What is the Immortality Bus?
The Immortality Bus is a pro-science symbol of resistance against aging and death. Join our scientists, robots, and activists as we use our mobile 40-foot coffin to ignite the next great civil rights debate in America and around the world. Anyone from any country can donate!
Hold it! Wait! Let's back up for a moment and give this wild endeavor some context...
For millennia, it was assumed humans could not escape death and the grave. Yet in the 21st Century, millions around the globe are realizing that modern science and technology may soon be able to overcome human mortality and even reverse aging. Unfortunately, many Americans—especially those who believe in afterlives—are neutral or even oppose stopping biological death and aging. Additionally, with a US Congress that is 100% religious, the American government has little incentive to stop death or to put national resources behind life extension science to make citizen's lives longer and healthier. As a result, nearly 7,000
Americans die everyday (over 100,000 die daily worldwide), even though the science is literally out there to stop it. This is an incalculable tragedy. Millions are dying needlessly—including people we love—because governments and the public won't put the resources into the science to stop death.
The Immortality Bus—hosted by futurist and US Presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan—aims to change all this. Appearing as a 40-foot coffin, the Immortality Bus will roll down American highways stopping at rallies and events, instigating the kind of clashes and debates that this country (and the world) needs to challenge archaic cultural ideals that are holding science, technology, and medicine back. The Immortality Bus aims to usher in the next great civil rights debate: Should we use science and technology to overcome death and become a stronger species?
Who is Zoltan Istvan?
Zoltan Istvan is a man on a mission to end death. Born in America, he's a futurist, philosopher, journalist, keynote speaker, family man, and the 2016 US Presidential candidate of the Transhumanist Party. Formerly a National Geographic Channel reporter, he frequently appears on television and currently writes for Vice, Gizmodo, Huffington Post, Slate, and many other places. He's one of the most visible public figures in transhumanism, a multi-million-person international social movement that aims to use science and technology to radically improve the human species. Google Zoltan to find our more info or check out his campaign website:
For whatever it's worth, Zoltan has been involved in extreme adventures his entire life, and is the inventor of volcano boarding (which is just like it sounds).
What We Need to Succeed
We want to do a full national tour on the Immortality Bus, putting on rallies, events, and educational conferences. More importantly, we'll also be showing up at important national social happenings like Ferguson, the Supreme Court Gay Marriage announcement, and the Baltimore Riots. You can expect us to park ourselves right in the middle of historical national action, and to stand up for those who are downtrodden and have been left behind by American closed-mindedness. The Immortality bus is pro-science, pro-democracy, pro-reason, pro-protecting the environment, and pro-freedom to do whatever you want so long as it doesn't hurt someone else.
To do all we hope to do, we need to buy the bus and make it look like a coffin. But we need more too: We want a life-sized, interactive robot on board, drones following us, a biohacking lab for experimenting on ourselves, Virtual Reality equipment, lots of public event materials, and, of course, fuel. For $25,000, we can pull all this off for a 4-month tour that will get us around the country. Here's the breakdown of where the $25,000 will go:
- Approximately $15,000 will be going to buying the bus and making it look like a coffin. This includes canvas covers for the windows & tires for the bus when it's parked, as well as the flowers on top.
- $5000 will go towards a full size, interactive robot (named Jethro Knights), bus drones, VR tech, event materials, t-shirts, and cool new tech gear—like live video cams which will film our journey for you to watch
- $5000 will go towards gasoline, food, bus maintenance, and other travel expenses
- If we don't reach our financial goal of $25,000, we'll still move ahead. We'll just buy a cheaper bus and spend less money on a robot, drones, and (gasp) food
- On a side note, obviously $25,000 isn't enough to feed and get hotels for all the bus volunteers. Because this is a humanitarian mission, volunteers will be paying for some of their own accommodation and food out of their pockets. So, with this in mind, please feel free to bid this campaign way beyond the $25,000 mark—that way we can continue the Immortality Bus for much longer than 4 months and make the tour much more involved and spectacular.
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The Process of Creating the Immortality Bus
Once funded, creating a coffin bus won't be too difficult. We'll buy the bus, paint it the right color, and have the specialized coffin top welded on. Then we'll find some giant plastic flowers for the top and mount it on. Once finished, it'll look similar to the drawings.
Zoltan Istvan has a long history with projects like the Immortality Bus. Besides spending years cruising the oceans on his sailboat, Zoltan has also owned a bus before (in fact the exact same model we are planning on buying). He's also spent years in real estate as an entrepreneur rehabbing houses, so he knows how to guide a team with tools to make something turn out just right.
The most challenging part of the Immortality Bus is getting volunteers to take time out of their lives to be a part of the tour. But so far, many people have already committed to joining us. Hopefully more will follow.
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When Are We Starting?
We hope to start the bus tour within a few weeks of the close of funding. You can follow our progress and get exact dates via our social media and on the Immortality Bus website (which will be finished soon):
http://www.immortalitybus.com/
Who Else Will Be On the Bus?
In addition to Zoltan Istvan, a bunch of other futurists, journalists, scientists, medical doctors, adventurers, and transhumanist activists will be riding on the bus. (Riders pictured above are longevity scientist Maria Konovalenko, Telegraph journalist and author Jamie Bartlett, & physician and women's rights activist Dr. Lisa Memmel). Many bus riders will come and go as we pass through various parts of the country. We hope to keep the bus full of interesting and charismatic characters. And surely a number of well-known celebrities and television personalities will also be joining.
Everywhere in the United States. We already have people offering events for us to attend (and crash), and we'll be staging pro-science and anti-aging rallies along the way. There are universities that want us to visit, journalists that want to cover us, and longevity celebrities that plan to ride with us. We'll leave from San Francisco and begin by covering the West Coast. We have parties planned in Los Angeles (with an invite from a Kennedy), an event on the Microsoft Campus in Seattle, a rally in Portland with a conspiracy radio show, and longevity speeches in Phoenix. Afterward, we'll continue East, stopping at the Mississippi River to to protest how polluted America's greatest waterway has become. We'll continue in the Bible Belt and visit megachurches, hoping to covert the religious to reason and transhumanism (and showing that formal religion and greatly extended lifespans can happily co-exist). In Detroit, we'll visit factories where robots have taken jobs (and ask our own trainable robot Jethro Knights, what he thinks). In Massachusetts, we'll stop at MIT and get chip implants, exploring growing surveillance issues. We have scheduled appearances in New York City, Chicago, and at Florida's Church of Perpetual Life, And, of course, we will be pulling up to Washington DC's US Capitol building to hand deliver a Transhumanist Bill of Rights to Congress.
You'll see it all with our live cams, our YouTube channel, and through the eyes of TV. You'll also read about it through Zoltan's various columns in mainstream media.
Furthermore, the more money we can raise in this Indiegogo campaign, the more places we can stop and events we can put on.
What You Get & the Social Impact
The goal of the Immortality Bus is to challenge the mainstream idea that that death is acceptable or natural. Frankly, given the power of modern science, nothing is acceptable or so-called natural if it causes suffering and hardship anymore. In 21st Century life, there's only what humans and their tools can achieve and what they cannot. And mounting evidence—including
studies using mice—points to the fact that we can stop suffering, disease, organ failure, and aging. If this is the case, then we can help stop the 100,000+ people from dying today, and also tomorrow, and so on. Furthermore, we can also stop you from having to ever die if you don't want to. In the future, most people will see aging as a disease that can be conquered—and should be conquered.
If you donate to our campaign, you'll get to know that you are contributing to saving the lives of millions of people around the world. That is something special, indeed.
And, of course, if you contribute, you'll also get our fun perks: like t-shirts, an eBook of the journey, bumper stickers, a signed copy of Zoltan's bestselling novel The Transhumanist Wager—and even a ride on the Immortality Bus.
Overpopulation Concerns and Other Issues
Of course, the
#1 concern that scientists trying to overcome death hear about is
overpopulation. Many people assume just because humans stop dying, the planet
will become overpopulated. However, this is not necessarily the case. What many people
don't consider is that technology—according to recent reports at the World Bank—has been raising
the standard of living for the entire species over the last 30 years. It's a simple fact: the higher the
standard of living around the world, the less children people have. In fact, if
people knew there were going to live far longer than a standard 75-year lifespan, many probably wouldn't have children at all for the first few hundred years. Some of this logic is demonstrated by many developed countries that now have negative growth
rates. The transhumanist age is ushering in new wealth to the world to all
people, and with it will eventually come a balanced and acceptable growth rate of population
levels. Give people the best science and technology available and encourage them to support and use it, and the world will find
the best path to preserve the shining brilliance of this ecologically fragile
planet.
Media and Why We Are Using Crowdfunding?
This is an independent project. We don’t represent any investors. Our goal is to change culture and the mind's of people. We do that through media and activism. If culture can be changed, then private longevity companies will sprout up, and people will vote in politicians that care directly about the health and length of citizen's lifespans. And if those truly pro-science politicians get into office, then they will create programs for everyone to live longer, better, and with greater health.
The Immortality Bus is a humanitarian mission. We believe in the 21st Century everybody has a right to a happy and indefinite lifespan, regardless of their heritage, age, and income. Our goal is not only to make your life and the lives of your loved ones better, but to do this for all the people on Earth.
Please contribute the Immortality Bus and help us change people's attitudes about health and dying. Together we can start saving millions of lives.
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Photo/Drawing credits and other info:
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