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Author Topic: Gravedigging
ChrisOwens
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Let's say a casket is put 6 feet under and filled in with fresh dirt. How long would it take to dig it up again?
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Survivor
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How long have you waited for the dirt to settle, and what kind of dirt are we talking about?

I'll assume that you'd be using hand tools, meaning a shovel.

Under optimal conditions, where the soil is slightly moist and very gently compacted, you can probably remove dirt at a steady pace of 5-10 cubic feet per minute, taking an occasional break. So it should take you about a half hour, with this and that. Possibly 15 minutes if you dig like a madman...or maybe a sane man with your life on the line. If you've got more than one person you can make things go a bit faster.

Generally, conditions will not be optimal. If the soil contains many rocks larger than pea-sized, or if there's a lot of moisture, or if the soil is sandy, or if it's heavily compacted, and so on and so forth. Given that the soil is somewhere that people decided to bury a casket 6 feet deep in the first place, I think that you can assume that it shouldn't take more than a day to excavate unless it's a really old gravesite. There shouldn't be great big rocks (unless deliberately placed as protection against grave-robbers), the soil will have been broken up once, it shouldn't be all that sandy, and so on and so forth. But realistically, conditions will generally be non-optimal and you'll spend a couple of hours digging that big a hole.

There's also the question of removing the casket itself (if you're including that step). How much longer this will take depends a lot on the casket. Your casket of a bygone era was intended to fit the body pretty closely to minimize the amount of collapse once the casket rotted. Modern caskets are often the size and weight of a small piano (once the body is inside) and are supposed to be virtually indestructable, to the extent that you can excavate them with a backhoe without worrying about chopping the corpse in half.

So, a little more precision on what we're digging up and what digging it up entails would be necessary info. Also consider how many diggers you've got (and whether any of them are backhoes) as well as the soil conditions. All of these things make a big difference.


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ChrisOwens
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Thanks. Very interesting. Great. Now all I need is a shovel...

The story just has one character digging up a grave in the middle of the night, a grave that was just filled in earlier that day. The story is set a little south of a post-American Denver. I had him taking 30 minutes to dig 7 by 4 section, about one foot deep.



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CoriSCapnSkip
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It's certainly been known to happen. Read Dickens's "A Tale of Two Cities" or any other work regarding graverobbing and it's known that one or two people (certainly you wouldn't want to let more than two people in on such an, um, undertaking) can dig up at least one grave in a night (how long in hours, I wouldn't venture to say.) Eddie Gein, on whom "Psycho" was based, made a regular practice of it alone. Might anything written about him shed light on how long such a venture took him?
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Robert Nowall
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You don't have to dig up a whole grave to rob it...just enough to pull the corpse out of it. It's a variation of the Obstetric theory of breaking-and-entering---if the head can go through it the rest of the body can, too.
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ChrisOwens
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It's an unsuccesful attempt, he gets a foot deep before he's found out. Based on Survivor's notes hopefully I can extract a credible time.
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franc li
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I'd say 30 minutes is kind of long for 7x4, 1 foot deep fresh soil. But various equipment failure and minor injuries could credibly stretch the time taken.

Of course there was a grave digging scene in Magic Street. Seemed to take 10-15 minutes. But they were digging like someone's life was on the line.

[This message has been edited by franc li (edited October 25, 2006).]


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Survivor
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I forgot to specify a significant parameter of "optimal conditions", namely that the digger is a healthy adult male with better than average strength. I always forget to mention that assumption. This one makes a bigger difference than most of the other parameters combined.

Anyway, if the story is "post-American", then I'd guess that the whole indestructable, hermetically sealed casket thing has also gone out of fashion. We're probably talking about a disposable pine casket, like in old times. That means that you don't need the hole to be 7x4, the digger can just dig down towards the torso, break open the top half of the casket, and slither the body out. The hole still has to be about three feet across for him to have a decent amount of room to use his shovel, but it's a lot less dirt than 7x4 (if the story is post-American, I wouldn't count on the initial hole being that big either).

Also, when a grave is freshly filled, it is common practice to heap a mound of earth over the grave to offset settling. This mound should be at least a foot high for a 6 foot grave. You can remove that in under a minute if you make a speed event out of it (a couple of minutes is more reasonable). The layer underneath is almost as easy, very lightly compacted and you still have an advantageous angle. Digging gets progressively more difficult the further down you go. The soil is getting more compacted, you're further down in a hole so your movement is restricted, you have to worry about getting the dirt out of the hole (after you get about waist deep it's best to use a bucket for this), dirt dislodged from the sides of the hole starts becoming a problem (less of a problem in a pre-dug hole, but still noticible), and you'll start to get tired of digging.

I'd say that overall the rate of progress has a bit of a square function...that last couple of feet will take you as long as the rest of the hole did.

But really, for digging a foot deep, you can just go out in your garden (or find a neighbor who wants some free tilling done) and try it yourself. You can even do it in the middle of the night (this probably makes a difference too, it definitely isn't on my list of optimal conditions), digging isn't that noisy.


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kings_falcon
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Survivor, why do you always know the answer to these questions?
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Survivor
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The digging question comes from both practical and theoretical experience with both digging holes and excavating. I've done a fair amount of both. Not graves, mind you. Like I said, this is information that you can find out with a shovel and some fresh dirt.
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Inkwell
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"Alas, poor Yorick! I...what the hell kind of name is 'Yorick,' anyway?"


Inkwell
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"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous


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Robert Nowall
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What Survivor said. Hasn't everybody dug a ditch or even just a big hole at some point in their lives?
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franc li
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Yeah, and it never seemed to go fast enough.
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Survivor
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Yeah, digging isn't one of those, "Ah, I'm done already?" kinds of labor.
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kings_falcon
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A post hole digger is an amazing thing. It makes getting through the Virginia clay possible. I've bent shovels trying to plant trees because the clay was wet and heavy.


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Inkwell
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^^^
Not to mention looking like an Oompa-Loompa for your efforts. Or like you just butchered a steer...depending on the consistency of the clay.

Lived there. Did that.


Inkwell
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"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous

[This message has been edited by Inkwell (edited October 28, 2006).]


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Survivor
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If you have a "sonic shovel", clay is no problem.

Or if you're in the vicinity of Denver...come to think of it. Denver has a lot of rocks...a lot of rocks.


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CoriSCapnSkip
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The fact that the soil had been recently dug, and therefore would be broken up, should make a difference. Other than that, yes there are a large number of types of soil, some with many rocks.
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januson
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if your setting is modern day, you have to consider the vault that might be sitting on top of the casket as well as the six feet of dirt. modern "memorial parks" don't allow for easy graverobbing
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