X-Message-Number: 13571 Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2000 11:36:58 +0400 From: Mikhail Soloviev <> Subject: Project "Latmos" [This message is a version of the article published in The Immortalist, Jan.-Feb. 2000.] Project "Latmos" by Mikhail Soloviev Latmos is the Ancient name of a mountain in the south-west of Asia Minor (now it is a part of Turkey, but in the Ancient time it was populated by the Greeks). According to the Greek myths Endymion (he belonged to one of the first generations of human beings and could be regarded as a prince or king) lays in one of the Latmos caves. He was plunged into eternal sleep by Zeus, who was asked to do it by Selena (a goddess of moon and hunting, her Roman name is Diana). She loved Endymion and wanted to keep him forever young (in 1817 John Keats wrote a brilliant poem on the subject). Thus this story is one of the first examples of the suspended animation idea. The essence of the project "Latmos" is the organization of a small colony (commune, settlement, village) of the (retired) Russian (European) immortalists. They would form a kind of social network to enable preservation of the body of a colony member as soon as possible after his/her deanimation. Our present resources don't allow us to use cryopreservation, but we could use embalming first (and I plan to carry out a small research to develop the best embalming method). The well-fixed (e.g. by resin) embalmed brain could be stored in a grave together with the body (embalmed or not). Thus in the simplest variant we would not even need a storage facility. Later if our resources grow we could organize cryopreservation (in the form of "Cryofarm", or in another way) -- for example, create a cryonics society and a firm to provide cryonics service (here it could interpreted as the burial at low temperature). A good place for the Latmos colony is Crimea, a peninsula in the Black Sea in the south of the Ukraine. The Crimean nature (sea, mountains, warm winters) and history (there were many Greek colonies) have many associations with the original Latmos region. Now it is possible to buy a small house here for $500 to $3000. Last year I did it. Another Russian cryonicist, Igor Artyuhov (who was born in Crimea), also intends to buy a house there. Of course, we need more prospective colony members, but we have time (where is the wood?) and I hope in a few years the Latmos colony will become a reality. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=13571