Live Long, Prosper, And Then EXPLODE

Or Just EXPLODE
Without all the pointless, time-wasting living and prospering guff.  You know, all the boring longeurs of establishing character and atmosphere and dramatic tension before getting down to the action.  Futurologist Gerry Anderson knew what he was doing when his shows started with a massive explosion, which Art will now illustrate - if he can stop sucking the spent uranium out of that fuel rod like a man with a marrow bone -

Explosions!

More explosions!

     I could go on like this for pages, but mercy precludes it.  This is only slightly tangential to my real intent, which was to ask "What's in a name?" especially as it applies to Ol' Gerry and one of his earlier programs, "Fireball XL5".  Art?

What!  What's going on here?*

     <screeching sound as Conrad re-sets Reality to Default Normal>

     Er - try again, Art.

Phew.

     Imagine, if you will, that you are a proud graduate of the World Space Patrol Academy, who has been gaining experience and space travel time on training vessels, until you get called into Commander Zero's office in Space City.

Commander Zero:  Congratulations, Commander!  You've just been promoted to take over one of our flagships: "Fireball XL5".  You will assume full control immediately and launch later this afternoon.
Commander Vega (Uneasily): Ah - er - thank you, sir.
CZero (Frowning): You look less than pleased, Commander.  Is something the matter?
CVega: Well, sir, it's the name.
CZero (Surprised): The name?
CVega:  Yes, sir.  It - well, it bodes ill.  Especially for the crew.
CZero: I don't see your point.  Explain, Commander!
CVega: I'll be flying a two-and-a-half thousand ton spaceship carrying over three hundred tons of the most desperately unstable, toxic, flammable fuel ever invented.  And some fool christened it a "Fireball" -
CZero (Flushing an angry red): "Some fool" - why, I'll have you know -
CVega (Interrupting): - and nobody has yet explained what happened to the previous XLs 1, 2, 3 and 4.
CZero: Ah yes <harrumphs loudly> er - experimental test prototypes, you know, risky in flight and all that.
CVega:  And?
CZero:  Oh very well - you know the end of the ramp, where your rocket-propelled sled flies off?

Not-quite-explosions!

CVega:  The blazing, flaming, fiery rocket-propelled sled that sits directly underneath XL5 with all that fuel?
CZero (Testily):  Yes, yes, it's a workaround.  If you look down as you fly off the ramp you'll see - ah - the other XL spaceships.
CVega:  There's nothing but glassy sand and bits of - Oh.
CZero:  You don't smoke, do you?
CVega (Muttering to self):  No, but I do fume on occasion. 

The countdown to danger begins

     Of course, I could be overthinking this ...

Bringing Tears To One's Eyes
No, nothing about soppy romantic drivel here: this is about Hom. Sap. doing spectacularly horrid things to other Hom. Sap., so you have my permission to skip if you so desire.
      If you have a long memory and have been reading BOOJUM! regularly, like all who want to survive when I take over, then you may recall your humble scribe going on about poison gases that Perfidious Albion developed for the First Unpleasantness.  I may have mis-named one, which should have gone under the name "SK", and which has nothing to do with Sulphur (chemical symbol "S") or Potassium (chemical symbol "K").

A gas shell

     Having done some digging, it transpires that SK is so-called because it was developed in South Kensington.  

Who knows what skulldiggery lurks behind these bland facades?**

     Now, this stuff is technically non-lethal, in that it's a Lachrymatory, or tear gas, though by all accounts getting any of it on your pearly orbs was excrutiatingly painful and would render you hors de combat for days, which is exactly the desired effect.  After all, someone who is dead can merely be wrapped in a shroud and left there; someone who is injured needs lots of TLC.
     There's a bit of wiggle room about "technically", too.  In theory SK was about one-third as lethal as phosgene, of which one inhalation would introduce you to Saint Peter and the nacreously-encrusted gates of heaven.  However, SK had, by design, very low volatility: that is, it evapourated verrrrry slowly so you were highly unlikely to get a lethal dose.  The debit side to this is that it hung around for ages and ages - known as being "persistent" since it did not waft away with the merest zephyr of wind - and if it got into a dugout or bunker, you had to Abandon Domicile for a couple of weeks.

"Hans said he wasn't weeping at having to leave his shelter, it was the SK."

     The thing is, if you ever mention "persistent gas" to a military historian or wargamer, they all shudder and go "Oh yes, mustard gas!  As invented by the wicked Teutons".  Nobody, it seems, bar a few chemists, has ever heard of SK.***

     Wow.  What an assemblage of misery.  Let us now bring a smile - if you can call that child-scaring grimace I have a smile - to our faces with something light and frothy.

     <thinks>



Hmmmm.


     <still thinking>


Nope.


     <thinks Atomic Ninja Death Weasels not quite frothy enough>

Aha!  I have it -

Dangerous Animals
Those interesting folks over at Facebook's "The Flop House" put up a thread about the various scarifying encounters they'd had with the native fauna of South Canada, which sounded both interesting and terrifying.  There was the Javelina - which looks like a kind of vampire boar - 

With protuberant piggy prongs

     Not to mention the black bear -

Who is alleged to be a great big coward.  That makes two of us.

     And a whole lot of snakes, that blend into the background cunningly, so that you risk treading on 'em.  Art?

There are 27 snakes hiding in this picture.

     Oh, and lots of alligators.  Alligators will tend to leave you alone if you leave them alone, so they have 0% to fear from Conrad.  There were also brain-eating amoebas and flesh-rotting bacteria, although since they lack dramatic impact you're just going to have to imagine them.
     In contrast I felt a bit of a wuss.  How could I compare with any of these virulent life-forms?

A herd of killer rabbit converge on the prey they have run down, about to tear it apart with their -

     See?  The UK's wildlife just isn't wild enough <sighs deeply>



*  The wit and imagination of WS Clave.  Check out his/her/it's stuff on Deviantart.
**  "Skulldiggery" is like "skullduggery" except present tense
***   I think we dodged the bullet there.