Continue Reading Below Advertisement

When facing down a war machine the size of a shopping mall, the last thing you think about is how much poop it puts out. You should probably continue doing that, if you ever want to have the courage to swim in the ocean again, that is.

"We empty the toilets into the ocean. With 6,000 people, those tanks would get full quickly. And in fact, in ports where we didn't have a sewer outlet, they'd often get pretty damn full in just a few days, so once we were out on the ocean again, out into the water it went."

chensiyuan/Wiki Commons

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

The ship has six different poop decks.

But it's more than poop. "I once saw some fellow yeomen throw a copier overboard because it was broken and he thought it would be fun to dump it somewhere in the Atlantic," Nick told us.

"The Navy throws most things overboard, except plastic [which gets recycled], as part of normal routine. Compost and sinkables are thrown overboard as long as you're in international waters. By far, most of the trash is food waste and paper. There was a pulping machine that ground it all up into a nice chunky slurry."