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A Question of Ethics for Reselling Sneakers

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A Question of Ethics for Reselling Sneakers

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How much money is too much money to spend on a pair of sneakers? NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Michael Sykes, staff writer with For The Win from USA TODAY Sports, on sneakerhead culture wars.

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

How much money is too much money to spend on a pair of sneakers? Well, among sneaker enthusiasts, otherwise known as sneakerheads, the most coveted shoes can fetch tens of thousands of dollars on the resale market. Bloomberg BusinessWeek has declared that sneakers are now a bona fide asset class, and their rising value has resulted in more scrutiny too. Earlier this week, a Nike executive resigned following news that her 19-year-old son allegedly used a credit card in her name to buy $130,000 worth of sneakers for his resale shoe company. Here to talk about this is Michael Sykes. He's a staff writer for USA Today. He writes the newsletter The Kicks You Wear.

Michael Sykes, welcome.

MICHAEL SYKES: Thanks so much for having me.

KELLY: So briefly tell us more about this Nike exec. Do we know how much she knew about what her son was up to and why she's stepping down?

SYKES: Yeah, so Ann Hebert was an executive at Nike. She was the vice president and general manager of Nike North America. She knew about her son's business, his resale business. She reported it to Nike in 2018. And now she's stepping down, it seems, because it sort of caught a storm nationally, and this is a story that is now a national headline.

KELLY: Yeah. Well, big picture as to why people are shelling out thousands and thousands of dollars for sneakers, and especially in the middle of a global pandemic where nobody can go anywhere anyway, I understand this has actually fueled the resale sneaker industry. How come?

SYKES: Yes, absolutely because everyone is sort of looking for a side hustle now, right? We're living in a time where people don't necessarily know where their next check is going to come from. So if you can hit on the sneakers app and buy a pair of Dunks, then maybe you can take them to a platform like StockX and flip them for, you know, maybe two or three times the retail price. And that's a come-up for people. That's another way to make money.

KELLY: You mentioned StockX, which, for people who don't know it, this is, like, the eBay of really cool sneakers (laughter). Is that fair? I've actually...

SYKES: That's fair to say.

KELLY: I've got it up right now. There's actually a little ticker tape of sneaker prices that is scrolling across the bottom of the screen, constantly telling me which shoes are up $81, or - oh, wow, somebody is down $349 today. I mean, how does that work? To what extent do you think this is driving prices versus merely reflecting them?

SYKES: So it's all a matter of supply and demand, right? There are these companies that make these shoes and sell them at retail value. But the thing about it is that a lot of these companies, like your Nikes, like your Adidas, will actually shorten the supply of these shoes. And so the fewer shoes that there are available, the quicker they are going to hit a platform like StockX and the higher the price will get on the resale market because they're so rare. And so the shoes that we see that are costing, you know, upwards of 5-, 6-, $700 are the shoes that are really rare and hard to find.

KELLY: What's the record?

SYKES: The record - it's really hard to say. If you want to consider donations, then the Doernbecher Raffle that happened this weekend - the shoe actually - the Doernbecher Jordan 1 actually hit $2.2 million, which is...

KELLY: Did it actually sell for that?

SYKES: Yeah, that was the price. I believe they actually shut the raffle down because they didn't want that much money for the shoe. But it just - the fact that someone was willing to pay that much for a shoe is wild.

KELLY: It is wild indeed. That is Michael Sykes, staff writer for USA Today and writer of the newsletter The Kicks You Wear.

Michael Sykes, thank you.

SYKES: Thanks so much.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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A Question Of Ethics As The Resale Sneaker Industry Grows

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How much money is too much money to spend on a pair of sneakers? NPR's Mary Louise Kelly speaks with Michael Sykes, staff writer with For The Win from USA TODAY Sports, on sneakerhead culture wars. MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: How much money is too much money to spend on a pair of sneakers?

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Why sneakerheads are obsessed with the quest for a rarer pair

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Password: Burton2026!

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Did you always want to be a designer?

Nope. Growing up, my family didn't have a lot of money. I wanted to make sure I could support them, so I went to business school. I was an accountant for a few years, but then I realized that life would be empty if I didn't follow my passion. That's when I started taking design classes.

What inspires your designs?

When you get into design, your mind starts opening up. You see inspiration everywhere! I can get inspired at the hardware store, a museum, or even in the woods.

What's the hardest part of your job?

It's hard to share your ideas and have people disagree or not like them. I didn't realize how emotional the job would be!

What's the first sneaker you loved?

When Kobe Bryant first became an NBA star, he wore Adidas Crazy 8 sneakers. They were so unique. I bought pairs in a few colors, and wearing them made me feel different. It was like I had a little bit of that Kobe energy in me.

What's your favorite sneaker you've designed?

It's actually my first one: the Boost You Wear. They were inspired by the Crazy 8 shoes!

What advice do you have for someone who wants to be a designer?

Always think like a beginner. That means being open to learning new things. Your point of view is special, but there are always people you can learn from.

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Did you always want to be a designer? Nope. Growing up, my family didn't have a lot of money. I wanted to make sure I could support them, so I went to business school. I was an accountant for a few years, but then I realized that life would be empty if I didn't follow my passion.

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Newsela | Poop pills sound gross, but cure serious gut infections

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But you're not really swallowing poop. Donor stool is processed in the lab to take out food and extract and clean the bacteria. The good bacteria is restored to the intestine to prevent reinfection.

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Power to the poop: one Colorado city is using human waste to run its vehicles

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Renewable natural gas is a growing industry for fuel, electricity and heat, but advocates says it's a largely untapped market in the US

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Editor's Note: Twenty years ago, James Cameron's blockbuster film "Titanic" entranced audiences around the globe. But it was less than 10 years ago that Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who discovered the Titanic in 1985, revealed to the world that he found the famous shipwreck as the result of a top-secret military expedition. Here's how National Geographic broke the news on June 2, 2008.
The 1985 discovery of the Titanic stemmed from a secret United States Navy investigation of two wrecked nuclear submarines, according to the oceanographer who found the infamous ocean liner.

Pieces of this Cold War tale have been known since the mid-1990s, but more complete details are now coming to light, said Titanic's discoverer, Robert Ballard.

"The Navy is finally discussing it," said Ballard, an oceanographer at the University of Rhode Island in Narragansett and the Mystic Aquarium and Institute for Exploration in Connecticut.

Ballard met with the Navy in 1982 to request funding to develop the robotic submersible technology he needed to find the Titanic.

Ballard is also a National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence. (National Geographic News is owned by the National Geographic Society.)

Ronald Thunman, then the deputy chief of naval operations for submarine warfare, told Ballard the military was interested in the technology-but for the purpose of investigating the wreckage of the U.S.S. Thresher and U.S.S. Scorpion.

Since Ballard's technology would be able to reach the sunken subs and take pictures, the oceanographer agreed to help out.

He then asked the Navy if he could search for the Titanic, which was located between the two wrecks.

"I was a little short with him," said Thunman, who retired as a vice admiral and now lives in Springfield, Illinois. He emphasized that the mission was to study the sunken warships.

Once Ballard had completed his mission-if time was left-Thunman said, Ballard could do what he wanted, but never gave him explicit permission to search for the Titanic.

Ballard said Navy Secretary John Lehman knew of the plan.

"But the Navy never expected me to find the Titanic, and so when that happened, they got really nervous because of the publicity," Ballard said.

"But people were so focused on the legend of the Titanic they never connected the dots."

The Thresher and Scorpion had sunk in the North Atlantic Ocean at depths of between 10,000 and 15,000 feet (3,000 and 4,600 meters).

The military wanted to know the fate of the nuclear reactors that powered the ships, Ballard said.

This knowledge was to help determine the environmental safety of disposing of additional nuclear materials in the oceans.

The Navy also wanted to find out if there was any evidence to support the theory that the Scorpion had been shot down by the Soviets.

Ballard's data showed that the nuclear reactors were safe on the ocean bottom and were having no impact on the environment, according to Thunman.

The data also confirmed that Thresher likely had sunk after a piping failure led to a nuclear power collapse, he added. Details surrounding the Scorpion are less certain.

A catastrophic mishap of some sort led to a flooding of the forward end of the submarine, Thunman said. The rear end remained sealed and imploded once the sub sank beneath a certain depth.

"We saw no indication of some sort of external weapon that caused the ship to go down," Thunman said-dismissing the theory that the Russians torpedoed the submarine in retaliation for spying.

While searching for the sunken submarines, Ballard learned an invaluable lesson on the effects of ocean currents on sinking debris: The heaviest stuff sinks quickly.

The result is a debris trail laid out according to the physics of the currents.

With just 12 days left over in his mission, Ballard began searching for the Titanic, using this information to track down the ocean liner. He speculated that the ship had broken in half and left a debris trail as it sank.

"That's what saved our butts," Ballard said. "It turned out to be true."

The explorer has since used a similar technique to find other sunken ships and treasures, including his expeditions to the Black Sea.

Are these expeditions also part of top-secret missions? After all, the Black Sea is in the volatile Middle East.

"The Cold War is over," Ballard said. "I'm no longer in the Navy."
Watch National Geographic's one-hour documentary marking the 20th anniversary of the hit film "Titanic" on Sunday, November 26 at 9/8c on the National Geographic Channel.

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Titanic Was Found During Secret Cold War Navy Mission

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Editor's Note: Twenty years ago, James Cameron's blockbuster film "Titanic" entranced audiences around the globe. But it was less than 10 years ago that Robert Ballard, the oceanographer who discovered the Titanic in 1985, revealed to the world that he found the famous shipwreck as the result of a top-secret military expedition.

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Why and How the Titanic Sank (Infographic)

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A remarkable variety of elements came together to sink the famed steamship Titanic.

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The Survivors

My mother had a premonition from the very word 'GO.' She knew there was something to be afraid of and the only thing that she felt strongly about was that to say a ship was unsinkable was flying in the face of God. Those were her words."

- Eva Hart, - Titanic survivor

Being a survivor of the most famous maritime disaster of all time was in many ways a tough legacy for some to live with and in some cases, some simply couldn't, and later took their own life. The Titanic survivors carried the burden of explaining the tragedy to the world and justifying why their life was spared above others.

The great injustice of the story of survival on the Titanic was that the wealthy survived and the poor perished. Even to the point that many second and third-class women and children were sacrificed at the expense of notable and wealthy men.

"I can never understand why God would have spared a poor Finnish girl when all those rich people drowned."

- Anna Turja Lundi, Titanic survivor.

J. Bruce Ismay would survive the Titanic but was murdered by the press for his decision to place his life above those of passengers. This was exemplified at the highest manner by J. Bruce Ismay - The owner of Titanic and a man who should have accepted much responsibility for the lack of lifeboats and other cost-cutting measures that inevitably lead to the sinking of Titanic. Ismay managed to find a spot on a lifeboat and watched hundreds of paying passengers die on the morning of April 15, 1912.

J. Ismay Retired as planned from the International Mercantile Marine in June 1913. Still, the position of managing director of the White Star Lines that he hoped to retain was denied him, surviving the Titanic Disaster had made him far too unpopular with the public.

He spent his remaining years alternating between his homes in London and Ireland. Because Ismay had never had many close friends, and subsequently had few business contacts, it was mistakenly easy to assume that he had become a recluse, he did enjoy being kept informed of shipping news, but those around him were forbidden to speak of the Titanic. He died in 1937.

A Complete Titanic TEACHING UNIT

For a complete list of Titanic Survivors click here. For a great demographic breakdown of survivors of the Titanic click here.

View full-size
Madeline Astor, Aged 19, was the maiden of the richest man on board.
Madeline Astor

Madeline Astor

The maiden of multi-millionaire Jacob Astor, Madeline inherited from her husband the income from a five million dollar trust fund and the use of his home on Fifth Ave and in the Newport so long as she did not marry. In August 1912, she gave birth to a son with whom she was pregnant on the Titanic, and she named him after her husband, John Jacob Astor. She relinquished the Astor income and mansions during WWI to marry William K. Dick of New York. She had two more sons; she divorced Dick in Reno, Nevada, in 1933 to Marry Italian Prize Fighter Enzo Firemonte. Five Years later, this marriage also ended in divorce. She died in Palm Beach, Florida in 1940 at age 47.

"As I was put into the boat, he cried to me, 'It's all right, little girl. You go. I will stay.' As our boat shoved off he threw me a kiss, and that was the last I saw of him."

- Mrs Daniel Warner Marvin - On her honeymoon

The unsinkable Molly Brown

The 'Unsinkable' Molly Brown

Molly's life took a surprising turn after the sinking. Previously, her efforts to be accepted by Denver society had been unsuccessful, the Selflessness and heroism she had shown on the Titanic prompted her neighbours, for a short time, to open their doors to her.

In 1924 she was named a potential candidate for Congress. As time passed on, however, she grew increasingly eccentric. Her husband died without leaving a final will and testament, and she found herself at odds with her children over his money.

In 1932, at the age of 65, she died suddenly in New York City after a stroke. It was only after her death when she became the subject of the hit Broadway musical and film, "The unsinkable Molly Brown" That she gained some of the fame she would have so enjoyed in life.

"Not until the last five minutes did the awful realization come that the end was at hand. The lights became dim and went out, but we could see. Slowly, ever so slowly, the surface of the water seemed to come towards us. So gradual was it that even after I had adjusted the life jacket about my body it seemed a dream. Deck after deck was submerged. There was no lurching or grinding or crunching. The Titanic simply settled. I was far up on one of the top decks when I jumped. About me were others in the water. My bathrobe floated away, and it was icily cold. I struck out at once. I turned my head, and my first glance took in the people swarming on the Titanic's deck. Hundreds were standing there helpless to ward off approaching death. I saw Captain Smith on the bridge. My eyes seemingly clung to him. The deck from which I had leapt was immersed. The water had risen slowly, and was now to the floor of the bridge. Then it was to Captain Smith's waist. I saw him no more. He died a hero. The bows of the ship were far beneath the surface and to me only the four monster funnels and the two masts were now visible. It was all over in an instant. The Titanic's stern rose completely out of the water and went up 30, 40, 60 feet into the air. Then, with her body slanting at an angle of 45 degrees, slowly the Titanic slipped out of sight."

- Robert W. Daniel - Philadelphia Banker

This infographic visually represents the survival rates of each class and gender on Titanic.

"I was on the whale deck in the bow calling the watch that was to relieve when the ice first came aboard. The collision opened the seams below the water-line but did not even scratch the paint above the line. I know that because I was one of those who helped to make an examination over the side with a lantern. I went down into the engine-room at 12:40am. We even made coffee, so there was not much thought of danger. An hour later I was still working at the light engines. I heard the chief engineer tell one of his subordinates that number six bulkhead had given way. At that time things began to look bad... I was told to go up and see how things were, and made my way up a dummy funnel to the bridge deck. By that time all the boats had left the ship, yet everyone in the engine-room was at his post. I was near the captain and heard him say, 'Well boys, it's every man for himself now.'"

- Alfred White - a greaser in the engine-room

"When the Titanic struck the iceberg, I was in bed. However, for whatever reason I was awake and remember the jolt and cessation of motion. A steward knocked on the stateroom door and directed us to get dressed, put on life preservers and go to the boat deck, which we did... The steward as we passed was trying to arouse passengers who had locked themselves in for the night. Elevators were not running. We walked up to the boat deck. Al was calm and orderly. An officer was in charge. 'Women and children first,' he said, as he directed lifeboat number 11 to be filled. There were many tearful farewells. We and Uncle Jim said good-bye... The lowering of the lifeboat 70 feet to the sea was perilous. Davits, ropes, nothing worked properly, so that first one end of the lifeboat was tilted up and then far down. I think it was the only time I was scared. Lifeboats pulled some distance away from the sinking Titanic, afraid of what suction might do... As row by row of the porthole lights of the Titanic sank into the sea this was about all one could see. When the Titanic upended to sink, all was blacked out until the tons of machinery crashed to the bow... As this happened hundreds and hundreds of people were thrown into the sea. It isn't likely I shall ever forget the screams of these people as they perished in water said to be 28 degrees... At this point in my life I was being brought up as a typical British kid. You were not allowed to cry. You were a 'little man.' So as a cool kid I lay down in the bottom of the lifeboat and went to sleep. When I awoke it was broad daylight as we approached the Carpathia. Looking around over the gunwale it seemed to me like the Arctic. Icebergs of huge size ringed the horizon for 360 degrees."

- Marshall Drew Eight-year-old travelling with his Aunt and Uncle

Paul Chevre - French Sculptor & Titanic Survivor

"When our boat had rowed about half a mile from the vessel the spectacle was quite fairylike, The Titanic, which was fully illuminated, was stationary, like some fantastic piece of stage scenery. The night was clear and the sea smooth, but it was intensely cold. Presently the gigantic ship began to sink by the bows, and then those who had remained on board realized the horror of their situation. Suddenly the lights went out and an immense clamor filled the air in one supreme cry for help. Little by little the Titanic settled down, and for three hours cries of anguish were heard. As moments the cries of terror were lulled and we thought it was all over, but the next instant they were renewed in still keener accents. As for is we did nothing but row, row, row to escape from the death cries. In our little boat we were frozen with cold, having left the ship without overcoats or rugs. We shouted from time to time to attract attention, but obtained no reply. A German baron who was with us fired off all the cartridges in his revolver. This agonizing suspense lasted for many hours until at last the Carpathia appeared. We shouted 'Hurrah!' and all the boats scattered on the sea made towards her."

- Paul Chevre - French Sculpture

"As I dressed, I heard the order shouted, 'All the passengers on deck with life belts on.' We all walked up slowly with the life belts tied on over our clothing, but even then we presumed that this was merely a wise precaution the captain was taking. The ship was absolutely still, and except for the gentle, almost unnoticeable, tilt downwards, there were no visible signs of the approaching disaster. But, in a few moments, we saw the covers being lifted from the boats and the covers being lifted from the boats and the crews allotted to them standing by and uncoiling the ropes, which were to lower them. We then began to realize that it was a more serious matter than we had at first supposed. Presently we heard the order, 'All men stand back away from the boats. All ladies retire to the next deck below.' The men all stood away and waited in absolute silence, some leaning against the end railings of the deck, others pacing slowly up and down. The boats were level with the deck where all the women were collected, the women got in quietly, with the exception of some, who refused to leave their husbands. In some cases they were torn from their husbands and pushed into the boats, but in many instances they were allowed to remain, since there was no-one to insist that they should go."

- Lawrence Beesley - English Schoolmaster

"After sinking with the ship, it appeared to me as if I was propelled by some great force through the water. This might have been occasioned by explosions under the water, and I remembered fearful stories of people being boiled to death. Again and again I prayed for deliverance, although I felt sure that the end had come. I had the greatest difficulty in holding my breath until I came to the surface. I knew that once I inhaled, the water would suffocate me. When I got under water I struck out with all my strength for the surface. I got to air again after a time, which seemed to me to be unending. There was nothing in sight save the ocean, dotted with ice and strewn with large masses of wreckage. Dying men and women all about me were groaning and crying piteously. By moving from one piece of wreckage to another, at last I reached a cork raft. Soon the raft became so full that it seemed as if she would sink if more came on board her. The crew for self-preservation had therefore to refuse to permit any others to climb aboard. This was the most pathetic and horrible scene of all. The piteous cries of those around us still ring in my ears, and I will remember them to my dying day. 'Hold on to what you have, old boy!' we shouted to each man who tried to get on board. 'One more of you would sink us all!' Many of those whom we refused answered as they went to their death, 'Good luck - God bless you!'"

- Colonel Archibald Gracie Jumped from the top deck and was sucked down with her

"A number of us who were enjoyed the crisp air were promenading about the deck. Captain Smith was on the bridge when the first cry from the lookout came that there was an iceberg ahead. It may have been 30 feet high when I saw it. It was possibly 200 yards away and dead ahead. Captain Smith shouted some orders... A number of us promenaders rushed to the bow of the ship. When we saw he could no fail to hit it, we rushed to the stern. Then came a crash, and the passengers were panic-stricken."

- George Brayton - First Class Passenger

"I saw the way she was carrying herself and the quiet, determined manner in which she spoke, and I knew she was more of a man than most aboard, so I put her in command at the tiller. There was another woman in the boat who helped, and was every minute rowing. It was she who suggested we should sing, and we sang as we rowed, starting with 'Pull for the Shore.' We were still singing when we saw the lights of the Carpathia, and then we stopped singing and prayed."

- Seaman Thomas Jones praised the courage of the Countess of Rothes in lifeboat number eight.

"I was in my bunk when I felt a bump. One man said, "Hello! She has been struck." I went on deck and saw a great pile of ice on the well deck before the forecastle, but we all thought the ship would last some time, and we went back to our bunks. Then one of the firemen came running down and yelled, "All muster for the lifeboats." I ran on deck, and the Captain said, "All firemen keep down on the well deck. If a man comes up I'll shoot him." Then I saw the first lifeboat lowered. Thirteen people were on board, eleven men and two women. Three were millionaires one was Ismay [J. Bruce Ismay, Managing Director of the White Star Line; a survivor]. Then I ran up on to the hurricane deck and helped to throw one of the collapsible boats on to the lower deck. I saw an Italian woman holding two babies. I took one of them, and woman jump overboard with the baby, while I did the same the other. When I came to the surface the baby in my arms was dead. I saw the woman strike out in good style, but a boiler burst on the Titanic and started a big wave. When the woman saw that wave, she gave
up. Then, as the child was dead, I let it sink too.
I swam around for about half an hour, and was swimming on my back when the Titanic went down. I tried to get aboard a boat, but some chap hit me over the head with an oar. There were too many in her. I got around to the other side of the boat and climbed in."

- Harry Senior - Fireman

"We did not begin to understand the situation till we were perhaps a mile or more away from the Titanic. Then we could see the rows of lights along the decks begin to slant gradually upward from the bow. Very slowly the lines of light began to point downward at a greater and greater angle. The sinking was so slow that you could not
perceive the lights of the deck changing their position. The slant seemed to be greater about every quarter of an hour.That was the only difference.

In a couple of hours, though, she began to go down more rapidly. Then the fearful sight began. The people in the ship were just beginning to realize how great their danger was. When the forward part of the ship dropped suddenly at a faster rate, so that the upward slope became marked, there was a sudden rush of passengers on all the decks towards the stern. It was like a wave. We could see the great black mass of people in the steerage sweeping to the rear part of the boat and breaking through into the upper decks. At the distance of about a mile we could
distinguish everything through the night, which was perfectly clear. We could make out the increasing excitement on board the boat as the people, rushing to and fro, caused the deck lights to disappear and reappear as they passed in
front of them.

This panic went on, it seemed, for an hour. Then suddenly the ship seemed to shoot up out of the water and stand there perpendicularly. It seemed to us that it stood upright in the water for four full minutes.

Then it began to slide gently downwards. Its speed increased as it went down head first, so that the stern shot down with a rush. The lights continued to burn till it sank. We could see the people packed densely in the stern till it was gone
. . .
As the ship sank we could hear the screaming a mile away. Gradually it became fainter and fainter and died away. Some of the lifeboats that had room for more might have gone to their rescue, but it would have meant that those who were in the water would have swarmed aboard and sunk her. "

- Mrs D. H. Bishop - Eyewitness account from Lifeboat

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Being a survivor of the most famous maritime disaster of all time was in many ways a tough legacy for some to live with and in some cases, some simply

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New CGI of How Titanic Sank | Titanic 100

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RMS Titanic | Harold Bride’s Press Statement made on 29 April 1912

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Following the loss of the Titaninc an Inquiry was launched to investigate the cicumstances behind the disaster and to make recommendations to prevent future occurrences.

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I am of that generation of Americans - Russians, too, I think - who grew up squatting under our school desks to practice how to survive a nuclear blast. "Duck and cover" was an actual jingle about Bert the Turtle, a cartoon character in a black and white civil defense film that was considered antique even by the time it was threaded up in our classroom. We'd squish ourselves below our desks, chortle, giggle, and wiggle our backsides.

I remember the yellow and black Civil Defense FALLOUT SHELTER sign over the stairs leading down to our school basement, where, I suppose, we were supposed to sit in the dark and eat canned goods until ... Well, that part wasn't clear. I think we knew even before we were out of 8th grade, when we read John Hersey's Hiroshima that there was no reliable way to really survive a nuclear attack on our city. So we made grisly, nervous jokes.

We made jokes, as children do, because the reality was impossible to hold in our minds; or just too harrowing. Over the years, a lot of us who grew up with those drills have confided to each other that we also had nightmares about what might happen if the sirens howled, we scrambled below our desks and into basements, and mushroom clouds engulfed the sky. Would we really survive? Would we even want to?

The old Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev is often quoted as saying, "The survivors would envy the dead." And President John F. Kennedy, his adversary during the Cold War said in a speech after the Cuban missile crisis, "The deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn."

The generation that has grown up after the Cold War has had lots of other reasons for nightmares: airplanes striking down skyscrapers, bombs on buses, subways, and in concerts, and shootings in schools, theaters, and houses of worship. Nuclear weapons have remained a threat in our times, and even expanded as India, Pakistan, and now North Korea each developed their own arsenals.

But there was a feeling that the possibility of a nuclear exchange had become more remote as the world had been sobered by the close calls of the Cold War, and wanted children to grow up without such incendiary nightmares. I hope there's not now another generation of children, growing up in America and Asia, cringing under their school desks.

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As Rhetoric Ramps Up, Are Today's Kids Worried About Nuclear War?

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I am of that generation of Americans - Russians, too, I think - who grew up squatting under our school desks to practice how to survive a nuclear blast. "Duck and cover" was an actual jingle about Bert the Turtle, a cartoon character in a black and white civil defense film that was considered antique even by the time it was threaded up in our classroom.

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The Atomic Bomb: Crash Course History of Science #33

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The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima | The Daily 360 | The New York Times

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What it is like dropping the atomic bomb?

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What it is like dropping the atomic bomb?

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On August 6, 1945, the B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima. Twelve men were on that flight. Some chose to keep a low profile and others spoke out about their place in history. Almost all had something to say after the war.

The 509th Composite Group was formed by the U.S. Army Air Force to deliver and deploy the first atomic bombs during World War II. The group was segregated from the rest of the military and trained in secret. Even those in the group only knew as much as they needed to know in order to perform their duties. The group deployed to Tinian in 1945 with 15 B-29 bombers, flight crews, ground crews, and other personnel, a total of about 1770 men. The mission to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan (special mission 13) involved seven planes, but the one we remember was the Enola Gay.

Air Force captain Theodore "Dutch" Van Kirk did not know the destructive force of the nuclear bomb before Hiroshima. He was 24 years old at that time, a veteran of 58 missions in North Africa. Paul Tibbets told him this mission would shorten or end the war, but Van Kirk had heard that line before. Hiroshima made him a believer. Van Kirk felt the bombing of Hiroshima was worth the price in that it ended the war before the invasion of Japan, which promised to be devastating to both sides.

I honestly believe the use of the atomic bomb saved lives in the long run. There were a lot of lives saved. Most of the lives saved were Japanese.

In 2005, Van Kirk came as close as he ever got to regret.

I pray no man will have to witness that sight again. Such a terrible waste, such a loss of life. We unleashed the first atomic bomb, and I hope there will never be another. I pray that we have learned a lesson for all time. But I'm not sure that we have.

After the war, Van Kirk got a masters degree in chemical engineering and worked for DuPont until his retirement. Van Kirk passed away in 2014.

Thomas Ferebee pushed the button that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. He slept in the plane both before and after he did his part. After the war, Ferebee stayed with the Air Force, serving in the Strategic Air Command and in Vietnam. He retired as a full Colonel.

Colonel Ferebee, who retired from the Air Force in 1970, always argued that the Hiroshima bomb was necessary. "I'm convinced that the bombing saved many lives by ending the war," he told Newsweek magazine in 1970.

That doesn't mean he had no opinion on the further use of such weapons.

"Now we should look back and remember what just one bomb did, or two bombs," he told The Charlotte Observer in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. "Then I think we should realize that this can't happen again."

Colonel Ferebee died in Florida in 2000, at the age of 81.

Army Air Force radar specialist Jacob Beser was the only man who served on both the Enola Gay in the Hiroshima bombing mission and the Bock's Car three days later when its crew bombed Nagasaki. He couldn't look at the detonation of the bombs because he was charged with monitoring for outside signals that could have detonated the bomb early and monitoring for signals of the proper detonation. This is addition for keeping an eye on radar for any enemy planes.

In this 1985 interview for the Washington Post, Beser was asked if he would do it again.

Given the same circumstances in the same kind of context, the answer is yes. However, you have to admit that the circumstances don't exist now. They probably never will again. I have no regrets, no remorse about it. As far as our country was concerned, we were three years downstream in a war, going on four. The world had been at war, really, from the '30s in China, continuously, and millions and millions of people had been killed. Add to that the deliberate killing that went on in Europe, [and] it's kind of ludicrous to say well, geez, look at all those people that were instantly murdered. In November of 1945 there was an invasion of Japan planned. Three million men were gonna be thrown against Japan. There were about three million Japanese digging in for the defense of their homeland, and there was a casualty potential of over a million people. That's what was avoided. If you take the highest figures of casualties of both cities, say, 300,000 combined casualties in Hiroshima [and] Nagasaki, versus a million, I'm sorry to say, it's a good tradeoff. It's a very cold way to look at it, but it's the only way to look at it. Now looking into tomorrow, that's something else again. I don't have any pat answers for that.

After the war, Beser was an engineer at Sandia Laboratories where nuclear research continued and at Westinghouse where he worked on classified projects for the military. He retired in 1985. In 1988, Beser wrote a book called Hiroshima and Nagasaki Revisited. He died of cancer in 1992 at age 71.

There isn't a lot of biographical information available on radar operator Joe Stiborik, except for some of his reminiscences of the mission.

Joe Stiborik remembered the crew sitting in stunned silence on the return flight. The only words he recollected hearing were Lewis's "My God, what have we done." He explained, "I was dumbfounded. Remember, nobody had ever seen what an A-bomb could do before. Here was a whole damn town nearly as big as Dallas, one minute all in good shape and the next minute disappeared and covered with fires and smoke...There was almost no talk I can remember on our trip back to the base. It was just too much to express in words, I guess. We were all in a kind of state of shock. I think the foremost thing in all our minds was that this thing was going to bring an end to the war and we tried to look at it that way."

Stiborik died of a heart attack in 1984 at age 69.

Morris Jeppson was only 23 years old when he was assigned to accompany the atomic bomb on the Enola Gay. It was his duty to arm the bomb and make sure it would work. Jeppson had the power to abort the mission if it didn't. It was his first and last mission of the war. Jeppson had worked in developing the mechanics of the bomb, and after the war he continued on the nuclear path. He studied physics at Berkeley and worked in the radiation laboratory there. Then he worked on developing hydrogen thermonuclear weapons at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. Jeppson went on to invent and market hi-tech machinery for medical and industrial uses.

In 1995, Jeppson looked back at the Hiroshima mission.

Until the 509th reunion that year Jeppson hadn't given the mission much thought. "Those bomb plugs were just kicking around in a drawer" for years, he says. Still, he maintains that dropping the bomb on Hiroshima was a necessary means to help end the war. He points to wartime concerns that Germany was developing nuclear bomb technology. "If that had happened, the world would be an entirely different place (today)," he says.

Jeppson passed away in 2010.

Richard Nelson was the youngest of the Enola Gay crew. He was 20 years old in August of 1945. He relayed the news of the atomic bomb to his superiors in code, who forwarded it to President Truman: "Results excellent." After the war, Nelson got a degree in business administration and made a career as a salesman. Fifty years later, he had no regrets about his part in the mission.

"War is a terrible thing," he told The Riverside Press-Enterprise on the 50th anniversary of the bombing. "It takes and it destroys. Anyone feels sorry for people who are killed. We are all human beings. But I don't feel sorry I participated in it. If I had known the results of the mission beforehand, I would have flown it anyway."

Nelson died from emphysema in 2003 at age 77.

Enola Gay tail gunner Bob Caron wrote a book about the mission called Fire of a Thousand Suns. Despite his description of the bomb's effects, he never regretted being part of the mission.

In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News published two weeks before he died, Mr. Caron said he had no regrets about his role in the World War II bombing. "No remorse, no bad dreams," he said. "We accomplished our mission."

Caron died of pneumonia in 1995. He was 75 years old.

Wyatt Duzenbury kept tabs on the Enola Gay's engines and other systems while others tended the bomb and the mission itself. He considered it an honor to be chosen for the secret bombing mission that was to shorten the war. After 1945, he stayed with the Air Force. In his retirement, he looked back at the mission.

...he told the Lansing State Journal in 1985, "We were told to go, cranked up, dropped it, and came home." He told the newspaper that he didn't feel guilty about his mission, but did "not feel good about the 100,000 people who died." In an earlier interview, he said, "Personally, I feel that if we hadn't dropped that bomb, and the other crew hadn't dropped its bomb on Nagasaki, it would have cost thousand of US soldiers' lives establishing a beach head for the invasion of Japan."

Duzenbury died in 1992 at age 71.

Robert Shumard assisted flight engineer Wyatt Duzenbury in keeping the Enola Gay running. In a 1960 interview, Shumard said he didn't feel honored to do what they did, but he felt honored to be selected for the mission. And given the circumstances, he would do it again.

"Nobody actually wants to cause the destruction we caused," he said. "But it was through a necessity rather than a wanton type of destruction. It was something that had to be done. As much as a man has gangrene in his leg, and they have to cut it off. It's something that has to be done. It was a cancer in the world situation that had to be removed, that's all."

Naval gunnery officer William "Deke" Parsons was pulled from sea duty to work on the Manhattan Project in 1943. He helped turn the nuclear bomb into a weapon of war, from development to assembly to delivery. He armed the first atomic bomb while the Enola Gay was airborne. After the war, Parsons continued in nuclear weapons development, rising to the rank of Rear Admiral. He oversaw the Operation Crossroads nuclear testing project and also served on the Atomic Energy Commission. Parsons witnessed seven of the first eight nuclear explosions. There are no quotes available from Parsons as he was still serving in the Navy when he died of a sudden heart attack in 1953. He was 52 years old.

Air Force flier Robert Lewis was a pilot first and foremost. He was upset that commander Paul Tibbets had named his plane the Enola Gay. But he was also dedicated to the mission, and earned Tibbets' respect despite the animosity between the two. Lewis wrote a diary of the mission in a notebook during the flight to Hiroshima, against orders. He later sold it for $37,000. It was resold in 2002 for almost ten times that much. He is often quoted:

"As the bomb fell over Hiroshima and exploded, we saw an entire city disappear. I wrote in my log the words: 'My God, what have we done?'"

Some sources say that quote was a revision after the fact. Later in life, Lewis defended the mission.

Over the past half century, some of the crew have returned to the city to take part in the annual commemoration celebrations. Lewis never did. For him "it was just a job of work. I helped make the world a safer place. Nobody has dared launch an atomic bomb since then. That is how I want to be remembered. The man who helped to do that."

Lewis died of a heart attack at age 65 in 1983.

Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets was chosen to head the bomb delivery mission in September of 1944, and he selected the rest of the crew. At that time, the Manhattan Project was preparing to drop a bomb on Europe as well as Asia. After the mission, Tibbets remained in the Air Force until 1966, achieving the rank of Brigadier General. He worked as an aviation executive until his retirement in 1970.

In a 2002 interview with Studs Terkel, Tibbets said he never had second thoughts about the mission:

Number one, I got into the air corps to defend the United States to the best of my ability. That's what I believe in and that's what I work for. Number two, I'd had so much experience with airplanes... I'd had jobs where there was no particular direction about how you do it and then of course I put this thing together with my own thoughts on how it should be because when I got the directive I was to be self-supporting at all times. On the way to the target I was thinking: I can't think of any mistakes I've made. Maybe I did make a mistake: maybe I was too damned assured. At 29 years of age I was so shot in the ass with confidence I didn't think there was anything I couldn't do. Of course, that applied to airplanes and people. So, no, I had no problem with it. I knew we did the right thing because when I knew we'd be doing that I thought, yes, we're going to kill a lot of people, but by God we're going to save a lot of lives. We won't have to invade [Japan].

Tibbets died in 2007 at age 92. He had requested cremation and no physical memorial, because it would become a pilgrimage site for nuclear protesters.
This post originally appeared in 2010.

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The Crew of the Enola Gay on Dropping the Atomic Bomb

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Nature Podcast · Updated Biweekly · We talk with the top hurricane scientists, forecasters, emergency/disaster managers and chasers to discuss the science, preparation and being at ground zero.

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Thanksgiving marks the 50th anniversary of the Alcatraz take over, when activists claimed the former prison island, citing a treaty that said all unused federal land would return to Native Americans.

If you want to hear more about the Alcatraz occupation, you can find Latino USA's episode about the life and legacy of one of its leaders Richard Oakes: By Right of Discovery, which was produced by Antonia Cereijido and Janice Llamoca.

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

Fifty years ago, Alcatraz Island briefly became an Indigenous mecca. This Thanksgiving, hundreds will gather on the island to honor this anniversary. Antonia Cereijido of NPR's Latino USA podcast tells the story of the occupation of Alcatraz and its impact.

ANTONIA CEREIJIDO, BYLINE: In the late 1960s, there was a burgeoning Indigenous movement whose goal was to fight for self-determination. Kent Blansett, professor of Native American studies at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, says mainstream news organizations were trying to capture what was going on.

KENT BLANSETT: The press was having a field day in the sense of covering what is this new Native movement and trying to figure out what is red power.

CEREIJIDO: Red power worked to bring Indigenous history and issues to the forefront of policy. There was a focus on reclaiming Indigenous land.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

RICHARD OAKES: We, the Native Americans, reclaim this land known as Alcatraz Island in the name of all American Indians by right of discovery.

CEREIJIDO: This is one of the movement's leaders, Richard Oakes, speaking to KRON4 News in 1969. He was a Mohawk and San Francisco State student. Alcatraz Island, the famous former prison off the shore of San Francisco, had been abandoned for many years, but news got out that there were plans to build a casino in its stead. When the Native activists heard about this, they had an idea.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #1: Richard, can you describe for me again what it is you hope to build out here on Alcatraz?

R OAKES: Build a nation.

CEREIJIDO: His argument - for centuries, conquerors and settlers stole land from Indigenous tribes and struck up treaties they never intended to follow. Citing the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, which set aside lands west of the Missouri River for the Sioux and Arapaho tribes, the activists laid claim to the island. And they go in front of news cameras and offered a familiar deal.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

R OAKES: We wish to be fair and reasonable in our dealings with the Caucasian inhabitants of this land and hereby offer the following treaty. We will purchase said Alcatraz Island for $24 and glass beads and red cloth, a precedent set by the white man's purchase of a similar island about 300 years ago.

CEREIJIDO: The offer might have been tongue-in-cheek, but activists had serious plans to move onto Alcatraz. Within a month, they managed to organize a radio station, a ferry system that would take food to the island and even a small school for children who came with their parents. A bill was presented in the House of Representatives in December of 1969 to, quote, "give Alcatraz back to the Indians." But six weeks into the occupation, tragedy struck. Leonard Oakes, Richard Oakes', son was one of the children on the island.

LEONARD OAKES: My older sister, she had fallen, and she hit her head on the corner of a brick slab. It had split her head from one temple to the other.

CEREIJIDO: They moved Yvonne Oakes, Richard Oakes' daughter, off the island and into a hospital in San Francisco. But she didn't make it. Morale on the island started to slip after that. Here's a news report from NBC in 1970.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #2: Things have fallen apart in the year they've been here. The buildings seem to be burning down one by one. The garbage is piling up.

CEREIJIDO: The government accused occupiers of stealing and selling copper wiring from the buildings on Alcatraz. Nineteen months after the occupation began, the Coast Guard came in and removed the activists.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER #3: What had started as a symbolic invasion in November of 1969 and later turned into a bitter struggle for the small band of Indians who vowed to hold Alcatraz forever was ended here today.

CEREIJIDO: A newspaper reporter interviewed Richard right away about Alcatraz, to which he said what would become his most famous quote - Alcatraz is not an island; it's an idea. Here's indigenous scholar Kent Blansett again.

BLANSETT: Alcatraz is not an island; it's an idea - that what happens on Alcatraz is beyond just the island itself; it's a movement and that this movement will slowly begin to kind of take over America.

CEREIJIDO: The red power movement ended in the late 1970s, but it laid the foundation for future fights in places like Standing Rock in North Dakota and the Amazons in Brazil. And last year, after decades of Indigenous activist organizing, San Francisco recognized October 8 as Indigenous People's Day rather than Columbus Day. Hundreds gathered on Alcatraz to celebrate.

For NPR News, I'm Antonia Cereijido.

Copyright © 2019 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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Why A Group Of Native American Activists Laid Claim To Alcatraz Island 50 Years Ago

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Thanksgiving marks the 50th anniversary of the Alcatraz take over, when activists claimed the former prison island, citing a treaty that said all unused federal land would return to Native Americans.

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Explore the prison island that inmates Frank Morris, Clarence Anglin, and John Anglin lived on, and escaped from, in June of 1962.

Secrets of the Dead: The Alcatraz Escape, premieres nationally Tuesday, March 29 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings).

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The Alcatraz Escape | Map: Alcatraz Island and the San Francisco Bay | Secrets of the Dead | PBS

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Explore the prison island that inmates Frank Morris, Clarence Anglin, and John Anglin lived on, and escaped from, in June of 1962. Secrets of the Dead: The Alcatraz Escape , premieres nationally Tuesday, March 29 at 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings).

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Did These Men Survive A Daring Escape From Alcatraz? | Mysteries Of The Missing

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Why we still want to learn about Alcatraz?

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Why we still want to learn about Alcatraz?

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Fifty years ago this November, a group of Native American students arrived by boat on Alcatraz Island because, they said, it reminded them of home. Like many Indian reservations, Alcatraz had no modern facilities or fertile soil. The federal prison had closed six years earlier, and the island had been designated "surplus government property." The students, who called themselves the Indians of All Tribes, offered $24 in glass beads and red cloth for Alcatraz. They noted that this was more than Europeans had paid Indians for Manhattan Island 300 years earlier, but that "land values have risen over the years."

Though the occupation seemed at first like a publicity stunt, the Indians had a vision for the island, including a Native American cultural center. But the protest collapsed after 19 months because of a series of tragedies and declining public support. Instead, the abandoned prison grew into one of the nation's premier tourist attractions, with more than 1.4 million visitors every year.

On the one hand, the popularity of Alcatraz reflects our fascination with freedom. The mundane liberties of daily life look more valuable than ever when considered while standing amid the forbidding cells, now with peeling paint and cracked concrete. On the other hand, the island's starkly beautiful setting, within sight of San Francisco's skyline, is itself compelling. Even inmates couldn't help admiring it. "I will never have such a magnificent view in any other prison," wrote Morton Sobell, a co-conspirator of the Cold War spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

Such prime real estate would seem to have had better uses, but Alcatraz is barren, windswept and without a natural source of fresh water. The Spanish explorer who named the island in 1775, Juan Manuel de Ayala, passed it by in search of a friendlier harbor. The federal government built the Pacific Coast's first lighthouse on Alcatraz in 1854, and the Army constructed a fort there, where it imprisoned Confederate soldiers during the Civil War. It continued to serve as a military prison until 1933, when the Justice Department took control and formed the Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary the following year.

By concentrating so many criminals in plain view, the government drew attention to the men it was hoping to make disappear. Newspapers scrapped for every juicy detail. When Al Capone headed there in 1934, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, "Capone sagged at his first glimpse of the prison." In September of that year, the paper revealed that George "Machine Gun" Kelly had begun serving time there. Former inmates grumbled about harsh treatments-like the "no talk" rule lifted only in the recreation yard on Saturday afternoons-enhancing the prison's fearsome reputation.

By the end of the 1930s, when the Alcatraz prison population reached its peak with 302 inmates, the federal government ran 14 prisons, and all of them were hard to escape from. But the idea of escaping from the Rock was especially romanticized. The waters of the San Francisco Bay were cold, with strong currents and sharp rocks. The journey was not exactly impossible: In 1934, just before the prison opened, a 17-year-old girl swam from Alcatraz to the mainland in 47 minutes. But the stories of several inmates who tried to make the break were turned into (usually whitewashed) movies: Henri Young in Murder in the First, Robert Stroud in The Birdman of Alcatraz and Frank Morris in Escape from Alcatraz.

The Native American students who occupied the island beginning in 1969 made savvy use of the place's notoriety. "Here, in this white man's prison, we have found freedom for the first time," LaNada Means, a student organizer, told the influential San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen.

The activists, who had brought sleeping bags and moved into the old cells, cooked on open fires, held nightly dances and celebrated "Un-Thanksgiving Day." News coverage attracted supporters, including celebrities such as Marlon Brando, who in turn attracted coverage. But the Alcatraz demonstrators, who had to contend with no electricity after authorities shut it off, among other hardships, grew discouraged. The 12-year-old stepdaughter of the protest's organizer, Richard Oakes, fell to her death from the third floor of a former guard residence. A fire burned down the historic lighthouse. Federal officials evicted the protesters on June 11, 1971.

The Indian rights leader Russell Means, who briefly participated in the Alcatraz occupation, credited the action with launching a new era of protests and legislation. "There was that spark at Alcatraz and we took off," he recalled in 2002.

Today, even at the old prison itself, which is run by the National Park Service, fleece- and sneaker-clad tourists who venture out to see where Al Capone holed up can also see that the protesters left their mark. Rangers have preserved their graffiti. "Peace and Freedom. Welcome," the water tower reads. "Home of the Free Indian Land."

In the century that a prison operated on Alcatraz, at least 71 inmates got off the "breakproof" island. As many as 28 may have made it to freedom

Research by Matthew Browne

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Fifty years after Native American activists occupied the island, take a look back at the old prison in San Francisco Bay

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At Venezia's New York Style Pizza, they have new delivery drivers and they are autonomous robots.

The way it works is an order comes in from a customer, a robot is activated, then an employee sanitizes both the inside and outside and places the pizza in the robot.

Then the robot travels to the home within a half mile range.

"We have our own delivery drivers, third party delivery and now robot delivery drivers we have everything covered during this pandemic, the Starship Technologies 6 wheeled robot is making it easier than ever before to social distance," says restaurant manager Renny Mitchell.

It can navigate sidewalks and streets and will deliver the food right to the customers front yard.

"It is so much easier to sanitize a robot putting it in there and sending it on its way no interaction the 6 feet thing is super easy to do with a robot they don't say anything," Mitchell says.

This pizzeria is the only one of their locations doing this, if you would like to order, you have to download the Starship Technologies app.

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This pizzeria is using robots to deliver pizza during the COVID-19 spread

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At Venezia's New York Style Pizza, they have new delivery drivers and they are autonomous robots. The way it works is an order comes in from a customer, a robot is activated, then an employee sanitizes both the inside and outside and places the pizza in the robot.

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Scientists have detected traces of omicron in wastewater in Houston, Boulder, Colo., and two cities in Northern California.

It's a signal that indicates the coronavirus variant is present in those cities, and it highlights the useful data produced by wastewater surveillance research as omicron looms.

Gathering this data requires careful collaboration among wastewater facilities, engineers, epidemiologists and labs. Scientists and public health officials say the data derived from samples of feces can help fill in the gaps from other forms of surveillance and help them see the big picture of the coronavirus pandemic, especially as a new variant emerges.

In San Jose, Calif., it all starts in a tunnel under the San José-Santa Clara Regional Wastewater Facility, which processes sewage from about 1.4 million people and 22,000 businesses.

Chances are that in many parts of Silicon Valley, what goes down the toilet ends up at this large plant at the south end of the San Francisco Bay.

"Every time you flush, think of us," said Deputy Director Amit Mutsuddy as he gave a tour and cursed the seagulls that feed on the fat floating on top of raw sewage settling in long tanks.

Staff members here retrieve samples daily as part of their regular lab work. They send additional test tubes by courier to get tested for the coronavirus at an outside lab that partners with Stanford University and the Sewer Coronavirus Alert Network (SCAN).

The SCAN project tests wastewater from plants around Northern California. It's only one of many on the hunt for the coronavirus, including omicron, in wastewater across the U.S. and around the world.

If there are strands of omicron RNA in that gunk, researchers can identify omicron at concentrations as small as one or two infections out of 100,000 people.

"As you can imagine, thousands of different kinds of diseases exist in the sewer. We work with them safely," Mutsuddy said. "It has not been anything new for us. It's just another coronavirus."

Taking a sample involves dodging suspicious-looking puddles in a dimly lit tunnel that runs underneath the smelly tanks. Along a long hallway, there's a sink where the faucet spews globs of black sludge.

What settles to the bottom of the tanks is called primary sewage and contains the solids that go down the pipes when the toilet gets flushed. Mutsuddy said it's easier to find virus there.

"The virus is lipid based, so it tends to stick to the fatty surfaces of solids," Mutsuddy said. "That's where we thought would be the maximum potential for capturing the virus if there is a trace of its RNA."

This is step one of an important new early-warning system to understand the spread of the omicron variant, said Dr. Sara Cody, the health officer for Santa Clara County, where the San Jose plant is located.

"It makes sense to broaden our perspective and have many different surveillance tools spinning. We've seen which ones really bore fruit," she said. Wastewater surveillance "is one that has ended up being really helpful."

A lucky break with omicron's mutations

Last week, researchers flagged four samples from wastewater plants in Sacramento and Merced for genetic mutations that looked like omicron.

Stanford environmental engineering professor Alexandria Boehm said her team's first findings had some uncertainty while they hurried to recalibrate their testing to spot omicron RNA, rather than delta. There was a small chance that their tests were picking up on another rare variant.

But they caught a lucky break: Omicron has a mutation in common with the alpha variant, which had been circulating several months ago. So they swapped out for older tests and spotted mutations characteristic of omicron.

After another round of omicron-specific tests on Monday, Boehm was more sure. SCAN announced the discovery.

"Because we detected it with two different assays that target two different mutations in omicron, and since they were both detected, I'm very, very sure that omicron is present in the wastewater samples," she said.

So far, the variant isn't showing up in clinical data in Sacramento and Merced counties. Public health officials have not identified omicron cases in those counties from PCR tests. In California, labs sequence about 20% of positive nose swabs, and that can take weeks.

But even the initial assays from the sewage were enough to notify county public health officials in Sacramento and Merced that omicron is present in their communities.

Boehm and her colleagues are confident in their testing - omicron is there - but they're not yet saying these four positive wastewater samples show community transmission of omicron, because that would require more data over a longer period of time.

"We're going to keep looking at it in these communities. If we see it continue to be present and start to go up, it's a really good indicator that it's circulating," said Krista Wigginton, an environmental engineering professor at the University of Michigan and another lead researcher on the project.

The team has seen steady concentrations of coronavirus RNA in Sacramento over the last two weeks and declining concentrations in Merced.

Searching the "alphabet soup" of sewage sludge

The fact that researchers found the variant at all represents a leap in testing capabilities and wastewater surveillance technology.

Cell biologist Tyson Graber, who's part of a team that monitors wastewater for the coronavirus in Ottawa, Canada, compares wastewater testing to looking at an "alphabet soup" of RNA from all kinds of organisms in the sludge and trying to recognize sentences that describe coronavirus variants.

"Thankfully we do know the language," he said.

The challenge is that the RNA "letters" are combined with everything else that passes through your body, plus last night's pan drippings that got scraped down the kitchen sink - then multiply that by about several hundred thousand other people.

"We really understand the language of SARS-CoV-2 now at a rate that's unprecedented in biomedical research history," said Graber.

The testing is both specific and sensitive. Plus, it's quick, he said.

"It's almost in real time. The turnaround time for our test for the alpha variant was under eight hours. This provided us a bit of a lead time in telling the community, 'Watch out: This new variant is here. It's increasing at this particular rate, and you should be watching yourselves and reducing your contacts.' "

Cody, the health officer in Santa Clara County, which has not yet detected omicron in PCR tests or in wastewater, said the beauty of wastewater surveillance is that everyone in a given area gets tested.

Like the children's book says, everyone poops. Everyone contributes almost daily samples.

Wastewater surveillance is a way to make up for deficiencies in other forms of testing. The data it captures includes people who are infected but don't have symptoms or don't get tested, as well as people taking at-home rapid tests, as they become increasingly available.

"If people aren't going out and getting a PCR test, those results in those cases aren't reported to us, and we won't see them in our case surveillance data. But we will still see it in our wastewater data," she said.

Santa Clara County has more than a year's worth of wastewater data to compare with results from PCR tests. Cody says they've learned when clinical data trends track wastewater concentrations.

"We started to see an uptick in a number of our sewer sheds just a little bit ago, and now we are beginning to see an uptick in our case count. So I think it gives us information a bit earlier," she said.

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DESIGN PARAMETER: A toilet

GEOMETRY/STRUCTURE AND PARTS:

Components of A Common Toilet

EXPLANATION OF HOW IT WORKS/ IS USED:

To flush the toilet:

1. When the handle is depressed, the flush valve chain opens the flush valve long enough for all the water in the tank (approximately 2 gallons) to rush into the toilet bowl.

2. All the water is then siphoned through a tube connected to the sewer and out of the bowl (the concept of siphoning will be explained later). In flushing the toilet, the float ball drops due to the lack of water in the tank, opening the inlet valve to let more water into the tank. The flush valve closes after all the water has been emptied from the tank and the presence of the new water helps keep the valve closed.

3. The water level increases (from the supply line, through the inlet tube and valve, passing through the bowl refill tube) until the float ball is floating on the water. When the water reaches a certain level, it causes the inlet valve to close and stops the tank from filling further.

4. If the inlet valve did not shut off, and the water kept flowing into the tank, the overflow tube would prevent it from doing so.

How a siphon works:

Example of A Simple Siphon

1. Siphoning is used in transporting a fluid from a reservoir of higher elevation to one of lower elevation. Bernoulli's equation (shown below) can help explain this type of fluid transport.

2. The siphon for a toilet is an upside down "U" shaped tube that connects the bowl (higher reservoir) to the sewer/cespool (lower reservoir).

3. If fluid (anything under approximately 2 gallons) is added to the toilet bowl itself, notice that the water level does not change. The extra fluid will cause the water level in the bowl to rise slightly for a moment, but then that extra water overflows into the siphon tube, passes through the tube, and out of the system (but this does not cause the toilet to flush).

4. When the toilet is flushed, 2 gallons of water rush quickly through the bowl, causing the siphon tube to fill up completely, resulting in a change in pressure (lower pressure inside the tube ahead of the flowing water, and higher pressure in the water (at the inlet of the siphon) in the bowl. Once all the water has passed through the tube, air enters and interrupts the siphoning process (causing the gurgle you hear after you flush). Then water in the bowl is replenished when the inlet valve in the tank allows more water to come in through the supply line.

DOMINANT PHYSICS:

See also siphoning above

Units

Variable Variable Description: Metric English

p

Density of the fluid

kg/m ³

lbm/m ³

h loss

Head loss (losses due to friction)

m ²/s ²

ft ²/s ²

Bernoulli's Equation:

With regard to a toilet, we can assume that the density (p) of water is constant, gravity (g) is constant, h loss and v in are both negligible compared to the other terms, and p in is atmospheric pressure. I timed the toilet in my house and it took approximately 8 seconds. Since we know that it takes 8 seconds for 2 gallons of water to flow through the cross sectional area of the pipe, we can determine a rough estimate for the flow rate (Q). Knowing Q and assuming the cross sectional Area, we can estimate the average velocities at specific points.

Flow rate:

Q = A*v

Since the flow rate (Q) is constant throughout the system, according to the law of conservation of mass ( ) and assuming that the density (p) remains constant, we can state that:

A*v in = A* v out

LIMITING PHYSICS:

Factors that may limit the performance of the toilet would include the cross sectional area of the bowl, the amount of water used to flush the toilet, and the time it takes for all the water to pass through. The mechanical efficiency is not that important in the case of the toilet.

Friction:

The friction between water and the siphon pipe is relatively low and can be determined using the Reynolds number.

Where v is the velocity of the fluid, d is the diameter of the pipe the fluid is flowing through, p is the density of the fluid (water=1000 kg/m^3), and m is the viscosity of the fluid (water=1x10-3 kg/m*s). When the Reynolds number is less than 2300 (as in a toilet), it is considered laminar flow and friction forces are assumed to be negligible.

PLOTS/GRAPHS/TABLES:

None Submitted

WHERE TO FIND TOILETS:

Hopefully you will allow yourself enough time to locate one. Suggestions would include the W.C., behind a tree, next to the food court in the mall, and in worst case scenario, you can always ask.

REFERENCES/MORE INFORMATION:

http://howstuffworks.com

http://howthingswork.virginia.edu

http://www.toiletology.com

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DESIGN PARAMETER: A toilet GEOMETRY/STRUCTURE AND PARTS: Components of A Common Toilet EXPLANATION OF HOW IT WORKS/ IS USED: To flush the toilet: When the handle is depressed, the flush valve chain opens the flush valve long enough for all the water in the tank (approximately 2 gallons) to rush into the toilet bowl.

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Regulations currently exist to ensure data privacy and protection, but AI technology continues to evolve faster than regulatory frameworks can adapt.