$200,000 for a Chance at a Second Life: Dead Bodies Are Being Frozen in Australia in the Hope of Resurrection Centuries From Now

Inside an ordinary industrial warehouse in the small Australian town of Holbrook are the bodies of people who paid more than $200,000 to have themselves frozen after death. They are hoping that one day humanity will learn how to bring the dead back to life, The Guardian reports.

The company Southern Cryonics, run by Peter Tsolakides, describes the procedure as a “chance to extend life.” Its facility in Holbrook is the only cryonics center in the Southern Hemisphere, according to its owners. Since opening in 2023, it has already taken in seven patients.

The bodies are stored upside down in enormous metal containers known as dewars, which are filled with liquid nitrogen. The temperature inside is −196°C. Each dewar can hold up to four people.

The first patient was a man who died in his 80s. He was placed in storage in May 2024. The most recent freezing took place in June, following the death of a man in his 90s.

Peter Tsolakides does not promise his clients resurrection. According to him, humanity will first have to “conquer death,” learn to cure all diseases and develop technologies capable of bringing the dead back to life. He estimates that there is roughly a 10% chance his patients could be revived 250 years from now. For cryonics supporters, even that slim possibility is better than having no hope at all.

Scientists, however, remain deeply skeptical about such prospects. Associate Professor Saffron Bryant, a cryopreservation specialist at RMIT University in Melbourne, notes that modern science is still unable to preserve an entire human body in a way that would allow it to be revived later.

Cells, embryos and blood components can indeed be successfully cryopreserved. This is done through vitrification, a process in which specialized substances prevent the formation of destructive ice crystals.

But the situation is far more complicated with an entire human body. It is impossible to distribute cryoprotectants evenly throughout all the body’s tissues, while during cooling the outer layers of the body cool faster than the inner ones. Scientists compare the result to a strawberry that has been frozen and then thawed: it becomes soft and loses its original structure.

There is another fundamental problem: even if the body could be perfectly preserved, the disease or condition that caused the person’s death would not simply disappear. A heart attack, Alzheimer’s disease or another fatal illness would have to be treatable in the future.

The question of consciousness is even more difficult. According to Bryant, the possibility of preserving and subsequently restoring a person’s consciousness currently belongs more to the realm of mysticism than science.

Nevertheless, there are people willing to take the chance. An estimated 1,000 people worldwide have been cryonically frozen. The community supporting the idea remains small, but relatively close-knit.

In Australia, the procedure costs around $60,000 for the initial stabilization of the body, followed by another $150,000 for indefinite storage at Southern Cryonics. There is also an annual fee of $350. The company recommends that clients take out life insurance for approximately $210,000.

Maintaining a single patient costs roughly $5,500 a year, with most of that amount going toward liquid nitrogen and staff salaries.

After death, the body is cooled as quickly as possible, including with the use of ice, and vitrification is then carried out over approximately eight hours. The body is infused with special chemicals resembling antifreeze, which are intended to protect cells from damage at extremely low temperatures.

The body is then transported to Holbrook and placed upside down in a dewar. However, not all of the patients there underwent full vitrification: some were simply frozen.

Southern Cryonics’ contract explicitly warns clients that any cryonic suspension method known today is likely to cause physical damage to the body that could prove irreversible. Any future revival would also require an additional payment, the amount of which is currently unknown.

One committed supporter of cryonics is facility manager Philip Rhodes. He himself plans to be taken to the same Holbrook warehouse after his death. Rhodes believes future generations may want to bring their distant ancestors back to life if such technology ever becomes possible.

In his view, the first patients could begin to be revived as early as 2080, while a person whose body had been well preserved could have better than a 50% chance of successfully returning to life. At the same time, he acknowledges that there are no guarantees.

“If you ever get woken up in the future, then you’ve really hit the jackpot,” Rhodes says.