Last night, I watched the THE HISTORY CHANNEL. Those interested in speculative fiction or science fiction should check out the programming from the evening of Saturday, January 29th.
I highly recommend "The Prophets of Doom" and also the preceding program about The Earth, "Megaquake". Did you know that America once attempted to split in half, along the line where the Mississippi flows, and that those who live in New Madrid, St Louis, Mephis etc are on a massive fault line?
How deep could the Mississippi be? I'm thinking "An American Loch Ness".
Loch Ness is a techtonic lake. The Mississippi could be --in part-- a techtonic river.
Here's how my thoughts ran. "What's in Your Water?" one of the Prophets of Doom asked in so many words. He talked about the effect of coffee-drinking on fish. Fish drink coffee because coffee-lovers flush processed coffee down the toilet every day, and the sewage treatment facilities are not designed to remove coffee from our effluent. Nor are they set up to remove Viagra, for that matter.
So, coffee-spiked water is discharged into the rivers where the fish live and breathe. What might be in the rivers around Hollywood? What are the fish involuntarily snorting down there? Liquid crack? Boner pills? Oh dear!
Apparently, it is Hospice policy to pour all unused medicines down toilets when a Hospice patient dies at home. That's a sizeable cocktail of morphine, plavix, industrial strength senna pods, ritalin.... no wonder Canada geese make such a mess.
But, I'm getting away from Nature's crack. The American "Trouser Cleavage" aka New Madrid Fault which was formed about 750 million years ago. There wouldn't have been significant life around the Rodinia supercontinent in the NeoProterozoic Era. Nor would there have been dinosaurs ready and willing to swim upriver on February 7th 1812 when the Mississippi briefly reversed course (if it did indeed flow inland, and I believe that it only flowed backward for a relatively short stretch inside Kentucky, not all the way from the Gulf... which would have been far more exciting).
Fans of trilobites and archeocyanthids, please forgive my disrespect. I am sure those hard-shelled creatures could mutate appallingly under very wrong conditions. I'm not by any stretch of the imagination an expert of the limits imposed on growth and sex by an exoskeleton.
Personally, if I can't have a plesiosaur, I'd rather have a monster croc or mutated dolphin running amok up and down the Mississippi, or even a mudskipper, than an ancient Horseshoe Crab on steroids.
What would you put in the water?
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I completely agree with you on the history channel. I find so much stuff there that is useful. I did watch POD as well and found it intriguing.
ReplyDeleteI love watching the History Channel.
ReplyDeleteI like it for the 'history' lessons and other things like the history behind the movies.
I enjoy the History Channel, but you've got my head full of over-sexed river dwellers on an enormous caffeine high (or worse). OMG, the images! The images!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your comments Kaye, Beth, Linda.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think of trilobites, I'm reminded of the remake of Clash Of The Titans (with Sean Bean as Zeus). I loved the desert Djinns and their giant scorpions.