Oh no! Oy vey! Here we go again! It's happening!
(media.communities.win)
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (112)
sorted by:
Speaking of doing the math... I was curious about the volume of ashes created after one human body is cremated. It was an easy internet search, and the easiest data point I found was one average human packs into a box 8 inches by 5 inches by 5 inches. I then multiplied that by 6 million people. Data is below. Note - I understand that the sizes/weights of prisoners of war were probably much less than what the website used as average (175lbs) but even if you halve these numbers it doesn't change the fact that the ash piles would be impossible to hide.
Average size of 1 Person: cremated ashes (in a box) = 8x5x5 inches
Average size of 6M People: cremated ashes (in a box) = 48Mx30Mx30M inches
Inches in 1 mile = 63,360
Average size of 6M People: cremated ashes (in a box) =
757.58 miles x 473.48 miles x 473.48 miles
Edited to add a link: Link.
thanks for the breakdown, really shows how foolish it all sounds. I remember picking up a friend's ashes, and the box was much heavier than I expected. now x that few million. and you're right, it would be difficult to hide.
Yeah the link I provided said it averages 5lbs. I was shocked.
Is this where the ashes are laid out flat over the ground? What if they were buried deep below ground, or thrown down a cave, or scattered over several bodies of water, or mixed into food or building materials or paints?
Well the premise of what I did was a 5x5x8 box. In practice the ashes would probably get compacted, and water would cause runoff - but even if you took 1% of that exercise it still comes out to roughly 7.5 miles long by 4.7 miles wide by 4.7 miles high. scattering them would work for the first maybe 100,000 but the shipping alone would be impossible during the war. I don't even want to think about mixing the ashes into other stuff though. I also don't know how much the ashes would compact. Either the dirt gets put back on top, possibly making a very large and very high hill (mountain?), or the dirt raises the elevation all across Germany.
That is interesting, just wanted to see if you thought of other things that could have been done to the remains. Maybe instead of one high mountain, several hills could had been made. Or perhaps most of the remains were dumped down rivers or into a few deep lakes and caves, so no need for as many hills to be made.
The only thing I can think of is like you said - rivers or lakes. It would shock me if they used their own water supply though, but I suppose they could've been that stupid. Maybe they could've shipped it in trains and dumped it in the Baltic or North Sea. This is all assuming the 6M number is real of course.
Wouldn't it get scattered? They don't need it for anything and ash was already all over Europe.
I would think it would have been obvious if another Pompeii showed up during the war.
I didn't read until the end, that is a huge amount of land required, wow.