Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrumbut | Hacker News Reader

I thought about this too, but then you consider whaling which killed much more and yet it doesn't seem that whales set up a persistent and organized resistance effort.

It sends me back to believing there is some sort of instinct triggered by the stimulus of killer whale attack.

View on HN

> and yet it doesn't seem that whales set up a persistent and organized resistance effort

Historically, they did. One famous example is the Essex, which was sunk in 1820 by the spontaneous attack of an unusually large male sperm whale soon after pursuing a pod of whales.

The difference today is that it's effectively impossible for a whale to put a hole in a steel-hulled ship.

Whales have to breath and are hunted by huge fast ships, basically floating factories. They are hunted with radar, radio, binoculars, microphones, and high power harpoons.

Even with whales smarter than humans, how exactly are they supposed to resist... beyond communicating about where the hunting ships are, which they may well be doing.

Not exactly a fair fight, or proof that they aren't smart.

Being from the town Moby Dick gets going in, I was thinking of the 18-19th century variety, where the whale boats were entirely vulnerable.

The variety employed in the last 100 years, you're right there's nothing they can do.

Persistent and organized resistance? Not even the Native Americans and First Nations could manage that. There were a couple attempts to organize that were cut tragically short. I wouldn’t expect whales to be better at this than humans.

The aztecs did fairly well actually until their population was heavily atrophied due to newly introduced diseases.

edit Specifically La Noche Triste. It was only after small pox killed about 40% of the population leaving most of the remainder to deal with disease caused sever disfigurement, disability, senility and starvation that the spanish really began to gain the upper hand.

There was plenty of persistent and organized resistance. It is unlikely that European conquest of the Americas would have been as successful or rapid if European diseases hadn't killed of 90% of the native population.

Mistrust of nearby tribes was exploited over and over again by Europeans. The Aztecs were conquered because they managed to make enough coastal bands angry that they were totally willing to side with the new people with iron stuff. The French and Indian War had natives fighting each other on behalf of the English and (mostly) French. The Modoc War happened because they were living on a reservation with the Klamath -- who treated them so badly they decided to try and live on some lava beds instead.

Seriously, outside of efforts by Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa, and the way-too-late Ghost Dance movement, intertribal unity efforts weren't really there. They won many, many battles against Europeans, but could not strategize to win a long war. Thus, disorganized and sporadic resistance.

Sure, disease made the conquest possible. And it's not a values judgement. It's just the old tale, divide and conquer.

Organized is not the same thing as Unified.

It does rather sound like a value judgement when you bring it up the way you have.

> yet it doesn't seem that whales set up a persistent and organized resistance effort.

Well sure, if everyone knew about it it wouldn't be that successful now would it? Nothing to see here. No whales. Move along please.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com