Last night, after a bandmate demanded we bury him in a coffin filled with Slim Jims, a discussion about the virtual indestructibility of Slim Jims began. We imagined a Thunder Dome-y, post-apocalypse filled with SPAM, cockroaches, Slim Jims, and Tina Turner. And then we wondered, apropos the original statement: “which would decompose faster: a Slim Jim or a corpse?”
I want to ask about a hypothetic unwrapped Slim Jim as well as the about the half-life of a wrapped Slim Jim. I realize there isn’t a whole discipline of chemistry devoted to over-salted snack 'ems, but if I can get this answer anywhere it’s the Dope.
I don’t know, I bet a Slim Jim has more preservatives than an untreated corpse. I imagine the Slim Jim would just dry out and still look pretty much like a Slim Jim, not so sure about a corpse (even an embalmed one).
I was involved in the clean up and restoration of a convenience store my parents purchased in 1990. At that time, it had been closed for about 5 years. In the clean up I found an opened Slim Jim package with the delicious morsel still inside. Aside from the dust, it looked exactly ilke a Slim Jim.
For those of you who aren’t aware, Slim Jims are some kind of smoked meat-ish, jerky-ish sausage-ish extruded food rod. If you squeeze them, orange grease will ooze from the end
They actually don’t taste all that bad, believe it or not.
There is a rental house near my place. When walking the dog, I noticed an opened Slim Jim, with about 1/2 of the meat-ish goodness protruding out of the wrapper, in the front lawn near a garbage pile (the place is/was a dump, and the pile had been removed). The Jim remained behind, and I watched it for over two months, in the elements, and it didn’t change appearance at all. One day it was gone.
It was strangest to me that the Jim didn’t get eaten by an animal right away.