(Picture: Alcor Life Extension Foundation/ Caters News Agency)

Linda Chamberlain, 72, isn’t afraid to die.

Most of us have spent at least a few sleepless nights wondering what awaits us in the great hereafter.

Those thoughts come into focus after losing a spouse but when Linda’s husband Fred passed away in 2012, she knew it wouldn’t be the last time they met.

Since 1970, Linda and Fred had been united both by their love and a shared dedication to mastering mortality.


They met through an interest in cryonics, the practice of storing dead bodies at very low temperatures indefinitely.

Practitioners of cryonics believe that, at some point in the future, technology will advance far enough that the corpses will be thawed out and revived.



Bodies are frozen at -196 degrees Celsius and stored in specially created containers, for prices of upwards of $200,000 (£155,000).

Willing participants are warned that there is no guarantee that their gamble will pay off but a select few have decided to put their faith in the future of medicine.

There are about 250 people already frozen in the US with another 1,500 signed up for after their deaths take place.

(Picture: Alcor Life Extension Foundation/ Caters News Agency)

The first person to undergo the procedure was Fred’s father in 1976.

He was a fragile stroke victim and didn’t understand much about cryonics, but trusted his son and daughter-in-law to do what they felt was best.

Linda’s mother followed suit in 1990 after dying suddenly of cancer.

In this hypothetical new world, the Chamberlains – and all the other forward-thinking cryonics fans – will be resuscitated and reunited in some form.

Linda doesn’t necessarily believe that their physical bodies will be brought back to life:

‘My brain may run on a computer platform but to interface I have an avatar body made of swarms of nanorobots, allowing my body to reconfigure to however I want it,’ she says.

‘If I wanted to swim in the ocean my nanobot body could reconfigure me into a killer whale, it’s based on science fiction but it’s an idea.’

The fact is that cryonics remains only science fiction for now: mainstream medicine considers it only speculative at best, and Linda herself acknowledges that ‘it’s hard to convey it without sounding like a lunatic’.

But even the most cynical of us can understand when she explains her motivation:

‘I do this for love,’ she says.

And what could be better motivation than that?

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