[ExI] monsters from the deep

[spike at rainier66.com]

A staple of 1950s pulp SciFi: America and Russia doing undersea nuclear testing causes a change in DNA, horrendous monster emerges from sea, devours Tokyo, etc.  (It’s always Tokyo.  Never Santa Cruz or some weirdsville place we can live without and never miss, always Tokyo, sheesh, those guys never catch a break.)

 

OK then.  Turns out they detonated nukes over the Pacific, formed carbon 14, and it took a while for the 14C to settle on the surface, be incorporated into the surface flora and plankton, to be devoured by beasts on up the food chain, which drop C14-rich turds, and eventually perish and sink.  Bottom feeders devour all that tasty carbon that comes raining down, so their 14C level goes way up and their age determined by C14 dating goes negative (cool!)

 

This article talks about how they studied the beasts down in the deepest ocean trenches:

 

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-05/agu-rcf050819.php

 

This comment slew me.

 

>…the researchers found the amphipods living in these trenches grow larger and live longer than their counterparts in shallower waters. Amphipods that live in shallow water typically live for less than two years and grow to an average length of 20 millimeters (0.8 inches). But the researchers found amphipods in the deep trenches that were more than 10 years old and had grown to 91 millimeters (3.6 inches) long…

 

{8^D  

 

Oh no!  There really are creatures from the great depths!  

 

Kewalllll…

 

OK so here’s what we do: set up those greenhouses we discussed a couple months ago, grow carbon-14 enriched plants, convince the public that if they devour our 14C-rich foods, they will live five times longer, point out to the ladies that 14C-rich foods not only makes one’s corpse C14 date younger, it makes them look younger now (that old trick never fails), convince the guys that these things down there grew from 20 millimeters to 91 millimeters, and since you are starting out with 91 millimeters, just think what it might do for your thing down there (that old trick always works too) then we make a cubic buttload (or rather I do (then I will say nice things about you (from my 250 million dollar gold-filled yacht.)))

 

spike  

 

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