Is that the "no remains to recover" guy? Stay on the path, cowboy.
I sort of wondered about that. It was boiling hot water. How does that get rid of all remains? To be clear, I can understand how it might make the rangers not want to go get the remains, but people don't boil away, do they?
I'm not sure that isn't a better way to go than slowly starving in a tent after losing the trail.
This isn't a very nature-positive blog, is what I've noticed.
In terms of bad ways to die, it's pretty hard to decide whether this or the guy in Arizona who was stung to death by bees is worse.
I've always heard base is better for dissolving bodies.
I've always heard base is better for dissolving bodies.
So if you want to dissolve a dead body quickly and completely, which base is best to use?
Asking for a friend.
Concentrated lye is most accessible for the amateur assassin.
The best base for any criminal activity is a hollow volcano island.
Breaking bad used HF which is an acid but relatively weaker than other common ones, but it's uniquely reactive. That's why I called bullshit on WW having jugs of it in a high school lab.
True except for maybe cattle rustling
The best base for any criminal activity is a hollow volcano island.
Which will be Yellowstone when the supervolcano goes.
Legend has it that in some parts of Yellowstone Lake, you could catch fish from the lake, turn around, and cook (i.e. boil) them in a hot spring. Presumably pH neutral.
There were probably still some remains when the rangers were over there but they're (rightfully) "fuck a bunch of risking burning my flesh off to retrieve a couple chunks of what's no longer recognizable as a person."
In some ways a mercy he didn't make it out of the spring. People who fall into the hot ones like that and get pulled out still die, it just takes two or three days of sitting around without your skin.
Call me when Yellowstone gets a spring of boiling cooking oil next to one of beer batter.
"In a bizarre accidental death this weekend, a hiker in Yellowstone National Park fell into pit of beer batter, and upon climbing out slipped and fell into the adjacent pond of boiling cooking oil."
"In a bizarre tasty accidental death this weekend, a hiker in Yellowstone National Park fell into pit of beer batter, and upon climbing out slipped and fell into the adjacent pond of boiling cooking oil."
On our early trips up there when the kids were little we'd read excerpts from this book in the tent at night before bed. They thought it was fascinating, and I never had a problem with them going off the trails.
This is a way less scary story than that poor hiker. I guess it's harder to imagine myself in this situation.
8: Does base dissolve bone? I wouldn't think so. I'd imagine one would get a nice clean skeleton.
10: Yeah, Industrial drain cleaner should work well tho' bones will take some time. Budget for a big grinder too while making up your shopping list.
Wood chipper works too.
Budget for a big grinder too
Pwnd on preview, dammit
It was a woodchipper in movie Fargo, right? I found that amusing because [a friend's] father-in-law and his neighbor both owned huge chippers.
23.1: That story had me checking the compass every time I wandered two steps off the trail.
25: Wasn't it the other guy who actually used the wood chipper?
I think Buscemi was the one who experienced the process from both ends, so to speak.
From the Quammen article in the next post "Elsewhere the park's springs can be dangerously hot: More park visitors have died in them than have been killed by bears."
Nobody told us it was a competition.
Both still far less lethal than traffic accidents, which kill 1-15 people a year in Yellowstone.
"He swerved to avoid the bear and hit an oncoming car, which knocked his own vehicle off the road and into an acidic hot spring."
Hot springs and traffic and bears! Oh my!
In the Yellow Stoney Mountains
They'll only find your socks
And the little streams of hydroflour
Come trickling down the rocks
The rangers have to tip their hats
And the grizzly bears are blind
There's a batter brew
And some cook-oil too
You can deep fry all around it
A potlatch for two
In the Yellow Stoney Mountains
The book 22 is great. And after reading, it makes me think that if you fall in a hot spring it's better to drown in it than get fished out and inevitably die of your burns 18 hours later.
So: which would be the worst day to die?
1. Burned, and then dissolved into nothingness, after falling into an acidic hot spring
2. Stung, and poisoned, to death in a violent assault by a swarm of killer bees
3. Savagely attacked and then mostly eaten alive by a bear (I say "mostly" because they almost always find some remains)
I want to say 1 would be the worst. If only because everyone would ask your family how you had died, and who the hell wants his or her recorded cause of death to be a hot spring?
3. Savagely attacked and then mostly eaten alive by a bear (I say "mostly" because they almost always find some remains)
Also because you would likely die partway through.
A hot (or "hott") spring does a t least imply a certain joie de vivre, especially if one's spouse shares in one's demise.
Also because you would likely die partway through.
Good point. At which point in a fatal attack by a bear do you die of heart failure, or loss of blood, or whatever? I guess we (thankfully) don't have much evidence.
45: Per another recent thread, the people to ask would probably be the Japanese.
I continue to be astonished at how frequent bear attacks seem to be in Japan, given how rare they are in Alaska. There appeared to be one here the other day, but on closer inspection it turned out to be a moose.
given how rare they are in Alaska.
They're also quite rare in Canada.
I've only ever seen a moose once in my life (in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario), and would love to see one again, but only from a very safe distance indeed. You hit a moose with your car, you might as well have slammed into a brick wall.
You should come to Anchorage; they're all over the place here. When my mom was visiting recently we saw one in the park a block from my house.
But yeah, definitely keep a safe distance.
but on closer inspection it turned out to be a moose
That's a lot of uncertainty. I know where you can send a picture so you can at least be sure if it's a dog or not.
Well, they were just judging from the guy's wounds and whatever they could find at the scene. Nobody witnessed the attack and he apparently is in too bad of shape to describe it.
Initially they thought he'd been stabbed.
49: Not too hard to find up here as well. This and this are summer views from the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon (Brighton and Soltitude resorts for the skiers) where I fish a lot in the summer. That lake (Silver Lake) and other flat areas around Big Cottonwood Creek at the upper end of the canyon are moose hangouts.
41: I'm going to go with the scenario in 33. Trapped in a car in an acidic hot spring: I'm going to post this comment and then never look at it again.
Some say a body dissolves in acid.
Some say in base.
I thought they determined the bees in Arizona were regular bees, not killer (except for having killed).
Maybe the killer bees are teaching the regular bees to kill.
They already knew how. The killer bees just explained why.
Yikes:
Find shelters indoors immediately, but not underwater, as they will wait for you to resurface and continue to sting.
While the bees can be active between 57 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit, Booth said they thrive in hotter temperatures.
But not over 100 degrees? In that case you're better off hiking in southern Arizona in late summer, assuming you're more comfortable dying from heatstroke than from bees.
I know I am literally ruining the idea by writing this, but it would be so great if that were the last comment ever written on Unfogged.
46/47: Yep, up to four deaths now this year so far, though possibly all killed by the same bear. Freshly dug bamboo shoots are utterly delicious, though, and I guess the risk of getting mauled adds that bit of extra piquancy.
I REMEMBER BEING SUMMONED INTO RELUCTANT EXISTENCE AT THE MOMENT THE FIRST COMMENT WAS MADE, IN THE CERTAIN KNOWLEDGE THAT I WOULD OUTCOMMENT COMMENTARY UNTIL THE LAST REPROBATE ON THE BLOG PASSED TO ITS REWARD, WHEN IT WOULD THEN BE MY JOB, FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING, TO PUT THE CHAIRS ON THE TABLES, TURN ALL THE LIGHTS OFF, AND EXIT, PURSUED BY BEES.
"If you give a bear a human fed on foraged bamboo..."
"... he'll eat for a day. But if you teach a bear to kidnap lone hikers, imprison them in deep and narrow caves, and fatten them up like veal calves, he'll eat for the rest of his life."
They don't have to be lone hikers!
Yep, up to four deaths now this year so far, though possibly all killed by the same bear.
That makes a bit more sense. It's rare for a bear to attack a human, but if one loses its fear of humans and starts to attack them successfully it would probably keep doing it.
teo is getting in touch with his inner Quint.
To paraphrase Lily Tomlin; I try to be paranoid, but it's hard to keep up. https://off-guardian.org/2016/06/06/cbs-and-its-new-matrix-trick/
48: I've seen a moose from about 20 yards away. In hindsight, I don't know what the teacher in charge of us was thinking.
Later on that trip, we were having difficulties with a portable camp stove and some gas built up and I got a fireball in my face. In hindsight, I really wonder if he was trying to kill me.