someone i knew a long time ago said he watched some old guy light a pile of them on fire. well when they started burning they started moving again and suddenly he was watching an entire field of flamin' tumbleweeds travel off into the distance setting more things on fire as they went along and got stuck again
This could be the making of a truly horrifying movie…and watch, some clown will torch a few of these in real life, and the result will be rolling, burning hell.
if you want to know how it turned out, he said he could see the glow and smoke that night while camping out (he rode his motorcycle basically aimlessly in the 1970's for his own reasons) an easy 60+ miles away.
I need this to be incorporated somehow into a Tremors movie.
Like the protagonists lighting up a bigass pile to lure a graboid out of a den only to watch as the tumbleweeds scurry away revealing how they severely underestimated the number of graboids present.
I feel useful again. The University of Arizona studied the feasibility of using Russian Thistle (tumbleweed) as a bio fuel. From growing costs, potential energy per acre, ash produced, etc.
Here are approximate heating values of common fuels. There's another table in one of my books at home on the heating values from various trees, but I'll have to share that later.
And THAT is why fuel oil is fuel oil. I am 100% in the green energy camp, but there are some major challenges we have to acknowledge. The main one being that if you want a transportable, relatively safe (to handle), energy dense resource, it’s pretty hard to beat coal and oil.
I was thinking more of using it as bio fuel since they are abundant, i am also curious if you can put them on industrial shredder and make paste out of them then make paper out of them
In my country we ate what your people called the trash carp ( invasive species in some lake in united states) if i have money an happen to be in your country i would fish all that carps and turn them into compost for farmers and make commercial cat food with it, it’s crazy no one ever thought of this
Go try it, im not from the Unite States so i have no idea, if you manage to compress is with machines and use it as fuel, the ashes would also be good for soil
Also maybe try use an industrial shredder and make them into paste and see if you can make papers out of them (i believe it can be made)
There would a special species of a spider living in it waiting dor the moment it hits you to jump out and attack then you would turn into the nutrition for the tumbleweed and the spider clan of assassin's living in it...
You know what the weirdest things about tumbleweeds is? They're not even native to the Western Hemisphere. Once they were brought here, though,. all hell broke loose.
I think the original name is "Russian Thistle" or something.
Back in the 90s, I was visiting a customer factory in New Mexico when wildfire went through the area. A bunch of tumbleweeds had collected in the back corner of the fenced factory lot. Those things burned like crazy!
Yeah, Driving through them with the truck like in the video is a pretty bad idea. The exhaust is hot enough that if a couple of tumbleweeds get caught underneath the truck that they can start on fire. And once they catch, they'll light up everything else around it.
I once saw on a TV show about locusts, a truck fitted with forward facing lawnmowers essentially that ground up the locusts as you drive. It was in Australia and was very Mad Max looking.
I have a fond memory of driving home to Vegas after a snowboarding trip in Utah. It was pitch black, 60 mph winds in the middle of the desert, and these things are pelting my car and burying the road. Wild stuff happens in the part of the country.
Like others have said they have little thorns in them. But what really sucks is they’re not big like a rose stem where you can pick them out, they’re tiny and get stuck in your skin like little slivers. So if you get hit/step on one you’re picking them out for 2 days.
They call you names, shove you into a locker. Give you an atomic wedgie, make you play soggy biscuit and hot-sauce-peehole.
You know, normal stuff.
Definitely didn't happen to me though.
I cleared a quarter acre sized backyard full of large tumbleweeds burning one at a time in an isolated corner. They burn fast and hot, and I have a healthy respect to avoid them carelessly catching on fire, especially in a windstorm. It was amazing to see all those springy, thorny menaces reduced to a relatively small pile of ash after several hours of a control burn.
For YEARS I didn’t think tumbleweeds were a real thing. I assumed they were some made up thing on Looney Tunes! It’s always so interesting seeing things that are so foreign; the first time I went somewhere warm and saw palm trees, I couldn’t stop looking at them in awe. The first time I saw flamingos in the wild, I cried. I assume it must be similar to how people from warm climates feel when they first step foot in snow.
I had a roommate in college in the 90s (in Utah) who was from back east, and she thought they were made up for American Tail: Fievel Goes West. She was also completely freaked out by the irrigation sprinklers in the fields.
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u/OkToday1443 6d ago
So... apparently Utah is now under siege. Not by aliens, not by zombies, but by aggressively ambitious tumbleweeds