Peter Thiel, the billionaire tech investor who plans to be frozen upon death

The billionaire investor Peter Thielco-founder of PayPal and influential figure in the industry technology, he intends to be frozen when he dies to keep his body. The executive signed an order confirming his desire to be preserved through the technique known as cryogenic freezing.

During his participation in the podcast Honestly with Bari Weiss, he again defended any method for avoid deathlike cryogenics. “We didn’t even try. We have to conquer death, or at least find out why it’s impossible,” Thiel said.

The project is like writing a letter to the future and hoping that one day the human species will have the knowledge needed to bring it back to life. A plan that not even he is entirely convinced of. “I signed up to be stored in a cryogenic lab. But I see it more as an ideological statement.”

It is not the first time that the idea of ​​cryogenesis and biotechnology appears among his plans. For years he has been trying to push the boundaries of nature, which has earned him recognition from Silicon Valley.

In 2014, he had already raised the possibility of his body being preserved for posterity in alliance with the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. Still, he admits he’s not so sure the technique works correctly.

“I keep thinking that I’m not doing enough in biotech and radical life extension or even trying to invest in curing a lot of these big chronic diseases that we have. The biggest problem is finding people with good ideas, finding a way forward.”

While Peter Thiel’s crusade appears to be serious, the truth is that cryogenic freezing preservation doesn’t have a very solid scientific basis. For this reason, much of the community truly considers a nonsense for the great challenges it faces.

To carry out this process, cryogenic liquid gaseous nitrogen must be used at very low temperatures, reaching -80°C. This heat transfer ensures very fast freezing times.

In humans, it is performed on already dead corpses. The person’s organic remains are frozen and stored. All of this, of course, in the hope that they will be resurrected in the distant future. One of the best known cases of this technology was Walt Disney, for which the Internet community created a legend that ended up being a total fiction.

frozen pets

Kai Micah Mills, founder of Cryopets and a pioneer and innovator in cryopreservation, has proposed freezing pets for future restoration. Which turns out to be more of a comfort than a hope.

Cryopets aims to eliminate the boundaries between life and death, or that the latter not be irreversible. In this sense, the startup, in addition to proposing the new method, also presents a network of veterinary clinics.

The idea is that, after death, the pets would be moved to a facility in Utah, USA, where they would be placed in metal vats and await scientific advances that could revive them.

It is no coincidence that Kai Micah Mills’ company is part of a financial incentive program provided by Peter Thiel.