Do dead bodies pose a health risk?

[Caradhras]

A interesting, if possible macabre, article from the BBC re the recent Haitian disaster.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8465464.stm

I thought it was potentially relevent info for the forum.

[Legbreaker]

Hmmm, when I read the bit about inheritances, etc at the bottom, I then thought just how irrelevant this would be post nuke...

The legal implications are completely understandable in a "normal" disaster situation, but once nukes fly it's just a little different.

[General Pain]

people dying from radstorms and other forms of violents death would still be scattered around ....the undertakers are on a permanent vacation...

so diseases would flurish IMHO

[Legbreaker]

The initial few days to a week might be ok, but after that vermin and insects would flourish. With those vermin comes the inevitable pestillance which will be all the worse due to embattled immune systems struggling to cope with a lack of good water, adequate food, and shelter not to mention the probability of injuries and untreated (or badly treated) wounds.

Give it a few months until the bodies have all decayed or been eaten and it'd be a different story. Not a pleasant sight, but relatively free of disease, etc.

[Trooper]

Handling dead bodies is "normal" service for civil defence and for military units in war time service. In warm weather decaying bodies are health risk and in cold weather they are just something that will rattle nerves on most people.

Protect & Survive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGMdnod8VPI&feature=PlayList&p=5B20BD9C52E615D9&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=26

Death at war: (warning graphic pictures). Finnish ww 2 photos (including raped and murdered children, cannibalism and execution of russian illegal combatant.)

http://nocandoo.servebeer.com/temp/suomisodassa/suomisodassa.htm

[Cdnwolf]

I am just wondering if during the exterminations at the death camps during WWII they had problems like that ?

[pmulcahy11b]

I am just wondering if during the exterminations at the death camps during WWII they had problems like that ?

My mother says yes. She's a survivor.

[pmulcahy11b]

Another thing my mother told me about burning dead bodies was at the camps, they knew the "ovens" were working when the smoke from them turned blueish in color, and an awful smell she still can't describe pervaded the camp. Disgusting, but a detail for GMs to put in their campaigns.

A less-disgusting detail is the first time she heard an American talking. She asked him for some bubble gum, because she thought he was talking with a mouthful of it. He wasn't. I'm guessing he was either from the deep South or Brooklyn...

[sglancy12]

I am just wondering if during the exterminations at the death camps during WWII they had problems like that ?

Yes. Body disposal was critical to the death machine.

When Sonderkommando 13 rebelled at Auschwitz they didn't blow up the gas chambers, they blew up the crematoriums. The rational was that with the gas chambers gone the Nazis would just start shooting people instead and continue to burn the bodies. With the crematoriums gone, the bodies would start piling up fast and when the inevitable Typhus outbreak hit, those SS Bloodtype tattoos wouldn't do shit to protect the camp guards. Kill the crematoriums and you shut down the death machine.

Unfortunately they only managed to destroy 2 of the 4 crematoriums and nobody survived or escaped during the uprising.

For a fictionalized account, check out the movie "The Grey Zone."

A. Scott Glancy, President TCCorp, dba Pagan Publishing

[Mohoender]

Hmmm, when I read the bit about inheritances, etc at the bottom, I then thought just how irrelevant this would be post nuke...

The legal implications are completely understandable in a "normal" disaster situation, but once nukes fly it's just a little different.

I agree and I don't. I agree with what you say on the legal implication but I believe, however, that inheritance could become much more relevant that what you think post nuke. In places were everything is down you are right but in places were it is not the case, the hability to prove that you are a rightful heir might become very important.

For exemple, someone able to prove that he is heir to the family that once owned Raciborz Castle could become a real challenger to the Markgraf of Silesia. Of course, that will not occur as we understand it now but it might be very useful to back your point in a more old fashion way (with true or made up proofs). Religion (Black Madonna) is a way to assemble people but being a true heir can be as powerful at the local or state level.

[Legbreaker]

Hmm, good point. However, I see hereditary not becoming a big issue until a decade or so after the war.

In the first few years the massive shock to what's left of society will leave who's got the guns as the more important factor than who somebodies father, mother, etc was.

Once the situation settles down and people accept the new rulers, laws, etc, then hereditary issues will become important once more.

[pmulcahy11b]

Another thing is the long-term effects on the present generation of starvation (and in T2K) radiation, chemical exposure, biological contamination, etc. My mother's current dental problems, for example, probably had its genesis in her childhood in the camps in World War 2 -- and she's 72 now.

You know, she's lived almost her whole life with untreated Bipolar Disorder, the after-effects of World War 2, being basically homeless until she got back to Yugoslavia, losing a slot on the 1956 Olympic Team (she was a sprinter) to tuberculosis, being an anti-Tito partisan, two lousy husbands -- it's wonder she has any kind of mental stability at all. She has more guts and fortitude than I have, easily. Lots of people like that will be running the world after the Twilight War.