Brain freeze

More people are doing non-traditional burials of their loved ones.

A recent viral TikTok video, which has been removed, showed one such method by two foreign visitors to the famous Inca citadel of Machu Picchu in Peru.

The video showed a woman taking ashes from a plastic bag, throwing them in the air, and then hugging her woman companion.

The video’s caption read: Saying goodbye with much love at Machu Picchu. It was hashtagged “ashes” and “spreading ashes.”

The video prompted the Machu Picchu archeological park to hire more guards and install more surveillance cameras to prevent another ash dispersal in the tourist spot.

Cesar Medina, the head of the park, said spreading human ashes at the site will now be banned for health reasons, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reports.

People are also choosing a high-tech burial. German startup Tomorrow Biostasis will pump a chemical solution into the body of American and IT worker Becca Ziegler and store it in a Switzerland pod “surrounded by liquid nitrogen and cooled to around minus 200 degrees Celsius,” according to AFP.

The 24-year-old Ziegler, who is still alive, has joined a list of 700 other customers of Tomorrow Biostasis who wanted to be cryo-preserved and then brought back to life in the future using advanced medical technology then.

Tomorrow Biostasis’ offer to freeze a body comes at a membership fee of 50 euros a month plus a lump-sum payment of 200,000 euros ($216,000) — or 75,000 euros if only the brain is frozen.