Body bag

A body bag is a non-porous bag designed to contain a human body, used for the storage and transport of corpses. Body bags are also sometimes used for the storage of corpses within morgues.

In modern wars, body bags have been used to contain the bodies of dead soldiers. Governments typically have reserves of body bags, both for anticipated wars and natural disasters.

During the cold war vast reserves of body bags were built up in anticipation of millions of fatalities from nuclear war. This was the subject of Adrian Mitchell's haunting protest poem "Fifteen Million Plastic Bags".

With the addition of provision for breathing, specially adapted body bags are also used for the BDSM practice of mummification.

The term body bag is also used for fashion or other bags worn on the body, and this sense has no connection with either of the two above senses.

See also

• shroud
• coffin