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by jacquesm 4100 days ago
At 2 square meters per grave in densely populated areas they're going to sooner or later have to bury people stacked if they don't want the dead to crowd out the living.
3 comments

But then there are family crypts with 4, 6, 8, 12 bodies interred pulling the average down. Not to mention the number of people who have been interred and then the cemetary later moved because it was on land deemed desirable to the developer (and of course a standard trope of many horror movies). So I doubt the dead could "crowd out" the living but they could certainly end up stacked in a cave somewhere far away from their original burial.
How long are grave sites kept in the US? Here in Germany they are reused (25 years is a common period), and family graves are "people buried stacked".
As far as I know burial plots are not reused in the US. You generally buy the plot in perpetuity.
It varies. There are sometimes problems with private or small cemeteries that are run by an association running out of funds (or the association can end up with no members left).

A search for "cemetery disrepair" returns lots and lots of local news stories.

People buried stacked is not entirely uncommon in the US though.
Even as a simple matter of logistics, I've often wondered - why don't we bury people vertically? About the only downside to it would be in the extremely rare case that exhumation is needed, which would have to be a (literally?) one in a million event?
Hard to enjoy your eternal rest if you can't lie down.
I feel sorry for the gravedigger who has to dig vertical graves.