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In a shed on an industrial estate in Holbrook, a small town in rural New South Wales, seven people are stored head-down in liquid nitrogen at -196C. They are clients of Southern Cryonics, which opened the southern hemisphere's only cryonics facility there in 2023. Each paid more than A$200,000 to be frozen after death in the hope that future medicine might one day bring them back.
According to its operators, Southern Cryonics is one of six such facilities worldwide, alongside two in the US and one each in Switzerland, China and Russia. Around 1,000 people are thought to be cryopreserved globally. Holbrook was chosen because it sits between Sydney and Melbourne, has a low risk of earthquakes and floods, and already received liquid nitrogen deliveries for a local cattle-breeding business.
After death, the body is cooled quickly and then perfused with antifreeze-like chemicals over about eight hours, a process called vitrification that aims to turn tissue into a glass-like state instead of letting damaging ice crystals form. Clients pay roughly A$60,000 for this step and A$150,000 for indefinite storage, plus an annual membership fee. Chair Peter Tsolakides makes no promises, and puts the chance of his "patients" being revived in 250 years' time at about 10%. Facility manager Philip Rhoades is more hopeful, suggesting revival could be possible by 2080 for people who were well preserved, and plans to be frozen there himself.
Saffron Bryant, a cryopreservation researcher at RMIT University in Melbourne, says current science cannot preserve a whole body. Cells, embryos and blood products can be stored using vitrification, but protective chemicals cannot yet reach every part of even a single organ, and the outside of a body cools faster than the inside, damaging tissue. Even if preservation were perfect, she adds, the disease that killed the person would still be there.
There is no evidence that anyone frozen in this way can be revived. Southern Cryonics' own contract warns that suspension will probably cause damage that may be irreversible, that any future revival would carry a further fee, and that bodies may be disposed of if the company folds. Most clients are expected to pay through life insurance, but only one Australian customer's insurer has agreed to pay so far.
