[HN Gopher] Mystery still surrounds what happened to the bodies ...
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Mystery still surrounds what happened to the bodies of Waterloo
militaries
Author : Manheim
Score : 67 points
Date : 2022-06-21 09:38 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gla.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gla.ac.uk)
| travisgriggs wrote:
| I know this adds nothing to the otherwise technical and
| scientific discussions that are the mainstay of HN except to
| demonstrate what an amazing free association/pattern matching
| machine the human brain is:
|
| I read the title, skimmed the article, now I'm listening to ABBAs
| Waterloo on repeat.
| dhosek wrote:
| I immediately thought of the Waterloo C compiler that was
| available for VM/CMS back in the 80s (there were other Waterloo
| compilers as well, but that was the only one that I ever used).
| bsg75 wrote:
| https://github.com/open-watcom
| bombcar wrote:
| I went to Stonewall Jackson -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-QQI6lb_Hg
|
| Also interesting to think of names that have become "things" -
| Waterloo "To be decisively defeated by an encounter with a
| powerful opponent or a problem that is too difficult" or
| Hindeberg, Titanic, etc.
| baldr333 wrote:
| The bodies can't be found because all that was left of the dead
| was used & sold. Even bones where crushed to make fertilizer. You
| fight for your country and this is how it ends for you. Truly
| wicked, not much different than today.
| jeffwask wrote:
| One's last sacrifice to capitalism/colonialism
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > not much different than today
|
| I think western militaries go to pretty extraordinary lengths
| to recover and repatriate bodies these days.
|
| In the Falklands in the 1980s there were still some battlefield
| burials, as that was still the accepted practice, but most of
| these were dug up after public outcry and I don't think we'd do
| that anymore, short of a full-scale war of national survival.
| jcadam wrote:
| Modern communications I would bet has something to do with
| this. Families often didn't find out that their relative was
| killed whilst campaigning until weeks/months after the event.
| No doubt this would have started to change during the mid-
| late 19th century.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I hope that my body is used to its fullest when I'm gone.
| Ideally they'll harvest anything useful, donate the rest to
| science, then dispose of what's left using the least amount of
| energy possible. My body is not to be revered or preserved past
| what is useful.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| 1. The article talks about the "used for fertilizer" hypothesis
| (including why it may not be a closed case).
|
| 2. "not much different than today"? Is this just some wild
| rhetoric or do you actually postulate that armies today are
| using the bodies of their dead for fertilizer/etc?
| pvaldes wrote:
| Not much different than today, if the news about Russia
| mobile crematoriums are eventually verified
| nomel wrote:
| > mobile crematoriums
|
| The existence of a portable system to "respectfully"
| dispose of the bodies is very different from profiting from
| the crushed bones of the deceased.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Seems at least implausible. Cremation is a fairly slow and
| energy intense process. If you wanted to dispose of bodies,
| there are easier ways.
|
| Also sure sounds a lot like the rumors back during Covid
| about secret mass cremations to hide how many were dying.
| Veen wrote:
| The Russians have an obvious motivation to hide how many
| soldiers are dying. That doesn't make it true but "it
| sounds a bit like something else that was nonsense" isn't
| a very strong refutation.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The accusation isn't that the Russians are hiding their
| dead, it's that they are covering up their treatment of
| civilians.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/amp/International/russia-accused-
| mobi...
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > That doesn't make it true but "it sounds a bit like
| something else that was nonsense" isn't a very strong
| refutation.
|
| It's improbable for the same reasons it was improbable
| the last time it wasn't true. Secret mass cremations just
| aren't practical from a logistical standpoint.
| varjag wrote:
| Mobile military crematories do exist in Russian military,
| there are public pre-war videos of them. Apparently the
| command seen enough need for them to manufacture the
| hardware. With a prior like that, it's entirely probable.
| paisawalla wrote:
| Anyone who has had a relative cremated knows that it
| takes 2+ hours for the body to be fully reduced to ashes
| and bone fragments. Two hours, for a single body, in a
| facility the size of a large garage. Just do some napkin
| math for what that means for the prospect of cremating a
| single body in something the size of a cement mixer.
|
| Running non-stop with no breaks, bodies ready to go,
| matching the efficiency of the most optimal stationary
| crematories, working around the clock, a single truck
| could burn 12 bodies using 336 gallons of fuel (per
| https://www.lng2019.com/how-much-natural-gas-is-used-to-
| crem...) and generating 6.6 metric tons of CO2. For this
| to even make sense politically, there would have to be a
| number of bodies so large that burning it made more sense
| than anything else, even with how costly and obvious it
| would be to observers.
|
| I'm open to your guesses, but I'm going to say one
| thousand innocents in a single place would be
| sufficiently atrocious. I say this because numbers like
| 100-200 are thrown around fairly casually when reporting
| on Ukraine and other locations, so I'm going up one
| magnitude from that. So 84 trucks working as described
| could finish this job in one day, releasing 5,500 metric
| tons of CO2 and consuming 2300+ gallons of fuel to do so.
| I leave it to the reader to determine whether it's
| plausible for a military in the midst of a very difficult
| war to dedicate the human and supply resources necessary
| to conduct such an operation (at peak efficiency, as
| described).
|
| At the very least, the movement and fueling of 84 such
| trucks (or even 30 if we're spending a week doing this)
| should be observable. We shouldn't have to rely on video
| from 2013 to make these claims. The video most often
| shown as proof of Russia's mobile crematories is one of a
| mobile incinerator, _e.g._ for trash which can fully
| combust in minutes.
| varjag wrote:
| The manufacturer's YouTube videos describe that as
| crematorium, not incinerator. Also not sure if you have a
| command of Russian, but the video with burning the trash
| still has the narrator explaining its use for cremation
| of 'biological waste'. They obviously didn't want showing
| said waste in demonstration video.
|
| Regarding the waste of resources, these are likely to use
| lower grade/bunker fuel. And as to priorities, remember
| Russia is the only country in the world that introduced a
| national standard for mass graves. In effect since
| February 1st this year:
| https://www.mchs.gov.ru/dokumenty/5693
|
| Scroll down to page 13 for pictures if you don't read
| Russian.
| paisawalla wrote:
| Can you link to these videos?
|
| I'm not sure what you think these regulations prove.
| AFAIK Russia is probably the only military of its size
| engaged in operations that would result in mass field
| casualties of soldiers, what should they do?
| varjag wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0hFnpyO8aY
|
| > I'm not sure what you think these regulations prove.
|
| That getting rid of corpses at scale is a problem they
| pay substantial attention to.
| paisawalla wrote:
| The video shows them putting in trash, and that it fits
| about a pallet of cardboard. It also says it gets to 1200
| degrees, much less than the 1800-2000 degrees required to
| incinerate a human.
|
| > That getting rid of corpses at scale is a problem they
| pay substantial attention to.
|
| Yes, because they are probably the only military engaged
| in conventional, symmetrical combat. Advanced nations
| like the US will just drop a bomb on a wedding and let
| the locals do the clean up. It's much more efficient, and
| as a bonus, provides a great boost to the local funerary
| economy as well.
| nwallin wrote:
| > Two hours, for a single body, in a facility the size of
| a large garage. Just do some napkin math for what that
| means for the prospect of cremating a single body in
| something the size of a cement mixer.
|
| You keep saying 'single body'.
|
| Crematoriums in mortuaries operate on the principle that
| you put one body in and get one set of ashes out. These
| ashes are then put in a single urn and given to a single
| family who will grieve their single loved one.
|
| That is not what Russia is using their mobile
| crematoriums for. You're not going to give the ashes of
| the deceased to the deceased's family; the deceased's
| family is all in the same pile of bodies with them. You
| do not put one body in at a time, you put in as many as
| will fit. As bodies are reduced, you create more space;
| you fill that space with more bodies. As ashes are
| generated, you remove the ashes as they accumulate at the
| bottom.
|
| You are replacing a low volume batch process with a high
| volume continuous process. You do not need to wait for
| the crematorium to heat up or cool down. You do not need
| to ensure 100% complete combustion. You do not need to
| worry about disturbing the neighbors with the smell. You
| do not need particularly high flue temperatures. This
| will be orders of magnitude more efficient.
|
| You are making a distinction between a mortuary grade
| crematorium and a mobile incinerator which needn't meet
| environmental regulatory standards; Russia is _not_
| making such a distinction.
| quesera wrote:
| > Two hours, for a single body, in a facility the size of
| a large garage. Just do some napkin math
|
| I think you have mis-extrapolated the logistics.
|
| It takes two hours for a single body, in a single-body
| crematorium, where the remains will be handled according
| to protocols developed for legal, social, and sanitary
| reasons.
|
| In a truck-sized, industrial-efficiency waste disposal
| incinerator, with military protocols and no laws, I
| expect you could handle a much higher input rate.
| paisawalla wrote:
| Look at the video provided. That thing would maybe fit
| two bodies at best, and doesn't reach the temperature
| needed to incinerate a body. I think these claims require
| a much higher burden of proof than what is being offered
| here.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Maybe the mobile crematoria were intended to "disappear"
| some kidnapped and murdered Ukrainian people (mayors,
| prominents, intelligentsia), not dead Russian soldiers.
|
| See, no body, no crime. Plus, a nasty dollop of
| uncertainty for the surviving loved ones and friends.
| paisawalla wrote:
| I was told that the age of multimedia would deliver radical
| transparency, where rumors would be dispelled before they
| had a chance to propagate, and superstitious beliefs would
| become untenable.
| joebob42 wrote:
| By who? And so what if someone told you that?
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| I guess the "so what" is the implication that we have not
| reached the promises or potential of civilian digital
| communication systems. I agree, and think what we have
| has instead made many areas of information worse,
| fragmented and unreliable.
|
| As for "who?", if you grew up the 80s of 90s you will
| remember the daily, breathless grandiose proclamations of
| various government digital literacy programmes. Selling
| the World Wide Web, the Information Superhighway,
| Ubiquity and Universal Access was a decade-long
| propaganda drive that laid the foundations for what it
| now the "tech industry".
|
| Of course there is much in the world that is over-
| promised, and over-reaches. At some point people usually
| reconcile the reality with the hype. With "tech" I think
| that has still not happened, and many remain in a dream
| world, high on the fantasies they grew up with.
| paisawalla wrote:
| Hi joebob,
|
| This is a rhetorical or satirical commentary on the fact
| that media technology, while having the superficial
| capacity for increasing access to and quality of
| information, often has the opposite effect of what one
| might expect despite that capacity. That is, it just as
| frequently and even more adeptly appears to embed and
| reinforce deeply pre-existing biases towards false --
| even obviously so -- narratives which are comforting or
| reaffirm the believer's sense that they see through the
| confusion of world events.
|
| The answers to "by whom", and "so what" questions are not
| going to be literal answers, just like "at what precise
| moment did you stop sleeping and become awake this
| morning" has no true answer, but would only invite a
| debate over the definitions of sleeping and waking. It's
| not meant to literally be a story about a time I was told
| something. I was told many things, by many people, in
| various forms, over a long period of time.
|
| The comment is meant to provoke the reader to consider
| that technology -- far from giving man the ability to
| conquer his nature -- emanates from man's nature, is a
| servant to it, and can easily serve to reinforce and
| entrench it. Therefore, one ought to treat technological
| progress carefully, and not assume that it is equivalent
| to human progress.
| trhway wrote:
| The crematoriums have been brought for civilians after
| Bucha. The sheer number of the civilians killed in Mariupol
| though forced to use traditional approaches - the ruined
| buildings are demolished without pulling the bodies out,
| and for the rest - there are huge swaths of fields near
| Mariupol covered with fresh graves marked only with
| numbers. The crematoriums are used in other places where
| FSB and Russian SS "Russian Guard" need to disappear the
| bodies of killed political activists/etc without leaving
| evidence like the mass grave in Bucha and there no mass
| casualties like in Mariupol.
|
| The soldiers have been either abandoned (a lot in Kiev
| fighting) or put into number-only graves in Belarus and
| near Rostov. A few are sent home to have those public
| funerals.
| toolslive wrote:
| Fun fact: the battle of Waterloo didn't take place in Waterloo
| but in Braine-l'alleud (3km further). Wellington could not
| pronounce that so he changed the name in his reports.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> "European battlefields may have provided a convenient source
| of bone that could be ground down into bone-meal, an effective
| form of fertiliser. One of the main markets for this raw material
| was the British Isles."
|
| So quickly we forget. By weight, most of those bones would have
| been animal bones. Horses and mules were everywhere around armies
| until the middle of the 20th century. And, pre-refrigeration,
| armies did not move food around in boxes. It walked behind the
| army on hooves. The combination of dead horses/mules in combat,
| plus all the cattle being eaten, means that the vast majority of
| bones around a battle would not have been be human.
| gumby wrote:
| > And, pre-refrigeration, armies did not move food around in
| boxes.
|
| Don't forget that canning was invented in response to a prize
| issued by the Napoleonic army.
|
| However it doesn't look like it was ready for use by the time
| of the battle at Waterloo.
| mc32 wrote:
| Genghis Khan the great ruthless conqueror of worlds would take
| herds (cattle and horses/meat and milk) along with his armies
| in order to feed the soldiers --lucky for him, the steppes were
| unusually green during his campaigns.
| galonk wrote:
| Wendigos!
| bombcar wrote:
| Fee-fi-fo-fum,
|
| I smell the blood of an Englishman,
|
| Be he alive, or be he dead
|
| I'll grind his bones to make my bread.
|
| But apparently not limited to the English, and for fertilizer,
| which grew the grain, but surprisingly accurate otherwise.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Wasn't it "I smell the blood of a Christian" (presumably as
| opposed to a "Turk" or "Moor")
| bombcar wrote:
| According to Wikipedia (never wrong!) it was known as early
| as 1596 with "Englishman"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fee-fi-fo-fum
| selimthegrim wrote:
| TIL the Celtic etymology of the first line.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| In this case, "mystery" seems like a euphemism for "we don't
| especially like the most probably theory".
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