Insane way you have to go to the toilet in Antarctica leaves people stunned
The insane way you have to go to the toilet in Antarctica is leaving people stunned.
Most people never think twice about their bathroom routine. But what happens when you're in an environment where conventional plumbing isn't sustainable?
Already, NASA have given us insight into the extremely 'complicated and expensive' way astronauts have to poop in space or how shooting stars could just be astronaut poop.
Now, a video has gone viral on social media after a worker from the University of Rochester's Ice Core and Atmospheric Chemistry Lab (@uofr_icecores) demonstrated how the toilet works in Antarctica. And let's just say it's nothing like what you're used to.
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"Here in Antarctica, we have limited plumbing and water, so we use an incinerator toilet when we have to poop," the narrator explained.
To pee, workers can use the bathroom inside the building where people sleep, he mentioned.
Going outside, the worker opened a door to reveal a narrow chamber with a cubicle inside. The video then panned to show a vast ice-covered landscape before the worker demonstrated the mechanics of the bizarre pooping process.
Upon seeing the toilet, it's pretty easy to notice there's no water tank attached.
"First, you put in the paper toilet bowl liner. Then, after doing that you do your business, here represented by a piece of chocolate," he explained. "You then step on the foot lever which opens the hatch and the chocolate drops inside to get burned up."
He pushes the hatch at the bottom and a flame erupts inside the toilet bowl, burning both the paper and 'poop.' Sometimes waste doesn't fall completely through the hatch, so you have to use a stick to push it down into the flames.
"There's a handy stick to help push it the rest of the way. And that's how to use an incinerator toilet," the worker concluded.
The video has received over 35k upvotes and 2,000 comments, with reactions ranging from horror to complete disbelief.
"Ok, I wasn't expecting the poop stick," one user commented.
"The Devil's Bidet," another replied.
"I know that smells so bad," someone else wrote.
Over on the original TikTok video, people had similar reactions and also questioned what happens in cases of diarrhoea or for women on their periods.
"It is impossible to do 1 and 2 separately," one person noted.
"What if the flap opens up when youâre pooping," another questioned.
Things like this help us realise that not all of us are cut out for life in Antarctica's extreme conditions, and that we probably shouldn't take our normal flush toilets for granted.