How many miles of feces? Are we talking to the scale of as long as the Panama canal, the length of New York, around the equator, or to the moon (and back)?

TherapyGary@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 13 pts · 1y (2 replies)

The average density of human feces is approximately 1.06 grams per milliliter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_feces

Normal stool (Type 4) typically has a diameter of about 1 to 2 cm http://d2xk4h2me8pjt2.cloudfront.net/webjc/attachments/73/57bbee4-bristol-stool-chart.pdf

Radius = 0.75 cm

Density = 1.06 g/cm³

Mass = 3,500,000 g

Volume = 3,500,000 / 1.06 = ~3,301,887 cm³

Cross-sectional area = π × 0.75² = ~1.767 cm²

Length = 3,301,887 / 1.767 = ~1,868,000 cm = 18,680 m = 18.7 km

So 18.7km or 11.6 miles

HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y (1 reply)

Type 4 Bristol scale or are we talking some other stool types

wildncrazyguy138@fedia.io · 11 pts · 1y

It’s log scale.

FistingEnthusiast@lemmynsfw.com · 9 pts · 1y (1 reply)

That would depend on the tightness of the anus

Are we talking about someone who squeezes out pencils, or a log-dropper?

jagged_circle@feddit.nl · 3 pts · 1y

Irrelevant. We roll them into ISO standard poo diameter after excretion

PP_BOY_@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1y

Mom look im finally above average

MushuChupacabra@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1y

Those are rookie numbers!

itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 1y

I'm going for the high score

FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org · 5 pts · 1y

I feel like I'm trending in line to make at least like 6 metric tons of shit. 3.5 seems low.

Numenor@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y (2 replies)

I need a visual

snrkl@lemmy.sdf.org · 1 pts · 1y (1 reply)

Of what, a metric shit-ton?

🤣

samus12345@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1y

A metric half shit-ton.

Goretantath@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1y

3 and a half metric shit tons.

Worx@lemmynsfw.com · 4 pts · 1y (1 reply)

Faeces Georg

SoupBrick@pawb.social · 3 pts · 1y

Was an outlier and will not be included in this study.

FuckFascism@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1y

[ removed ]

HowAbt2morrow@futurology.today · 4 pts · 1y

My uncle knocks that out every leap year. 3,5 tons ain’t shit.

01189998819991197253@infosec.pub · 4 pts · 1y

Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca · 3 pts · 1y

And a smidgeon or three of PFAS and plastics and heavy metals.

eaterofclowns@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1y (1 reply)

Maybe you do; I produce far more feces by replying to comments on the internet

Kolanaki@pawb.social · 2 pts · 1y

I am the one who shits. 😤

daggermoon@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y

Double that for me.

LordGimp@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 1y (3 replies)

Sandman slim taught me that you can shit on a tarp for a year, dry it in the sun, and all that shit will fit in a shoebox at the end of the year.

raltoid@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y (1 reply)

Not without additional steps, a shoebox for big boots or being malnurished.

For reference, a large normal shoebox can hold 10-11kg of water, which is about the same mass as a year of dried average and healthy expulsions(~29g per day). And without compressing it as it dries or other methods, the tarp-dried feces wont be as dense as water.

It should also be mentioned that there are people who produce over three times as much, simply because they eat a lot more.

LordGimp@lemm.ee · 1 pts · 1y

Well Jimmy was talking about a northern CA hippie with a weed growing operation so yeah I'd say odds of being a vegan were pretty high. Would all that fiber make more or less shit?

daggermoon@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y

Nah, you're supposed to shit in a bottle and cover it with a balloon and leave it in the sun until the balloon is inflated and then inhale.

CubitOom@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 1y

The Book of Your Life | Robot Chicken | Adult Swim

Beacon@fedia.io · 2 pts · 1y

38 liters sounded impossibly low, and then i saw the 3 zeros after the space

thatradomguy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1y (6 replies)

So, uh... where does it all wind up? Like all of our tons of shit---where are they stock piling it?

tal@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 1y (2 replies)

https://extension.psu.edu/what-is-sewage-sludge-and-what-can-be-done-with-it

Approximately 99% of the wastewater stream that enters a treatment plant is discharged as rejuvenated water. The remainder is a dilute suspension of solids that has been captured by the treatment process. These wastewater treatment solids are commonly referred to as sewage sludge.

At present, almost all sewage sludge produced in Pennsylvania has been treated and is of sufficiently high quality to be classified as biosolids. Somewhat less than half of this material is disposed of by landfilling or incineration, while the remaining biosolids are recycled to the soil by use in agriculture, mine reclamation, landscaping, or horticulture.

jagged_circle@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 1y (1 reply)

"Rejuvenated" is a fancy way to say they dump it into the nearest water way (river, lake, ocean)

tal@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 1y

You're mostly drinking water that has, at some point, passed through a dinosaur!

https://what-if.xkcd.com/74/

Dinosaurs, as a taxonomic group, have been around[10] for 230 million years, but their heyday was the mid-to-late Jurassic period. In this period, there were probably around 5 trillion kilograms of dinosaur alive at any given time.[11] (Today, there are probably only a few hundred billion kilograms of living dinosaur,[12] 50 billion of it chicken).

If we assume Jurassic dinosaur water requirements were similar to mammal ones,[13] then this suggests dinosaurs drank something like 1022 or 1023 liters of water during the Mesozoic era—more than the total volume of the oceans (1021 liters).

The average "residence time" of water in the oceans—the amount of time a water molecule spends there before moving into another part of the water cycle—is about 3,000 years,[14] and no part of the water cycle traps water for more than a few hundred thousand years. This means we can assume that, over timescales of millions of years, Earth's water is thoroughly mixed—and dinosaurs had plenty of time to drink it all many times over.

This means that while the chances are that most of the water in your soda has never been in another soda, almost all of it has been drunk by at least one dinosaur.

peoplebeproblems@midwest.social · 2 pts · 1y

Well theres good news and bad news.

Good news is that it's organic matter that can easily change form.

someguy3@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y

Well it should be going back on the crop land. The circle of life.

jagged_circle@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 1y

The ocean. Such a waste

Gork@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 1y

Well shit.

ABetterTomorrow@lemm.ee · 2 pts · 1y

Where does that all go?!?

poppichew@piefed.social · 2 pts · 1y (1 reply)

My loving sibby once told me to look around me while on a bus. Said look to the left of you, look to the right. Everyone you see is full of shit. Was a nice gesture, and I think I've kept that with me always =)

CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 2 pts · 1y

A corollary to that: we spend our entire lives moving shit from one place to another.

Works for both definitions.

FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y

You're welcome.

lolola@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 1y

I'm on that low% speedrun

Trex202@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y

No, you!

jagged_circle@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 1y (18 replies)

People who say we need petro chemicals for modern agriculture need to understand this

Quilotoa@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 1y (14 replies)

The problem is that human feces carries a lot of human pathogens.

jagged_circle@feddit.nl · 5 pts · 1y (13 replies)

That's why you compost it before use. Its own heat kills those pathogens with time.

BobGnarley@lemm.ee · 6 pts · 1y (1 reply)

I think North Korea does this with less than optimal results.

jagged_circle@feddit.nl · 3 pts · 1y

In don't think North Korea does anything optimally lol

Quilotoa@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 1y (10 replies)

If everyone would be diligent to compost it correctly, it would work. You couldn't ensure that on a large scale.

jagged_circle@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 1y (9 replies)

If it was State run, of course you could.

Quilotoa@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 1y (7 replies)

You're probably right. I don't think the state would take it on, though. One mistake, and you have deadly consequences and people suing for justice.

jagged_circle@feddit.nl · 2 pts · 1y (6 replies)

You realize every other time it rains in NYC, they dump raw sewage into the ocean and there's an uptick in people who get sick (swimmers) as a result?

Almost every major city in the US has this problem.

So I must disagree. I don't think it would be worse than our current situation.

Also, we currently fertilize food crops with cow manure, which also carries pathogens. These pathogens could be also eliminated by composting too, but I don't think anyone does this. This is usually the cause of e-coli and salmonia outbreaks in the US.

What I'm proposing is safer than the status quo

Live_your_lives@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y

Perhaps I'm just not understanding you, but how does composting treated sewage fix the problem of dumping raw sewage into the water before it ever reaches the treatment plant?

The reason for the dumping of raw sewage is because these cities have older infrastructure which combines wastewater and storm water collection into one system. Heavy rains can increase the flow rate in such systems by as much as ten times their usual rate, which is far too much for treatment plants to handle without massively oversizing them and it also could make them lose the microbiology that treats the wastewater for them. Diverting this sewage directly into the receiving waters actually prevents even worse public health problems from occurring.

Another problem with what you are proposing is that, while composting can be good enough to get rid of pathogens, it's not good enough to remove things like pharmaceuticals and heavy metals. Incineration would be a more effective solution, but it requires even higher upfront costs.

01189998819991197253@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 1y

Safer, maybe. But it's crappy work.

I'll leave...

outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 1y

That is, of course, the only way to coordinate anything.

01189998819991197253@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 1y

So, what you're saying, is that they don't understand shit.

Godric@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1y (1 reply)

One could wonder why modern agriculture systems don't use free human waste

jagged_circle@feddit.nl · 0 pts · 1y

Because we don't care about the negative externalities of using fossil fuels.

Corporations don't care about harming people