You can pay this Russian company to fake your death and bury you alive for around $60,000

While the rest of us naïve Americans pay our psychiatrists $80 an hour or eat mushrooms to solve our problems, the Russians have developed a much more direct approach: live burial.

A company called Prekated Academy in St. Petersburg, Russia offers the opportunity to fake your own death, stage a funeral for yourself and start a new life – all you have to do is pay a low price of 3,545,000 Russian rubles or USD 57,455.

The following was (loosely) translated from an Instagram post:

“If:

• Your life has turned into constant, hopeless shit
• You can’t get out of the financial hole
• They don’t take out business, team, life, family
• They see no positive prospects for the future

Don’t be frightened at the thought of death, but see it as a chance for salvation – make a knight’s procession, bury yourself!”

I really tried to reach someone with this company but I couldn’t get through because of the basic limitations that exist when trying to contact people in another part of the world. However, this appears to be a genuine service that you can pay for. If anyone used it without getting ripped off I can’t say because those people would likely be listed as dead. However, I have to say that promoting a $57,000 service to people in a financial hole seems inherently funny.

“I give you the opportunity to say goodbye to a low standard of living, to cut irrevocable bridges to the dreary past, to reconsider life and to find personal success without mistakes,” the post said. “Not only will you regain faith in yourself and in a happy future, but you will regain a great mission, potential and love for life in all its diversity.”

The majority of the company’s other Instagram posts that I translated all seemed to be devoted to business marketing strategies or second-hand success stories about people who had used the Fake Your Own Death service and made a lot of money doing it.

Courtesy of Prekated Academy/Instagram

However, a key post that immediately followed the original post that offered the live funeral services calmed any skeptics who might worry about guaranteeing their own personal safety when paying such exorbitant costs.

“We do not intend to expose our customers to undue risk,” the post said. “Scientists have calculated that the buried person has enough air in the coffin for about 5.5 hours. So even if your life sucks, it won’t take you more than 60 minutes to bounce back.”

Being the hardworking little journalist that I am, I looked it up and about five hours one can hope to survive, depending on how big the coffin was, according to this website. The next obvious question the post decided to answer was what the company’s protocol would be should a customer wish to remain in the coffin.

“Euthanasia is illegal in our country, so whether you choose to stay fucked or be born again, we will save you,” the post reads. “However, one country has now introduced a quota for euthanasia and is actively promoting the service, even as a measure against depression. Google it at your leisure.”

It seems that the service is available all over the world, but for the full stuff you have to go to St. Petersburg.