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Old 06-06-2015, 05:46 AM   #951
Anders
 
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Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
Default Re: Real-Life Weirdness

Mysterious clumps of worms along Texas highway
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Old 06-06-2015, 11:06 AM   #952
johndallman
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... having failed in the auditions for Icky Goo.
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Old 06-06-2015, 01:20 PM   #953
Flyndaran
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... having failed in the auditions for Icky Goo.
I love the line about initially being mistaken for clumps of spaghetti. Are spaced clumps of spaghetti on highways that common of a sight in Texas? Plagued by roving bands of littering Italians?
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Old 06-06-2015, 01:22 PM   #954
johndallman
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Are spaced clumps of spaghetti on highways that common of a sight in Texas?
They don't like to talk about it.
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Old 06-06-2015, 07:18 PM   #955
jeff_wilson
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They don't like to talk about it.
Sometimes while the water is still high, fire ant mounds will float loose from the soil and bump into houses or boats whereupon the fire ants swarm out and take over.
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Old 06-12-2015, 06:56 PM   #956
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Lake Karachay is a small lake in the southern Ural Mountains. Used as a dumping ground for the Soviet Union's first plutonium and nuclear waste processing plant, the entire lake floor is composed of high level radioactive waste to a depth of about 11 feet. Radiation on the shore of the place can kill an unprotected human in an hour. The site remained in use from 1945 - 1957, until the plant's nuclear waste storage tanks (for the stuff they were wiling to hang on to rather than dump in the lake) exploded and contaminated the area.

The lake has been drying out since the 1960s, exposing the lakebed and allowing the radioactive material to be carried away as dust.

What better candidate for the "Hot Spot" line?

As a location, your PCs have a built-in time limit with an incentive to do their job and get out as fast as possible. Some might find it a suitably remote and unappealing spot for their (heavily shielded) secret lab or lair. The lake would have been a fine dumping ground for Sealed Evil in a Jar -- either before or after the Soviets built there, or as the destination for the Sealed Evil the PCs just contained on the last adventure. The radiation in the region could be a staple excuse for your atomic horrors and mutant superpowers.

Last edited by Anaraxes; 06-13-2015 at 07:16 AM.
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Old 06-12-2015, 07:02 PM   #957
Flyndaran
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Heck, I would love to learn what kind of real world life survives there. We all know the Chernobyl plant has radiation "eating" fungi, but that lake has orders of magnitude more punch.
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Old 06-12-2015, 07:05 PM   #958
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Sometimes while the water is still high, fire ant mounds will float loose from the soil and bump into houses or boats whereupon the fire ants swarm out and take over.
Myrmidon Armageddon. Try saying that 10 times fast.
I hope by naming it out loud I haven't placed the idea into a Sci Fi channel TV exec's head.
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Old 06-12-2015, 07:11 PM   #959
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More or less self-explanatory, but:

Anglo-Saxon Cure for Styles Might Have Modern Uses

It's a long way from there to actual drugs, but it's an interesting story anyway. There's a modern tendency to dismiss our ancestors as utterly ignorant, when in fact they were just as smart as we are and knew things worth remembering.
Our ancestors were the one's who survived to be our ancestors. In a world that often looked like it was built specifically for the prevention of such.
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Old 06-12-2015, 07:16 PM   #960
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9th century woman found buried with a ring that says "for Allah" on it.

Were there muslims living in Sweden in the 9th century? Obviously not many, but still...
Perhaps a thrall or two. Or a trader that couldn't get back or preferred to marry locally. Sweden was after all at the North end of the river routes and both were cultures that roved about a lot in those days.
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