL16, basic raw materials could be transported, no complex structures or molecules and no living beings, then as the TL increased, more efficient forms of data compression would be developed, enabling more complex forms to be transported (think of it like the development of digitising a picture - it has taken decades to get to the point where we can compress a complex picture down into something that can be sent quickly by email, etc) and more data to be sent at the same rate. I think it would be a gradual process; not an all or nothing, one step to full instant teleportation of everything.

I don't think its necessary to transport the actual matter, you can transport raw matter with a particle accelerator and a decelerator at the other end. Probably the simplest would be a mass driver.

A 1 km long mass driver made of superconducting coils can accelerate a 20 kg vehicle to 10.5 km/s at a conversion efficiency of 80%, and average acceleration of 5,600 g. if we went up to 72% of the speed of light, without getting into the realms or relativity, this is 216,000 km/s, which is 20571.428 times the speed of 10.5 km/s squaring this number gives the length of the mass driver in kilometers, which is 423,183,674 kilometers when rounded off the nearest while kilometer, this is 2.82 AU in length, it accelerates a 20 kg payload at 5,600 g along its entire length to reach 72% of the speed of light. Now if we were accelerating this payload toward Alpha Centauri it would take 6.111 years to travel the distance of 4.4 light years between Alpha Centauri and the Sun, and we would need another mass driver of equal length to catch the 20 kg payload and slow it down to match the velocity of a planet orbiting in that system. That is one idea of a matter transporter, it literally transports matter. Converting the matter to energy and beaming it to Alpha Centauri and then converting it back into matter does not produce much of an improvement over this, instead of taking 6.111 years to reach Alpha Centauri it takes 4.4 years when traveling at the speed of light as radiation, very hard radiation in the form of gamma rays I might add. When you convert it back into matter you get equal amounts of matter and antimatter, that is what usually happens when you convert energy back into matter, about half of it is antimatter! There is not much of an incentive to do this, a star already converts quite a bit of its mass into energy. beaming mass energy at the speed of light has no advantages over simply transporting the matter as matter, without information.

The matter transporter I was thinking about actually transports no matter at all, it transports molecular patterns instead. It takes about an object and beams the molecular information it collected during the deconstruction of the object, the matter gets left behind. At the receiving station, using local matter, the object is reconstructed from the information sent. This is more like a 3-d fax machine. There are printers today that can print with living cells, this is used to create simple human organs such as livers and he live, a more advanced tissue printer might someday be capable of printing a human brain along with the body and organs in the right place to go with it. The DNA sequence is also transmitted and a DNA strand is synthesized and inserted into the cells which are then grown and then printed into a body with memories and a brain. This is not quite the way a Star Trek Transporter is supposed to work, it doesn't actually reassemble the molecular patterns but does it on a cellular level instead, while omitting the cancer and whatever disease the original patient had. Since our memories have to do with the cellular structure of our brain, the replicant produced by this biological 3-d printer would have the same memories and personality as the original, whether that person was the original or only thinks she is would be a matter that would be up for debate. Lets say an advanced biological printer printed this girl. Would that make more sense in a Traveller setting?

 

[Rick]

I know exactly what you meant - the first form I mentioned covered this, it is a way of transmitting matter as a data file. You don't need to repeat yourself every time. As to organ printing, livers are currently beyond our current technology - we can only print skin sheets, tubes or hollow 'bags' such as a bladder - but it is a good analogy for a matter transporter technology curve; we are at the very basic level, as we build better printers, better ways of building organs and of converting the data into an object, these will slowly become more advanced until, eventually, we might be able to print an entire body. But, to say that because we have the basic technology, we can print anything, immediately, is absurd - things like these take time and research to develop.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I know exactly what you meant - the first form I mentioned covered this, it is a way of transmitting matter as a data file. You don't need to repeat yourself every time. As to organ printing, livers are currently beyond our current technology - we can only print skin sheets, tubes or hollow 'bags' such as a bladder - but it is a good analogy for a matter transporter technology curve; we are at the very basic level, as we build better printers, better ways of building organs and of converting the data into an object, these will slowly become more advanced until, eventually, we might be able to print an entire body. But, to say that because we have the basic technology, we can print anything, immediately, is absurd - things like these take time and research to develop.

A human cell is one million times bigger than the atoms that make it up, it should be easier to manipulate human cells than individual atoms and molecules. One can then assume that organ printing is a lower tech level than nanotechnology, which is what Star Trek style transporters really are if you think about it..

So what are the steps to printing a person who's been frozen after death, the first step is cloning that person, you need to clone each type of cell from that person, maybe create a stem cell from the genetic information, The stem cell then divides and specializes. You load the various cell types in the printer, and then you print the body. The brain requires some extra work, you need to print it exactly they way it is found in the frozen deceased person so memories and personality may be recovered. At tech level 15, I believe Agathics is developed, this is basically the ability to turn old cells into young cells at the microscopic level, cloning is available at this tech level too.

 

[Epicenter]

It's unlikely that freezing a body is going to do a thing. I put it into the same category as Ancient Egyptians mummifying their dead for their faith; I'm sure it makes the girl in question feel better, which I think is the important thing. Will it produce anything in the future? I doubt it.

As other posters have pointed out, the lag between death and freezing is going to remove most of the value of freezing the person in the first place - brain damage, memory loss, and so on.

Another question of reviving someone is ... why?

This primitive from centuries ago is not going to have any relevant job skills / won't be able to support herself, won't speak the language, is going to suffer from extreme culture shock, and basically is not going to be much more than a curiosity or of interest to a certain segment of historians and anthropologists - neither group are known for their large amounts of money to support a person who is essentially an invalid.

Assuming there IS some miraculous technology to read information from a dead, then frozen brain - why do you need to revive the person at all? If it is historical information you want, you can read it from the dead brain and get all the information need about conditions.

Of course, there might be some sort of "sentient millieu" who might revive a person so frozen (assuming there was anything to revive), not as a physical being but as a disembodied intelligence - just like everyone else at that point. Such a being might need little support, so wouldn't be a drain. They might just revive her for ethical reasons or reasons of curiosity. But such a society would honestly be beyond the singularity, I think.

 

[Condottiere]

I heard it discussed the other day on the radio, and the wife complained that it wasn't discussed and happened at the start of their marriage, required a life insurance that the corporation would use to cover the costs of future resuscitation, which opportunity costed all they could have done to provide opportunities for their children.