The Threadless Nut

In case you aren’t aware, there is a lunar eclipse this evening. Neat.

Coincidentally (?) there is also an errant satellite that will be shot down during the aforementioned eclipse. Also neat.

I see this going one of 2 ways, either completely uneventfully, or horribly, horribly, wrong.

The former option probably doesn’t require much exposition. Missile, Satellite, Boom. It’s the latter, and far more interesting option that is not quite obvious, so I’ll lay it out for you.

Some aspect of the eclipse will cause the missile to fail to impact the target. It may be that the alignment of the Earth, Sun and Moon causes a slight change in the gravitational field of the Earth that messes up the guidance system, or maybe just a rather important Navy officer gets distracted by the spectacle, not important which. This error causes the missile to continue traveling through space until it finally strikes our poor, defenseless Moon. The resulting explosion is enough to fracture the little planetoid into several chunks. As the eclipse subsides it reveals the shattered Moon to the horrified population of the earth.

Over the course of the next few months, the orbit of our own planet around the Sun is affected by this change. The Earth’s path becomes more elliptical bringing us both closer and farther away from the Sun at the extremes. The result is stifling summer temperatures and brutal winter conditions. Over time, the climate degrades further and further and we are periodically peppered by the smaller chunks of debris from the moon.

Eventually, the increased radiation from the close proximity to the Sun mutates those who spend too much time outside into bloodthirsty zombies (there are always zombies). The population dwindles as more of us become, or are consumed by, these zombies, and the environment becomes increasingly toxic.

Finally, despite the efforts of a plucky oil drilling crew, the largest pieces of the moon come crashing into the Earth, instantly wiping out huge chunks of the remaining populace. This event pushes our orbit even farther out of alignment resulting in complete, yet spectacular, destruction as we collide with Jupiter.

I’m sure everything will be fine, but would it really hurt to just push the missile launch off until tomorrow?

So there appears to be this drug, scopolamine, that basically turns one into a mindless, subservient zombie. Some unsavory types are using this to con folks out of their life savings and for other nefarious purposes. While it doesn’t seem to currently generate the kind of traditional zombies that we all worry about attacking us, it’s probably only a few molecules away from doing that. You may want to keep an eye on it.

This drug comes from the Borrachero tree that grows wild in Colombia, so it’s not exactly hard to get. Here’s an article that describes the situation. One especially amusing excerpt:

“We probably should put some sort of fence up,” jokes biologist Gustavo Morales at Bogota’s botanical gardens, eyeing children playing with borrachero seeds everywhere.

“If you ate a few of those, it would kill you.”

You should “probably put a fence up”? Ya think?!

“Ok, kids, go out and play, but remember to stay away from the zombie tree! Don’t want you filling up on brains and not being able to finish your dinner!”

According to this BBC article chimps in Senegal have been observed fashioning branches into spears and using them to hunt with. They go as far as sharpening the sticks with their teeth and removing the bark and side branches.

I know most of you read this and think “So what? They’re just a bunch of monkeys”. Well, you must understand that this is just the beginning. Don’t forget that many years ago, some enterprising caveman did the same thing, and look where we are now. Soon they’ll figure out the wheel, then fire, all of a sudden they know how to make steel. My biggest monkey concern used to be that an infinite number of them would get together and write Hamlet, now I have to worry about them building an Abrams Tank.

This especially concerns me as all my apocalyptic home defense plans are based on the very real threat of Zombies, and to a lesser extent, robots (see previous blog entry). Defending against super evolved commando monkeys is an entirely different thing. Most notable is the fact that we live in the woods. This, of course, means lots of trees which are perfect for slowing down large robots or confusing lumbering zombies. But these monkeys live in trees. They’ll be leaping about the treetops dropping grenades that they made this morning on the house, it’ll be a slaughter.

I’m going to have to make some changes.