orecast
orecast now comes in short form as well. Our TikTok channel runs at @orecast1, and it shows what sits inside the data behind the map.
Visit the orecast channel on TikTok
A map and a thirty second clip answer different questions. On the map you look something up: your town, your radius, what is documented there. On TikTok you run into something you did not know you wanted to know. A mammoth skeleton that turned up in a lignite pit. A river people have panned for gold since the Middle Ages. A mofette where carbon dioxide pools on the ground until small animals suffocate in it.
The material comes from the same database that feeds the app: 368,817 documented mineral occurrences, 161,821 fossil sites from the Paleobiology Database and GBIF, and 147,656 caves, spoil heaps and adits from OpenStreetMap. On top of that sit smaller layers we built by hand, because no feed delivers them: 49 mammoth sites, 36 dinosaur sites across twelve countries, 37 rivers with a documented gold panning history, 15 amber areas and 77 springs and mofettes. Every one of those was checked individually.
Thirty seconds is not much time, and that is where most videos about buried riches go wrong. They trim until a documented occurrence turns into a promise. We keep to the same line as the app. We show what is documented and say how solid the evidence is. Where the yield is poor, the video says so. Nobody gets rich panning for gold in Central Europe. A few flakes in the pan still make for a good afternoon.
One point belongs in every video and therefore here too. A documented site is not an invitation to dig. You need the landowner's permission to disturb the ground, nature reserves carry their own restrictions, and Ice Age vertebrate finds are protected almost everywhere. German law adds a wrinkle that surprises most visitors: under the Schatzregal, which applies in most federal states, archaeological finds pass into public ownership the moment they are discovered, no matter who owns the land. Old adits and shafts can kill you, including the ones that look harmless. And if you go looking for amber on the Baltic coast, know that white phosphorus looks almost exactly like it and ignites in open air.
Follow the channel if you want to see what comes next. And if a video makes you curious, the map will show you what is documented around you.