BD&DSM

…you know it exists

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The Doclopedia #1,947

State Secrets: New Mexico – Ants At A Picnic

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Did you ever see that old 1950s science fiction movie called “Them”? Giant ants in the New Mexico desert, created by atomic testing? It’s a pretty good movie.

The ants are real.

Oh, the aren’t nearly as big as the ones in the movie. No, these are only about the size of a chihuahua dog, which is still incredibly huge for an ant. The big problem is that these ants are vicious carnivores that the United States government has to work like hell to keep contained in the special lab where they study them.

These ants are their own new species, created right there in White Sands when they were testing the A Bomb. Fortunately, the initial nest was discovered pretty quickly, when it had only a queen and 60 workers. They were caught and taken to a lab where they promptly escaped from their enclosure and killed two technicians, who they promptly began eating. Using cold, the ants were subdued and placed in a much stronger enclosure.

It took them a month to escape from that one. This went on for 3 years, 9 enclosures and 7 human deaths.

The ants have been in their current enclosure for decades. It makes a supermax prison look like a fenceless yard.

Fun Fact: If a newborn Queen and her accompanying drones do not leave the nest within 2 hours, the workers kill them and feed then to the old Queen. If ants from two colonies meet, they immediately try to kill each other. That’s why the lab has three colonies. If one escapes, they release the second. They kill each other down to a handful of ants and the humans then kill the survivors. The third colony is there as a replacement.

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The Doclopedia #1,948

State Secrets: New York – Who Ya Gonna Call?

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New York State, and especially the larger cities and towns, are hotbeds of spectral activity. Ghosts have been popping up for centuries. Some are benign, some are mischievous and some are evil. So, why don’t we hear about 400+ years worth of massive ghost activity?

Because of the the De Vallenzetters family. The name means “The Trappers” and trapping ghosts is what they do. They’ve been in New York since the earliest days of the Dutch explorers and they’ve been trapping ghosts, spectres, spirits and other non-corporeal undead ever since.

Currently, there are estimated to be a couple of thousand members of the family in the state. The majority of them live in small towns and villages under assumed names, but there are plenty in the big cities, too. There are at least 50 in New York City alone.

The SXU has a distant, but cordial, relationship with the De Vallenzetters. They would love to know how the family traps ghosts, where they store them, and even if the family is fully human, but prudence prevents such questions.