Euxinia or euxinic conditions occur when water is both anoxic and sulfidic. This means that there is no oxygen and a raised level of free hydrogen sulfide (H2S). Euxinic bodies of water are frequently strongly stratified, have an oxic, highly productive, thin surface layer, and have anoxic, sulfidic bottom water.

 

The word euxinia is derived from the Greek name for the Black Sea- Εὔξεινος Πόντος (Euxeinos Pontos)- which translates to "hospitable sea". Euxinic deep water is a key component of the Canfield ocean, a model of oceans during the Proterozoic known as the Boring Billion proposed by Donald Canfield, an American geologist, in 1998.

 

There is still debate within the scientific community on both the duration and frequency of euxinic conditions in the ancient oceans. Euxinia is relatively rare in modern bodies of water, but does still happen in places like the Black Sea and certain fjords.

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In that spring a ship sails into port. Nobody on it is alive. It is controlled by automatic cyber systems. While deep below…  

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Horror in Clay.

 

    “The most merciful thing in the world, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little but someday the piercing together of disassociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality and of our frightful positions therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“Dead Cthulu waits dreaming…    “

 

    Pulp horror writer H.P. Lovecraft penned tales of ancient monsters called Old Ones that, if awakened, would emerge to devour the world. Cthulu lay in death’s sleep at the bottom of the Baltic Sea awaiting something to disturb him from necrotic slumber. To learn of these mysteries is to risk madness. For the Old Ones are too awful for the human mind to conceive without succumbing to a hopeless darkness of Bubbling Oceans, Dead Zones, a poisoned planet.”

 

*****

 

What if I told you that within two or three years you will die a brutal and horrible death… that your wife and kids will die.That your whole family will be wiped out. Most of your friends, your whole milieu…gone. gone with the new, harsh wind.

 

What if I told you that your neighbors and friends will turn against you and do this. That the police, and the courts and the military and the government will help them. That your home, and all your possessions will be destroyed. Nothing you see around you will exist. That your entire street will be blown up and burnt to the ground leaving nothing but rubble. That nothing you know will exist as it does this moment. Gone forever. 

 

What if I told you that a madness had taken over your neighbors and fellow citizens and they did this. And then they were destroyed. And their homes blown up and burnt to the ground, leaving nothing but rubble. In fact if you look around, of what you see, nothing will remain.

 

And all your neighbors will be dead, your city, destroyed. Los Angeles will be flattened, and San Francisco and Portland, San Diego and Seattle. All the cities in the land and all the towns. All major cities, destroyed, lesser ones, too. All roads, rails, airports. The power grid, bridges blown, factories and industrial plants, the infrastructure, the structure of civilization, itself. Leaving wandering survivors searching for food, shelter, heat. And aliens will appear, with power over all. 

 

You would say this is a terrible fantasy. I cannot imagine. I cannot accept. We are a modern society, we have laws, and science and culture. We understand. l am a citizen. It cannot happen. I am valued, respected. I am known. I have an Iron Cross from the Great War.

 

For this is what happened, in Germany in 1938.  Those that could see, those that could imagine, some of them escaped. They made it to America and waited for America to save the world. And we did. But their world…all of Europe, most of the occupied east, the far east and Japan… most of the world was destroyed. leveled to rubble. Ground to dust. Seventy million humans were killed. The world flipped over. Again.

 

Would you have gotten out? Would you have seen? Would you have believed.

Could you have imagined. Could you have acted? Would you have lived?

 

What if I told you that within a few years you would die a horrible and brutal death? You and your kids. Your family, your friends, others like you. Those unlike you. Those who believe, those who don’t. Everybody. 

 

That all you see will be destroyed. Riots, storms, desperation. Armed gangs determined to survive. At any cost. Nuclear war, nuclear winter, starvation pestilence, cold, heat. A world flipped, nature turned against you. A world no longer capable of supporting complex life. And there was nowhere to flee to. No refuge America, northing to be done. But die. And disappear.

 

And that there was a tipping point but you didn’t know where it was. Not a long slide, but a sudden break, giving you no time to adjust. In a few years. Or a few days, Or it was already past. And what you could do is too late.

 

Could you imagine that? Or do you reject it. Couldn’t happen. you say. Or God will prevent. A raptured escape. A heavenly refuge. You abandon this world til it resets. Your marvelous individual consciousness goes on… Maybe. Maybe not.

 

And this will happen. The scientists tell us it will. And they are scared. Can they get your attention, can you conceive? Can you accept?  What will you do?

It is now. What you see around you is a fiction, its a fantasy. It cannot hold. Can you imagine it will disappear. Total destruction. Can you imagine? Can you relate?  To the total destruction of your world. 

 

Climate change will reset the world  As it has done before. Six mass extinctions that we know about. Many more we don’t.You cannot escape to America. It is not that easy this time. This time, it is the whole world. It is humanity. It is oxygen based life down to the single cells. It is the end.

 

A Petri Dish

 

    The earth is a closed system, admitting only energy from the sun. Imagine a smaller closed system, a petri dish, Imagine it is “infected” with a bacteria, the chemical elements it feeds on and light energy. In the absence of predators, with no limits on reproduction, it will use the energy to rapidly reproduce, to absorb and use all the chemicals, take the energy from them and excrete toxic waste, to fill the dish with its numbers, then to suddenly collapse… to die out, leaving its dead bodies to dissolve back into chemicals. That is the earth. That is where we’re heading. We are the infection. That is us. This is my scream. 

 

    The climate is like a wild beast. And we’re poking it with sticks. 

                                                                                                             Wally Broecker

 

    The human mind cannot really contemplate the end of its own existence. This is why we created Religion.  More so, we cannot contemplate the end of humanity, but it is possible, even likely, and in the long run, probably assured.  But what extinction means is the end of all life we know in this part of the galaxy. And we don’t know that there is life elsewhere. So it means for us The end of everything. But more, the pointlessness of it all. Of all history, culture, experience, our reality. Everything we have known, earned, experienced. All that we have loved, hated, fought against, fought for. All human experience. All the creatures who have shared our existence. All that we have husbanded. All we have known. And it will be our fault. It may be that we will have failed. That the human mind could not advance as fast as our technologies, our moral and intellectual failure.  A race to goodness…to godliness. A race that we have lost.