If there’s thing I can’t abide, its people who actually try the things I report in the Gory Details.  For example, I received this letter about my article on freezing rodents:

"I hope you’re happy.  After little Jimmy read your article, he took Mr. Whiskers, put him in a freezer bag, just as you recommended, and . . ."

Blah blah blah.

According to the letter, I owe the Stinemetz family of Greensboro, North Caroline $12.94 for the rodent and $8.26 for miscellaneous cleaning supplies.  Apparently, mom dropped the glass with the "ratcicle ice cube."

Anyway, there’s some concern that old Gory may always have his facts straight.  The one sentence rejection from Scientific American about my article on grafting goldfish parts read simply:

"You, are full of shit."

Maybe so, but watch now as we segue gently into today’s topic. Sewers.  As full of whatever as I may be, I don’t hold a candle to the amount of waste running under your home town right now.  Let’s learn more.

As human civilizations around the globe began to organize into cities, one of the big problems, besides whether or not to double park the chariot, was poop.  Humans produce between a quarter and a half a pound of "solid" waste a day, much more water.  This may not seem like much but let’s do a little math.

You’re a Sumerian Warlord and have just proudly built one of the earliest cities.  You’ve got 100,000 citizens.  This means, your city produces a little more than twenty tons of human poo a day as well as a lot of . . . hmmmm.  Since it’s an arid climate, none of it really washes away.  In a year, in your metropolis will produce something around 7300 tons of you know what as well as a lake that no vestal virgin would touch with a ten meter scepter.

In biblical times and sometimes still today, there wasn’t really much done about this.  Well designed streets had a kind of V-shape so that water and anything else would wash down the middle.  This served as both flood control and the latrine.  In many places in the mid-east, it is still common to sleep on top of the houses, largely to get away from the smell.

No one knows who built the first underground sewers, the Romans had them, the Chinese probably had them long before.  It was in Paris that the sewer became an art form.  Built on the banks of the Seine River, Paris seems naturally inclined to the handling of sewage.  Dig a ditch in the direction of the river, cover it and go on with your day.  Things were never that easy.

In Les Miserable Victor Hugo takes a break from the story to describe the sewers of Paris.  He talks about the sections built by Charlemagne, destroyed by invaders, and some very cool bits about sections where bad nuns were walled up and left.  Now that’s my kind of fun.  By the time Hugo was writing in the late 1800’s no one knew how many miles of sewer there were under Paris or why one section backed up into a lake every summer.  He, like Gaston LeRoux who wrote Phantom of The Opera and others, did agree on one thing: the slimy, rat filled sewers of Paris were way cool places for scary stories.

These days, It seems like every movie worth its PG-13 rating a scene in a sewer.  I blame would blame Indiana Jones, but I like him, so I’m blaming that talentless bum from National Treasure instead.

Anyway, here are some cool things to consider about sewers if you put one in your story.

First, water levels in sewers are famous for rising and falling over the course of a year.  This creates lots of chambers and pockets that are only seasonally accessible or were never meant to be part of the sewer. There are several cases in Egypt and other places where underground crypts have become, due to water movement, part of the sewer system.

People put all kinds of weird stuff down the drain.  Sewer crocodiles are a common myth, oh and ninja turtles, and Lex Luthor.  You know what, stuff dumped down the drain coming back to haunt you is waaay overdone so just drop it okay.

~ Natural Booby Traps ~

The other thing I like is that sewers explode.  Really.  As human waste decomposes, it puts off methane.  A modern sewer is supposed to be vented to prevent build ups but hey, could be fun.  More than one early twentieth century sewer made the news on a hot spring day when sparks got where they shouldn’t be.  More often the sewer doesn’t explode but the poor sap sent down there is asphyxiated by the fumes.

"Careful down there Larry. The smell will kill you.  Larry?  Larry?"

My favorite mishap with a sewer happened in New York City.  One morning, for no clear reason, the sewers in Manhattan filled up with thick, choking smoke.  Through the miracle of modern ventilation the stench and smoke was carried up into many of the buildings and more than a block of the city had to be evacuated.  What happened?

Well, in New York, transformers that run power into the buildings are often underground and vent into the sewer system for reasons that only make sense to city planners.  A small Italian restaurant in the neighborhood found the cover to one of these and though, "Hey, why pay to have our fry grease hauled off when we can just dump it in here?"  This went on for several years till the transformers were completely covered and overheated producing a fire made of, oh yes, years old fish and French fry grease.  The smell, oh the smell!

I was going to boast at the end of this article about being as full of S*** as New York City.  Having written it though, I just don’t think it’s right.  I’m not that good.

Now get out there and write.