Problem NOT solved by application of explosives!

[JohnD]

All,
Forgive me, I can't remember your name, but a regular poster on this site has as their signature tag, "No problem is insoluble by the proper application of explosives!"
Well, maybe the inhabitants of Florence, Lane County, Oregon will disagree.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_t44...eature=related

John

[Nowhere Man]

Ah, yes, the old exploding whale video. The fail there is that they didn't use enough high explosives.

Fred

[danscope]

I think they would have been better served if thay had applied a sufficient amount of flame. The wholesale redistribution of rotting whale by the application of high explosives is clearly a mistake in judgment, and a bigger
stinking mess.

[Krel]

Definitely not anywhere near enough explosives, plus if they had placed the charges correctly, then they could have blown most of the carcass into the water. But it could have been worse: http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzool...perm_whale.php

David.

[01101001]

[...] a regular poster on this site has as their signature tag, "No problem is insoluble by the proper application of explosives!"

dgavin

There is no problem that cannot be solved by a suitable application of high explosives - US Army Demolitions School

[JohnD]

Thank you, Sir!
Mr.gavin, would you 'dispose' of an unwanted whale with a big bang?
Surely the best and most skilled use of explosives would be to excavate a big hole, so placed that the whale just rolls in and all the elevated sand falls back onto it?
Job done!

John

[danscope]

They really should have towed that whale out to sea where great white sharks take Beeg chuncks out of it , and the little creatures of the sea do
the rest. But they decided to play cheap.

[slang]

Looks like it's impacted by a bowl of petunias.

[peteshimmon]

Oh no! not again!

[mugaliens]

Ah, yes, the old exploding whale video. The fail there is that they didn't use enough high explosives.

Fred

Exactly. Just think - if they could have used a small nuke, they'd have done away with the whale and had a new bay to boast about!

[Atraveller]

Oh no! not again!

They just didn't realize the correct number of explosives was "42"

[Nick Theodorakis]

Exactly. Just think - if they could have used a small nuke, they'd have done away with the whale and had a new bay to boast about!

It's the only way to be sure.

Nick

[mugaliens]

I wonder if anyone bothered to contact one of the local fishing industry reps. Certainly there had to be some old whalers lurking along the coast...

[danscope]

Whaling is prohibited within a measured limit, I believe.

[Fazor]

I, for one, am satisfied both with the arrived at solution to the problem, and the somehow unforeseen result of said solution.

[BigDon]

What the OP fails to realize is the quote states proper or suitable use of high explosives.

This was neither, but could have been if somebody not suffering from cranial rectal inversion syndrome had been present.

Even a good idea, poorly executed, still sucks.

Around here they just bulldoze a hole in the sand and push the dead whale in.

[HenrikOlsen]

One proper application of high explosives would have been to use them to dig the hole for the whale.

[BigDon]

One proper application of high explosives would have been to use them to dig the hole for the whale.

Brilliant Henrick,

but this is the state (Oregon) where they fired their highway planner for making freeway offramps that were banked in the wrong direction. Somehow real civil engineers didn't see that as excusable at all. Right about this time frame (1970's). These were his men at work. As my old construction foreman used to say, "You can't make chicken soup with chicken "excrement"."

[peteshimmon]

Did not anyone realise that lots of candles
might be useful shortly?

[JMV]

Ah, yes, the old exploding whale video. The fail there is that they didn't use enough high explosives.

Fred

Apparently the amount of explosives needed to dispose a dead animal does not scale linearily with the mass of the carcass. According to this tech tip, 55 pounds of explosives should ensure total obliteration of a 1,100 pound horse. Going by that example and assuming linear relationship, half a ton of dynamite should have been enough for an eight-ton whale. It also might be that the highway engineers did not distribute the explosives around the whale properly, thus leaving a large chunk intact.

[Fazor]

Apparently the amount of explosives needed to dispose a dead animal does not scale linearily with the mass of the carcass.

I thought that mass equations typically scaled exponentially rather than linearly?

[HenrikOlsen]

Apparently the amount of explosives needed to dispose a dead animal does not scale linearily with the mass of the carcass. According to this tech tip, 55 pounds of explosives should ensure total obliteration of a 1,100 pound horse. Going by that example and assuming linear relationship, half a ton of dynamite should have been enough for an eight-ton whale. It also might be that the highway engineers did not distribute the explosives around the whale properly, thus leaving a large chunk intact.

They didn't want to blow it into lots of small bits (which was what they actually accomplished for part of it), they thought they could make the whale fly into the water.

Incidentally, you do know that applying 55 pounds of explosive to a dead horse doesn't make the horse disappear but rather makes it cover a lot of ground really fast with tiny bits of horse.

[slang]

They didn't want to blow it into lots of small bits (which was what they actually accomplished for part of it), they thought they could make the whale fly into the water.

For that.. shove a thick iron plate under it. A stack of nukes in the middle, and launch it Project Orion style. (Just have the grace to put a bowl of petunias with it on the plate, so it has company on the way down.)

[BigDon]

Apparently the amount of explosives needed to dispose a dead animal does not scale linearily with the mass of the carcass. According to this tech tip, 55 pounds of explosives should ensure total obliteration of a 1,100 pound horse. Going by that example and assuming linear relationship, half a ton of dynamite should have been enough for an eight-ton whale. It also might be that the highway engineers did not distribute the explosives around the whale properly, thus leaving a large chunk intact.

God, you just gotta love typos in explosive manuals.

One-by-sixteen (1-inch diameter by 16 inches long = 2.54 centimeters by 43.8 centimeters) stick powder generally weighs about 1 pound (45 kilograms) per stick.

Though the best one I ever saw was one teaching you how to make plastique at home that had you pouring water into about a half a gallon of sulfuric acid at a critical stage, where if you were following the directions to the letter, you would also have a bunch of other nasty stuff on the table already. I knew better than that and I had a chemist/blasting expert (With Vietnam experience) look at it and at first he laughed when he saw the paragragh in question, then he stopped laughing when he read the whole thing. Said it wasn't a typo so much as a boobytrap in print.

I suspect somebody was actually using Applied Darwinian Selection when that manual was printed.

[JMV]

They didn't want to blow it into lots of small bits (which was what they actually accomplished for part of it), they thought they could make the whale fly into the water.

Well, the reporter in the video explains:

The hope was that the long-dead Pacific gray whale would be almost disintegrated by the blast, and the small pieces still around after the explosion would be taken care of by seagulls and other scavengers.

and the engineer says:

The only thing is we’re not sure just exactly how much explosives it’ll take to disintegrate this thing, so the scavengers, seagulls, and crabs and whatnot can clean it up.

So I think that blowing it into lots of small bits was exactly what they were trying to do.

As for the part where the reporter notes:

The dynamite was buried primarily on the leeward side of the big mammal so as most of the remains would be blown toward to sea.

I believe they were trying to prevent any small pieces from flying inland where they might spread the smell closer to human habitation or where there might be less scavengers such as crabs to clean up the mess.

Incidentally, you do know that applying 55 pounds of explosive to a dead horse doesn't make the horse disappear but rather makes it cover a lot of ground really fast with tiny bits of horse.

In the manual I linked they say:

Caracasses that have been dispersed will generally be totally gone after a few days.

Caracasses that have been partially obliterated will generally not show any trace of existence the next day.

I believe scavengers play an important role in making those tiny bits disappear after a few days.

[mugaliens]

Whaling is prohibited within a measured limit, I believe.

Not for the removal of an already dead, beached whale, it isn't.

[mugaliens]

...but this is the state (Oregon) where they fired their highway planner for making freeway offramps that were banked in the wrong direction. Somehow real civil engineers didn't see that as excusable at all. Right about this time frame (1970's). These were his men at work. As my old construction foreman used to say, "You can't make chicken soup with chicken "excrement"."

LoL, isn't that the same state where pumping your own gas is prohibited due to "safety reasons?" And they blow whale shards over a quarter mile radius and hundreds of people.

Ok, I think I got it...