Thanks!

Annual financial reports and (at least) annual shareholders meetings are legal requirements for maintaining corporate integrity in California, and most US states. 21CM is a California corporation, and as such it must allow shareholders to vote, hold an annual meeting of shareholders, permit a shareholder to inspect records after a written demand and provide an annual report to shareholders (http://ag.ca.gov/consumers/general/corporate_shareholders.php). I know of two shareholders who have requested some or all of the above, and did not received a response from 21CM, despite the passage of several years since the requests were made. I have not made such requests, so I cannot speak to whether these complaints of noncompliance are valid, or not.

It would be interesting to know if the various corporate entities associated with and/or funded by LEF have filed the required state and federal financial reports, or otherwise complied with state and federal laws that preserve their corporate shield and/or their tax exempt status — Mike Darwin

?

http://www.mysanantonio.com/business/article/Conquering-death-in-Comfort-1427875.php

Since that time, there have been truly enormous advances in molecular sieving technology and cryogenic refrigeration. It is now possible to use polymer membranes to selectively remove nitrogen from the air and deliver it to a highly efficient low maintenance cryogenic refrigerator, or gas liquifier. This has eliminated the need for separation towers on small scale nitrogen liquification facilities, which were a major headache in terms of both maintenance and nitrogen gas purity. Advances in helium refrigerators have reduced maintenance to a series of simple, straightforward parts change outs, dramatically increased reliability, and virtually eliminated significant downtime. They have also reduced the cost of such systems dramatically.

Concurrent advances in solar power technology have made it feasible to provide sufficient kilowattage to reliably power such small-scale LN2 production plants in a place such as central or southern Arizona. Low or no sun days can be compensated for by storing LN2 liquified on sunny days (easily feasible in central Arizona). Thus, in the event of a ball-busting emergency, the procedure would be to convert all patients to neuro and place them in bigfoot dewars. At this time, 2 bigfoot dewars would be required for Alcor. You would, at a minimum, also need the following: a single 150 kW Solar Power Plant: $605,800, 2 x LN2 Plants: $144,000, Food, Water, Medical Supplies: $15,000, 2K gallons Diesel Fuel: $5,000, Miscellaneous: $10,000, Hardened Storage Facility: $1,367,640 (ECD-60), $ 290,300 (CAT-12) at a Total cost of ~ $2, 447,750. This rough estimate is based on specific cost and energy use estimates made by Eugen Leitl and I a couple of years ago and would allow 1-year grid independent survival of patients and staff (I’m sure costs have risen substantially since then). The diesel fuel is necessary as a buffer for any prolonged period without sunlight, and to supply HVAC and lighting for personnel during the night under some foreseeable conditions. The entire facility would be underground and would use off the shelf technology in this implementation. This was, in fact, to be Part 4 of my Failure Analysis Lectures, but alas, I didn’t finish it, since Parts 1-3 seemed to be of no interest and to have no practical effect. As you may now be guessing, this is where I am heading with the “The Latter Day Laputas” articles; so you now know the ending ;-0. BTW, the slides and some of the text for this proposal were submitted to Alcor awhile ago. My guess is that they haven’t stopped laughing yet, if they paid them any serious attention at all. — Mike Darwin

As in on-site LN2 production?

The creation of such a hardened facility with grid-independent cryogenic refrigeration capability is really just common sense. For instance, most of the world’s largest corporations, and all of the world’s largest nation-states have super-hardened facilities for storage of their most critical data; tax records, financial records, intellectual property, etc. A quick look at the unexpected weather related flooding, tornado and seismic damage to infrastructure around the world (and especially in the US) shows the wisdom of such a strategy – even in the case of human enterprises that have comparatively short timescales of operation: i.e., on the order of a 100 to 200 years at most, for corporations.

Finally, as the Ted Williams case illustrates (and Dora Kent, as well), patient security can go from a negligible risk position to a very high risk position in a matter of days or weeks, with virtually no warning. All that would be necessary is for Alcor, CI, or any other cryonics organization to cryopreserve an individual who touches off intense hostility on the part of some of the public, or in some special interest group. For instance, while I was very dubious about the Ted Williams cryopreservation, it never even remotely occurred to me that it would launch a micro-movement of zealous nut-cases who would, in fact, threaten Alcor. Given the inherent ability of cryonics to provoke strong emotional reactions in some people if they perceive it at as threatening, it is not unreasonable to create a secure environment for the patients, and also for the staff (who are arguably more likely to be primary targets of vengeance or revenge). Of course such a threat does not obviate the need for RATIONAL planning and execution of security precautions in a cost effective way. — Mike Darwin