ive been trying to get a picture of this van for years

i’ll kick anyone’s ass. i’ll kick your ass. i’ll kick your dog’s ass. i’ll kick my own ass

Show some respect, people.

THANK YOU

The story of Balto is interesting. He led a team of sled dogs across the Alaskan wilderness in the dead of winter with diphtheria antitoxins to stop an outbreak in Nenana Alaska. Diphtheria is a deadly infectious disease that could wipe out a third of a town’s population. It is mostly unknown to the public today because of vaccines. Balto’s body is preserved in the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

He’s a big hero of mine!

Let’s not forget Togo! Who, at 12 years old during the serum run, lead his team 200 miles through much more dangerous conditions during the first leg of the journey before Balto ran the last 55-mile stretch.

Togo and Balto didn’t bust their asses for dying children for you to turn around and not vaccinate your damn kids

The actual story is fascinating.

The town of Nome, situated in Western Alaska, was a relative hub for even smaller communities in the region, but in winter was utterly cut off from… nearly everywhere. The harbour iced over in winter, there were no roads connecting it anywhere else, the nearest railroad line was nearly 700 miles (1000+ kilometres) away in Nenana. Air travel was still new at the time and planes couldn’t handle the inclement winter weather.

In 1924, the community had a single doctor and a few nurses who served approximately 10 000 people, including large Eskimo populations in the area (the town itself had a population of roughly 1000 people - bear in mind how few children lived in this community when you see the casualty counts). He had realized his diphtheria vaccine stock was expired and had ordered more from mainland USA months earlier. When it failed to arrive on the final ship of the season, he was a little concerned, but diphtheria was fairly rare, and he figured he’d just restock in the spring.

Of all the rotten luck, January 1925 was when a diphtheria outbreak hit the region.

There was a scramble, in the mainland USA as well as Alaska, to find a way to get the vaccine to this town in the middle of winter. There were attempts to fly a vaccine supply over, but the planes were grounded by storms. This was part of the United States in the 1920s. There was no way to get there.

Except by sled dogs, running the vaccine from that train station in Nenana, 674 miles away. Over 1000 kilometres away, in the dead of winter in Alaska, by 20 mushers (mostly native Athabaskans) and 150 sled dogs running in relay, switching off at tiny villages and rest stations along the way. It was bitterly cold. As in, -85°F (-60°C) at the coldest. There were blizzards, hurricane force winds, and at some points visibility was so poor the men couldn’t see their dogs in front of them.

No man or beast should have been out in that. You freeze in seconds if you’re not moving. Multiple dogs died from being run so hard in such cold weather. Mushers grappled with hypothermia and frostbite. One needed hot water poured over his frozen hands because he was frozen to his sled. Another’s face was black with frostbite. Some strapped themselves up and lead their packs when their lead dogs collapsed.

This relay team traveled 674 miles in 5.5 days. Togo and his owner, Leonhard Seppala, did by far the longest and most dangerous run, travelling over 260 miles (about 420 kilometres) including the initial travel to his pickup spot. Gunnar Kaasen and his lead dog, Balto, did the final 53 miles (85 kilometres) into Nome, where they were greeted as heroes.

Prior to the vaccine arriving in Nome, 5-7 children officially died of diphtheria, with dozens of confirmed cases who may well have died without treatment - but it’s suspected the surrounding Indigenous communities were much harder hit, with numbers impossible to confirm.

When you think that this happened less than 100 years ago, how desperate this community was for a vaccine, how much these mushers risked and lost to get it to this town as fast as they possibly could…

I wonder what they’d think of people today.

(this is the Iditarod. this trek to deliver vaccines was so important, that we immortalized it the way we immortalized the marathon.)

They weren’t delivering diphtheria vaccine, but diphtheria antitoxin aka antiserum. Part of the route of the serum run forms part of the Iditarod route but it is as a whole not in memory of the serum run.

Also, “"E****o”“ is a slur, Inuit people are v clear about this.

Also, “"E****o”“ is

a slur, Inuit people are

v clear about this.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

the wiki article goes into great detail. The first human in the relay, ‘wild bill’ shannon, developed hypothermia. Three, maybe four of his dogs died. The guy whose hands froze to the bar was Edgar Kalland, and Charlie Evans was the dude who strapped himself up to the sled with the dogs. After two of them collapsed and later died. There were twenty different teams throughout the trip.

And then they did it again

There was the first relay, which delivered 300k units of medicine to try to control the spread while the other 1.1 million units were prepared

Anyway, Balto, Togo, and 18 other lead dogs didn’t bust their asses and four/five dogs didn’t die and people didn’t get hypothermia, frostbite, and get their hands frozen to the sled handlebars delivering medicine to control an outbreak that was predicted to have a near 100% mortality rate in the area, just so people nowadays could be antivax

And I guarantee you every single one of those mushers thought it was worth it. If ten children were saved, five, ONE, it was worth the pain and the risk and, yes, the death, because they were adults, and these were children.

We did it once.

Don’t make us do it a-fucking-gain.

late fall evenings in Seattle.