Name: What Happens If Everyone Flushed at the Same Time?
Uploaded: 2020-04-04T07:51:18.000Z
Duration: 3 min 26 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

In their 4,000-year-long history, toilets have been through a lot.

But I bet they've never seen something like this...

coordinated to perform the biggest "flush mob" in history?

Pushing all the wastewater in the world down the drain, all at once?

if everyone on Earth flushed at the same time.

Don't be shy, we humans spend about 13 months of our life going to the toilet.

but only for two-thirds of the world's population.

About 2.4 billion people lack access to proper sanitation.

But that leaves us with over 5 billion "flush mob" participants.

The effect of the big flush would be anywhere from "not much happened"

And yes, the waste could back up into your home.

your waste goes down the pipe and flows into a sewer system.

First, it goes through a system of pipes under the street.

Then, it runs into progressively bigger pipes

all the way to your local wastewater treatment plant.

But are they big enough for everyone to flush at the same time?

That's not something we can know for sure until we try.

The first thing to get overwhelmed by the vast amount of waste

These are stations that serve to push your waste uphill

But you can only push so much poop up the pipe.

Eventually, the pipe gets overwhelmed, and can't handle anymore wastewater.

At that point, it would back up to where it all started -

with substances that were supposed to be delivered to the treatment plant.

The overflow would fill up every wastewater line in your home,

Not all of our pipes will be able to handle this excess.

But it's not necessarily going to happen this way.

You see, we might flush all our toilets simultaneously,

but that doesn't mean that the waste will make it to the sewer system

Your waste might have to travel a further distance

than the waste of your friend who is flushing two blocks away.

This means that the pipes might still be able to handle the "flushpocalypse,"

depending on how good the sewer system is where you live.

In that case, the worst thing to come out of this "flush mob"

would simply be a big ol' waste of water.

And while you're flushing freely without guilt,

some people live each day without that luxury.

they might pollute their own water sources and get sick from water-borne diseases.

If only we had a cure-all for every illness...

Well, that's a question for another WHAT IF.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

What Happens If Everyone Flushed at the Same Time?

overwhelmed

eventually

access

vast