This is the introduction to a sequence on signing up for cryonics. In the coming posts I will lay out what you need to do, concretely and in detail. This sequence is intended for people who already think signing up for cryonics is a good idea but are putting it off because they're not sure what they actually need to do next. I am not going to address the question of how likely cryonics is to work – that's been covered extensively elsewhere.

If you have no idea what cryonics is, or if you want a thorough refresher, I recommend WaitButWhy's Why Cryonics Makes Sense.

Biases

This sequence is US-focused, since I went through the process in the US. It's also somewhat Alcor-biased, since I chose Alcor quite early on in the process. However, I've collaborated with both non-US cryonicists and people signed up with the Cryonics Institute, so I'm confident there will be useful information no matter where you are or which institution you choose to keep you in a vat of liquid nitrogen.

Epistemic status

I approached all questions in good faith and have documented my reasoning to the best of my ability, but I don't have a high level of confidence in my conclusions. Commenter Josh Jacobson is signed up with the Cryonics Institute and had a very different experience than the one outlined in this sequence, and I don't think I have any special knowledge or abilities that he doesn't. My recollections of the research that led to these posts has also faded with time.

Caveats

This sequence was researched and written in late 2020, and just two years later, it seems that the landscape has already changed significantly. For example, Alcor has changed their membership options, their fee structure, and their payment options, and they've also introduced an online signup flow that I have no experience with. As such, please be aware that some of the logistical advice in this sequence may be outdated. I have tried to update the sequence where possible, but I'm not going to go through and overhaul it.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Connor Flexman, Daniel Filan, Gordon Worley, Mati Roy, Seraphina Nix, and nameless others for letting me ask them endless questions. Thanks also to Eli Tyre and Oge Nnadi for their previous writeups on this topic, from which I borrowed liberally.

Summary of the process

The first thing most people probably want to know is: What do I do now? It turns out to be really hard to figure this out, and I think unnecessarily so – the information is out there, but it's not all written down clearly in one place. This sequence is my attempt to rectify that.

Basic process overview

Here is a basic overview of the cryonics signup process from start to finish:

Preliminary decisions
1. Neurocryopreservation vs whole-body cryopreservation
2. Cryonics Institute vs Alcor
Contact an agent to get life insurance
Fill out and submit cryonics membership application
Sign cryopreservation contract
Optional additional paperwork
Keep your policy and membership up-to-date forever
Be cryopreserved upon your legal death

For those who want to get oriented visually, here's a flowchart covering the basics:

Sequence outline

And here is the outline of this sequence:

Introduction (you are here!)
Neurocryopreservation vs whole-body cryopreservation
Cryonics Institute vs Alcor
Intro to life insurance for cryonics
Making it official
Optional additional steps
Actually putting someone in cryostasis (possibly forthcoming late 2022)
Appendices

You may notice similarities to the process overview above, with the main difference being an outsize focus on paperwork, and particularly life insurance. This is because life insurance is a cesspool of bureaucratic bloat, and I wanted to lay things out really clearly so that you can navigate it without crying as much as I did. Once you've secured your funding method (whether that's life insurance or something else), the rest of the process is very straightforward!

I think the preliminary decisions – on whole-body vs brain and which provider to use –merit a fair amount of consideration as well. I've already made my decisions there, but you may have different cruxes than I do; the questions raised can get pretty philosophical.

What I chose

If you just want to offload all of the complex decision-making to me (the person who spent several months writing this sequence but has no other relevant qualifications), I chose Alcor neuropreservation, which I funded by a $200,000 indexed universal life insurance policy from Kansas City Life, with help from the insurance agent David Donato. I made these choices as a fairly well-off 25-year-old female US citizen with no major health problems and no history of drug use. If you are in a substantially different situation but still want to defer to my judgment, send me a DM and I can help you figure out what's right for you.

Should I sign up?

Even though this sequence assumes you think cryonics is a good idea in the abstract, you might be wondering if you, personally, should actually sign up for it, and if so when. Below I'll discuss a couple factors that might help you make that decision.

Costs

Monetary cost

Cryonics is not just for rich people. It does cost money, but it's really not exorbitant, especially if you're young and healthy. There's a wide range of possible costs (corresponding to different choices of cryonics provider or life insurance policy type) that bottom out around $25 a month. I personally (25-year-old female, who did not make decisions primarily based on price) pay about $240/month.

For most people, I think this cost is probably worth a small (but not infinitesimal) chance at immortality. Sure, if it's a choice between paying life insurance premiums and having enough to eat, feed yourself first. But if you're at all financially secure, and you think cryonics is a good idea but just haven't gotten around to signing up, I don't think you should view the cost as a major deterrent.

Time cost

Signing up for cryonics takes a fair amount of time, even if you come in understanding exactly what to do, and also offload the paperwork to an insurance agent. So if you're busy with something very urgent – like, if you've been spending all your mental energy this year advising national governments on their pandemic response measures – then now is indeed probably not the best time to sign up. But if it's been like five years and you always feel too busy to get around to it, I recommend just biting the bullet and doing it now.

If you're not price-sensitive, you could pay someone to do nearly all of the work for you, but you'd still have to hire that person, provide them with your personal information for filling out forms, look over their decisions, sign papers, and potentially submit to a medical exam. My guess is it'd be hard to get it below ~10 hours total.

If you're not willing or able to pay someone to go through the signup process for you, expect more like ~40 hours. That's a significant chunk of time, but not an unmanageable one.

Attention cost

The signup process just takes a while, even if you do everything right (Oge reports 11 weeks between seeking out a life insurance policy and receiving his medallions), and so there's a sustained back-of-the-mind attention cost until it's over. Being signed up for cryonics also requires a bit of ongoing maintenance (something I'll cover in a later post), but not much more than, say, taking out a rental insurance policy does.

Now vs later

I know someone who signed up with Alcor in their twenties, and then the next year was diagnosed with potentially fatal cancer. If they had waited any longer, they would have been uninsurable, or in the best case, their life insurance premiums would have been crazy, unaffordably high. As it turned out, they remain insured, grandfathered in at their previous price. Sure this is just an anecdote, but it really drives home for me that, while you may be at an age when it's statistically highly unlikely that you'll die, it's never impossible.

All that's to say: If you think it's a good idea, do it now; don't put it off. If you're uncertain whether it's a good idea, find the root of your uncertainty and make a real decision, rather than just indefinitely driving at half-speed.

But I'm not in the US!

Not a problem! You can still sign up with Alcor or CI, and fund your membership using life insurance, so nearly everything in this sequence will still apply to you.

If you're looking into the signup process and are not in the US (or need to work with anyone outside of the US), I strongly recommend finding cryonicists in the relevant country; they'll be able to help you with bureaucratic specifics more than I can. Here are some links I found (disclaimer that I'm not endorsing any of these and they might not even still exist):

Australasia
Belgium
Finland
Germany: Cryonics Germany, German Society for Applied Biostasis
Greece
Italy
Netherlands
Portugal: Alcor Portugal, Cryonics Portugal
Québec
Southern hemisphere
Switzerland
UK

Likely-outdated email contact info for additional groups available here.

What's the lowest-effort thing I can do right now?

If you don't expect yourself to go through the full process right away for whatever reason, but you want to increase your chances of cryopreservation in the event of your death, you should sign a Declaration of Intent to Be Cryopreserved (form here).

This constitutes informed consent, making it much more likely that it will be legally possible to preserve you in case of an emergency. I expect this to take less than 30 minutes in total.

(Note: I previously recommended that people also become an Alcor Associate Member, but as of September 2022 Alcor is no longer accepting new associate members.)

That's it for now! Stay tuned for many more posts that are very technical and much longer than this, and please comment if you have any questions!