ancient disaster

no i'm fairly sure pompeii began as the result of a buried cheese

With reasoning that airtight, I'm sure the reptilian overlords have since quietly "removed" the book and it's author.

http://fatadelic.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/planetofapes.jpg

I always was fascinated by the ancient mystery of the missing colony of Roanoke, founded by Sir Walter Raleigh off the coast of what became North Carolina -- who then apparently forgot to send them any supplies for three years. This was 1585, 20 years before Jamestown and 40 years before pilgrims landed in Massachusetts.

When supplies finally came, the only evidence that anyone had ever been there was a tree that had been carved with the unrecognizable word, "CROATAN".

-- Tracer Hand, Wednesday, April 16, 2008 11:25 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

yes this is freaky

still i'm not sure custer's last stand is an "ancient disaster" along the lines of pompeii?

aw who cares.

Croatan was actually a local indian tribe

yeah i think it was a sign to their buddies back in england about where they'd gone to, but a hurricane intervened before they could be found; most people think they "integrated" with the croatans/hatteras indians

Roanoke mystery is pretty cool (and the basis for a rather excellent comic book series.)

Not sure this counts, but isn't there some theory that when the mediterranean valley became the mediterranean sea that was the basis for all subsequent flood myths because ppl were living there already and the survivors were the duders who actually went a started shit up in the tigris/euphrates/indus area that we now think of as the earliest civilization.

Because, THAT!

Also, for recent human instigated stuff (non-war division) the Texas City fertilizer kablooey is pretty wicked.

speaking of subterranean dino civilizations

http://io9.com/380198/dennis-hopper-with-a-deevolution-machine-++-what-could-go-wrong

Yep and "Croatoan" was on the tree (note spelling)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatoan_Island

what board is this thread on? it just doesn't show up anymore. it's like Bigfoot.

i knew i should've kept my mouth shut about our reptilian masters

http://photos9.flickr.com/13128006_f9c7a6cf1a_m.jpg

pinefox it shows up for me fine!

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=40

Scott of the Antarctic I AM GOING OUT I MAY BE SOME TIME BYE BYE

Aw c'mon! um, 5 people dying at the South Pole because LOL they had no idea how to ski or use snowshoes is not a "disaster"

What was disastrous about the Erebus and Terror?

Franklin Expedition, right? That was a disaster.

Santorini/Thera

yeah Scott was no disaster, but I ended up voting for it because for me it's the most interesting of those listed

I'll admit that a few of them don't really qualify as either "ancient" or "disaster", really the only thing that connects them is "bad shit that happened long before I was born, that thrilled me and gave me the fear when I was a kid" Most of them seem to have some kind of hubris clobbered by nemesis thing going on as well.

Did anyone else see the Pompeii exhibit at a museum? It was travelling around in the '80's - before most of you were born, I know.
I was young when I saw it, and remain scarred to this day by viewing the mummified corpses.
So I voted for Pompeii.

Black Death massively upped wages for surviving peasants and arguably kickstarted the death of Feudalism in England so I vote it not a disaster

what is a few dozen million deaths? You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs.

are you after writing in a vote for The Great Hunger?

still no sight of this thread on New Answers - seriously. I have never known the like of it.

The Great Fire of London

Also, the Nika Riots. Roughly 30000 killed.

The first five extinction events (all life on earth nearly wiped out, again and again) were pretty big deals too, I'd say.

nika riots are intense!! it's like a 50's greaser movie times a billion, and in uh constantinople in the 6th cent.

black death doesn't count cos there wasn't a "the" black death, the bubonic plague broke out in several different times and places over a few hundred years.

Has this thread now vanished for everyone else too?

It really has not been visible to me since it was brand new.

check your preferences. do you have polls hidden?

"Croatan" = "Nat, a orc" backwards.

It's a creepy thread.

bigscale fave

smallscale fave

creepy in a good way.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

pompeii can eat a classically educated dick

black death doesn't count cos there wasn't a "the" black death, the bubonic plague broke out in several different times and places over a few hundred years.

Bubonic plague did indeed break out during different centuries, but as far as I know only one of these outbreaks is called the Black Death, and that was the plague that spread in Europe between 1347 and 1351, killing 30-60 percent of European population. I think the timeframe is narrow enough to say it was a particular event, certainly it was recorded in history as one.

Yeah!

is anyone watching "The Terror" (fictionalised version of the Franklin expedition, complete with added lovecraftian HORROR* i believe)

based on dan simmons' 2007 novel, which i haven't read

if so NO SPOILERS but is it any good? i was just rereading david c. woodman's two excellent books on how the inuit reported on this disaster (which completely changes the story) (and does include some weird shit, if not quite lovecraftian)

erebus and terror robbed in this poll btw

I just checked the novel out of the library last week after seeing it recommended on some Greatest Horror Novels list. Have not yet cracked it.

I don't know why they needed to add any HORROR, when the story already has a horrific blend of peak BE officer classes, cannibalism, pneumonia, scurvy, lead poisoning, the unremitting sub-zero winds etc...

I fell off this series after a couple of eps, but I read other people saying it was good.

dan simmons is a horror writer so i guess it's what he always adds?

the two versions of the actual real story are
A: "everyone is stuck on two iced-in ships when they eventually leave to march south except they all die, some of them eating others"
B (via the inuits): "everyone leaves the iced-in ships and spends quite a complex two years living off the land but not marching anywhere much until SOMETHING HAPPENS (tho no one quite knows what) and the remainer split into three parties, one remanning the ships and sailing them away (but not very far away), one marching and dying, the third staying put and dying , some of them eating others. the ones who sailed the ships, land and march -- some possibly a tremendous distance in one of several possible directions but no one is quite sure where they end up, hundreds of miles east or hundreds of miles south, or indeed how it all ends for the last ones"

A is possibly not very dramatic
B is all gaps and guesses needs a ton of added speculation to work as a story, with the caveat that the speculation that works best for a story may be wildly untrue

both A and B have a grim and terrible ending, which we know from the outset (no one got home; no inuit have come forward to say "oh they lived out their days with my ancestors")

fair enough, but I do prefer movies where less happens these days and think you might be underrating the dramatic potential of A (directed by bela tar and with barely a paragraph of dialogue for the first 3 eps!), and the point I jumped off this was when the daft oversized polar bear turns up.

yes it's weird in the inuit testimony books bears are NEVER mentioned even though i assume they are a fairly routine menace for one and all

one inuit who encountered them was a young hunter called kai (apparently short for kayak!) who -- after spotting a couple of wandering white guys hundred of miles from where everyone said they all died -- was himself killed by what his fellow inuit called a "very ugly walrus" (which is my favourite line in the book = "strangers among us" by david c.woodman)

a search reveals that walruses sometimes kill polar bears and humans. They are probably underrated as deadly predators in western fiction.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--LqJpmVwV--/c_fit,f_auto,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/fuh8gmgmp6g0nujxjcj2.jpg

I know a song about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9H-Jt7_OJE