Folks....WTF is going on???

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 2:05 am

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/01 ... ashore.php

This is getting stranger and stranger. And more scary.

My first thought is some sort of virus specific to these species, but then I think birds, fish, and crabs don't really share that much in common genetically or immunologically.

Then, they say the birds died from some sort of physical trauma? Just don't get that.

So what then?

The next thing that pops into my mind is somebody is testing biological weapons of some sort.

saysadie · Post by **saysadie** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 3:45 am

edited, because I skimmed like the first few lines and didn't scroll down. Sleepy.

bumblemusprime · Post by **bumblemusprime** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 4:21 am

That is really, really ******* weird.

Sometimes I wonder why I try at this science-fiction writer thing, because the world is going the way of a lot of sci-fi. Mass, unexplainable animal deaths? This is a bit like what happened with the bees, isn't it?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 12:50 pm

Bioweapons, I think not.

Look at the tally: Birds, thousands; fish, millions; crabs, thousands; humans, none.

Pretty crappy bioweapon, that.

No, more likely they're all natural causes.

Unusually cold weather for the crabs, wrong salinity for the fish, and some possibly-rare atmospheric condition for the birds.

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 2:46 pm

Or perhaps some sort of change with the magnetic fields. Many animals rely on the magnetic fields of the Earth, somehow their physiology is in tune with it.

Pretty crappy bioweapon, that.

I was thinking more along the lines of bioweapon testing, like nanotechnological attack of specific genes and such. Which is very scary if such a thing were to come into existence.

Post by **Kaylee** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 2:59 pm

Maybe they read some conspiracy theories on the net and they died of boredom?

My guess would be coincidence. Coincidence is unlikely but as Dr. Hawking observed "Our existence is proof that very unlikely things happen all the time."

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 3:19 pm

Yaya wrote:Or perhaps some sort of change with the magnetic fields. Many animals rely on the magnetic fields of the Earth, somehow their physiology is in tune with it.

Someone's watched The Core.

Well, the magnetic north pole is moving, nothing unusual there, though. It's not like there's been a polar inversion, or a large coronal mass ejection (both of which we appear to be overdue for), which would wreak havoc with our technology to a much greater extent than it would wildlife.

Sunyavadin · Post by **Sunyavadin** » Fri Jan 07, 2011 5:33 pm

My guess is it happens a couple of times a week somewhere in the world.

A newspaper noticed it happening in two fairly close-by places and reported on it.

Since it had now made the news that there was a PATTERN, other media outlets began to follow suit when they found stories of it in their area.

The story got bigger and bigger from there.

It's like if a newspaper ran a story with the sensational headline "Pensioner seen catching a bus!"
Another couple of papers, having never considered it newsworthy, decide ot run the same story.
Suddenly the papers are awash with headlines of "Thousands of pensioners mysteriously catching buses!"

So, um, yeah.....

Legion · Post by **Legion** » Sat Jan 08, 2011 12:09 pm

sorry my fault.

Impactor returns 2.0 · Post by **Impactor returns 2.0** » Sat Jan 08, 2011 1:44 pm

The bird deaths are believed to be related to fireworks as it was new years eve.

The fish was supposed to be low temperatures.

The crabs was an earthquake

It can all be explained...

Post by **Kaylee** » Sat Jan 08, 2011 5:22 pm

Did Shockwave do it?

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Sat Jan 08, 2011 5:40 pm

Impactor returns 2.0 wrote:It can all be explained...

It's the modern plagues. God is cleansing the earth in preparation for 2012.

Clearly.

Sunyavadin · Post by **Sunyavadin** » Sat Jan 08, 2011 6:00 pm

Karl wrote:Did Shockwave do it?

Yes.

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Sat Jan 08, 2011 6:35 pm

Sunyavadin wrote:
Karl wrote:Did Shockwave do it?
Yes.

Pretty much the best explanation I've heard so far.

Sheba · Post by **Sheba** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 2:41 am

with the birds, you have to wonder if it's Avian Flu 2.0

Post by **Kaylee** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 10:47 am

I have heard that bird is the word...

Post by **Best First** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 12:31 pm

Sheba wrote:with the birds, you have to wonder if it's Avian Flu 2.0

Avian Flu.0

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 4:26 pm

Sheba wrote:with the birds, you have to wonder if it's Avian Flu 2.0

Technically, given that they are avians to begin with, it'd just be Flu.

Or if it's the inter-species variety, Human Flu.

Looks like Obamacare came in a little too late for them to get their winter jabs!

saysadie · Post by **saysadie** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 8:11 pm

What I don't get about the fireworks explanation is why don't we see the same sort of thing happening during the summer on either Independance or Canada Day, when hundreds of thousands of people are firing off fireworks, usually around the same period of time (if they live in the same area)?

Different flight/behavioural patterns, maybe?

I know there's a bat virus going around that is killing bats by the hundreds.

Obfleur · Post by **Obfleur** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 9:09 pm

Batman'll sort the bat virus thing.

Post by **Kaylee** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 11:17 pm

He'll have some sort of bat anti virus kit on his utility belt. It won't be a problem.

The Last Autobot · Post by **The Last Autobot** » Mon Jan 10, 2011 11:27 pm

I really hope is the end of the world (or at least of us).

Its about timeeeeeeee!!!!

Brendocon · Post by **Brendocon** » Tue Jan 11, 2011 7:27 pm

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/scie ... 101103411/

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 3:27 am

saysadie wrote:What I don't get about the fireworks explanation is why don't we see the same sort of thing happening during the summer on either Independance or Canada Day, when hundreds of thousands of people are firing off fireworks, usually around the same period of time (if they live in the same area)? .

Because the firework explanation is bullsh*t.

Here's some more reports:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/0 ... 05541.html

Blue beaks?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/0 ... 05541.html

Fish found without eyes? Birds overeating?

I just don't buy the whole "oh, this happens all the time" argument. I mean, I'm 38 year-old, been reading National Geographic and watching The Discovery Channel for as long as I can remember, and I never read about this sort of thing.

I want a better explanation than "oh, this happens all the time".

No it doesn't.

Post by **Kaylee** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 9:42 am

TBH it might well happen all the time. It's only in the last 10 years we've really lived in a world where every little odd thing gets reported (particularly if it can be given a sensationalist spin) and it's possible to summon up complete, in-depth articles.

Go back to 1990 and this sort of thing would be likely to get just a paragraph in the back pages of a newspaper.

Go back even further to the 1950's-1970's and it likely wouldn't even get reported, or at least not until weeks after the event when the local news in foreign countries managed to percolate into other nations.

So I quite believe you've been reading the high-brow news sources for some years, but that doesn't mean these things don't happen (relatively speaking) quite frequently

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 2:04 pm

What Karl said.

The media has only recently become omnipresent. Prior to that, things only got reported if the right person/people was/were in the right place(s) at the right time(s) to observe said things.

Add to that the changes of society's and individual's attitudes over time, and a lot of things that might seem unusual or newsworthy now were once probably considered everyday or the norm.

Paedophiles, serial killers, massacres, victims of war, to name but a few examples.

Post by **Kaylee** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 2:18 pm

To give a (semi redundant) example: the tech press over the last 5 years has gotten to the point where I find it almost unreadable. Most everything is reported but everything is reworded into clickbait to drive up the traffic and the ad revenue.

It's impossible to find a decent discussion on, for example, the recent Microsoft Hotmail outage without the whole thing being polluted by people swearing blind that MS are about to go bankrupt, that Apple will take over everything, this is the 'year of Linux' or that Google are going to steal your house. Everything is sensationalist, everything is hyperbole.

I tend to read blogs from a few trusted individuals now rather than the likes of ZDNet and Gizmodo, it's just a waste of time.

The mainstream press has to a degree always been that way, but their boundaries too seem to get pushed a good few feet every year.

To bring my rant back on point, we get news reports now of more-or-less everything (which is good) but good reporting and writing has diminished in quantity in favour of sensationlism. It's a variation on the old adage 'sex sells', I guess.

Optimus Prime Rib · Post by **Optimus Prime Rib** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 2:49 pm

Yaya wrote:
I want a better explanation than "oh, this happens all the time".

No it doesn't.

at the risk of turning this into a religious topic I feel I need to regurgitate sentiment that you have passed along before:

"Just because you do not believe it does not mean it is not true."

Yaya · Post by **Yaya** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 3:11 pm

Karl wrote:TBH it might well happen all the time. It's only in the last 10 years we've really lived in a world where every little odd thing gets reported (particularly if it can be given a sensationalist spin) and it's possible to summon up complete, in-depth articles.

I hear you. One of the first things I considered was this very thing, that perhaps the media is just so much more far reaching that everything gets reported, whereas otherwise it wouldn't have.

Perfectly logical explanation.

Which I don't buy.

Why now? Why this year? The Internet wasn't born in a day. If the media has led to the reporting of these kinds of occurrences, I would have thought I would have heard of this sort of strange "birds falling out of the sky in the exact same spot" mass animal death years ago.

at the risk of turning this into a religious topic I feel I need to regurgitate sentiment that you have passed along before:

"Just because you do not believe it does not mean it is not true."

Although I could put a religious spin on this, it's not what I'm getting at. The whole end-of-days thing hasn't really crossed my mind.

There is some environmental influence going on here that I think needs to be addressed. The concern I have is, if it is environmental, can it also affect humans as well? That's my concern.

Optimus Prime Rib · Post by **Optimus Prime Rib** » Wed Jan 12, 2011 3:14 pm

what I mean is, Karls explanation sounds pretty dead on. We dont KNOW if these kinds of things have been happening for thousands of years because we had no way of communication with the entire world instantly until recently.