Archive Saturday: History Week

Archive Saturday — crap from my old webpage. Also, I’m hungover.History Week: Tornado!
by nacho

March 25th, 1948. The first tornado prediction is made by Captain
Robert Miller at Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma. The following comes
from Captain Miller’s personal diary, a draft for a planned speech at
the 50th reunion dinner in 1998.

March 20, 1948

After only 20 days as the forecaster at Tinker AFB, I was jarred from
my restful sleep first by the sound of my staff sergeant masturbating,
and then by the vicious vagaries of a massive storm. I was from sunny
LA, as was my staff sergeant, so I wasn’t used to anything like this. A
massive cloud of darkness blasting across the empty and desolate
plains, Midwesterners scattering like flies… Later, my staff sergeant
would swear it was “raining men.” He was as frightened as I when the
storm hit.

Our mistake had begun earlier in the day. My staff sergeant, Brian
Wilcox, and I had been studying the latest weather reports. Four hours
before the storm hit, the skies were clear and the sun was out. Just
like a normal day in sunny LA. We issued the forecast, “Head to the
beach and enjoy the sun, fellow Oklahomans!” and called it a night.

We gravely underestimated the Midwest weather.

Around 9pm, weather stations to the west and southwest of Tinker
reported thunderstorms in progress. Using the AN-PQ-13 radar system, a
cornerstone of the advanced American radar system developed in May of
1945 by Otto Heidrich, we noticed that the thunderstorm cells being
reported by the other stations looked particularly ugly. Then a message
came in from the Will Rodgers Airport – “Tornado south. On ground.
Moving towards you, Tinkerbells. Another blow to you Air Force pansies!
GYMKATA!”

We knew we were in trouble.

When Wilcox and I saw the tornado, there was nothing we could do but
watch it wreak havoc across the base. Then, inexplicably, the tornado
held position and began to pulsate. We later learned that several
relics had been belched out of the storm and left scattered on the
approach to Hanger 37. Objects which, as impossible as it sounds,
appeared to be from another time. Somehow, this particular tornado had
opened a tear in the fabric of time and space. Now, we knew that
Hitler’s Germany had been working on this technology and, towards the
end of the war, the Japanese had used this time-vortex against us at
Okinawa. In the experimental stages, the Japanese used it to hurl
little girls from the year 1342 at our front lines in the hopes of
shocking our troops. Rumor has it, Hitler had more developed plans for
this tear in the fabric…though, of course, we’ll never know the
secret.

Wilcox theorized that this was a fluke accident, something that had
been put in motion by the Axis powers, but our CO -Major E.J.
Dervishire – suspected something sinister. Could the Soviets have
captured time-vortex technology?

The morning after the storm, Wilcox and I were told to set up an accurate prediction protocol for time-vortex storms.

March 22 – 24, 1948

For three days, Wilcox and I poured over all of the available
statistics for the storm on the 20th. We noticed certain similarities
between that storm and previous storms, all of which were ordinary
tornado events. With one exception. In 1905, the mayor of Dead Indian
Bend vanished and there were 14 triplet births on a religious commune
up in Wakassessee, OK in conjunction with a possible Vortex Event.. We
discovered that there was a specific “threat area” and, then, all we
had to do was wait for a repeat. We knew the ins and outs of the storm,
we knew that older storms looked similar. All we had to do was wait for
the warning signs to develop, then we would be able to create an
accurate prediction.

March 25, 1948

On the morning of the 25th, we noticed a pattern on the charts that
almost exactly matched the morning of the 20th -sunshine and a clear
day. Obviously, it was a “threat” day. We took this news to our CO.
After we explained the situation, he asked if we were going to sound
the Vortex Alert. If we did this, then it meant that all the personnel
at the base would quickly group together and deploy the Vortex Net.
After that, specially trained marines would be sent through the Vortex
with a jeep, a packet of condoms, three starter pistols and 18 sticks
of dynamite. To sound this alert, and then have it turn out to be a
false alarm, would get us in a heap of trouble. I was uneasy until
Wilcox spoke up.

“Well… It does look a lot like the 20th.”

“I guess,” I replied. “We don’t really know, sir. We’re from sunny LA.”

“You don’t have storms in California?” the major asked.

“Not in sunny LA.” Wilcox replied sheepishly, eyes downcast.

The major insisted that we make a decision, so we went ahead with the
Vortex Alert. The time was 2:50pm. As it turned out, we were correct –
except what hit us that evening wasn’t a Vortex, it was an ordinary
tornado. We had inadvertently placed the first tornado warning and,
therefore, set up a clear and accurate method for predicting tornados –
saving thousands of lives and millions of dollars in property.

As I write this, it is March 20th, 1998. Fifty years since the events
leading up to our historic tornado prediction began. I have returned to
Tinker AFB with Wilcox and Dervishire for a reunion. It’s good to see
my old friends again.

We are only a few seconds from the exact time the Vortex woke me up 50 years ago. It should be a –

(Item 67541, recovered grid ref. AB 765 478. 14:35 on 3/21/98. Pocket-sized notepad, torn.)

History Week: Meteor!
by nacho

In 1998, skywatchers and astronomers alike anxiously gathered beneath
their telescopes, binoculars and skirts of their mammas. The event: The
possible return of the Leonid meteor storm. The date was November 17th
and 18th, and scientists hoped for a repeat of the greatest meteor
storm in history – the 1833 Leonids storm, or, the “Night of Raining
Fire,” as it was known in Germany. Feuernacht shocked the world, led to
the creation of religious cults, and is directly responsible for Andrew
Jackson’s “No black Catholics” policy, which created social tension in
the United States and, ultimately, led directly to the Civil War.

Let’s get in the time machine with Yesterday’s Weather staff reporter,
Webmaster Leff, and take a ride back to 1833. Hopefully Leff is wearing
pants today.

Day Of Judgment!

1833, a cold November night in Anytown, USA. You have just gone to bed
after slaughtering Cherokee children and raping Sioux women. Your
slaves work hard on the bubblegum trees, and you have lived through
another day without getting a spot of dirt on your impeccably white
suit. You twirl your handlebar moustache and anally rape the Negro
houseboy while tapping your cane against the urn holding the ashes of
your father, Colonel Renoir Lafayette, the famed Revolutionary war hero
who, at the age of 15, rode through the streets of Boston shouting,
“Those bloody upstarts have seized the tea shipment! To arms! To arms!”

Only a few hours after you head to bed, you are awakened by a great
commotion in the streets. A fracas, you think to yourself, brought on
by the Abolitionist schoolteacher who shows too much ankle. Then
someone is pounding on your door. At the same instant, you see flares
of light outside of your window. The town is afire! You race to the
window and look down. Crowds are milling in streets, shouting and
pointing upwards. Tis not the town, tis the heavens! The heavens
aflame! Streaks of light scream past in a deafening roar, the backdraft
from the alien saucers whipping down and knocking people to the ground,
scorching the thatched roofs and frightening the cattle. Several women
lie down and give birth on the spot – especially strange, as they are
not pregnant! It is Judgment Day! YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!

Yes, scenes like this played out in every American community on the
night of November 12th, 1833. The 1833 Leonids storm was the greatest
of it’s kind since the days of Vulva, where Roman Gladiators were
charged with the task of lassoing passing meteors and cracking them
open with giant, silver hammers. For the first time, the study of
meteors was placed on astronomers’ agendas, right beneath the need to
disprove the “cheese moon” theory.

On this night, conditions were ideal. Most of North America enjoyed
clear skies, and the cosmic eruption in the early hours was visible to
all. Tens of thousands of meteors appeared and brilliant fireballs
rivaled the moon. Smoke trails snaked through the sky. Up till this
point, people had thought meteors were caused by “frog storms,” lakes
that had suddenly erupted due to geothermal blasts in the unorganized
territories. Amphibians, as was believed at the time, maintained a
unique buoyancy once airborne and had a tendency to rain down on
hermits and mining communities.

While scientists watched this supposed “frog storm” with fascination,
local reports indicated widespread panic amongst the general populace.
A South Carolina slaveholder wrote about his experience in the South
Carolina Mercantile Herald:

“My slumber was disturb’d by dis~tressing calls from my Negroes. They
are usually a quiet lot, but on this night they dost hath a cacophones
(sic) roar. I mov’d out to the verandah and I shouted, ‘Why dost thou
shoutest so?’ They then pre~ceded to call out for mercy, shouting
prayers to their heathen, Negro god. I took my sword up~on me and began
laying about with a mightily good thrashing to the nearest of the
babbling brutes. Then I saw what appeared to be angels in the sky.
Several hundred hundreds of lights doth appear, and I knew that my
actions were sacred to God. I expired thirty expensive brutes that
night to show my faith!”

Not Judgment Day!

Of course, it was not Judgment Day. This might be due to the fact that
there is no such thing as a “Judgment Day,” but, more importantly, the
meteor storm was nothing new. People had seen it before. But, in 1833,
after the Educational Purification practices put into effect by Thomas
Jefferson in 1802, there was no “official” history beyond 1781.

The storm also contributed to several millenarian religious revivals –
a blossoming psychosis in 1830’s U.S. that is responsible for the
script idea for Poltergeist II. Many of these millenarian sects remain
today, like the Catholics.

Eventually, after several weeks of anarchy and mass hysteria,
scientists uncovered the truth. As it turns out, the Leonids storm had
been returning to earth every 30 years. Only three other displays,
however, rivaled that of the 1833 show. First reported by Leonidite
hunters on cave walls, the storm had been part of human history from
the very beginning. The Leonidites were pottery makers and artists,
driven into the ocean by advancing Mongol hordes in 1456 BC. Or
something…we don’t really know. But they did give their name to the
meteorites. That’s the important thing.

Subsequent storms have all been disappointing, as was the 1998 storm.
But, hopefully in 2028, when history is once again forgotten, the world
will be pitched over the edge of anarchy by the next Leonids
visitation.