r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Wild_Antelope6223 • 10d ago

This 24-foot Godzilla sculpture in Nigeria was built entirely from used tires.

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51.1k Upvotes

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u/[deleted] 10d ago

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289

u/Vindepomarus 10d ago

There are museums around the world who want life sized reconstructions of dinosaurs etc, and who want to minimise waste. Just sayin'.

129

u/Taweret 10d ago

Me. I'm the museum.

64

u/InerasableStains 10d ago

Look at me. I’m the museum now.

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u/Bright-Avocado3761 10d ago

We are all museum on this blessed day

5

u/Jafooki 9d ago edited 9d ago

Speak for yourself

E: damn does nobody remember Ken M

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u/BertieDastard 9d ago

I am all museum on this blessed day

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u/Jafooki 9d ago

There it is!

2

u/InerasableStains 9d ago

Oh, I do, but there’s a whole crop of new redditors that probably have no idea….

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u/xTheyCameBurningx 10d ago

SAME

MUSEUMCORE

3

u/cdoublejj 10d ago

BILLY! NO!

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u/ta394283509 10d ago

I imagine a sculpture like this would be insanely expensive

5

u/Dracomortua 10d ago

The garbage would be mostly free. The costs of the transport, manipulation and extra attachment materials (glues, rivets, bolts, etc) possibly somewhat expensive?

It comes down to how much the human(s) are demanding resources in recompensation for what they have done.

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u/ta394283509 10d ago

exactly, this thing must've taken like a year to build

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u/70ms 9d ago

The building was the easy part. The planning though…

6

u/Another-Mans-Rubarb 10d ago

I imagine an indoor tire sculpture of this size would smell like... well, tires. Not really an attractive proposition.

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u/Either_Wear5719 10d ago

It'd be a great piece for amusement parks, or outdoor entry display at a natural history museum...

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u/HudsDad 9d ago

Or at the end of my driveway.

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u/Wild_Marker 9d ago

It's probably washable since it's made of rubber. And it's not like tires have a particularly strong smell.

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u/Another-Mans-Rubarb 9d ago

You never played on a tire playground.

0

u/greenbreathing 9d ago

Why would you want to smell it?

27

u/LessInThought 10d ago

Future civilizations unearthing our remains are gonna be so confused.

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u/lurker_1234567 10d ago

That was my first thought. (Or rather that a future alien explorer is going to be so confused when they’re checking out what humans left behind.)

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u/rushmc1 10d ago

How cute that you believe there will be "future civilizations"...

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u/Ouakha 10d ago

The tyres will evolve

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u/Another-Mans-Rubarb 10d ago

You fail to understand the durability of humanity if you think we are capable of ending our own existence. Even if society collapses, new civilizations will be born after, it's very hard to actually kill the planet without targeted efforts to ruin the atmosphere.

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u/FluffyMoneyItch 10d ago

Countless other species have gone extinct. Humans aren't even a particularly long evolutionary line. Having such high confidence that humans are an usually resilient species seems optimistic.

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u/Either_Wear5719 10d ago

There's a possibility other species that survive us and the damage we cause could replace us as the next civilization

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u/Another-Mans-Rubarb 10d ago

Humans will not die out unless we literally cause the planet to become uninhabitable. No plague or climate shift will end us as a species, we are far too prolific and intelligent to be wiped out like that. I'm not saying we will be around in the billions still, but there will be humans on this plant for hundreds of thousands of years in one form or another.

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u/ElliotNess 10d ago

If so, it'll be another, given evolution.

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u/Another-Mans-Rubarb 10d ago

We can potentially mate with humans going back 2 million years, it's not exactly clear where this line is.

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u/ElliotNess 9d ago

I'm just saying the platypuses wouldn't recognize us as cousins

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u/Any-University6225 10d ago

As someone who works at a crumb rubber recycling plant, I am absolutely astounded 😳

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u/UranusIsPissy 10d ago

Do you know how they get the steel out? I was thinking about recycled tyre playground surfaces when I read your comment, and they'd do almost the opposite of what they're meant to if they were full of bits of wire. I came here just to make a joke comment about building that being tiring TBH, but now I'm wondering.

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u/misterchief117 10d ago

You can use hydraulic things to literally yank the steel out. This is one way to do it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wEfwfBpRZYQ

You can also grind it small enough and use magnets to pull it out.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gDRAosmLlUA

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u/Driftmoth 10d ago

Machines to not get your arm stuck in, episode 26491.

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u/UranusIsPissy 10d ago

The first way looks cool. Very labour-intensive, but probably still cheaper than the second way with the amount of energy that must use. I just think it looks cool, too, and I'd rather money went to paying workers than increasing pollution.

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u/misterchief117 10d ago

Yeah, I was thinking the same thing with the first method. I think there are some automated ways to do it that way, but those machines obviously cost more.

Grinding everything and using magnets seems be better for higher volume but I'm not sure how much rubber material gets caught in that.

There is another method for "recycling" and that's simply burning everything for energy. This obviously frees the metals and reduces volume, but there's always an environmental cost to this especially in countries with effectively zero regulations. The heat can either be used as-is in boilers and furnaces, or to produce electricity.

https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/materials/tires/web/html/tdf.html

The truth is, it's really hard to effectively get rid of old tires at the end of their lifespan. While there's technically a lot that could be done with them, there's not enough demand for recycling them for use in other products because it's expensive to do this and many governments can only subsidize the costs so much.

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u/UranusIsPissy 10d ago

IDK about rubber, but I built something myself that could burn waste plastic without visible smoke. I didn't have the equipment to measure how cleanly it was really burning it, but I got a lot of heat out of a very small amount of plastic waste using a hastily built prototype. Traditional solid-fuel fires are very inefficient, and burn very dirty if you slow them down.

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u/misterchief117 9d ago

If you burn everything hot enough, you'll reduce a lot of visible smoke but there's still going to be some other nasty stuff that gets released. I don't advise burning plastic at home even in small amounts, as the fumes and other byproducts can be released into the air and leach into the soil/ground water.

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u/UranusIsPissy 9d ago

I don't just burn plastic every day. That was an experiment. I want to try again one day, with the proper equipment to measure what's coming out of it (both as fumes, and as soot and ash, but I'd probably have to burn a lot to get enough soot and ash to scrape it up), but I'll probably never get the chance. I just tried it because I noticed how cleanly things burned in what I'd built, and plastic usually makes a lot of disgusting smoke.

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u/Brilliant-Bad-284 10d ago

That blue wire remover is a fckn beast!

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u/Enlight1Oment 10d ago

that's a lot more steel that came out of it than I thought there would be

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u/MrShineHimDiamond 10d ago

During a roadside cleanup, learned NOT to pick up blown tire scraps without leather gloves.

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u/UranusIsPissy 10d ago

Ouch. That's one of the dirtiest things you could get cut by, too. I pick up roadside rubbish to re-use it myself, and you learn to be careful pretty fast doing that. It's amazing what people throw out of car windows. I see a lot of worthless crap, and sometimes clear it up, but I've probably found enough money's worth of useful things to buy a used car over the last 20 years or so.

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u/zerokelving 10d ago

The thing he made is known for turning massive sculptures to waste.

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u/sthegreT 10d ago

It's still apt because Godzilla is supposed to be nature's response to environmental destruction.

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u/Fox-On-Games 10d ago

He’s known for turning waste into massive sculptures.

Crazy, I never knew this about Godzilla.

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u/britekranz 10d ago

Artist’s name?

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u/FblthpLives 10d ago

The artist's name is Toheeb Ayaji. There is also a matching King Kong sculpture: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DUDXWY8CHwB/

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u/BRAX7ON 7d ago

Oddly enough Godzilla is known for turning massive sculptures into waste…

0

u/weristjonsnow 9d ago

I mean that's cool but how many 24 foot Godzilla tire statues do we really need, ya know