From: ichudov@Algebra.COM (Igor Chudov @ home)
Date: Sun, 6 Dec 1998 01:08:23 +0800
To: mah248@nyu.edu (Michal Hohensee)
Subject: Re: y2k/gary north delusions
In-Reply-To: <36694C23.B4CB9509@nyu.edu>
Message-ID: <199812051640.KAA04447@manifold.algebra.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text



Michal Hohensee wrote:
> Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
> > Michal Hohensee wrote:
> > > Igor Chudov @ home wrote:
> > > > Petro wrote:
> > > > >       Ok, so let's cut that back to what we _need_. First off, we don't
> > > > > dump our dish water down the drain, it gets "recycled" to flush the
> > > > > toilets.
> > > >
> > > > get them to shit outside.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Bad bad bad bad bad bad *bad* idea.  This might be ok in the Russian
> > > countryside, or any other countryside, but it an *excessively* bad thing
> > > in just about any modern city.  If running water fails to run in the
> > > cities, and people do as you suggest, and take their business outside,
> > > it will not be long before tremendous numbers of people get sick and
> > > die.  What with the high concentrations that people live in in most
> > > cities, I expect that this'd make the Black Death look like a mild case
> > > of the flu.
> > 
> > Like I said, someone would need to build a latrine. That's all that's
> > needed.
> > 
> 
> Latrines aren't sufficient to the task.  In a city like NYC, latrines
> might solve the problem for perhaps a week (assuming that we tear up all
> the roads and sidewalks --something which we cannot do in time, even if
> we wanted to), but then they'll be full, and there won't be any more
> places the latrines can be rotated to.

Why, shit is actually pretty compact. usually with latrines, the liquid
filtrates out, and the compressed shit does not take too much space.

If you dig a deep enough hole (2-3 yards) it should last for a long,
long time. I estimate that a human being produces about 1/2 to 1lb
of hard waste per day, some are more full of it, some less. Let's settle
on one lb per day.

Let's see, a hole that is 5 yards wide, 3 yards deep, and, say, 2 yards
wide, is about 30 cubic yards. It could take about 40 tons of hard
compressed waste, that is, 80 thousand man-days of shitting can be
compressed in it.

You definitely need some heavy machinery to dig this kind of hole
(and then you have to build smoe kind of frame over it to prevent people
from falling into it if it collapses), but it is not hard and can even
be done in a catastrophic scenario.

That's a lot!!! Let's see,a high rise building with 50 floors and 10
apartments in each floor, that's about 1200 people. The latrine would
last them what, about sixty days! And then they can dig another one.

> Then we're back to doing it in the open.  Less concentrated cities might
> last a while longer, but not much longer.  There's no getting around it,
> we *need* working sewer systems to have modern cities.  Otherwise, the
> cities die.

Not in the short run. They could survive for a while.

	- Igor.