Three Koreans among growing number of cryonically preserved bodies worldwide

A facility in Australia is storing the bodies of deceased people in liquid nitrogen at minus 196 degrees Celsius, in the hope that advances in future medicine may one day bring them back to life. Experts, however, say that reviving a cryonically preserved person is impossible with current science.

Southern Cryonics, the only human cryopreservation facility in the Southern Hemisphere, operates in Holbrook, New South Wales, Australia, according to the Guardian on Friday (local time). The facility, which opened in 2023, currently holds seven "patients" suspended in liquid nitrogen.

The facility occupies an ordinary warehouse-style building in an industrial complex in Holbrook. Inside stand two large stainless-steel cylindrical tanks — essentially oversized thermos flasks — filled with liquid nitrogen to maintain an internal temperature of minus 196 C.

The first person cryopreserved there was a man in his 80s, in May 2024, and a man in his 90s was added in June, bringing the total to seven. The youngest patient is a woman who died in her 40s.

Southern Cryonics Chairman Peter Tsolakides puts the odds of revival in 250 years at around 10 percent. "Basically, you have to conquer death, cure all diseases and then be able to bring back the dead," he said. "The probability is not zero."

The preservation process begins immediately after death. The body is cooled as quickly as possible, blood is drained and replaced with a cryoprotectant solution similar to antifreeze — a procedure designed to prevent ice crystals from destroying cells that takes about eight hours. The body is then placed in a liquid nitrogen tank for long-term storage.

Because liquid nitrogen gradually evaporates, it must be continuously replenished. A facility manager said the tanks were initially topped up once a month, but the schedule was changed to every two weeks after the first two clients' families expressed concern about potential disruptions to the liquid nitrogen supply.

The entire process costs more than A$200,000 ($134,000). Initial stabilization immediately after death runs about A$60,000, followed by A$150,000 for indefinite storage. An annual membership fee of A$350 is charged separately.

Experts remain skeptical about the real prospects for revival. Saffron Bryant, an associate professor of cryobiology at RMIT University in Melbourne, said it is difficult to perfectly preserve an entire human body with current technology. While individual cells, embryos and blood can be cryopreserved, she said, distributing a cryoprotectant evenly throughout a whole body is an entirely different challenge.

"If you try to cool the whole body at the same rate, the outside — like the skin — cools faster than the inside," she said. "It's similar to what happens when a strawberry goes mushy."

Even if cell damage could be prevented, the underlying cause of death would still need to be reversed. "Whether it's a heart attack or Alzheimer's, the cause of death has already occurred," Bryant said, adding that freezing a body cannot undo that. On the question of whether consciousness could ever be restored, she said it was "closer to mysticism than science."

Despite these technical limitations, an estimated 1,000 people worldwide have been cryonically preserved — about 600 in the United States and around 200 in Russia — with more than 4,000 others already signed up and waiting.

South Korea has its own cryopreservation service. Cryo Asia, a biotech cryogenic technology company, has preserved three people to date, including a woman in her 80s who had blood cancer and a woman in her 40s with bile duct cancer. The cost is 180 million won ($134,000) for 10 years, with an additional 5 million to 6 million won required each year for liquid nitrogen replenishment.