Nuke the Whales for Jesus

A famous urban legend used to float around the science wing of my highschool: that one of the physics teachers had challenged his class in the mid 80s to come up with the most offensive bumper sticker slogan imaginable.

The winner was "Nuke the Whales for Jesus."

It just worked on so many levels. Jesus, check. Nuclear weapons, check. Save the whales, check.

But anyway. I can’t help but think about whale nuking every time one of the Navy sonar and whale-beaching stories comes up. This time it’s a report from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) suggesting, once again, that mid-frequency sonar does indeed kill whales. Either by directly damaging tissues or scaring them into surfacing too quickly, which leads to the deadly bends.

There’s about to be a big sonar test off Australia and the Navy has promised to try and be as cautious as possible, scouting for whales and using lower decibels. But of course, they say, we need this technology to detect and fend off enemy submarines...possibly nuclear submarines...who might be attacking Americans because of religious zealotry.

So it’s just like I said: Nuke the whales for Jesus.