Discussion»Questions»Death and Dying» Are modern-day coffins made in such a way as to keep out even the tiniest insects and other organisms that normally feed on cadavers?
No. The vaults keep out a lot but eventually they may fail too. That begs the question of why purchase a vault. The answer: I recently found out that today buying a vault is not optional. They are required in my home state for burial.
Many of the organisms that help decompose a body are already inside a person... all the person's life. With the body no longer able to fend them off, they are free to do their job - recycle.
Vaults are used to keep the ground level. In the old days, they heaped dirt in a mound over the corpse/coffin. As the contents rotted, the ground would settle back to "normal" level. These days, we consider the mound tacky. Plus, we use heavy equipment to dig graves., The vaults serve to - (a) keep the surface tidy looking, (b) to keep heavy equipment from compacting the corpse/coffin as they roll over it, and (c) help protect the groundwater from "contaminant"s leaching in.
