Pat PilcherPAT PILCHER has figured out what the loo paper panic is REALLY all about, and it’s got nothing to do with morons with very clean bottoms
If you’ve sat back and watched the carnage in our supermarkets as those people buy vast amounts of toilet paper, relax, we’ve finally figured it out.
After putting in the hard yards, we at Witchdoctor towers scoured the Googleverse to find out just what possible use all of those bog rolls could possibly be to anyone. The answer proved to be a pleasant surprise and one that makes so much sense when you think about it.
Panicked pooper paper purchasers may be full of shit. Still, the reality is that Coronavirus is first and foremost a respiratory illness, not a gastric or bowel disorder. You could purchase a bazillion tonnes of toilet paper but it won’t make an iota of difference if you come down with Coronavirus, which affects your lungs, not your bum.
So, what use could all this stockpiled loo paper possibly be? It turns out that the answer came from a YouTuber called NileRed who has more than a passing passion for chemistry.
As he explains in his YouTube video, loo paper is made out of cellulose. This, he says, is a fancy-pants word for plant fibre. It turns out that from a chemical perspective, cellulose isn’t all that different from glucose, a form of sugar. As NileRed points out, all the cotton clothes we wear and the wooden homes we live in are technically almost sugar. Sweet!
So, here’s the clever bit. NileRed takes a bog standard roll of toilet paper (he chose a particular brand because its packaging had kittens on it), which he soaks in a combination of household chemicals and then an enzyme that breaks cellulose down into glucose. This takes a few days, and the loo roll is first transformed into paper mache, and then a liquid goop. NileRed then ferments the goop to make up a weak alcoholic brew. From here, he uses some spare lab glassware and jerry rigs a simple still. With it, he distils the glucose goop wine into as much pure methyl alcohol as possible. We suspect loo paper hoarders’ll probably know it forevermore as Bog Roll Vodka).
So, the moral of the story? Most toilet roll hoarders are likely to find themselves starving once the Coronapocalypse happens and transforms what is left of humanity into something from a Mad Max movie. While most of these idiots have very clean bottoms, they won’t have any food. The smart ones may figure out how to transform their stockpiles of toilet paper into booze. This could be swapped for food (or fuel for their post-Coronapocalypse muscle cars).
That said, Witchdoctor recommends you avoid making your own loo paper booze.
Mad Max-style bartering and clean bums aside, distillation is a specialised skill and Alcohol vapours are highly flammable. Because of this, we at Witchdoctor suggest that unless you REALLY know what you’re doing, use your loo paper where it is needed and not to make booze.
