The Three Horrors

Back in the early 1990's I wrote a (rather long) short story about a horror genre author who was trying to break out of that cast.

He was sitting alone in a forest cabin on a stormy fall evening and started writing a story about his favorite mystic, Jesus. The story was a exposé on the return of Jesus to this material plane of existence, something forecast in most Christian circles. The author was not a fan of religion in general or Christianity in particular, however the historic and future visit of Jesus to Earth was of great interest.



As he was writing the story he heard a knock on the door and rose to find Jesus actually standing on his welcome mat, sarong, sandals, halo, and all. Almost as soon as he was invited in Jesus began to negotiate with the author. Jesus was not happy with the way the story was unfolding and wanted the author to drop the whole plan.

Jesus said that it was very important that no one knew when he would return and the story was far too revealing. It appears as if the author had some "inside" information about the event, had a sense of intuition, or had done a great deal of research on the topic.

The author argued that this story was his "ticket" out of the genre, something he had been working on unsuccessfully for quite a few years.

Basically ignoring his interest in breaking out of the mold, Jesus offered to reveal the three horrors that humans are facing on the Earth at the present time. After careful consideration the author acquiesced (as that would mean three best seller books) and agreed to the proposal.

Jesus then revealed the three horrors to the author.

I never finished this story as I was never happy with the three horrors that I came up with. War, failing economies, disease, all had been written about in the horror genre. I could come up with nothing necessarily unique and compelling.

One day last year I realized exactly what the three horrors actually were:

1. Offshore oil well caps that will only last 100 years.



The materials used and the process employed to cap a non-productive offshore well may last 100 years or so. If accurate location data, leak sensors, and monetary reserves are not set aside to re-cap these wells, who will do that? How many barrels of oil will spill into the ocean as each cap fails?

If the money is not set aside, who will pay for this work? The horror is evident if there is no one qualified to do the work, if there is no money to pay for it, or if the wells leak for years before anyone notices or discovers the source.

2. Nuclear waste dumps that will need to be monitored for thousands of years.



"The lambs were born without eyes or mouths. Some had legs that had grotesquely grown together; others had no legs at all. Many were stillborn. Thirty-one were lost in a single night.

On a pasture nearby, a cow was found dead, stiff and with its hooves bizarrely stretched up into the whispering wind. Down by the river, men of the Yakama tribe pulled three-eyed salmon from the Columbia. Trout were covered in cancerous ulcers.

And then the babies started getting sick."

This quote from: Spiegel International

This is an article that defines the horror quite well. Our government has set a new date for the Hanford "clean-up", that year is 2054, over a hundred years after the plant was established. The question of how long it will take for the radioactive contamination to reach the Columbia River is moot as radioactive water has been pumped back into the Columbia for many, many years.

3. "Superbiotics", bacteria and viruses that are resistant to medical intervention.



Take a look at this video: ITN News

The general issue is that our increased use of antibiotics has created bacteria that are very resistant to drugs that we have available. Medical research is now spending millions of dollars to develop anti-viral drugs. Viruses are much, much smaller and elemental than bacteria:

Bacteria (singular: bacterium) are HUGE unicellular microorganisms. They are typically a few micrometers long and have many shapes including curved rods, spheres, rods, and spirals.

Viruses (from the Latin noun virus, meaning toxin or poison) is a sub-microscopic particle (ranging in size from 20–300 nm) that can infect the cells of a biological organism.

There are approximately 25,000 micrometers to an inch; 25,000,000 nanometers to an inch.

To be continued...