Come on... SOMEbody had to say it...

According to my (very rough) calculations, that thing will take about 10 million stiffs.

Very efficient use of land, but perhaps not of building materials.

And I would have though there might still be some sensitivity towards mass graves in that part of the world.

John

So, exactly how many dead Germans is it going to take to complete this pyramid? Come on, the maths geniuses amongst you should be able to work this out!

... only just cunningly squeezed in at the very end to shut up the "Where's the IT angle" crowd. Well done! Keep it up.

-- or just another pyramid scheme?

<ducks>

*Runs after Doc Farmer with his coat*

Being able to choose a design/picture for the stone that marks my final resting place is all well and good, but I think the question that really needs answering is; will I be able to select from a range of interesting booby-traps such as falling boulders, trapdoors over a pit full of snakes and the perennial favourite - a slowly descending ceiling of spikes?

And what about curses - probably a premium service, but definitely a must for the full entombed-for-eternity-in-a-giant-mausoleum experience.

<groan>

dead people! They had to pay 700 euros to be used

to build it oh, it's in Germany never mind.

Well, if Germany disappears ... don't say Terry Pratchett didn't warn you!

Would certainly make future exhumations difficult if the one you want is right at the bottom!

Bloody typical - I go to the pyramids in the morning, and every last one, the Germans have got up early and put their towels on them already...

They tried to bury people in unmarked graves in the last war, now they're simply stacking them in a damn great pyramid.

If your parents get buried there, don't you think it'll be a bit Oedipal being buried on top of (your) Mummy?

€700 for putting another block of stone on? Definitely a pyramid scheme!

Would be better if they made a massive human pyramid out of the stiffs.

A 200 meter high All-Seeing Eye. Zen zee plans for zer Fourth Reich will kom to fruition.

but unless it's a graveyard jenga or kerplunk I'm not interested.

Er, so until the 10 millionth stiff is in, this thing will still be under construction? Won't it be covered with cranes with lorries bringing in tons of materials? Just the place to go and visit your deceased relatives.

Me Pun'd it Good!

... of the KLF / K2 Plant Hire's ill-fated (?) "Great Northern Pyramid Of The People" project!

Probably about as much chance of happening, too.

why are so many people on here making childish comments about the war...grow up idiots....i think its a great idea and i will book my place a s a p.

1 - What do they do when the bereaved complain that they don't want Gran' to be in the middle of the pile because she's claustrophobic? (..and, by definition, the vast majority WILL be in the interior.)

2 - ...and, besides, they paid 700 bills and want to be able to SEE her electric-pink coffin!

3 - Even assuming that they build it as a series of "shells" (think pyramidal matryoshka dolls) as more deaders are added, so that it will always be gererally pyramidal, it'll rarely look as neat and tidy as their adverts show it.

4 - I'm getting "website can't be found" errors, so I can't check, but are the deceased buried intact in brick-shaped coffins, cremated and stacked in smaller boxes, or mixed in to concrete and stacked as cinderblocks? In any case, I can't imagine them being as structurally sound as the nutters imagine. I don't see a tier of standard-sized coffins on the bottom row being able to support the stacks above once you got to any significant height, although I could be wrong. ...and if any of the lower boxed collapse, you've got a corpse-slide of titanic proportions.

On the other hand, the blocks in the current Great Pyramid of Khufu/Cheops at Giza have dimensions in the 5' x 8' x 12' range (480 cu. ft.). Assuming a block for the proposed project - either hollow, for ashes, or a "mix-in" concrete block - of 9" x 9" x 12" (I'm estimating from memory of family members' granite-block reliquaries), it would take 270 of them to equal one average Giza pyramid bllock.

Even using mortar to hold the whole thing together, building a mass that is more than 10 times the volume of the Giza pyramid out of blocks that are less that 4% the volume of the ones used originally sounds like a recipe for disaster. I'm no engineer, but I have a feeling that, when you try building something that large out of pieces that small, you actually have to treat the aggregate as a fluid, rather than as a solid.

Ron Murray, above, may have been joking, but it does, indeed, sound like a take-the-seed-money-and-run pyramid scheme.

Unless the corpses pile up at a pretty spectacular rate it will be pretty damn small for a long time to come. Lets see, Germany has a population of around 80,000,000, and at the current death rate around 800,000 per year. Lets say that 10% of Germany's population choose to use this, which seems hopelessly optimisitic, but then some will come from outside too. Assuming our man above is a bit high, lets say 8 million bodies, then that's 100 years to complete the structure... After a year it won't be very impressive at all.. I think we're mre likley to see one of whatsits hovercars...

"Stones can be custom designed with any number of colors, images, or relief decorations."

Maybe I'm just being a bit too logical here, but who cares what color your stone is, or what image or decoration you have on it, when it's 500 meters up (or at the bottom, covered by 500m of other blocks)?!?

Not to mention, when most people (at least those I've known or seen) visit someone's grave, they want to get close to the grave. I'd call it a psychological issue, but nevertheless, that's what they do. They do not want to be standing on the ground looking 500 meters, at which point they won't even be able to see the gravestone.

GIven that the perfect ratio of the dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Giza meant that you could sharpen razor blades if you put them dead centre in the pyramid, what would happen to the corpses at the centre of this pyramid if the ratios were repeated?

it's a dying business.

i'll get my coat...

"GIven that the perfect ratio of the dimensions of the Great Pyramid of Giza meant that you could sharpen razor blades if you put them dead centre in the pyramid, what would happen to the corpses at the centre of this pyramid if the ratios were repeated?"

"Yup! Ol' Gramps may be dead, but he's still as sharp as a tack!"

A. Merkin, for "Teuton Commons' Tomb"

Re: *no comment* - Thanks, I was about to holler after Doc and tell him he'd forgotten to take it.

Well, assuming that it's built to the same ratios as Giza...

Each side of the 578m pyramid's base will be about 908.3m.

That would give the pyramid a base area of around 825 000 m^2, and a volume of 158 950 000 m^3.

Assuming that they're putting 100 million people in it, that gives each person a block of 1.5895 m^3, or in other words a block about 1.167 m to a side (a shy under 46 inches).

All those numbers look a bit arbitrary to me.

Should go to Steve Ballmer. It should be shiny and round (just like him!).

As for security: who needs it, with Steve at the top, it will be OK. Besides he represents all good security because the pyramid will certinaly have "windows" (to the soul?).

Further on Mr. Ballmer: The sooner the better (but it won't happen that way).

Are these guys serious. Their site uses wordpress and you can sign up for free? They then promise to fix GMail's spam problem and also let you provide a url which gets posted on their website. Sounds like an interesting mix between dodgy link exchange program and an undertaker's spam list.

Looking at their web site I think the plan to start off with a really small pyramid and just keep adding extra layers on the outside so that over time it will grow to a very big structure and the final size will most probably be limited by the structural limitations of the building materials as eventually the interior and lower levels will colapse under the weight of the structure.

This means that for a considerable amount of time the "Worlds Biggest Mausoleum " could be about the size, if not a justa bit bigger than a family house.

They could always employ costumed midgets to dance around it spinal tap style.

Look at this site: http://www.thegreatpyramid.org/wp/?page_id=74. The picture on the page clearly shows Fountain of Wealth in .... Singapore!

Looks more like the Paris Hilton to me.....

... the collaborative graveyard with user-generated coffins.

Yeah right, great idea. I've always wanted to be buried in Germany. In a Pyramid. With lots of other people.

Actually €700 (aprox 500 quid) is pretty cheap - a basic funeral in the UK costs a couple of grand.

"I've always wanted to be buried in Germany. In a Pyramid. With lots of other people."

Well, unless your family has it's own crypt, you're going to be sharing a graveyard with lots of other (ex)people too. Or cremated, in which case one's ashes share the planet with a *lot* of other (ex)people.