Are You Ready for the Orca War?
Batten down the hatches because these salty cetaceans are coming for you
Orcas are at war with humans.
You may have missed this important news roiling in the ocean of other news. Trust me. This is more important than anything you’ll read in the next thirty seconds.
The New York Times, which keeps track of wars and such, recently issued this alarming report:
Two people were rescued on Sunday after an attack by a group of orcas caused enough damage to sink their boat, according to the Spanish maritime rescue service. It was the fifth such sinking in waters off the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in recent years.
Nobody talks about this. I know because the article isn’t all that recent and nobody talked about it:
The Alboran Cognac, a sailing yacht about 50 feet long, was approached by the animals on Sunday morning, some 14 miles off Cape Spartel in Morocco, the rescue service said. Crew members onboard reported that the animals had slammed the hull, damaged the rudder and caused a leak.
Maybe the orcas just wanted the cognac, but seriously, if that doesn’t scare the barnacles out of you, I don’t know what will. Maybe this:
I’ll admit it. That’s not scary. It’s cute. There they all are, just gathered around chatting. Adorable. With their big teeth and all.
But riddle me this: What are they chatting about?
Thanks to some recent National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) research (aka, Orca wiretapping)1, Ruminato has obtained a conversation translated by our crack (addicted) cetacean translation staff. Here’s the transcript:
Orca 1: Last week Lucy got sucked into that big plastic bubble in the middle of the Pacific. She never came out.
Orca 2: Time for payback. Those insufferable two-legged nukeheads need a beat down.
Orca 3: I hear they’ve made it illegal to kill us.
Orca 1: Ha, those dumbasses are somehow actually getting more stupid by the year.
Orca 2 Yeah, I’m glad the apes win in the end.
(Dad joke laughter)
Orcas have a built-in advantage during this coming war. As Orca 3 correctly noted, international law says you can’t kill them. You can’t even harass them. If they start thumping their heads against your boat, your only option is to skedaddle.
The truth is, orcas have been in a foul mood since Shamu got the shaft at Sea World2 and Sea World thought it would be cute to trademark her name and pass it on to a succession of other captive orcas.
Orcas have long memories. They are part of a larger group of animals called cetaceans (this is why I’m using the word). They’re basically dolphins with big teeth. Big, sharp teeth.
Most scientists now agree that some cetaceans, like dolphins and orcas, have more complex brains than humans. The recent U.S. election seems to confirm this.
These are not dumb creatures. And now, orcas are fixing for a fight.
So your hope rests on armor. Lots of it. Boat armor, body armor, whatever you can find. And if AI designs your body armor the way Leon Musk3 probably would like to do while he’s building spaceships to colonize a dead, poisoned planet full of rust, you are truly doomed. It will be full of truly horrible vulnerabilities.
Not to state the obvious, but I expect the next set of Orca attacks to come in waves. It will be organized. It will be terrifying. The pic below is not an AI pic. It’s a photo of an Orca battalion steaming toward their next rendezvous with a Spanish yacht.
The hapless yacht crew will be helpless.
The question for the rest of us: How best to prepare?
Since listicles are the essence of some parts of the self-help ecosphere, you might expect a story like this to contain a listicle of defensive options in the face of this new danger.
My apologies. I can’t help with that. I loathe listicles. This refusal of mine to yield to the vanguard of the lowest denominator of self-help literature may seem selfish in the face of the orca scourge, but I have a reputation to protect.
Besides, it’s not my fault humanity turned the ocean into a toilet while I was posing as an ecowarrior during my sushi-eating phase (I, too, was once the age equivalent of a millennial).
Like all responsible ecowarriors, I have always responded with “paper, of course,” when asked, “Paper or plastic?” at the supermarket.
Nowadays, many supermarkets don’t give you that choice because they automatically give you paper, but Amazon compensates for this token effort to save our oceans with extreme packaging that resembles a Russian nesting doll.
Considering each Amazon delivery driver piles a supermarket's worth of stuff into their vans each morning, you can imagine the toll that takes on our oceans.
I wonder if we could avoid this war by offering Jeff Bezos to a pod of angry orcas. The next time Bezos takes a ride in one of his spaceships, Mission Control could discreetly guide the ship on its return into an orca hot spot. Crisis, and orca war, averted.
And, to the delight of almost everyone, Bezos's sacrifice to Shamu’s descendants could be televised in a special Amazon Prime Video event.
Speaking of oceans. If you avoid the ocean, you probably think you’re safe from the coming Orca War. You’re not.
Remember that now quaint and forgotten science your teachers in the pre-Florida Man days called “evolution”? It taught us that sea animals have a history of developing legs for crawling on the ground. Then, they often change their minds after seeing the shitshow on land, and those legs retract faster than an incontinent Trumpian devil rat jumping off a ship full of moronic cabinet nominees.
The assumption is that this takes millions of years.
Think again. It takes minutes now, thanks to ocean pollution and toxins. If you don’t believe me, just do a Google search for “orcas with legs.”
Seriously, do it now. I can wait. I even set the link up for you. Feel free to add your favorite in a link in the comments.
I realize the world is full of big problems. It’s not unreasonable for you to say, “A war with orcas is just not on my worry list.”
But part of my job as a Substack writer is to add to your list of worries and concerns.
How’d I do?
Notes
Soon to be eliminated by the folks at Project 2025
“‘The Day of the Dead’: Animals Who Died at Marine Parks.” 2023. PETA Headlines. October 31, 2023. https://headlines.peta.org/day-of-the-dead-honor-animals-who-died-at-marine-parks/.
Rennolds, Nathan, and Katie Balevic. 2024. “Trump Calls Elon Musk by Wrong Name as His Speeches Face Scrutiny.” Business Insider. September 8, 2024. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-calls-elon-musk-wrong-name-speeches-face-scrutiny-2024-9.
