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Edgar Su / Reuters
A 50-year-old grave digger who asked to be identified as Mr Sim exhumes a grave at Bukit Brown cemetery in Singapore on November 27, 2012.
Reuters reports — Eternal peace does not last long in Singapore.
Starting early next year, workers with heavy machinery will begin constructing an eight-lane highway across the small country's oldest surviving major cemetery, overriding the objections of nature lovers and heritage buffs.
Singapore, with its 5.3 million people crammed onto an island less than half the size of London, is already more densely populated than rival Asian business center Hong Kong, making permanent burial space unfeasible.
Edgar Su / Reuters
Mr Sim, left, breaks a tombstone with his sledgehammer as he exhumes a grave at Bukit Brown cemetery with his boss, Mr Leung.
The whole of Bukit Brown - the resting place of more than 100,000 people, including some of Singapore's pioneering business and clan leaders and their large, intricately carved tombs - will eventually be used for residential development. At least 30 people buried there have streets named after them.
Some families have begun removing the remains of their ancestors, and authorities plan to dig up the remaining graves in January. Read the full story.
Edgar Su / Reuters
Mr Sim holds two coffin nails found when exhuming a grave at Bukit Brown cemetery.
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Here is a chance for Singapore to hold a world record. Since it's running out of space, build the deepest 100 storey building underground. (Not overground) and name it the deepest cemetery in the world.
Each floor can accommodate many hundreds or thousands of tombs. It's a high tech cemetery for a high tech country.
or just dig a BIG hole and drop the remains in...sick people
Paris had a problem, so did London with cemeteries as the population grew. Paris has between 5-6 million people buried in their catacombs. For some countries, which are more islands, the tradition is to throw the bodies into the ocean. There simply isn't any room on the island, while places in South Central America countries like Bolivia, bodies are buried three deep. When a person dies, the lowest body is removed, and the newest placed on top the other two left in place. It can make for some very delicate burying. Especially if some not so long dead bodies are in the middle. Burning may have to be an option for this latest case.
Whatever this country decides to do, I don't imagine the dead will be complaining. But if we start hearing stories about drivers seeing ghosts after the highway is built, it should make for a great movie.