“An attempt was made to get round-the-clock nursing staff at a cost of $37.50 per hour (market rate), so that someone duly authorized by the State of California would be available to pronounce legal death, allowing the suspension to start without the 20 to 40 minute delay that would have occurred while the on-call hospice nurse drove over to pronounce legal death.”
This suggests to me that, at least with current techniques, response time is actually quite important. While about 50% of the population dies already in a hospital, and another chunk has 911 called only to be pronounced dead, there is also a sizable portion of the population which dies quietly at home. It is that last category which would still require a fair amount of expense.
If there’s new developments that allow cryonic suspension to start hours or even days after death without issue, then transportation expenses can probably be eliminated. At that point you can probably also discount labor another 50%, since you wouldn’t need to ensure 24⁄7 staffing, and a backlog wouldn’t be a horrific situation. However, until that development occurs, transportation seems to actually be one of the most critical and expensive issues facing modern cryonics. Both Alcor and CI charge rather heavily for that transportation / standby service.
Quoting the Alcor article from my post:
This suggests to me that, at least with current techniques, response time is actually quite important. While about 50% of the population dies already in a hospital, and another chunk has 911 called only to be pronounced dead, there is also a sizable portion of the population which dies quietly at home. It is that last category which would still require a fair amount of expense.
If there’s new developments that allow cryonic suspension to start hours or even days after death without issue, then transportation expenses can probably be eliminated. At that point you can probably also discount labor another 50%, since you wouldn’t need to ensure 24⁄7 staffing, and a backlog wouldn’t be a horrific situation. However, until that development occurs, transportation seems to actually be one of the most critical and expensive issues facing modern cryonics. Both Alcor and CI charge rather heavily for that transportation / standby service.