Two EPA agents investigate a report of human body parts discovered at the rural site of Tri-State Crematory. What they find sets off the biggest investigation in Georgia history.
This podcast contains graphic descriptions of death and decay.
Please listen with care.
It can take hundreds of years for a human body to return to dust.
Immediately after you die, the body begins digesting itself.
Breathing halts, your blood stops circulating.
Your body cools, losing one and a half degrees every hour until it reaches room temperature.
After about two hours, rigor mortis sets in, stiffening your muscles.
Small fluid filled blisters form on your organs and skin, giving the body a plastic like sheen.
The bacteria in your body, no longer kept in check by the immune system, begin to feast.
They consume tissue, releasing methane and other gases in the process.
Your body bloats, nearly doubles in size.
That unmistakable horrid odor of death grows for several days and soon you can be smelled a quarter mile away.
Under certain conditions, a process called saponification takes place.
It turns your fatty acids into something called grave wax.
Your body becomes soap, and parts of.
It stay preserved for decades, if not centuries.
But more likely, the bugs get you first.
Because death attracts insects to your body.
Flesh flies arrive within minutes and they in turn attract larger predator insects.
Ants and wasps come to eat the flies.