Flush Mob

Htims Yert

Here in the US, it's April Fools' Day. So, instead of our usual philosophic and political fodder, I thought I would sprinkle in some odd, but (mostly) true, stories from here and there.

Imagine if all 350 million toilets in the United States were flushed at the same time. Granted, doing this would require exceptional coordination, and the helping hands of a few million foreigners. But what if we could pull it off? Would flushing in concert explode all the pipelines, cripple the water supply, flood the streets with sewage, and, in short, destroy civilization as we know it?

Turns out it's a complex thought experiment, and, without the possibility of a real-world test, experts can't be sure how things would, quite literally, go down. But a total system failure doesn't seem likely.

According to Michael Johnson, a civil engineer at the Utah Water Research Laboratory who models fluid flow in sewer systems, the consequences of mass flushing would range from negligible to pipe explosions depending on where you are.
~ from What If All of America's Toilets Were Flushed Simultaneously? by Natalie Wolchover ~

Okay, it's well established that not every American visits this blog daily. So, I have an assignment for those who do. Tell everyone you know to synchronize their watches and let's do a flush mob today at 6:00 p.m. PDT. :-D