How Things Work Part VI: The Quickening

We Must Fear the Termite

Anyone who has traveled on Interstate 95 through Providence, Rhode Island, is familiar with the above giant insect. Largely known as "the Big Blue Bug," the four-thousand pound fiberglass termite has occasionally gone by the droll moniker of "Nibbles Woodaway." It was originally constructed in 1980 to serve as a unique advertisement for an extermination company, but the the cobalt termite has since become an iconic piece of roadside Americana. We at the Hyper Kitchen feel that more buildings should be adorned with colossal bug statues if we want to remain competitive in the twenty-first century world economy.


Would you like to know more?
-Visit New England Pest Control's office website

And I thought this was a glamorous job

Naraka is the underworld in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jainist mythologies. Unlike Western hells, in which sinners sizzle in hellfire for eternity, Naraka is only a temporary cleansing state of existence, in which misdeeds are met with punishment and then the damned are returned to the realm of the living. With that being said, it still looks absolutely miserable. Let this be a warning to all you readers who like debauchery: embrace virtue or be made into soup.

What lies beneath the Burmuda Triangle? Who killed JFK?

What was Captain Stewart's mistake?
For the answer to this story, turn to page 82.

Who built the pyramids? Who killed the dinosaurs?

Write your answer on a postcard and mail it to your nearest Hyper Kitchen Resource Center,

Megadeath

You're looking at the man with the highest IQ ever measured. His name was Herman Kahn. Joining RAND in 1947 (two years after the detonation of the first atomic-bombs) Kahn worked with scientists such as Edward Teller and Hans Bethe to develop more-powerful nuclear weaponry, ultimately producing the H-Bomb. When it became clear that the growing conflict between the United States and Soviet Union could escalate into a nuclear exchange, Kahn was one of the many minds enlisted by the American government to develop strategy for such an exchange. His job entailed contemplating scenarios of unspeakable destruction with clinical detachment and professionalism.


In 1960, he wrote a book on the subject called On Thermonuclear War. The principle assertion of the book was that a nuclear war was not only likely, but basically unavoidable given the escalating conflict between the superpowers. But Kahn insisted such a prospect was not as apocalyptic as one might think, and indeed a nuclear war could be be a winnable war. Kahn believed that while the devastation would be beyond human comprehension, (with many millions of people dead or poisoned and entire cities reduced to ash) mankind had previously endured torturous eras and emerged strong and stable. The medieval Black Plague was cited as an example. His projections of post-nuclear America depicted a nation where fallout was a daily inconvenience and deformed, irradiated babies were an unfortunate part of ordinary life. Such horror, according to Kahn, "would not preclude normal and happy lives for the majority of survivors and their descendants."

Despite reasoning that can only be called at best spurious and at worst insane, On Thermonuclear War was highly influential in shaping America's nuclear policy. Kahn emerged as one of the most prestigious cold war minds, working for various think-tanks in the ensuing decades. He died in 1983 of a massive stroke. While his name is not widely known amongst the public, he has an appropriate cultural legacy, providing the main inspiration for the frenzied Dr. Strangelove.


Would you like to know more?
-Read Kahn's "The Nature and Feasibility of War and Deterrence"
-Read this New Yorker review of "The Worlds of Herman Kahn"

Real men wear leopard print speedos

Angelo Siciliano was born in Italy in 1892, and moved with his family to Brooklyn, New York, twelve years later. A scrawny youth, Siciliano claimed to have been frequently harassed by neighborhood bullies. He became interested in fitness and bodybuilding, and dabbled in gymnastics at the YMCA. Unable to afford exercise equipment of his own, he was forced to find alternative methods. While visiting the zoo, he saw a tiger pacing about its cage and observed its mighty musculature. Inspired, he developed his own method of exercise, Dynamic Tension. The method was comprised of tensing one's muscles and then moving against that tension. It apparently worked quite well as by 1921 he was a circus strongman, having changed his name to Charles Atlas. The following year, he authored a comprehensive fitness program and began to market Dynamic Tension to the 97-pound weaklings of America. One of the ways he reached his target demographic was through comic-books, in ads like the one pictured, beginning in the forties and extending well into the seventies. Several generations of skinny bespectacled kids sent away for the program and Atlas made a considerable profit. The advertisement became a pop-culture icon (even inspiring a song in the Rocky Horror Picture Show), and has endured even after Atlas' death.

Would you like to be hero of the beach?
-Visit Charles Atlas.Com and man yourself up

The Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu

Find any cigarette-scented, mildewy comic-book from the seventies, and it's likely you'll discover one of Count Dante's advertisements for his Black Dragon Fighting Society. Despite his undeniably stylish mutton-chops/afro combination, it is generally accepted that Dante was not, in fact, the deadliest man alive.

"The Belly of the Beast" or "the Mouth of Madness"

June is now well past its prime, and the best course of action is to gather what remains and toss it to the shadows that those crawling, slithering things that dwell there can feed. That's right folks! Once again it is time for our Monster of the Month feature. As a heatwave holds Vermont in its burning grip, it seemed appropriate to explore the very depths of Hell itself! Today's Monster of the Month is the dreaded Acheron, plucked from medieval Christian mythology.

Originally, the name Acheron goes back to the days of the ancient Greeks. In the poetry of Homer, Acheron was the name of a river that flowed into the Tartarus, the Greek underworld. There are also legends that describe Acheron as a water-themed Titan, slain by Zeus in that celestial family feud. Aparently the name and it's underwordly associations endured over the subsequent centuries, travelling across Europe.

In mid-12th century Ireland, a monk named Brother Marcus wrote a supposed account of a knight named Tundale. This text, called "Visio Tnugdalus" as it was originally written in Latin, was wildly popular and may have influenced Dante's Devine Comedy. As the story goes, Tundale the knight was not an evil man, but arrogant and indulgent. For his comeuppance, he was stricken with a disease that rendered him bed-ridden and comatose. Tundale was expected to die, but awoke after three days and announced that angels had given him a tour of Hell, demanding that he tell the world what fate awaited the damned.

Hell, as described by Tundale, is not truly a place, but rather a living thing attended to by the Devil. Those who fall to Hell are lead to the monster Acheron, a giant with three gigantic throats and a mouth large enough to swallow nine thousand men. Acheron devours all who are thrown to him, and they fall into his enormous pit-like stomach. Sinners are left in torment, forever sealed in darkness as they are eternally digested amidst screeching monsters and wild animals, similarly trapped. Upon witnessesing such horror, Tundale returned to life a god-fearing, church-going man.

The name Acheron has since become a generic demonic name used in horror movies, fantasy role-playing games, and bargain-basement occultism. It has also been adopted by a truly awful Black Metal band from Florida. Who can say what crime humanity committed to deserve such a fate?


But don't take my word for it! You can read about it in a book!
-Jorge Luis Borges' superlative Book of Imaginary Beings
-A History of Hell

Just the facts, ma'am

I want that tie.