X-Message-Number: 4890 Date: Wed, 20 Sep 1995 09:57:45 -0400 (EDT) From: Robin Helweg-Larsen <> Subject: Re: Third World Cryonics Brian Wowk commented: > Given what Paul Wakfer has had to go through to > start his own cryonics storage facility in the U.S. > (and in a shared building at that), I can only ask > Robin Helweg-Larsen if he is volunteering to > > 1)Finance a facility in the Bahamas. > > 2)Continuously oversee it. > > 3)Subsidize the (probably) enormously high > cost of LN2 there. > > 4)Purchase a helicopter to ferry in LN2 > when hurricances knock out the local > production plant. > Theorizing is > easy. Dealing with hard core practicalities > is much harder. > Your points are well taken, and I don't have answers to all of them. But, yes, if I can find a way to do it, it seems that my most practical contribution to cryonics could be to finance a facility in the Bahamas. I own a half share of 21 acres of undeveloped land with 900 feet of beach, on the main road on Eleuthera, 2 miles from an international airport serviced twice daily by American Eagle from Miami, as well as other flights from Nassau; the land is 4 miles from the main town on the island, Governor's Harbour, which has a Club Med and reasonable support facilities. Telephone, water and electricity connections are available. I was brought up in Governor's Harbour and have a comfortable relationship with people in local politics and local business. However, it is not certain at present whether I have Bahamian citizenship, or whether I am technically a foreigner. I also have to negotiate with my brother for use of the land, or control or purchase of his half. But there is the beginnings of a plan in my head. I am not planning on running a cryonics facility, but if I can see a way to provide a home for one, I will. To answer the second point, yes, I would expect to continuously oversee it. I would like to live on site, and to be able to operate my present management training business from there. After all, at present I live in Chapel Hill, and do no work in North Carolina at all. But there are logistical complications to working from an Out Island which I recognize. That's why I'm not there now! Any combination of the following interests me: small hotel, training facility, managed retirement home, research lab, or cryonics facility. LN2 costs I haven't got around to considering yet. Hurricanes can be prepared against, as can the temporary loss of amenities (when I was a kid, our water came from our own catchment system, our electricity came from our own diesel generator). I don't think a helicopter is necessary, but I'll take one if it's being offered! Obviously, my plans are still unstructured; I only have a direction, not a concrete proposal. The only reason I shared them in the first place was in response to Bill Walker's posting of Sept 7. I haven't worked out how this fits in with any organization's view of the world, in fact I've been so busy with my US business expansion that I still haven't got my insurance together or done a sign-up, let alone talked with people as much as I should. But there it is. I think the Bahamas is a good low-tax (no income tax or inheritance tax or corporate income tax) location, open to speculative research and medical proceedings, with an attractive climate (never above the 90s in summer) for people of all ages, close to the US. I think a cryonics facility could do well there. Always optimistically, Robin HL Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=4890