Before making a single edit, Tropedia EXPECTS our site policy and manual of style to be followed. Failure to do so may result in deletion of contributions and blocks of users who refuse to learn to do so. Our policies can be reviewed here.
All images MUST now have proper attribution, those who neglect to assign at least the "fair use" licensing to an image may have it deleted. All new pages should use the preloadable templates feature on the edit page to add the appropriate basic page markup. Pages that don't do this will be subject to deletion, with or without explanation.
All new trope pages will be made with the "Trope Workshop" found on the "Troper Tools" menu and worked on until they have at least three examples. The Trope workshop specific templates can then be removed and it will be regarded as a regular trope page after being moved to the Main namespace. THIS SHOULD BE WORKING NOW, REPORT ANY ISSUES TO Janna2000, SelfCloak or RRabbit42. DON'T MAKE PAGES MANUALLY UNLESS A TEMPLATE IS BROKEN, AND REPORT IT THAT IS THE CASE. PAGES WILL BE DELETED OTHERWISE IF THEY ARE MISSING BASIC MARKUP.
Why are people who pee in the bushes sent to Urinetown? It's not like they're using up the limited water without paying — in fact, they're saving water.
"The Stink Years" *cue shudder* Basically, in past years, yes, this was allowed. But it meant that everyone's pee was all over your lawn, the roads, and everywhere. Which is not only disgusting, but horrible for hygiene and likely to help spread horrible diseases to your already-weakened-by-drought civilians. Very good reason to keep people from peeing in the bushes.
Except urine is sterile and urea, a major componant of urine, is broken down in the nitrogen cycle which can improve the health of plants. Chemical/sawdust toilets are also an option.
Why didn't people just distill the water in their urine? I know Cladwell probably would not have allowed it, but why not after Hope takes charge? It should've become clear to the people after the drought started in force.
That's what "I See A River" is ABOUT. They do that, but it runs out eventually.
How can it run out? They drink the pee, which causes them to pee. This ain't rocket science.
What you're describing assumes a perfect conservation of material. I don't know much about pee distillation, but if we say 60% of pee can be distilled into drinkable water (the figure doesn't matter; the point is that it's less than 100%), then that's less and less water you're getting every time you go through this lovely process.
I think Little Sally brought that up, but Lockstock said that if they distilled or worked with any kind of hydroponics the story wouldn't happen, which is funny when you think about it.
Perhaps a more obvious alternative: why not use salty ocean water for toilets and save the fresh water for drinking/showering? Even distilling the saltwater could produce a little more usable water.
That's assuming that where they are is anywhere near the ocean. They could be landlocked, which would make more sense.
The biggest question I have is this; why don't people just move? Perhaps it's illegal, but a we've seen they clearly outnumber the police and could get away. Why not just strike out for somewhere that has water and wait for UGC to slowly shrivel and die? An even bigger plot hole when Hope takes over and it presumably isn't illegal to leave.
YMMV • 
Radar • 
Quotes • (
Funny • 
Heartwarming • 
Awesome) • 
Fridge • 
Characters • 
Fanfic Recs • 
Nightmare Fuel • 
Shout Out • 
Plot • 
Tear Jerker • 
Headscratchers • 
Trivia • WMG • 
Recap • 
Ho Yay • 
Image Links • 
Memes • 
Haiku • Laconic • 
Source • Setting