Murder Hornets, Aliens, and Bushfire

Two blog posts ago, I said I would cover the murder hornets, aliens, and race wars. Last post, I covered the resurgence of Black Lives Matter (originally regrettably phrased as a "race war"), so now it's time for the murder hornets and aliens.

I'm going to straight-up say that I lost a rough draft with details of the spread of the murder hornets. Seems like there used to be better information available, but I'll still share what I can find right now.

They were first spotted in British Colombia in August, 2019. They were later found in Washington State in December. Since then, there have been three sightings in 2020 between these two regions. Experts say that they have about two years to eliminate the spread, otherwise they will become a persistent invasive species. I'm taking the lack of recent news as a positive sign.

Murder hornets, otherwise named Asian Giant Hornets, originate in Japan. They have a body length of 45 milimetres, a wingspan of 75 milimetres, and a stinger of 6 milimetres. They are the largest form of hornet in the world.

Despite their nickname, a sting from one of these guys will not likely kill you. They are stigmatized in a similar way that orca's are referred to as "killer whales" despite not being a threat to humans and not particularly more violent than most predators. A human can only die by murder hornet if they are swarmed, which is true of regular hornets as well. Still, their enlarged size is quite a put-off for many people who are intimidated by stinging insects. At least they help encourage people to stay inside during quarantine.

More concerning is that, if they don't murder humans, they do murder bees. You see, murder hornets have a habit of approaching, infiltrating, and beheading honey bees en masse. If you don't know, we are already in the middle of a global bee crisis. Bees are, outside of their role of producing honey, responsible for polinating many of our crops. Without them, we face major food shortages. We have been struggling to respond to a declining bee population for some time, and the introduction of bee-hating murder hornets only hastens that concern.

Now, they do have honey bees in Japan, despite being the original home of murder hornets. The reason for this is that bees over there learned a trick. They will swarm an invading hornet and shake their bodies, increasing the temperature until their intruder is cooked. Honey bees, despite being physically weaker, have a higher resistence to heat than the murder hornets do. Unfortunately, the bees in Canada and the US don't know this, and are thus easy targets.

So if the spread continues, my hope is that, since nature figured out this issue in Japan, it will figure itself out in North America. My mother suggests introducing Japanese bees to local apiaries (bee farms).

As far as the aliens go, there have been a few videos leaked from the US Navy circulating over the past few years. These videos contain footage of flying aircraft moving in erratic patterns that excede the capacity of known technology and our understanding of physics. The Pentagon chose not to disclose whether or not these videos were legitimate, but did acknowledge their "veracity".

Strangely, this year they decided to confirm that the videos are real, and that they contain images of technology that do not exist within the US or to their knowledge, outside of it. They confirmed that our concerns are the same as theirs, and that there is a very real chance that we are not alone.

Here's an annoying CNN clip of the phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60ZJQ4I7_3M

I've heard a theory that the US government chose to release this information now in an attempt to distract from their mismanaged response to COVID-19 (This is before the resurgence of Black Lives Matter)

"Why has widespread testing not yet been made available?"
"What's being done about the situation in New York?"
"How will the economy recover from lock down?"
"Is it true that China is already recovering from the virus?"

US: "Uh... aliens are real"

If that was the intention, it didn't really work. It just made people panic more.

Regardless, this is the only time during my life where I can say "Hide in your bunkers!" and "Aliens are real!" and the government is like, "Listen to that guy".

This concludes the three topics I promised three posts ago. However, 2020 has offered more significant natural phenomenon. I don't believe I covered the wildfires in Australia as they were ocurring.

They usually have a "bushfire season" starting in August, which is something to be mindful of but not generally unmanageable. However, in June 2019, the Queensland Fire and Emergency Service warned of a potentially early onset due to unsually dry conditions and early flare ups. Unfortunately, the fires would start early, and would rage through the nation until March, 2020, reaching their peak between December and January. These fires resulted in 186,000 square kilometres of land being burned, destroying over 5,900 buildings, killing at least 34 people and an estimated rough billion animals, driving some species to extinction. Costs to recover from this tragedy are estimated to exceed 4.4 billion dollars.

And right as they were recovering from the bushfires, a global pandemic occurs. Would suck to get a stay at home order right after your home got burned down.

This probably does it for scary world events in 2020. I heard an asteroid came uncomfortably near Earth, but wasn't a realistic threat other than reminding us that space junk is flying around randomly and we can't do much to stop it. There was an unusually large swarm of locusts in Africa, and they've got a dust storm right now that's floating toward us, but should if anything make approaching hurricanes less dangerous. People talk about how World War Three was trending in January, but it didn't happen and it's not trending now. Natural phenomenon is happening all the time, and because some significant stuff is happening this year, it seems like everyone is paying more attention, and expecting everything to blow up.

The next post will either focus on Phase 2 of Canada's pandemic response, cultural development as a result of COVID 19, or how the homeless have been impacted. I also still need to start that recipe blog.