When Oregon blew up a whale with 20 cases of dynamite (2024)
55 comments
·March 18, 2025cjs_ac
> "So I'm all excited, and I went over to my dad: 'They're going to blow it up, 20 cases of dynamite,' and my father proceeded to say, 'I think you misheard them. I think he said 20 sticks,"' Umenhofer recalled in 2015. "And I said, 'No he said 20 cases.'"
> It was indeed 20 cases of dynamite.
Reminiscent of this letter by Evelyn Waugh to his wife during the Second World War:
> Darling...
> So No. 3 Cmdo were very anxious to be chums with Lord Glasgow so they offered to blow up an old tree stump for him and he was very grateful and he said don't spoil the plantation of young trees near it because that is the apple of my eye and they said no of course not we can blow a tree down so that it falls on a sixpence and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever and he asked them all to luncheon for the great explosion. So Col. Durnford-Slater D.S.O. said to his subaltern, have you put enough explosive in the tree. Yes sir, 75 lbs. Is that enough? Yes sir I worked it out by mathematics it is exactly right. Well better put a bit more. Very good sir.
> And when Col. D. Slater D.S.O. had had his port he sent for the subaltern and said subaltern better put a bit more explosive in that tree. I don't want to disappoint Lord Glasgow. Very good sir.
> Then they all went out to see the explosion and Col. D.S. D.S.O. said you will see that tree fall flat at just that angle where it will hurt no young trees and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever.
> So soon they lit the fuse and waited for the explosion and presently the tree, instead of falling quietly sideways, rose 50 feet into the air taking with it half an acre of soil and the whole of the young plantation.
> And the subaltern said Sir I made a mistake, it should have been 7.5 lbs not 75.
> Lord Glasgow was so upset he walked in dead silence back to his castle and when they came to the turn of the drive in sight of his castle what should they find but that every pane of glass in the building was broken.
> So Lord Glasgow gave a little cry and ran to hide his emotion in the lavatory and there when he pulled the plug the entire ceiling, loosened by the explosion, fell on his head.
> This is quite true.
noneeeed
That reads like the script from a sitcom. Amazing.
rsynnott
I mean, Waugh was a comic writer; if he was still around he probably _would_ be writing sitcoms. I don’t entirely buy his claims of truth here.
bell-cot
A vaguely-remembered old and likely-British quote:
"It is generally desirable that a 'demolition expert' actually be the latter."
null
frozenlettuce
The sentence "The blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds" deserves to be engraved there
stephencanon
Let's not forget "land-lubber newsmen, soon to become land-blubber newsmen"
jlmorton
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.
red-iron-pine
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
DiggyJohnson
I don’t think GP was questioning the truth of the matter
postexitus
don't think it was that expensive.
jounker
There’s film of the whale being blown up. The best part is the sound of whale meat falling from the sky.
Magi604
>SR-71 speed readout story
Are you referring to this: https://www.thesr71blackbird.com/Aircraft/Stories/sr-71-blac...
Never heard of it before, but just read it now, and it's a fantastic little story.
mikepurvis
I have an autographed copy of Brian Shul's book, which is the origin of it. He used to sell them through his website, though he passed away in 2023:
MrBuddyCasino
The two whales:
- blown up by dynamite
- 393-years old, wandering the ocean since 1627
kylehotchkiss
I love the list of half considered excuses considered before landing on dynamite. They just wanted to use dynamite.
potato3732842
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 around it rather than rip it from the earth in one go.
You don't realize how much you miss it until you start out pricing the options for clearing rocky forest.
ceejayoz
And for the really big jobs there’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare
philwelch
So what happened to make it not as commonly used anymore?
quanto
Your last quip fascinates me. Do you price options such? How is the pricing different under different methods?
bigbacaloa
Folks used it to clear old tree stumps too.
mschuster91
> 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 helicopters [1], but after some outrage in 2001, eventually the government decided in 2004 that the practice would now be banned, in exchange the government took over the helicopter transport bills.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprengung_verendeter_Rinder
cyberax
Yeah. They just needed more of it.
codethief
> the blast blasted blubber beyond all believable bounds
They don't make them like that anymore.
gp2000
I first heard of this in humorist Dave Barry's column. His description is worth a read.
https://www.theexplodingwhale.com/evidence/resources/dave-ba...
pfdietz
"I am probably not guilty of understatement when I say that what follows, on the videotape, is the most wonderful event in the history of the universe."
gnabgib
(2024)
They named a park after it: Oregon town names park after rotting whale officials blew up 50 years ago (3 points, 5 years ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23604100
Related The Exploding Whale remastered: 50th anniversary of legendary Oregon event (209 points, 4 years ago, 74 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25070440
pvg
There's gotta be a long danglist of relateds in one of these posts somewhere given it's such an evergreen.
joshdavham
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?
fifilura
I think a chainsaw would suffice.
Whalers have been taking care of whale carcasses for ages, it is not like it is a first?
latexr
> 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.
NotYourLawyer
I bet it would burn just fine. Lots of blubber.
hrnnnnnn
Brett Domino wrote a song about this.
RajT88
Nowadays they drag them out to sea for scavengers, yes?
Another good option would be burning it in place. Make wood fires on top of the carcass which will burn down into the blubber and effectively make a giant candle.
The 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.