Stopping The End Of The World, Canadian Style

With that Independence Day sequel turning up in theatres soon, I got to thinking of how, in all these end of the world disaster films, with perhaps the exception of The Day After Tomorrow, there's never really a mention of what might be going on in Canada. This is my response, set a couple of centuries and a half down the line.

Alien Invaders Wreck Havoc On Planet Before Being Throttled By Red Serged Hellion

February 5^th, 2267 (CP). The world is struggling to put itself back together after an invasion of alien beings across the globe destroyed cities and landmarks, laid waste to entire nations, and wiped out millions of lives. In what has been designated the biggest cataclysm to ever come across the planet since the Trump Temper Tantrum of November 9^th, 2016, scores of cities were destroyed by the space faring Tawrae race of reptilian extra terrestrials, bent on destruction just for the sake of destruction.

“My great-great-great-great grandfather Giorgio told you people it was aliens,” Dimitri Tsoukalos told reporters after the great cataclysm had been turned back. Referring to an early twenty first century ancestor who appeared on programs on ancient aliens and who had strange hair, the young Tsoukalos was busy trying to figure out where his Athens area home had gone to after the Tawrae had wrecked havoc in Greece.

The British Royal Family, who took refuge in Scotland at Balmoral while London was being demolished, are reportedly all accounted for. Queen Kylie III has issued a statement, declaring that “the people of Great Britain will carry on, will always rise up, and will never miss afternoon tea again. Now where are my corgis? I didn’t leave them at the Palace, did I?”

The French military, which in the last century had risen up to new heights of might (a curious thing, given their historical track record until ninety years ago of regular surrenders and half hearted fights in warfare), were decimated during the alien invasion. The Tawrae made a special point of demolishing Paris and the city of New Marseilles, leaving the Eiffel Tower upside down and piercing through the Louvre. “We have lost so much of our precious art,” Louvre director Gustav LeFou told reporters, weeping. “Even the Mona Lisa, our precious lady, she is shredded beyond repair. I know, millions of lives lost should matter more, but I can’t muster myself to feel that way right now. I just feel like getting myself good and drunk, but even my favourite restaurant got wiped out of existence.”

In Russia, Tsar Vladimir the 19^th, clone of the first Tsar of the modern era dynasty, Vladimir Putin, was killed after the Tawrae attacked Moscow, destroying the full reserve of Putin clones. “Our beloved tyrant is gone,” Russian prime minister Tatiana Orlov told reporters, weeping before the wreckage of what had once the Kremlin. “All we have known for two and a half centuries has been the benevolent iron fist of the Putins. How can we carry on without him? Well, I don’t know about you, but I think vodka is in order right about now. Unfortunately we lost all the vodka in stock too, and it may take weeks to replenish the supplies."

The attacks ranged across the world, decimating large countries and small. China saw the destruction of the Forbidden City and the Great Wall (not to mention millions of lives). Cape Town in South Africa was smashed and shattered. Australia saw massive carnage in its major cities, and officials there fear there might be serious consequences. With gangs of marauding anarchic bikers already taking to the roads, the nation is developing what some are calling Mad Max syndrome. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an aide to the Prime Minister admitted, “We can’t even blame this one on the dingos.”

In America, still holding onto military power centuries after its founding, former president Josiah Bush shook his head while at the family ranch in Texas. “You know, I knew them there alien critters musta been comin’, and if I’d been re-elected, we wouldn’t have seen San Francisco and Los Diego slide into the sea. We wouldn’t have seen all that destruction wipe out New York City 2.0, just like they always showed in the old time movies. I mean, did you see how the Statue of Liberty ended up falling to earth in Ohio? We wouldn’t have seen New Miami flattened like a pancake. The Bushes always knew how to get things done, yes sir. Mission Accomplished, like old Dubya used to say. But no, you people all had to vote for that Federalist Isolationist Party brat. Don’t y’all go on sayin’ I didn’t tell you so.”

The President herself, Kiara Kardashian, was evacuated from Washington shortly before its destruction with her cabinet, having to leave behind the cryogenically preserved remains of her ancestor Khloe, and was deeply unhappy. “What happens when we finally find a cure for the terminal narcissism disease?” she was heard to ask, seemingly ignoring the reality that millions of her citizens were dead, the country was shattered, its largest cities blasted into oblivion, and its survivors were looking for answers. “Granny Khloe’s going to be pissed, people, pissed!”

Queen Sarah VII, the self titled Empress of the 500 acre Duchy Of Wasilla, a walled off independent enclave in the heart of the state of Alaska, issued a statement. “Those aliens, by golly, they didn’t even try comin’ out this way, you betcha. They know we got ourselves lots of guns and phasers and gosh golly thermal grenades, and we ain’t afraid to use ‘em, you betcha. Like the first Queen Sarah said, I can see Russia from my house!”

And yet humanity has survived. The alien invasion has been halted and defeated. Not by a rag tag army of misfits, as might have been the case in old disaster films of the 20^th and 21^st centuries. But by one person. As it turns out, the one person the world needed to get the job done.

After laying waste to much of the world, the Tawrae turned their attention north of the American border, to Canada. Scientists and military officers had been perplexed as to why the country had been spared up to that point. Dr. Millicent Stanhope, a physicist with North America Space Command, told reporters, “The working theory we had was that the enemy perceived the country as far too cold for their liking. I mean, they left Alaska alone too, so our military bases up there were unaffected. A bit of a shame they didn’t at least blast that irritating Duchy Of Wasilla. Wait, did I say that out loud?”

Some of the fleet attacked Toronto, interrupting a rally by fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who had been desperately deluding themselves into the hope that this year would be the year their team won the Stanley Cup, despite not having had won it for three hundred years now. Most of the alien fleet landed in southern Alberta- a curious break with their procedures up to that point- their ships had laid waste to regions from altitude.

Thousands of heavily armed reptilian shock troopers poured out and took up position. So did their Grand Emperor, Tavx Mrothmar, eight feet of pure ugly, drool, and crankiness. Waiting there was a lone figure in red serge. It was a Mountie, and she looked annoyed.  It was the legendary Inspector Wynonna Ulrich, one in a long line of cranky Mounties, going back to the beginnings of the police force in the 19^th century with Zane Ulrich and including the esteemed but cranky Lars Ulrich. All of them cops, all of them thoroughly dangerous, all of them seriously grouchy.

“I’m Wynonna Ulrich. Lay down your arms and surrender,” Ulrich told the aliens, witnessed at a distance by onlookers, too scared out of their minds to run from the sight of alien ships, and too baffled by the one woman standing up to them.

The Tawrae laughed and laughed. Ulrich shrugged. “Last chance, you ugly mother****ers.”

Grand Emperor Mrothmar stepped forward, staring at her. “Wynonna Ulrich? Don’t you play keyboards for that Poptallica band?”

Ulrich sneered. “I am not that Wynonna Ulrich.”

What followed, according to witnesses, was a brawl her distant ancestor Lars would have been proud of. The Inspector smashed through the lines of Tawrae shock troopers, carving a path of destruction and broken bones, kicking alien butt and leaving them crying. In the end, with the fleet ships blown to oblivion from within, and the broken bodies and agonized moans of Tawrae troopers all around her, she had Mrothmar by the throat, most of the bones of his body broken. “I don’t suppose it’s too late to ask for your holo-autograph, is it?” Mrothmar managed to ask.

Ulrich finished him with one last punch, dropping the deceased emperor’s remains before her. Canadian police and military have taken the surviving aliens, heavily wounded and perhaps a mere twentieth of the force that landed, into custody pending decisions on what to do about them. The remainder of the fleet fled at top speed, leaving behind pleas of clemency in holo-messages, apologizing for “that whole destroying most of your planet thing, and by the way, please don’t send that angry woman after us, we’re really, really, really sorry.”

As for Ulrich herself? She returned to her home, for a change in uniforms and a shower, what with all the orange blood she ended up getting on her during the epic brawl. Then she came back to her detachment, where the press was waiting.  She wasn’t in much of a mood to talk to reporters, particularly after one entertainment reporter spoke up. “Skip Jones, New Hollywood Tonight. Wynonna, what will the rest of Poptallica think of you moonlighting as an alien killer?”

Ulrich’s eyes narrowed. “You have five seconds to run.”

Jones looked confused. “Run? Run where? For what?”

Ulrich sighed. “To hell with the five seconds.” She closed the distance, and only in that last moment did Jones seem to understand he was in danger.  He turned and started running, the Inspector close on his heels. At last word, Jones had fallen- or been thrown- into Tombstone Canyon. He won’t be missed. 

Jebediah Sure Would Taste Better With Some Good Honey Mustard

Two orders of business today, before I get started. First, I direct you to Sacred Ground, where I did a blog with Lyn about Quebec City. Check it out, and comment, let us know what you think. That's assuming the current issues with Blogger comments sorts itself out fast.  

Second, in recent days, this blog passed one hundred thousand views. This still astonishes me. You see, for the longest time when I was growing up, I was so used to being the odd one out. Knowing that for some reason this blog seems to get a lot of traffic both pleases me and confuses me to no end.

Now, to the mayhem at hand, and it occurs to me that this blog might have done well to be written for Sacred Ground, given the subject matter. A word of warning: if your ancestors took part in certain taboo activities implied by the blog title, either as a diner or as a meal, you might want to avoid this one...

Donner Lake, California

I have a long fascination with the history of the American West. Contrary to the simplicity of most television and film Westerns, the real story of the West is an infinitely complex web of stories where things are not black and white, where you find moments that can make you proud, alongside other moments that horrify you or make you feel great shame. The history of the West is one of people, and of place. It’s a story that crosses geo-political boundaries; the story of the Canadian West has some unusual parallels and differences to the American experience.

In 1846, the U.S.- Mexican War began, drawing American forces down into the Southwest and directly into Mexican territory. When it was done two years later, Mexico had lost much of its territory, which would one day become states in the Union of their own right, and an army of exceptional young officers had tasted combat and learned lessons that would come back on their own home ground thirteen years later as they turned to war against each other. Mexico would never really recover from the war.

Early on in the war, California itself was taken by American forces, and by the end of the first year was secured. A wave of pioneers began moving west towards California, following trails already being used by Americans to travel to a place that was not yet their own even before the war. In May of 1846, one such wagon train of pioneers, consisting of over eighty people, started out from Missouri for the proverbial promised land. That group came to be known as the Donner Party.

Donner Pass, California

The journey across the continent in those days was one that would routinely take months. One wrong decision, or a delay, could be deadly. Wagon trains routinely fell apart at the time because of disagreements. There was always the potential threat of hostile natives. More to the point, the land itself and the bad judgment of the people in a wagon train could be unforgiving. Such was the case with the Donner Party, and it led to them occupying a rather... infamous place in American history.

The wagon train took a route through Utah and Nevada, thought to be a faster route. They intended to be in the warmth of California by September. Instead, the route had never been tested; the man who actually promoted it had never done the route with wagons. It passed through the unforgiving Wasatch Mountains and Great Salt Lake Desert. The route slowed the train considerably, and required far more work than other routes would have. Animals were weakened by the strain. An elderly man disappeared, and was never seen again. Tensions built among the members of the train, which finally reached the Sierra Nevada by October, quickly becoming snowbound in the high Sierra in the area around Truckee Lake.

The tensions in the group had caused serious rifts; James Reed, a member of the group, had been driven out after a fight ended in the death of another man and forced to ride ahead alone into California. In retrospect, he was unbelievably lucky. Tempers had been badly frayed during the journey, and the group had splintered into small groups, each distrustful of the other. The nominal leader of the group, George Donner, had enough difficulties trying to keep things together.

The Sierra Nevada is a hard place, even today. To get caught out in it during the winter, unprepared and without enough supply, can be a death sentence. The range includes many peaks over twelve thousand feet, and is an entirely unforgiving place. The Donner Party managed to take shelter in rudimentary cabins around the area, built by people who had passed through the Truckee Lake area some years before. Attempts to go further west- or to come east from the handful of party members who safely made it into California early- met with failure as the snows set in. The Party set into their encampments for the winter, just hoping to survive.

Encampments, Truckee Lake 1846-1847

Food stores quickly began to run low. More animals died of starvation and cold. Teams sent to try to find help were swallowed up by the mountains, dying of exposure and cold. Of one such team, it is known that cannibalism of the dead took place. Among the main camps, people began to die of starvation. Madness set in among some of the families. Cannibalism set in among some of the survivors, feeding off the dead. Exactly how much is unknown; during the winter, three relief parties managed to breach the area and find survivors, as well as mutilated remains. Survivors tended to refrain from admitting that they ate of the dead, primarily out of shame. Regardless, what happened that winter would serve as a reminder of the unforgiving power of nature, and of how badly society itself can splinter under pressure.

Of the eighty seven people who ended up encamping in the area over the winter, forty eight survived. Only two families remained intact.  For years afterwards, remains and bones were being discovered by passing parties, and buried. Personal items were destroyed. The ordeal left profound wounds among the survivors, deep animosities that would last a lifetime. The stories were embellished, to the point where it’s hard to tell where the truth lies and where the exaggeration or the cover-up begins.

Today the areas where the tragedy took place are preserved as a state park. Truckee Lake has been renamed Donner Lake. The Donner Memorial sees thousands of visitors in a year. The last member of the party died in 1935. And the Sierra Nevada remains an unforgiving place. The story of the Donner Party is relatively minor in the greater story of the West, but the tragic aspect of it still draws us back to it. It isn’t a story of heroism or villainy. It’s one of the brutal, harsh reality of the West, a hard lesson that the land can turn on you, that one bad decision can destroy you. Too many failed to heed that lesson in the years that followed, and even today, the lesson still applies.

Donner Memorial

Oh, and Jebediah probably didn’t taste all that good, even if they’d had honey mustard. Just saying.

Cataclysm

Palin Wins Landslide Victory And White House; Vows New Era In White House

Washington, D.C. (AP) ~ Republican Presidential candidate Sarah Palin shocked the country and the world by winning the 2012 Presidential election, soundly defeating President Obama in the popular vote and the electoral college yesterday. In an election campaign that has polarized the United States, the one time outsider took the mantle of the Presidency despite the predictions of pundits and pollsters, who had her well back of the popular Democrat. Supporters of the President-elect across the nation came out in droves, voting and gathering in rallies. Palin herself was with her husband and children in Wasilla, Alaska, watching the returns through the evening. She addressed a gathering of supporters in her home town after media outlets began to call the election in her favour.

"Gosh, golly, I feel good," the President-elect started. "We went out there and we got the vote out and we rigged the election and we came out on top, you betcha! Now I'm the President! Wooo! You know, all those people who are in disbelief right now, God love 'em, well, they'll just have to get used to hearing those three magic words: President Sarah Palin. And in my first order of business, I'm going to have Levi Johnston arrested and thrown into Guantanamo for fifty years. Knock my daughter up, will he? Not when the Mama Grizzly is running things! Then I'm going to drop some nukes on Moscow and China and Paris and Iran and Syria, show 'em who's boss, God bless 'em. Then I'm going to have Congress disbanded. Then I'm going to have myself named Benevolent Supreme Empress of the United Sta... wait, my staff is saying something to me, you betcha... what do you mean, I can't tell them that yet?"

Scared you, didn't I?

Don't worry, it didn't happen.

Yet.


And with luck, it never will.

Does that prospect rate as a cataclysm? Of course it does. Which was a nice way to dovetail into the subject for today: disasters.

Awhile back I watched a documentary on Yosemite. It featured climbers on El Capitan, making their way up the rock face of the granite monolith. El Cap is a 3000 foot tall monolith of granite, its familiar sheer rock face rising up above the valley floor in Yosemite National Park. It's a dream climb for mountaineers... and a nightmare for anyone with a fear of heights.

El Capitan

Halfway up is a slab of granite called the Texas Flake. It's a block that's slowly detaching from the main face due to the forces of erosion. Climbers use it as one of the routes up the face, hoping that this isn't the day that the block gives way. If it does, well... they're screwed.

There was footage in the documentary of a similar slab of rock elsewhere in the Yosemite valley. In 1996, 75000 tons of granite fell over 2000 feet from Glacier Point. It reached a terminal speed of 250 miles an hour before crashing into the valley below. One person was killed, more were injured, damage was done to some buildings below the crash zone. Dust was kicked up by the compression of air beneath the falling rock. The air blast from the crash toppled over a thousand trees.

Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir at Glacier Point

Glacier Point, Yosemite

Someday the Texas Flake will do the same thing. And like I said, if anyone happens to be climbing that day, they're screwed.

at the top of the Texas Flake

The documentary reminded me of a story I'd first read years ago, and yet another documentary on the subject itself. In 1958, an earthquake triggered a rockslide into Lituya Bay, Alaska. The wave generated by the crashing of the rockslide into the bay scoured the bay up to a height of 1720 feet. That's far more then what the typical (and catastrophic) tsunami generated by an undersea quake is capable of alone.

Lituya Bay

Geologists have been looking at this issue since the Lituya incident, researching where other problem spots in the world might be that could generate what they call megatsunamis. Hawaii is one spot, where evidence on the ocean floor shows massive pieces of the island that have broken off in ancient times. The Canary Islands are another; a section of one of the islands will one day slide into the sea, triggering a wave that will cross the ocean and devastate the American coast from Florida to Massachusetts. And there are places where the continental shelf itself is unstable, and the backwash of an undersea landslide would wash back on the land behind it. The West Coast of North America is prime for this sort of thing.

Why bring this up?

In future writings, I've got an idea for an opening to a novel, which I'd have to do some serious consultation with geologists about, to get it right. In short? The complete annihilation of Los Angeles. Granted, it helps that I don't like Los Angeles, and always wanted to destroy it in a book, so...

Come on, would you really miss it?

You wouldn't miss this nitwit, would you?

And the same goes for these two wastes of oxygen....

Aside from anyone living in Los Angeles itself, of course, who might object to being the subject of fictional massive casualties as the opening of a book, who would really miss it?

I think the angle I'd take with that book would be two fold: how does a nation deal with the destruction of an entire city and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people? And what kind of adversary would take advantage of that situation?

Disaster itself draws us in. When we've seen footage of the 2004 tsunami or Hurricane Katrina, we've been horrified. Earthquake, flood, or tornado damage shock us. A volcanic eruption in one part of the world can have an effect thousands of miles away. It's the sort of thing we can't look away from.

And whereever there's a disaster, Anderson Cooper will be there, seemingly before the rescuers themselves, looking grim. It's in his contract, don't you know?