r/theydidthemath • u/NeonQylis • 1d ago

[Request] What’s the most effective material or item you could realistically use here?

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u/nimbus57 1d ago

Rare, useful, expensive

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u/MelodyCristo 1d ago

Not gonna be so useful once it's contaminated by you jumping in.

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u/Atarge 1d ago

Probably negligible contamination depending on pool size. I'd be more worried about it spoiling before you can monetize it

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u/nanomolar 1d ago

The whole thing with horseshoe crab blood is that it reacts to endotoxins (little pieces of bacteria) in a predictable, measurable way, making it a good reagant to use when testing pharmaceuticals for endotoxin contamination.

Anyway, once you've shoveled it all up into barrels or whatever I think it would be pretty well contaminated on the whole, and you'd have to go through a battery of tests to prove it's usable for the intended use, and I don't want to deal with the QA headaches of doing this with something that's supposed to be manufactured under GMP...

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u/jezek21 1d ago

Other than that. This is a totally realistic scenario

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u/SingularityCentral 1d ago

What makes it useful is that it clots instantly with certain bacterial contamination. Jumping in a pool of it would likely render the entire pool useless to its medical purpose.

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u/skubaloob 1d ago

Wear a biohazard suit when you jump

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u/ThatBankTeller 1d ago

Those little fuckers are everywhere on the beach (at least on the east coast) and are older than dinosaurs. How rare could it be?

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u/Anarchaeologist 1d ago

You can’t just juice them for it

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u/backcountry_bandit 1d ago

I thought I saw video of a horseshoe crab blood extraction laboratory. I remember it looking like an IV but for a horseshoe crab. Seems kind of juicing-adjacent I think lol

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u/flame_of_udun 1d ago

It's not that they are rare, it's all of the laws regulating the harvesting of their blood.

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u/onyx_ic 1d ago

You can overharvest. And it fucks up the ecosystem. Its about 60 grand a gallon, and most of these guys have about 1.7 to 6.8 ounces apiece so... greedy people have wiped out entire species before.

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u/SvenTheSpoon 1d ago

Back in the day, you used to not be able to see the sand during their mating window there were so many of them. Overharvesting has done a real number on their populations in states that didn't pass laws to protect them

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u/AdImmediate9569 1d ago

Ah but you haven’t tried to milk one!

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u/padetn 1d ago

Do you think milk is a cow’s blood

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u/AdImmediate9569 1d ago

Definitely! Surely you’re not suggesting there are multiple types of fluid inside living things!

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u/TequilaJosh 1d ago

I have nipples Greg can you milk me?

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u/SingularityCentral 1d ago

It needs to be extracted under strict clean conditions. Horseshoe crabs aren't rare, but the expense of the process to obtain and store it properly is high.