If there was a pandemic there would be widespread cremation. We couldn’t keep up with the burials.
Our burials are too elaborate anyway. In the Bible when it says “his bones were laid with his ancestors” that is literally what it means. They had a cave where the body was place. Eventually it was just a pile of bones all mixed together. Not considered disrespectful at all.
What we do today is disrespectful. Draining the blood and embalming the corpse. And for what? We bury people in coffins that are in hermetically sealed valuts.
“Draining the blood and embalming the corpse.”
You mean you don’t want to be all made up to look like a half melted wax dummy so everyone can say how much you look like yourself?
I agree with you (I've told my family I want to be cremated), BUT...
...there was a good reason for the modern re-invention of enbalming.
During the US Civil War, there were no refrigerated train cars. The bodies of soldiers killed in battle, or who died from illness, would putrefy beyond the point when their families could hold a traditional funeral for them.
So many entrepreneurs went into the mortician business and headed for the battlefields.
This "service" is usually not needed anymore, but our culture has never looked back (with the exception of small groups like Orthodox Jews who have kept their tradition of next-day burials and prohibition against enbalming).