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When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)
51–60 of 71 posts
Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)
#52The blown up whale in Oregon is sort of like the SR-71 speed readout story. Reposted endlessly, but you just kind of accept it.
you don't have to accept it. it was filled live, and covered expensively. chunks of whale fell on peoples' cars and required insurance payouts. it is well documented, and unlike the SR-71 -- classified stuff + pilot bravado -- this is just a glorious fuckup
don't think it was that expensive.
Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)
#53What should they have done instead to dispose of the whale? On its face, dynamite doesn’t sound totally implausible. Should they have just used even more?
I bet it would burn just fine. Lots of blubber.
Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)
#54I love the list of half considered excuses considered before landing on dynamite. They just wanted to use dynamite.
In the early 70s it was common to use dynamite for all manner of stuff like this. I'm not gonna say it would have been routine at a small county highway department but in some lines of work it absolutely would have been. It wasn't cheap but it was cheap enough that a typical rural land owner would rather just dynamite stumps or boulders rather than tackle them with any machine small enough that you'd have to dig out…
So what happened to make it not as commonly used anymore?
Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)
#55What should they have done instead to dispose of the whale? On its face, dynamite doesn’t sound totally implausible. Should they have just used even more?
I think a chainsaw would suffice. Whalers have been taking care of whale carcasses for ages, it is not like it is a first?
> I think a chainsaw would suffice.
From the video:
> The carcass (…) couldn’t be cut up and then buried because nobody wanted to cut it up.
Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)
#56The video of this was the first big file that my brother and I downloaded from the internet circa 1995-6 or so. It took a long, long time over our measly 14.4 connection but it was worth every minute.
Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)
#57I love the list of half considered excuses considered before landing on dynamite. They just wanted to use dynamite.
In the early 70s it was common to use dynamite for all manner of stuff like this. I'm not gonna say it would have been routine at a small county highway department but in some lines of work it absolutely would have been. It wasn't cheap but it was cheap enough that a typical rural land owner would rather just dynamite stumps or boulders rather than tackle them with any machine small enough that you'd have to dig out…
Also, dynamite doesn't last forever -- so if you are a municipality with excess dynamite that is approaching its end of shelf life, and disposing of it unused is tantamount to admitting you wasted money buying it ...
Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the early 70s it was common to use dynamite for all manner of stuff like this. I'm not gonna say it would have been routine at a small county highway department but in some lines of work it absolutely would have been. It wasn't cheap but it was cheap enough that a typical rural land owner would rather just dynamite stumps or boulders rather than tackle them with any machine small enough that you'd have to dig out…
So what happened to make it not as commonly used anymore?
People got nervous about all the stuff being blown up, and decided to regulate it to (near) death.
Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)
#59Brett Domino wrote a song about this. https://youtube.com/watch?v=UJHKB4arFNQ
Thank you for sharing this.
I want to add that Sufjan Stevens has a song, "Exploding Whale", which is not really about the event per se, but uses it as a metaphor: "....Embrace the epic fail/Of my exploding whale...."
Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the early 70s it was common to use dynamite for all manner of stuff like this. I'm not gonna say it would have been routine at a small county highway department but in some lines of work it absolutely would have been. It wasn't cheap but it was cheap enough that a typical rural land owner would rather just dynamite stumps or boulders rather than tackle them with any machine small enough that you'd have to dig out…
Your last quip fascinates me. Do you price options such? How is the pricing different under different methods?
Heavy machinery (bull dozers, excavators) have per-hour costs. Both in machine operations, and in fuel. It is usually in the several hundred to thousands of dollars per hour, depending on the size of the machines.
Clearing forested rocky soil is right up there in the ‘worst case’ scenario, time and wear and tear wise. It might take 80+ hours in some cases to clear a couple acres. That is very expensive.
With dynamite, it might take a quarter of that. Equipment requirements are usually much less - a big drill, and whatever needed to transport the dynamite and caps to the site, pretty much. And dynamite (if you aren’t dealing with all the paperwork), isn’t particularly expensive either.
As long as you don’t need to worry about fly rock, shrapnel, complaining neighbors, etc.