Michael Jackson’s apparent attempts at cheating death have failed: he missed the deadline to be cryogenically frozen. The British newspaper The Daily Mail is reporting German doctor Gunther Von Hagens, the man behind the process known as “plastination” has an agreement in place to do what he’s already done to Bubbles the Chimp: pump polyurethane into the veins of Michael Jackson and dip him in a plastic coating.

Apparently this has been “plan-b” for months.

Von Hagens’ process is behind the wildly popular The Body Worlds & Mirror of Time exhibition at the O2 Centre in London — the same place Jackson was to perform 50 concerts — a schedule 5 times greater than he signed up for, and believed to be responsible for enough stress to lead Jacko to tell a reporter he wished to die. Blame the Nation of Islam: they reportedly acted on Jackson’s behalf during the concert negotiations and signed him up for more than the 10 concerts he told them he would do.

The “Plan A” of cryogenics couldn’t be fulfilled: the process requires the body to be frozen almost immediately after death, yet the sudden death at age 50 required an autopsy — and a second one will be performed by a private laboratory, too.

How Plastination Works

The fourth step in the plastination process: curing the polymer-impregnated body with gas, heat or ultraviolet light to harden it in the chosen pose.

The biggest issue in Plastination is getting the water out of the body. After the body is embalmed to halt decomposition, the body is placed in a bath of acetone, drawing out the water and impregnating the cells with the chemical. It’s later boiled off in a low heat scenario in a bath of liquid polymer. As the acetone is vaporized out of the cells, the polymer replaces it. The body is posed at this time, kept in place by a frame. The polymer is cured either with gas, heat or ultraviolet light to harden it.

Gunther von Hagens established the Institute of Plastination in Heidelberg, Germany in 1993 after spending 15 years perfecting the process. He started on vegetable tissue and worked his way up to humans. He has a body donation program set up in Germany with over 9,000 donors signed up for the process. 340 people work at five laboratories in China, Germany and Kyrgyzstan. The lab in China focuses on animals, with it’s most difficult specimen being a giraffe — which took 3 years to complete, 10 times longer than the human body.

Body Worlds was first shown in 1995 in Tokyo, and has since traveled to more than 50 museums and other venues around the world.