A small Texas town will soon play host to a real life Wayward Pines when it becomes home to 50,000 cryogenically frozen bodies that scientists hope to thaw out hundreds of years in the future.
Comfort, Texas, will be the home of Timeship Village, a disaster-proof complex storing frozen bodies and biological material that is capable of surviving terror attacks and rising sea levels, says TimeShip.org.
"DNA, tissue samples, and cryopreserved patients will be housed in Timeship, and their safety and security against all threats, both natural and human-made, will have to be maintained for hundreds of years."
Designed by architect Stephen Valentine, the new Mecca of cryogenics is set to become the largest center of research and cryopreservation in the world.
The landmark Timeship Building will be located at the center of a town surrounded by a massive plot of land that's encircled by high walls and guarded by a tall city gate. Eventually, the cryogenic complex will be completed with housing dormitories, libraries, research laboratories, conference space, its own power supply, and an agriculture center, says TimeShip.org.
"We're taking people to the future!"
Cryonics is the science of freezing people who are sick and dying with the hope that they will be able to be revived, or thawed out, in the future and their ailments cured.
There is currently no way to reverse the cryogenic freezing process and revive those already frozen, but earlier this year, scientists were able to revive the brain of a cryonically frozen rabbit, which they claim gives hope of a breakthrough in the future.
Valentine hopes his Timeship Village will help pioneer life extension research and enable him to grant those preserved by the cryogenic freezing process eternal life free from health defects.
The project began years ago when Valentine started searching for the perfect location to house his immortal Ark, and last month, work finally began on the megalithic Timeship Building. Designed to house 50,000 people who are neither dead nor alive, but frozen in time, Valentine hopes his massive project will help move mankind into the future.The cryogenic structure won't just contain frozen people; it will also host the DNA of nearly extinct species, biological material, human organs, cells, and tissues in an effort to advance the freezing capabilities of cryogenics.
"Developments in science, particularly genetics, may eventually make possible extreme life extension of hundreds of years, and perhaps even practical immortality, sometimes called technological immortality."
In a case of science meeting science fiction, Fox created a fictional show, Wayward Pines, that showcases a group of cryogenically frozen humans who survive thousands of years into the future and must survive a strange and hostile world.
In the fictional television show, the surviving humans live in a compound surrounded by high walls and survive on supplies stored on-site since mankind died out.While the show is fictional, Valentine seems to have incorporated many of its designs into his Timeship project. His cryogenic Mecca is being built to withstand attacks from outside and be completely independent, with its own power and food supply, according to the Daily Mail.
"Timeship has been designed to provide that security at every level, from defense against terrorist attack, to sea level changes due to global warming, to interruption of energy supplies due to any catastrophe."
Critics argue that cryogenics is an unproven science that preys on the weak and dying who, more often than not, must be wealthy to gamble on its promise. Instead of death, however, Valentine hopes to realize the promise of cryogenics by delivering on the promise of eternal life without health issues.
Would you allow yourself to be cryogenically frozen in the hopes of being thawed out in the future?
[Image via Stephen Valentine/Timeship]
