🪰 What If Your Butt Had a Grand Finale?

You know, farting is one of those things… it’s a little taboo and a whole lot of necessary. We’re only human, and as much as we try, we really can’t hold it in. So passing gas is about as normal and natural as breeze running through the trees. However, our breeze smells a bit worse.

Now, the timing of a fart is when things get especially awkward. Like on a first date, for example, you don’t necessarily want to let one rip while your sitting across from a complete stranger, trying to get to know them. Or an interview. Just imagine sitting there, talking yourself up, when all of a sudden a big ol’ stinky snap, crackle, and pop fires off right in the middle? Well, your chances of getting that job just went down…

It’s funny though… farting is something we all do, yet we need to control its release from time to time. Which makes one wonder, what would happen if all of our gas just continued to accumulate and then let off in one stinky grand fanale? Honestly, I don’t think all of us have pondered this, but heck, it’s out there now, and we’ve just gotta know what happens.

Well, thankfully this TikTok from Funky Ferret helps answer this completely unnecessary hypothetical question. It starts with a poor, unsuspecting chair and then introduces things better suited for an aerospace engineer to assess.

A surprisingly substantial body of work

The video states that we let off about 14 farts a day, which is the perfect place to begin this deeply questionable investigation.

National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases:

Studies suggest that people pass gas through the anus an average of 8 to 14 times a day.⁶ However, some people may pass gas more often. Experts consider passing gas up to 25 times a day to be normal.

Using 14 a day across 25 years gives us roughly 128,000 farts. Holy cow. We may have forgotten most of them, but apparently our bums have been building quite a portfolio.

Now, where does all this gas come from? Well, some gas comes from air we swallow, while bacteria in the large intestine produce more as they break down undigested carbohydrates. So around lunchtime, the gas production team gets to work and starts stockpiling that club sandwich, fries, and soda, turning it into the unholy abomination that’ll later escape from our backside.

The TikTok video states that accumulated emissions come to a total volume of about 9,000 liters. Seriously, just picture 9,000 one-liter bottles filled with our hypothetical gas. It’s both fascinating and disturbing.

The chair becomes the least of our problems

Now, just imagine all that gas, 9,000 one-liter bottles, sitting in your body and giving it roughly one second to escape through an opening roughly the size of a quarter. In this imaginary scenario, once we let that fart rip, we’re letting off 290 Gs of acceleration, which eventually reaches Mach 8.

We literally become THE ROCKET MAN. Or rocket woman. Sorry ladies, definitely don’t want to leave you out of the equation.

In those moments before “take off,” we’re worrying less about an offended dinner guest to wondering whether anyone constructed a flight plan.

But in all seriousness, the rocket connection does have some real science behind it, which means we now have the privilege of consulting NASA about our backsides.

NASA, “Rocket Thrust Equation”:

In a rocket engine, stored fuel and stored oxidizer are ignited in a combustion chamber. The combustion produces great amounts of exhaust gas at high temperature and pressure. The hot exhaust is passed through a nozzle which accelerates the flow. Thrust is produced according to Newton’s third law of motion.

According to Newton’s third law of motion, expelling gas in one direction can push the object with some pretty hefty force in the opposite direction. How much thrust depends on how much mass comes out per second, its speed, and its pressure. While we don’t know exactly how much a lifetime of farts alone would produce, the video gives us an idea of that force with imaginary plumbing and an extraordinary energy budget.

Still, once we enter this ridiculous scenario, the domestic consequences are magnificent. Somewhere beneath our airborne backside is a living room whose most pressing maintenance issue was, until recently, a loose curtain rod.

Really, after all this, an awkward little fart at the table feels almost considerate. You might have to crack open a window, but at least nobody has to explain to State Farm while there’s all of a sudden a person-sized hole in the roof.