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When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)

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Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)

#61
(2024)

As a meta note, putting 2024 on this is a bit of editorializing & arguably linkbait. It was published 5 mo ago in November. We don't tag (Jan) for things submitted in June, do we?

Everyone [0] knows Oregon blew up a whale in 1970. In any case, a recap of this famous event should be able to stand on its own with the article's headline, which is more descriptive than what we have: "Happy Anniversary: 54 years later, Oregon still can't get enough of its exploding whale".

0 - figuratively

Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)

#62
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)

#63

Earlier 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?

The political winds and demographics of the 70s happened. And then some overzealous hippies blew up a few bathrooms to much media spectacle and that was the nail in the coffin that got it effectively banned.

https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/weather-underground...

Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)

#64

What 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?

Whalers only want them when they're fresh.

The whaling museum in Nantucket has a fascinating display about a beached whale that died there. Since the museum has examples of the equipment that was used to extract oil, it was decided to extract its oil in the traditional fashion.

One whale corpse yields quite a lot of oil. The highest value was placed on oils that remained liquid even in winter, so the summer's oils were kept until then. They were exposed to the cold, and the portion that remained liquid in each barrel was poured off to get this most-expensive fraction. As weather warmed up and other fractions became liquid, they were serially decanted. By the time summer arrived, only the highest-melting-point fractions were left.

Fascinating place; if you ever happen to be there, I recommend a visit. It's quite close to the ferry landing.

Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)

#65

I love the list of half considered excuses considered before landing on dynamite. They just wanted to use dynamite.

> They just wanted to use dynamite. It's not uncommon to break up large cadavers so they can be eaten by scavenger animals before the rot causes olfactory issues or poses actual health risk. In Austria for example, cattle which died on the alpine pastures (about 20 a year) was usually blown up to allow scavenger animals to quickly dispose of the remains as that was way cheaper than hauling the carcasses off with heli…

Firefox auto translate is super useful for pages like this where there's no EN equivalent, thanks for sharing.

>If a cow or similar cattle ship outside the slaughterhouse by lightning, fall, illness or for similar reasons, it is up to the owner, i.e. usually the farmer, to ensure the transport and disposal of the animal body in Austria to ensure the protection of water bodies and an intact landscape.[ 1] In the Vorarlberg Alps, about 20 such deaths occur each year. If the carcass is located on an alpine pasture or at anywhere else that cannot be reached by truck, only a transport by helicopter is possible. It cost 15,000 Austrian shillings in 2001. This corresponds approx. adjusted for inflation by 2025. 1,500 euros.[ 2]

>Although at least in Vorarlberg 80 percent of these transport costs were covered by the federal state, the farmer was only approx. It was customary to pay for the helicopter 3,000 shillings there instead to eliminate the animals by blasting it on the spot. This beat in 2001 only with 500 shillings.[ 2] Thus, the farmer was able to approx. 2,500 shillings (approx. 250 Euro) save. The explosion ripped the animal into smaller pieces, which should then be removed more quickly or eliminated by eaters such as birds and vows. The explosion was either by explosives, which in turn meant increased costs or by the farmers themselves.

(It was interesting to see the term for this event is "Walexplosion" in German -- I cannot speak the language but I did enough Duolingo, paired with a trip to DE and Austria that I can jump between machine translation and a dictionary and understand things in the written form)

Edit: The grammar of German seems to get translated quite literally, heh.

Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)

#66
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They just wanted to use dynamite. It's not uncommon to break up large cadavers so they can be eaten by scavenger animals before the rot causes olfactory issues or poses actual health risk. In Austria for example, cattle which died on the alpine pastures (about 20 a year) was usually blown up to allow scavenger animals to quickly dispose of the remains as that was way cheaper than hauling the carcasses off with heli…

Firefox auto translate is super useful for pages like this where there's no EN equivalent, thanks for sharing. > If a cow or similar cattle ship outside the slaughterhouse by lightning, fall, illness or for similar reasons, it is up to the owner, i.e. usually the farmer, to ensure the transport and disposal of the animal body in Austria to ensure the protection of water bodies and an intact landscape.[ 1] In the Vora…

Firefox auto translate is great from a technical perspective, and I think it's awesome to see it translate sentence by sentence, but the actual quality isn't great. It tends to keep word order and grammar and mostly just translate the words themselves, as you saw.

Here's the relevant section via DeepL:

In Austria, if a cow or similar livestock dies outside the slaughterhouse due to lightning, a fall, illness or for similar reasons, it is the responsibility of the owner, i.e. usually the farmer, to ensure that the carcass is removed and disposed of in order to protect waterways and maintain an intact landscape.[1] In the Vorarlberg Alps, there are around 20 such deaths per year. If the carcass is located on a mountain pasture or in another place that cannot be reached by truck, it can only be removed by helicopter. This cost 15,000 Austrian schillings in 2001. Adjusted for inflation, this corresponds to approx. 1,500 euros in 2025.[2]

Although at least in Vorarlberg 80 percent of these transportation costs were covered by the federal state, meaning that the farmer only had to pay approx. 3,000 shillings for the helicopter, it was common practice there to remove the animals by blasting on site instead. This only cost 500 shillings in 2001[2], so the farmer was able to save around 2,500 shillings (approx. 250 euros) by blowing up the animal. The explosion tore the animal into smaller pieces, which would then decompose more quickly or be disposed of by scavengers such as birds and foxes. The explosion was either caused by demolition experts, which in turn meant higher costs, or by the farmers themselves.

Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)

#67
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox auto translate is super useful for pages like this where there's no EN equivalent, thanks for sharing. > If a cow or similar cattle ship outside the slaughterhouse by lightning, fall, illness or for similar reasons, it is up to the owner, i.e. usually the farmer, to ensure the transport and disposal of the animal body in Austria to ensure the protection of water bodies and an intact landscape.[ 1] In the Vora…

Firefox auto translate is great from a technical perspective, and I think it's awesome to see it translate sentence by sentence, but the actual quality isn't great. It tends to keep word order and grammar and mostly just translate the words themselves, as you saw. Here's the relevant section via DeepL: In Austria, if a cow or similar livestock dies outside the slaughterhouse due to lightning, a fall, illness or for s…

>Firefox auto translate is great from a technical perspective, and I think it's awesome to see it translate sentence by sentence, but the actual quality isn't great. It tends to keep word order and grammar and mostly just translate the words themselves, as you saw.

I wish there was an easier way to toggle the translation on/off, if one's goal is to read the news in another language it's a bit hard to do so.

Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)

#68

I love the list of half considered excuses considered before landing on dynamite. They just wanted to use dynamite.

> They just wanted to use dynamite. It's not uncommon to break up large cadavers so they can be eaten by scavenger animals before the rot causes olfactory issues or poses actual health risk. In Austria for example, cattle which died on the alpine pastures (about 20 a year) was usually blown up to allow scavenger animals to quickly dispose of the remains as that was way cheaper than hauling the carcasses off with heli…

See also: "Obliterating Animal Carcasses With Explosives" published by the US Forest Service: https://www.intrans.iastate.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/B...

Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)

#69
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox auto translate is great from a technical perspective, and I think it's awesome to see it translate sentence by sentence, but the actual quality isn't great. It tends to keep word order and grammar and mostly just translate the words themselves, as you saw. Here's the relevant section via DeepL: In Austria, if a cow or similar livestock dies outside the slaughterhouse due to lightning, a fall, illness or for s…

>Firefox auto translate is great from a technical perspective, and I think it's awesome to see it translate sentence by sentence, but the actual quality isn't great. It tends to keep word order and grammar and mostly just translate the words themselves, as you saw. I wish there was an easier way to toggle the translation on/off, if one's goal is to read the news in another language it's a bit hard to do so.

I happen to have built a tool with that premise :P https://nuenki.app/ - I presume you're trying to read the news in another language for language learning purposes, not for diversifying your information sources.

Re: When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)

#70
post #5

The blown up whale in Oregon is sort of like the SR-71 speed readout story. Reposted endlessly, but you just kind of accept it.

The two whales: - blown up by dynamite - 393-years old, wandering the ocean since 1627

There are whales, still alive, who existed when Herman Melville first published Moby Dick.

And they still haven't read it.

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