A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Corpse size has a lot to do with it. I wouldn't swim in even a large pool with a dead human in it (knowingly), but one dead fish or rodent or dozens of dead tadpoles or bugs? Not an issue.
Heck, most household swimming pools have dozens of dead bodies in them, but they're 99% insects.
The whole premise of this meme is a bit silly. If there was a corpse floating near the beach, I think most people might wait for the corpse to be removed, and perhaps even a reasonable cause of death to be determined, before entering the local area. The same is true for pools.
"Smithens, the corpse is growing near me again. Use the pool-skimmer to push it into the deep end"
Ah, so corpse count AND proximity are both factors? Along with knowledge of the presence of said corpse?
And corpse size and species. The variables are piling up... This is gonna be a difficult study
This can be simplified to the individual's understanding of how quickly they could be touching a corpse.
Corpse size still plays a role. You wouldn't want to touch a dead tadpole, but you may not even notice.
Ah no, a dead fish indicates that the water isn't healthy. You should shy away from it.
Yeah, fish always make sure to leave the water before they die.
Fish tend to die by being eaten, a dead fish that nothing has eaten yet is a concern.
Like too much chlorine?
What about a dead baby?
People will walk through a forest that definitely has many corpses in it. Humans will not walk through an alley that has 1 corpse in it.
Humans have a corpse: proximity ratio that they find acceptable.
Edit: typo
I'd call it a radius, not a ratio, but yep.
If you knew there was a dead person next door you might be a little uncomfortable, but could go about your day. If you knew there were 50 dead people next door you would need to get out of there.
The number is relevant, not just the proximity to the closest one.
I'd also call it a corpse, not a course:
Some humans will go to a Japanese forest for the express purpose of live streaming a corpse.
Ugh I hate that guy
How does graveyards fit into the equation? You could knowingly be just a few meters away from rows of corpses, but not really care.
Does the dirt provide insulation?
Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell you that, like, you'll walk through a graveyard, or a morgue, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I bring ONE corpse to a job interview, well then everyone loses their minds!
I think the corpse acceptability must also account for whether the person expects a corpse to be present.
Well you can't walk down ol' one-corpse alley and not expect a corpse there.
But if there're two corpses there then HELL NO!
People are often uncomfortable in graveyards and, for example, would not want to walk through one at night when they would be willing to walk through a field.
The dirt does provide a sort of insulation however, as people would be more willing to walk through a graveyard than through a house that had the same density of corpses in the basement. It's the theoretical accessibility to the corpse that plays a factor here.
Ah, so the corpse acceptability depends on the coefficient of corpse-permeability of the intermediate space as well as the distance.
Lead lined coffins are safer than wooden ones. This might also explain the thick metal doors you always see in morgues on tv.
A lot of human survival is based on heuristics, if you can tell there's a corpse in something, you probably shouldn't drink or eat it... As a general rule of thumb
For large body of water since you're unaware of the corpse two kilometers away on the bottom, it's probably not an issue for you.
However, primal human heuristics are not calibrated correctly from modern media. There was the reservoir where somebody was caught on camera peeing into it, hundreds of millions of liters of water, and they decided to drain the entire thing to prevent the public concern. That's just a heuristic run amok
A lot of human survival is based on heuristics, if you can tell there's a corpse in something, you probably shouldn't drink or eat it... As a general rule of thumb
And this is why it's dangerous to drink ocean-water.
Also why you should drink lots of that delicious peepee pool-water
ETA: If you're having dinner with someone who dies in the middle of eating their food, you can safely finish their food, drink, and poisoned soup as long as they didn't die face-down in it.
This PSA brought to you by the Society of Selective Listeners
my body is a machine that turns piss into piss
That's what's literally happening in your kidneys. Your primary urine is low concentrated, and gets converted into high concentrated secondary urine through several fun biophysicochemical reactions. Boring piss gets to be exciting piss. Wohoo?
Ultra Urea Man! Not the superhero we wanted, but the superhero we needed
The salt an ocean water will make you sick long before you get sick from decay-based pathogens. Takes about 100 g of salt to kill somebody...
And the chlorine and pool water will probably make you feel poorly as well.
You sound like my doctor. Quit ruining my food and gimme my blood-pressure medication!
And this is why it’s dangerous to drink ocean-water.
i thought this was because it was salt water?
Also what is the intermixing of water two kilometers away, especially affected by currents (which I presume, without checking ofc bc this is the internet 😁, are more horizontal than vertical - thus would intermixing occur more readily on the horizontal but the fact that it's vertical distance mean... what really)? So yeah, it makes sense then that due to the unknown factors, the default would take over.
Sometimes the water sits stable with next to no vertical intermixing and sometimes it intermixes to homogenity. Depends on the external conditions
I wonder if there is a point where the graphs of "perceived effect on the water" cross for both this experiment and homeopathy, and what that means.
You are a little soul carrying about a corpse.
–Some Roman guy paraphrasing some Greek guy.
It's less that there's a specific ratio of corpse:water but whether the corpses have been turned into fish poop yet.
There are molecules of human shit in every pool and they get into your mouth. The density is just not enough to feel the taste or become ill
That old guy swimming in front of you probably forgot to wipe or wash his ass so the density is getting close to detectable sometimes
As they say the dose makes the poison. See ya at the pool
This is like eating bugs. Everyone eats bugs all the time, it is awareness of the bugs and bug to food ratio that tends to cause hesitation.
Similar to the water:piss ratio regarding (US?) swimming pools, insofar as the knowledge that the "nostalgic" smell of swimming pools is not the comforting presence of chlorine so many believe it to be, and is in fact the confirmation of a volume of piss in the water that is rapidly nearing the extent of said chlorine's capacity to neutralize (sapped also by ceaseless sunshine & innumerable contaminants hitching rides on patrons' oblivious meatsacs).
In short: if you smell "pool", someone(s) have pissed in it. A lot.
Chlorine reacts with a lot more than piss and you should be far more concerned if you don't smell it.
Dilution is the solution to this pollution