Robert Ettinger, the cryonics pioneer who advocated freezing the dead with the hope that medical technology would someday enable them to pay taxes again, is dead at the age of 92 after attempting to defrost an erection he had back in the ’60s.
Ettinger first came up with the idea for cryonics in World War II during the Battle of the Bulge when he saw a bunch of frozen bodies and thought, “I can make money off of that, sure.”
Ettinger founded his Cryonics Institute back in 1976 during the height of disco, a time when anyone would have been justified freezing half the music industry just to make them shut the fuck up.
For its services, the Cryonics Institute charges customers $28,000. But if you bring your own tin foil, “5 bucks.”
The first person Ettinger deposited at the Institute was his mother, Rhea. This was followed by ten years of Ettinger depositing her Social Security checks.
He also froze the bodies of his two wives, Mae and Elaine. They’re stored next to a sign reading, “WARNING – Do Not Open.”
Ettinger’s last wishes were to someday be brought back to life as a 92 year-old man with a lot of really serious health problems.
Mourning Remembrance 