I seem to recall incidents around here where trucks running into concrete bridges necessitated repair. Having damage to a bridge can be very dangerous. Although the result from Google are larger that a semi
Try this one:
If you want to spend an hour or two watching some truck drivers having a very bad day, check out the videos at this site:
It’s a low railroad bridge in North Carolina (I think) that has been peeling the roofs off of trucks for years, despite (in order of installation) warning signs, signs with flashing lights, and an actual raising of the bridge by eight inches a few years ago.
The bridge is not damaged by these collisions because there is a heavy steel barrier before the bridge that is what they hit first. By the time trucks get to the bridge, they are short enough!
India does one better.
Probably a bit more expensive a fix than to a semi-trailer.
One third of Americans are torsos.
I’ve seen some americans.
I’d say it’s nearer to two thirds for a lot of them.
i’m joking
TIL The US Forest Service has a guide to blowing up a horse with explosives.
"The United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service has a handy guide, complete with illustrations, on how to blow up a horse. If you’ve ever heard the tale of a certain Oregon whale that was splattered across a crowd of onlookers and journalists, you probably already realize this isn’t a terrible idea.
The guide – first published in 1995 for use by Forest Service employees – explains that sometimes you just have to blow up a horse. Dead animals in recreation areas, for example, can attract bears, which could lead to a situation with even more carcasses to dispose of. "
Key point as to how much explosives: “If you can still see horse, you’re doing it wrong.”
Last month I read Vermont Wild: Adventures of Fish and Game Wardens by Megan Price and Eric Nuse. In the first book Nuse recounts how they had to blow up a rotting moose carcass that was poisoning a pool. Only they didn’t bring a long enough fuse and had to set off the explosives from too near the corpse.
I’ve seen that guide before, and I continue to be amazed at how many sticks of dynamite are recommended. Not that I have any direct experience with high explosives, but 55 pounds just seems like a lot…
Butch and Sundance if the link doesn’t work.
Too bad they don’t have one for whales.
Drat. You got there before me.
Having lived in Seattle a long time, and knowing the conditions leading to this exit, I am a little sympathetic. It’s in the dark, in an enclosed tunnel of sorts leading through the downtown, with drivers going at fairly high speeds (traffic permitting). The exit looks like a high speed situation…until it’s abruptly not. There are, of course, signs warning drivers to slow down.
It is.
As John Allen Paulos pointed out in his book Innumeracy, one pound of dynamite is enough to destroy a car and everything in it.
You’d think that cars are built more sturdily than horses.
Well, the goal is to turn the horse into a mist, which is way more work than just disassembling it.
Your post is almost twice as funny as mine is.
This reminds me of an interesting fact.
When assembling a modern cartridge for a gun (case, bullet, primer, etc.), the powder put in the case is not an explosive. It is a propellant. Technically, the powder does not explode.
Several years ago I had the opportunity to take really high speed (0.25 million frames per second) footage of C-4-type material going off. You could actually watch the material burning from one end to the other and sending out V-shaped shock waves. It was extremely cool. And the fact that it was burning in a definite direction and sending off waves, rather than simply all burning at once, highlighted how it could function as a propellant. After the entire stick of material had burnt, it sent off a plume in the direction of the burning from the end of the stick.
It’s called deflagration. The combustion does not produce shock waves, it is expanding at less then the speed of sound IIIRC. I think this is an issue with all guns, large cannons need charges that are large but don’t deflagrate too fast.
Mythbusters cement truck. And didn’t ‘mist’ it completely.