A Divorced Russian Couple Is Fighting Over 81 Frozen Bodies

There are about 500 dead and intentionally frozen people on our planet, writes Yana Pashaeva for Slate. She's talking about cryonics believers—people who think it's possible they can be brought back to life in the future and have paid to keep their body in a frozen state until that can happen. At least 81 of those bodies are in Russia, where a soap-opera-esque drama is playing out. It revolves around the 15-year-old cryonics company KrioRus, which has in that time amassed those 81 client bodies and was started by Valeria Udalova and Danila Medvedev.

Now they're divorced, Udalova has her own cryonics company, and they are fighting over possession of those bodies. That fight reportedly hit a whole new level on Sept. 7, when Udalova and some of her Open Cryonics staffers allegedly broke into the cryostorage facility where the bodies were being kept by cutting through a metal wall, reports Newsweek. The allegations from Medvedev's side: that Udalova and her accomplices made off with frozen bodies by loading them onto a truck, but that as the large tanks (called "dewars") holding the bodies were lifted, the liquid nitrogen inside was either intentionally removed or sloshed out.

KrioRus staff called police, who stopped the truck; the bodies have been returned, but Medvedev's side says damage done in the raid could make it hard to keep the dewars properly filled with liquid nitrogen. Udalova says she's angling to get Medvedev arrested. Police are said to be investigating. (This dying teen won the right to have her body frozen.)