WI: Walt Disney actually WAS frozen?

it's a well-known urban legend that Walt Disney had himself cryogenically frozen before his death (or upon his death) in order to be preserved and brought back at some point in the future so that he could continue his work. in actuality, he really did die and he was cremated shortly thereafter (and as a point of interest, the first known cryogenic freezing happened almost a month after he died, in January of '67)

but what if he really was frozen shortly before his OTL death? let's say that it happens in mid-1966. would Disney be able to be safely unfrozen years later and his lung cancer treated, either in the OTL present-day or sometime in the near future?
 
At the moment, cryogenic freezing (at least according to someone whose research into the matter I trust over my own) is essentially a gamble--a very, very low odds one, but arguably better than certain death. Recovering a body from cryogenic freezing and resuming any kind of physiological or neural function is as far as I am informed impossible for the moment, and likely to remain such for quite some time--but of course, that's time you have if you're frozen.

So...long story short, even if we could cure Disney's cancer (given how late-stage it was, I think that's a challenge) we couldn't currently unfreeze him, and we're probably not going to be able to do anything similar anytime in the near future.
 
The major issue isn't the cancer, but that the freezing effectively destroys the cells by crystalising liquids. Especially given when Walt would have been frozen (before this was even recognised to be an issue), it's not just that the cells are dead, it's that the information about where they are and what they were doing has been destroyed because the water in them has expanded and shredded them. Walt would be a human-shaped meat popsicle, not a preserved organism.

When do we get Walt Disney back? You would need a computer powerful enough to simulate the crystallisation process in exact detail so it could work backwards from a solid mass to get a snapshot of his pre-death neural network, then rebuild him from new organic materials. But given that the frozen brain in early cryogenics is basically an undifferentiated mass, you would need to know the EXACT (i.e. down to a molecular level) circumstances of his death and simulate the whole scenario again and again until you arrived at a result molecularly identical to frozen-Walt. We're approaching Omega Point-level computing power needed here.
 
The major issue isn't the cancer, but that the freezing effectively destroys the cells by crystalising liquids. Especially given when Walt would have been frozen (before this was even recognised to be an issue), it's not just that the cells are dead, it's that the information about where they are and what they were doing has been destroyed because the water in them has expanded and shredded them. Walt would be a human-shaped meat popsicle, not a preserved organism.

When do we get Walt Disney back? You would need a computer powerful enough to simulate the crystallisation process in exact detail so it could work backwards from a solid mass to get a snapshot of his pre-death neural network, then rebuild him from new organic materials. But given that the frozen brain in early cryogenics is basically an undifferentiated mass, you would need to know the EXACT (i.e. down to a molecular level) circumstances of his death and simulate the whole scenario again and again until you arrived at a result molecularly identical to frozen-Walt. We're approaching Omega Point-level computing power needed here.

Actually the real point/problem is that cryogenic tech in the 60's is not very good, and we currently do not have the tech to undo modern cryo or 60's cryo thus this goes in Future history.
 
would Disney be able to be safely unfrozen years later and his lung cancer treated, either in the OTL present-day or sometime in the near future?

Answer: Probably not.

I think instead of asking if freezing would work, you should ask "What if it did work"

So, everyone, how would the world of 2012 react to a living Disney? What other impact would this technology have?
 
Answer: Probably not.

I think instead of asking if freezing would work, you should ask "What if it did work"

So, everyone, how would the world of 2012 react to a living Disney? What other impact would this technology have?

Personally, i wonder what Walt would have thought of the current crop of Disney movies and tv shows. He probably would love Phineas and Ferb, due to how imaginative it is. One also wonders what he would think of the ABC/Marvel/Lucasfilm aquisitions.
 
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