This article was originally published on April 6, 2021.
It’s said that one of the things that makes us human is our awareness of our own mortality, and for nearly as long as we’ve known that we’ll one day die, we’ve wondered about the possibility of waking back up. Stories about resurrection and immortality are found in countless religions and myths, and in recent years, many of these stories have hinged on the idea of cryonic preservation: freezing a body and then reanimating it in the future. If it worked for Han Solo, Captain America, and Fry from Futurama, why can’t it work for us?
“[For] most cryonicists, there’s two things you’ll find. We are sci-fi lovers, obviously. We’re also optimists,” says Dennis Kowalski, the president of the Cryonics Institute, a non-profit based in Michigan and one of a handful of companies worldwide offering its line of services.
That optimism ...
