Human Petroleum?
 

I was thinking about this, and may have simply been thinking to hard....But I became curious....

Fossil fuels come from the decay of fossils, AKA dead organisms from long ago, right?

So does this mean, if the world is around long enough, the area where large cemetaries are currently located could be potential petroleum deposits?

-Will

i think that could happen over the fullness of time but i believe the process of organic material turning into oil takes millions and millions of years.

also, the dinosaurs were running the show for more than a hundred million years, if my research in fifth grade is holding up, but humans have only been running around in any significant numbers for a few hundred.

Hence the reason I said "If the world is around long enough" lol. I also have no clue how much material it actually takes to bring about something like that. Didn't know if a large cemetery would be sufficient or not....

-Will

Do I sense a remake of Soylent Green? :D

Only if we keep burying the dead upon the dead. Oil deposits are generally former swamps or forests (on land or at sea) where biological matter stacked upon itself and was then covered by non-organic matter.

I doubt cemetaries would have enough organic matter to create the same effect, at least from human bodies. The grass clippings, however, might make for a different story.

What jazz said.

Not enough bio-mass.

Any idea, roughly, what kinda mass we'd be talking about, to be considered sufficient?

-Will

Soylent Premium, a high octane sci-fi thriller?

Something the size of a massive swamp.

Just a FYT,

The most recent discoveries have placed the origin of us, humans, homo sapiens at 195,000 years ago. In the last few decades it has been moved back from 100 thousand to 130 thousand to near 200 thousand - based on discoveries of human remains.

Carry on...

Well really, oil itself is normally formed from aquatic microscopic diatoms and zoo plankton. Therefore humans are never and will never be oil.

Coal is formed from plant matter.

Really we mammals make bad fossil fuels, even if mummies were once used to power steam engines.

Learn something new everyday....was just wondering if I'd be powering somebodies personal space travel shuttle someday lol...

-Will

Remember kids, the bacteria (and other unicellular organisms) own the earth's biomass.

Multi-cellular life is, all together, only a small fraction.

I've since realized that....I guess I needed to be educated

-Will