« Santa in breach of Health and Safety legislation | Main | Environment agency to prosecute Santa »

December 22, 2004

Animal rights groups seek injunction against Santa

The Animal Rights lobby groups in the UK, including the Animal Liberation Front, RSPCA, Fairness for Farm Animals, and several others are seeking an injunction against Santa for the "abuse" of his reindeer. It is alleged that forcing these animals to draw a fully laden sleigh around the world at the sort of speeds that must be achieved and sustained causes the animals to suffer severe friction burns to noses, antlers, and hooves.

In their submission they have also claimed that it would cause the animals undue stress to have to draw the sleigh around roads that are not snow covered (it is unlikely that the UK will have snow for Christmas) and that the traffic noise and fumes will also cause them physical and mental harm. It is alleged that bringing them to our climate - and indeed, to the warmer parts of the world - will expose them to unecessary risks of contracting diseases for which they have no immunity. It is further alleged that Santa is causing these animals to be exposed to risks for which reindeer are not equipped - to whit, the risk of aerial collision during flight with a variety of aircraft which may not have suitable equipment to detect them. This will be compounded by making them use the UK road system (or any other EU road system), as motorists are simply not able to cope with animals on motorways.

A spokesman for the ALF has threatened to take direct action against Santa and the Elves if they dare to abuse the reindeer in bringing them to the UK. Other groups are threatening to blockade roads and airports if Santa is permitted to land and make his deliveries by road.

The High Court will hear this application as soon as a Judge and jury can be assembled in the next few days.

Posted by The Gray Monk at December 22, 2004 10:00 AM

Comments

NOTE: the end of this is relevant

Subject: Quantitive Analysis of the Dynamics of Time, Energy and Forces with Respect to Single Modal Intra-neighbourhood Delivery of Christmas

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18 in the world. However, since Santa does not usually visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second--3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle is the Ulysses space probe. It moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run at best, 15 miles per hour. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element.

Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500,000 tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them. Santa would need 360,000 reindeer. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth II (the ship, not the monarch).

Almost 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second 0.001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Posted by: alli (youngest) at December 22, 2004 09:55 PM

Well down under he uses six white boomers (according to Rolf Harris anyway). What the English equivalent be? Six red foxes?

Posted by: Ozguru at December 29, 2004 03:29 AM