I visited the museum in Albuquerque a couple of months ago, and it was absolutely fascinating to see all the artifacts.
The most surreal was the outdoor shed with dozens of decommissioned hydrogen bombs. Blunt little canisters, each one once possessing the genocidal ability to release more fire power than has been released in all the wars in human history. And in aggregate with all their friends, to essentially put an end to civilization. By design.
And now they sit on mechanic's creepers, lined up like motorcycles in a parking garage, each one with a little sign describing its vintage and firepower.
It’s so interesting how denial works at every stage. Even those who accept, on some level, the possibility of nuclear war, prepare for it in the most inadequate ways. The toilet issue is perfect illustration. On top of everything else, this scenario will probably involve people stricken with diarrhoea from several causes. They need serious sanitation. Instead the official advice is complete fantasy. Crazy.
This is an interesting topic because it doesn't take a nuclear war to lose access to the sewer system and millions of people around the world are already experiencing this.
For the first 2 decades of my life our small lake cabin had an outhouse. Not really much different and not really that bad. The worst smells dissipate quickly and the continued biological activity degrade things further. In a small enclosed space with poor ventilation it would be more noticable. Overly clean Americans are way more nose sensitive than the rest of the world, this also contributes to the "problem". In the 40s and 50s everyone but the most aristocratic folks would have had the outhouse experience, and be much less worried about it.
My ex-wife lived in Northern Minnesota. The septic wasn't very deep and would freeze in the worst of the winters. The solution was a 5 gallon bucket and a bale of hay or straw. Replace bucket as needed. It's not pretty but it works. I have a few in the basement for that job.
When I was in college in the early 90s, our school cleaned out the fallout shelters and sold off all the things they found in there. I bought one of those sanitation barrels, for my own personal amusement. We wound up using some of the supplies, like the rolls of sandpap---err, toilet tissue and hand cleaner. My wife was extremely nope regarding the "sanitary napkins". For a while, the commode seat (which you were supposed to put over the barrel top) graced the garage wall. We tried to actually sit on it to see how viable it would have been - I doubt the canister would have lasted more than a few days before collapsing.
Eventually we discarded all that remained. I regret not keeping some of it. The "instruction sheet" was a darkly hilarious read - it was almost cheery as it described how to manage a clearly impossible situation.
I can imagine the horror as it dawns upon everyone that at some point the barrel would collapse. Everybody would postpone using it as long as possible. “No, I’m good, thanks… I think I can wait a while longer. You go ahead.”
I can see that happening. After all Gemini 7 astronaut Frank Borman went nine days out of the two week mission without a bowel movement because he soo despised the Gemmini toilet arrangment(basically a plastic bag): in the end though nature forced his hand and he said that the releif(parden the pun) was 'exquisite',....
Also, if that bucket serves 50 people, and there’s only one liner, I’m guessing this meant maybe 50 bowel movements or maybe 50 people per day. Then you’d bury or otherwise dispose of the bucket. I don’t think the bucket was intended to be reused or it would have multiple liners.
My understanding is that their expected use time would depend in fact on how many people were using them. A report about them from the time says that if 50 people were really using one, it would be filled in "2 days or less." It seems to be an interestingly unexplored point in the literature on them — how many of them you should have.
portapotties on wwii heavy bombers did exist and have been rrsearched, (crude and awkward) but for smaller planes - mediums & fighters - no such luck - and as training for nuclear war often meant longer flights between toilets, that too is a story much worth exploring...
Long range escort fighters like the P-51 Mustang were actually designed with a tube set-up to allow the pilot to relieve himself on an eight hour flight but as far as the other matter was concerned you were basically **** out of luck and had to resort to a low residue diet leading up to the mission. Parts for the relief tube system show up for auction on a regular basis and have some value as collectables due to their novelty value:
A funny aspect about this: I got two reminders of this from two separate movies over the last couple of days. The first came from watching the extended cut of "Dawn of the Dead," where our heroes hole up in a Civil Defense shelter space (complete with big windows directly overhead) that's full up with these personal sanitation units. Later in the movie, they use those for holding up appliances such as hot plates because it was already established that they had access to toilets and sinks. Knowing what I know about shopping malls (I used to run a carnivorous plant gallery in a dying mall in Dallas), not only would they have all sorts of problems when the plumbing inevitably clogged, but Eighties-style shopping malls have a regular problem with sewer lines leaking and blowing out due to age and poor maintenance, and most malls don't have easy access to those lines to allow, say, fixing a line for a Starbucks restroom when the Starbucks's downstairs neighbor is a high-end men's store. (At my dying mall, several downstairs spaces had to be abandoned long before the mall shut down because not only did the pipes blow out and leak into the spaces below, but they blew out multiple times in the space of a few weeks, spraying sewage everywhere, and since the owner was trying to flip the property, he had no interest whatsoever in repairing and replacing.) Compared to the HVAC, lights, and power going out, though, making a typical mall nearly unliveable, the sewer line blowouts are relatively minor, if you can believe it.
The only other movie I've seen that discussed toilet issues after a nuclear detonation with any seriousness (the animated film "Where The Wind Blows" makes jokes about litter boxes before the bombs fall) is "The Divide," a really creepy 2012 film involving a near-dozen people surviving a nuclear strike on New York. The super, played by Michael Biehn, is a prepper who improvised batteries, water and food stores, and a septic toilet before the building blew up, and he emphasizes "It's septic, so pour some lime in every time you finish." Since the film follows approximately three months underground, yeah, you can imagine how disgusting that toilet would have been in that time, and conditions were still hellish above-ground by the film's end.
I lived through the freeze down in Texas a couple years ago having the power, water, and heat go out.
Because it looked like it was going to be days... I figured out how much water I had, then divided by 4 ish (another couple plus dogs)
Not a lot, but enough for 2 liters a water a day per person.
Then I remembered the toilet required water to flush and realized we would maybe be able to flush it max twice unless we came up with some way to get more grey water
Took a while though of thinking to figure out I could crack the ice on the building pool and ferry that water up the stairs to keep the toilet going. That would be easier than trying to melt snow on the camping stove.
Helped also that I had all my Chicago winter gear in a box so my fingers and toes were fine. I still dream about my horror seeing the people in line outside of HEB on the last shot for supplies wearing sneakers in negative degrees.
On a very directly related note, Ted Cruz is a cowardly slime. Abandoned his own dog to go to Cancun, in addition to me, my wife, and the good citizens of Texas. Fuck that guy with a rusty spoon.
... ah yes! The rarely mentioned but absolute bottom line problem of human beings producing noxious wastes. Really a part of the necessity of food and water. It has always seemed to be a an especially, perhaps insurmountable, problem with large public shelters. A problem which could destroy morale and make survival an almost unreachable goal.
Sitting on a flimsy seat on top of a barrel filled with gallons and gallons of excrement. That is not going to work well. There is going to be a lot of spillage and leaks. One hundred people will produce about a TON of waste in one week! It is going to get everywhere. It is going to be a serious health problem, perhaps catastrophic! A little bit of shit goes a long way to ruining any situation; let alone 2,000 lbs ( or 4,000 lbs after two weeks).
I wonder if the Scandinavian countries, who have historically spent a lot more time money and thought on Civil Defense, have come up with anything better than this Medieval dungeon approach?
At one point, I had 2 English mastiffs. One was 175 pounds, and one was 120 pounds, so human sized. Sometimes, they pooped on walks, and we picked it up (man sized poops). Sometimes, they pooped in the poop area in the back yard (gotta have a poop area if you have dogs). One week, we weighed the poops before putting them in the garbage can: 40 pounds/88 kgs which didn't include the poops from walks.
That little cardboard toilet was going to fill up quickly.
We double bagged the dogs poops before putting them in the garbage because mastiff friends of ours had a bag break in a garbage truck. Friends were told that they couldn't put poop in the garbage any more because it smelled so bad that the garbage personnel couldn't work with that truck, and they had to wash the garbage truck.
Imagine the stench that is so bad that they have to wash a garbage truck.
i grew up in the days of "duck & cover" & once used a protractor on a map of my city to estimate blast radius effects relative to downtown. there was a bomb shelter in the science museum at fair park (documentation of it can be found online), while the closest official shelter to my house was two miles away in the basement of a bank.
This is why, if I had a bunker, it would double as my home library. I’ll already have the books and the big globe that opens up as a liquor cabinet; add an attached bedroom, bathroom and small kitchen & pantry and I’m golden for weeks.
I visited the museum in Albuquerque a couple of months ago, and it was absolutely fascinating to see all the artifacts.
The most surreal was the outdoor shed with dozens of decommissioned hydrogen bombs. Blunt little canisters, each one once possessing the genocidal ability to release more fire power than has been released in all the wars in human history. And in aggregate with all their friends, to essentially put an end to civilization. By design.
And now they sit on mechanic's creepers, lined up like motorcycles in a parking garage, each one with a little sign describing its vintage and firepower.
I guess I read it as “Bountiful Sanitation Department,” as Bountiful is a city in Utah and assume the object was “borrowed” from it.
Sounds likely, and it works on both levels!
Yep! Levels number 1 and number 2.
"We are number one. All others are number two, or lower." - The Sphinx
What is that quote from? Because I thought it was elephants (or turtles) all the way down.
I just wanted to say “number 1” and “number 2” in a thread about toilets 😉
Oh, it comes from the flick "Mystery Men" and was uttered by Wes Studi's character 'The Sphinx'.
Ah, thanks. I’ve never seen it (it’s on my list!), but I like Wes Studi. 👍
And then there’s the grim thought that one of the symptoms of radiation sickness is diarrhea and vomiting. Lovely!
It’s so interesting how denial works at every stage. Even those who accept, on some level, the possibility of nuclear war, prepare for it in the most inadequate ways. The toilet issue is perfect illustration. On top of everything else, this scenario will probably involve people stricken with diarrhoea from several causes. They need serious sanitation. Instead the official advice is complete fantasy. Crazy.
This is an interesting topic because it doesn't take a nuclear war to lose access to the sewer system and millions of people around the world are already experiencing this.
For the first 2 decades of my life our small lake cabin had an outhouse. Not really much different and not really that bad. The worst smells dissipate quickly and the continued biological activity degrade things further. In a small enclosed space with poor ventilation it would be more noticable. Overly clean Americans are way more nose sensitive than the rest of the world, this also contributes to the "problem". In the 40s and 50s everyone but the most aristocratic folks would have had the outhouse experience, and be much less worried about it.
My ex-wife lived in Northern Minnesota. The septic wasn't very deep and would freeze in the worst of the winters. The solution was a 5 gallon bucket and a bale of hay or straw. Replace bucket as needed. It's not pretty but it works. I have a few in the basement for that job.
When I was in college in the early 90s, our school cleaned out the fallout shelters and sold off all the things they found in there. I bought one of those sanitation barrels, for my own personal amusement. We wound up using some of the supplies, like the rolls of sandpap---err, toilet tissue and hand cleaner. My wife was extremely nope regarding the "sanitary napkins". For a while, the commode seat (which you were supposed to put over the barrel top) graced the garage wall. We tried to actually sit on it to see how viable it would have been - I doubt the canister would have lasted more than a few days before collapsing.
Eventually we discarded all that remained. I regret not keeping some of it. The "instruction sheet" was a darkly hilarious read - it was almost cheery as it described how to manage a clearly impossible situation.
How is it that they can make cheap toilet paper as rough as sandpaper but as weak as tissue paper? It’s kind of amazing.
I can imagine the horror as it dawns upon everyone that at some point the barrel would collapse. Everybody would postpone using it as long as possible. “No, I’m good, thanks… I think I can wait a while longer. You go ahead.”
I can see that happening. After all Gemini 7 astronaut Frank Borman went nine days out of the two week mission without a bowel movement because he soo despised the Gemmini toilet arrangment(basically a plastic bag): in the end though nature forced his hand and he said that the releif(parden the pun) was 'exquisite',....
I am eagerly waiting for MARY ROACH's book on this important subject, tentatively set for 2030 under the title of "PACKING FOR ARMAGEDDON" (-;
Yes!
Also, if that bucket serves 50 people, and there’s only one liner, I’m guessing this meant maybe 50 bowel movements or maybe 50 people per day. Then you’d bury or otherwise dispose of the bucket. I don’t think the bucket was intended to be reused or it would have multiple liners.
My understanding is that their expected use time would depend in fact on how many people were using them. A report about them from the time says that if 50 people were really using one, it would be filled in "2 days or less." It seems to be an interestingly unexplored point in the literature on them — how many of them you should have.
portapotties on wwii heavy bombers did exist and have been rrsearched, (crude and awkward) but for smaller planes - mediums & fighters - no such luck - and as training for nuclear war often meant longer flights between toilets, that too is a story much worth exploring...
Long range escort fighters like the P-51 Mustang were actually designed with a tube set-up to allow the pilot to relieve himself on an eight hour flight but as far as the other matter was concerned you were basically **** out of luck and had to resort to a low residue diet leading up to the mission. Parts for the relief tube system show up for auction on a regular basis and have some value as collectables due to their novelty value:
https://www.aircorpsdepot.com/an8018-1-horn-flyers-relief-tube/
https://www.aircorpsdepot.com/an8020-bracket-flyers-relief-tube/ Page 48 of the pilots handbook for the P-51 describes the location of the tube within the cockpit:
https://aafcollection.com/items/documents/view.php?file=000470-01-00.pdf
That makes perfect sense, thanks!
A funny aspect about this: I got two reminders of this from two separate movies over the last couple of days. The first came from watching the extended cut of "Dawn of the Dead," where our heroes hole up in a Civil Defense shelter space (complete with big windows directly overhead) that's full up with these personal sanitation units. Later in the movie, they use those for holding up appliances such as hot plates because it was already established that they had access to toilets and sinks. Knowing what I know about shopping malls (I used to run a carnivorous plant gallery in a dying mall in Dallas), not only would they have all sorts of problems when the plumbing inevitably clogged, but Eighties-style shopping malls have a regular problem with sewer lines leaking and blowing out due to age and poor maintenance, and most malls don't have easy access to those lines to allow, say, fixing a line for a Starbucks restroom when the Starbucks's downstairs neighbor is a high-end men's store. (At my dying mall, several downstairs spaces had to be abandoned long before the mall shut down because not only did the pipes blow out and leak into the spaces below, but they blew out multiple times in the space of a few weeks, spraying sewage everywhere, and since the owner was trying to flip the property, he had no interest whatsoever in repairing and replacing.) Compared to the HVAC, lights, and power going out, though, making a typical mall nearly unliveable, the sewer line blowouts are relatively minor, if you can believe it.
The only other movie I've seen that discussed toilet issues after a nuclear detonation with any seriousness (the animated film "Where The Wind Blows" makes jokes about litter boxes before the bombs fall) is "The Divide," a really creepy 2012 film involving a near-dozen people surviving a nuclear strike on New York. The super, played by Michael Biehn, is a prepper who improvised batteries, water and food stores, and a septic toilet before the building blew up, and he emphasizes "It's septic, so pour some lime in every time you finish." Since the film follows approximately three months underground, yeah, you can imagine how disgusting that toilet would have been in that time, and conditions were still hellish above-ground by the film's end.
I lived through the freeze down in Texas a couple years ago having the power, water, and heat go out.
Because it looked like it was going to be days... I figured out how much water I had, then divided by 4 ish (another couple plus dogs)
Not a lot, but enough for 2 liters a water a day per person.
Then I remembered the toilet required water to flush and realized we would maybe be able to flush it max twice unless we came up with some way to get more grey water
Well? How’d it go?
Well, nobody in my house died.
Took a while though of thinking to figure out I could crack the ice on the building pool and ferry that water up the stairs to keep the toilet going. That would be easier than trying to melt snow on the camping stove.
Helped also that I had all my Chicago winter gear in a box so my fingers and toes were fine. I still dream about my horror seeing the people in line outside of HEB on the last shot for supplies wearing sneakers in negative degrees.
On a very directly related note, Ted Cruz is a cowardly slime. Abandoned his own dog to go to Cancun, in addition to me, my wife, and the good citizens of Texas. Fuck that guy with a rusty spoon.
Interesting. Glad to hear you survived! 👍 😉
Cruz: yeah. I’d recommend a fork instead of a spoon.
Having called Mr. Cruz's office once a week, every week, for five years because he was once my rep.
I'd prefer if his fate is very slow.
... ah yes! The rarely mentioned but absolute bottom line problem of human beings producing noxious wastes. Really a part of the necessity of food and water. It has always seemed to be a an especially, perhaps insurmountable, problem with large public shelters. A problem which could destroy morale and make survival an almost unreachable goal.
Sitting on a flimsy seat on top of a barrel filled with gallons and gallons of excrement. That is not going to work well. There is going to be a lot of spillage and leaks. One hundred people will produce about a TON of waste in one week! It is going to get everywhere. It is going to be a serious health problem, perhaps catastrophic! A little bit of shit goes a long way to ruining any situation; let alone 2,000 lbs ( or 4,000 lbs after two weeks).
I wonder if the Scandinavian countries, who have historically spent a lot more time money and thought on Civil Defense, have come up with anything better than this Medieval dungeon approach?
At one point, I had 2 English mastiffs. One was 175 pounds, and one was 120 pounds, so human sized. Sometimes, they pooped on walks, and we picked it up (man sized poops). Sometimes, they pooped in the poop area in the back yard (gotta have a poop area if you have dogs). One week, we weighed the poops before putting them in the garbage can: 40 pounds/88 kgs which didn't include the poops from walks.
That little cardboard toilet was going to fill up quickly.
We double bagged the dogs poops before putting them in the garbage because mastiff friends of ours had a bag break in a garbage truck. Friends were told that they couldn't put poop in the garbage any more because it smelled so bad that the garbage personnel couldn't work with that truck, and they had to wash the garbage truck.
Imagine the stench that is so bad that they have to wash a garbage truck.
i grew up in the days of "duck & cover" & once used a protractor on a map of my city to estimate blast radius effects relative to downtown. there was a bomb shelter in the science museum at fair park (documentation of it can be found online), while the closest official shelter to my house was two miles away in the basement of a bank.
You've seen the movie WarGames?
Prof Falken had the right plan.
This is why, if I had a bunker, it would double as my home library. I’ll already have the books and the big globe that opens up as a liquor cabinet; add an attached bedroom, bathroom and small kitchen & pantry and I’m golden for weeks.