Giant Radioactive Slugs

Less Robert Patterson-y Vampire

You know, in the olden days of Sci Fi, when I was a kid, nuclear war was the way we all died.  Back then Zombies were slow and stupid, Vampires were really not attractive and “Alternate History” was some weird guy that wrote about aliens and Hitler.

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 The world was simpler then.  Everything blew up, but the lucky few were, somehow - through luck or planning, going live the idyllic live in Australia while the rest of the world suffered through radiation-muted giant slugs.

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Einstein, Hitler and FDR fight the
UFOs in Turtledove's Worlds.

I think of that now because, it probably won’t really be Australia, will it?  I mean once India and Pakistan got the bomb – and China started throwing its weight around the South China Sea – and the US put people in Darwin – well, Australia doesn’t look like the giant-slug free paradise it once did.

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I suppose it never was.  It was always really going to be South America, right?  It is far from nuclear powers, lacking massive natural resources (at least enough to be worth nuking) and relatively removed from the day to day craziness of the world.  There used to be Cuba, and it was assumed that the fall out would float down.  But let’s be honest – Cuba isn’t the worry it once was, and any fall-out will probably take out Orlando and Alabama not Rio de Janeiro.

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Sad Australians watch

I suppose it was always thus.  But when you are writing for 14 year old boys, the surf and bikinis of Sydney will always trump the jungles of the Amazon (which was pretty much all that was taught about South America back then).

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Plus, you would have to learn a new language.  Or TWO!  Good grief, nuclear fallout was bad enough without having to learn to say, “Are the giant-slugs on their way?” in Portuguese.

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Ginat Radioactive Sea Slugs - Circa Fukashima