Gaslight Bay

The Beginning

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As a Climate Scientist & Activist – you’re extremely concerned about the state of the environment.

Things are always worse than the media lets on. You’ve seen all the numbers.

It’s much much worse!

But this time

you’re actually scared.

The end of everything is quite possible.

And the information you’ve just been given suggests that it could happen at any time,

Quite suddenly and without any warning at all.

A Global Extinction Event.

.

You have to know it’s not true

Or try to stop it.

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Rugged and remote, the cold isolation of the Alaskan coastline is the only place to know for sure.

And so you’ve come to a tiny fishing town.

Unheard of by most, but with a long and strange history.

Welcome to Gaslight Bay

The Reason We Could All Be Totally Fucked In An Instant

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…is Methane Clathrate.

4 Hydrogens and a Carbon:

Methane – a non-toxic, but non-breathable gas.

Trapped within a solid dodecahedron formed from  2 Hydrogens and an Oxygen

Frozen Water.

Ice.

Mostly the Ice of the Arctic Continental Shelf, as it happens.

Trillions of tons of Methane gas, trapped within its frozen waters.

And while it’s still under scientific investigation, as to how the accelerated rate of global warming might affect this delicate balance.

China, Japan, Russia, and then the US

have begun drilling into the ice shelf itself, to extract this plentiful and cheaply obtained fuel.

Regardless of the ultimate cost

Because recent readings from the hydrographic and meteorological equipment at Gaslight Station, have been alarming.

Suggesting that something similar to a Limnic Eruption might be imminent.

Though vastly smaller in scale, Limnic Eruptions, like the one in Lake Nyos, Cameroon, 1986;

caused up to a million tons of Carbon Dioxide to suddenly burst into the atmosphere,

It asphyxiated over 1,700 local inhabitants in under 20 minutes.

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In the waters of the Arctic there are trillions of tons of Methane.

And the last time it erupted due to global warming, was 250 million years ago,

When it led to the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event

Also known as “The Great Dying”

 

 

But The Only Problem

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…is the equipment at Gaslight Bay

(named for the lights of the drilling rigs to be seen on the horizon at night, totally un-romantic)

It’s unmanned, and getting old and ornery. The climate here is harsh and unhelpful:

and some of the readings have always been weird.

A scientist once stationed here claimed a series of his radar readings tracked an entire fleet of UFOs!

Weird too, the mysterious  ‘benefactor’ funding this trip, and who provided you the latest information sub-rosa.

It may not be the most reliable equipment; and you’re truly hoping that’s the case in this instance.

Because if the readings are accurate…

Stepping off the boat, onto a chill and slick jetty, your heart skips and you slip for balance, at an earth tremor.

It only lasts less than a minute, more a murmuring than a quake.

But it is not a good sign.