[paisawalla]

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.

[nwallin]

> 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.

[paisawalla]

That's a fascinating exploration of how you would design and run such an operation. Is there evidence that any of this is happening?

The truck that someone posted looks like it could fit two bodies and gets to 1200 degrees, which I guess works with your partial cremation theory (full cremation needs 1800-2000 degrees). It doesn't seem to me that fitting 2 bodies into the incinerator, then adding an additional "get rid of these half-burnt bodies" step, really changes my point much.

[s1artibartfast]

Here is a industrial incinerator which fits in a shipping container or flat bed that handles ~2000 kg/day or about 150 bodies.

https://www.azom.com/equipment-details.aspx?EquipID=4559

[paisawalla]

1. This doesn't get hot enough to cremate bodies.

2. "This incinerator can burn 20000 kg/day of trash" != "This can burn 150 bodies"

3. Is this being used in Ukraine? Are there any of these devices in Russia?

[arinlen]

> 1. This doesn't get hot enough to cremate bodies.

You initially questioned if cremating bodies in mobile crematoria was technically possible.

Then you were pointed out that not only is it technically possible, there are smaller mobile crematoria being sold to the public for civil applications which, even though were designed for a whole different problem, demonstrate this is quite feasable and not a challenge.

And your follow-up question is that you feel a mobile crematorium designed for mobile trash does not do a good job cremating a body?

It seems you're desperately trying to move the goalpost. You've switched from "this is an impossibility" to "this specific product wouldn't be as efficient as the Russian ones".

[paisawalla]

This doesn't have the technical capability to incinerate bodies because it would need to get more than 1000 degrees hotter than the quoted maximum temperature. That's a physics challenge.

[nwallin]

> 1. This doesn't get hot enough to cremate bodies.

The goal is not cremation, the goal is disposal. It only needs to get hot enough to make the bodies go away, not to cremate them.

[quesera]

> 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]

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.

[varjag]

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.

[pvaldes]

Agree. Fuel is not relevant here. They are wasting resources at full speed yet each day of this war. The idea of wasting a few gallons more would not stop then. Not when they were mobilizing yet hundreds of war vehicles and ships for months and are the third largest oil producer in the planet.

They had thrown tens of millions of rubles to the gut and put thousands of Russian soldiers in a grinder meat, just for make an old man happy before die. They just don't care.

[paisawalla]

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]

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]

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 again, they are probably the only military in the world engaged in conventional, symmetrical combat at their scale. Advanced nations like the US will just drop a bomb on a peasant wedding in Baluchistan 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.

[arinlen]

It's amusing how you switched in only a few posts from claiming the idea Russia operates mobile crematoriums to be absurd to unquestionably support the need to dispose of mass bodies, including standardizing mass graves, as some evident necessity.

[paisawalla]

Look, I received what is now considered a classical education, where one is expected to show how their evidence supports a cogent and coherent argument. I understand that you, however, subscribe to the modern school, where you wait for your cultural superiors to instruct you as to the current proper thought, which you then espouse with unthinking zeal.

Arguing from the existence of legislation regulating how to dispose of large numbers of animals or dead soldiers is an ad hominem and an obviously disingenuous argument. In a previous age, this would be understood to be an incredibly stupid way to argue, and I pity you for being incapable of seeing that.

Meanwhile, bring evidence.

[varjag]

> The video shows them putting in trash, and that it fits about a pallet of cardboard.

JFC, the video is titled "Crematorium" and the narrator talks about incinerating biological substance. Did you expect them to burn a body for youtube video?

> It also says it gets to 1200 degrees, much less than the 1800-2000 degrees required to incinerate a human.

Brass melts at ~1000C. 1200C should be plenty for organics.

[paisawalla]

My guy, translating between an Anglo and a non-Latin (Slavic) language is not a precise science. Please don't rely on YT autogenerated captions to fully capture all aspects of reality. Use the eyes that are found in the forward part of your skull: people do not "cremate" cardboard and wood chips, they "incinerate" them. The fact that Russians use «krematziye» to describe this doesn't mean you're watching a cremation.

[inglor_cz]

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.

[arinlen]

> Maybe the mobile crematoria were intended to "disappear" some kidnapped and murdered Ukrainian people (mayors, prominents, intelligentsia), not dead Russian soldiers.

Supposedly the initial goal of Russia's fleet of mobile crematoria was to serve during the post-invasion occupation of Ukraine to disappear elements of the country's local and central leadership that represented a risk to Russia's annexation of the Ukraine.

It just so happened that Russia's plan to steamroll through Ukraine, with their front-line troops carrying parade uniforms and riot control kit and barely any supplies or logistic infrastrucure, didn't really panned out.

Nevertheless, Ukraine claims that Russia is now using their fleet of mobile crematoria to try to hide the full scale of the atrocities in places like Mariupol.

I'd also add that Ukraine's effort to store and preserve the corpses of Russia's own dead soldiers, and be very vocal about returning them either to the deceased soldiers' families or even the Red Cross, is also a way to counter Russia's propensity to thin out their official casualty statistics.