*Unless *you achieve the toss with enough horizontal momentum. As I said before : high explosives is the obvious way to go :).
I just saw this article on the BBC about the formal and informal efforts to remove bodies from Mt. Everest. The end of the article says that some bodies, including Green Boots, have been moved and suggests that the Chinese Tibetan Mountaineering Association and the Chinese Mountaineering Association may be responsible.
I know that helicopters have trouble in the thin air, but what about a medevac hot air balloon?
also someone has to detach the body from the ground. My guess is they are effectively frozen to the ground as well.
Ice cubes aren’t made of meat and bone. Frozen humans shattering into a million tinkling fragments is something that happens commonly in movies, but in real life (and especially at temperatures well above that of liquid nitrogen), it’s not going to be like that.
The bodies on Everest are not just frozen, they’re partially freeze-dried. They might well break apart at the joints or midsection, and would certainly suffer surface damage from impact, but they’re not going to smash into little pieces like an ice cube.
My thoughts on the original question and the required logistics are (I’m just pulling assumptions out of my arse here) that climbing Everest is closer in magnitude to a moon landing (though without the same fuel costs among other things) than it would be to rock climbing Mt Rushmore or something of that nature. I’m no expert but I’ve read Into Thin Air by Krakauer and read various things online. From what I’ve read, as well as comments upthread, I get the impression that simply getting oneself up and back is an extremely dangerous and exhausting undertaking (no pun intended).
Maybe if a few countries are willing to chip in for a few permanent way-stations (like something from a James Bond film or The Thunderbirds) on the way up it might be feasible but I suspect the money for that would be hard to find.
To repeat what has already been discussed upthread: Various schemes or permanent installations have been discussed that would make the climb safer. This is generally a bad idea. Aside from the logistical problems of building such facilities in the first place, anything that makes the climb safer and/or easier would inevitably attract climbers who are less competent, less prepared, and more willing to accept risk in the belief that help is close at hand. This is pretty much the opposite of what we need.
this. it’s not like a frozen steak shatters if you drop it.
Agreed. I certainly wasn’t suggesting way stations as a good idea and it sounds as though it’s enough of a zoo already without encouraging more under or unqualified adventure seekers.
Exactly. I dropped a frozen leg of lamb and it chipped the concrete floor of the garage. The meat was barely dented.
If it’s frozen to liquid helium temperatures, maybe meat will shatter, but not so much at snowy mountaintop temperatures.
If getting the bodies out of sight is satisfactory, how about requiring that each expedition must bring up a grenade? To be used to explode the body into smaller pieces that can either be retrieved as generic trash or will hopefully be dispersed by the winds.
That worked really well with the whale. Dead Whale Explosion on Dutch Beach - YouTube
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Sorry, wrong video.
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Yeah but 1) the whale was one hell of a lot bigger
2) The whale was freshly dead and thus chock full of fresh gooeyness.
These bodies are apparently freeze dried and much smaller. And if the first time a grenade is used on a particular body if you’re still left with pieces too large to ferry out easily, why, then some succeeding group uses their grenade on what’s left. Repeat until what’s left doesn’t trigger the ‘oh mighod I’m looking at a dead human body’ reflex in ordinary onlookers.
And what about the avalanche(s)?
That’ll move unwanted body (or parts theeof) downhill, too.
I thought I’d linked the video of them blowing up a dead whale on a beach in Washington state. It didn’t go well at all. Lots of large chunks flying around.
Interesting article:-
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20151008-the-graveyard-in-the-clouds-everests-200-dead-bodies
Who’s going to go fetch them? You? Go right on ahead.
Back when I was in the Army we’d joke about disposing of the fallen by digging a vertical hole and placing an incendiary grenade on top, because only callow 18-year-old-youths can seriously talk about something so stupid and disgusting and inhumane.