Did you guys see Snowpiercer? Great movie! Circa 2013, directed by Bong Joon-ho. No? Well, you should. I didn’t know it was going to be quite that brutal. But I loved the concept and I had to see how it turned out. I don’t know why I always think post-apocalypse movies, books, and TV shows are going to be comedies. I guess because that’s how I think of Corporate Torsos. And my own wishful thinking, imagining that life in the collapse is gonna be hilarious somehow.
Anyhou, in the movie Snowpiercer, human civilization has ruined the earth with its climate manipulation tactics. They’re trying to reverse global warming, and they do, until things get really icy.
Controlling the weather…cool sci-fi concept, right? Wrong! Totally doable these days, thanks to geoengineering. And not only that, but it’s been around since the 1940s. Contentious, but in use.
One time I was looking for a room to rent in a new town, and my prospective landlady roommate informed me about HAARP and chemtrails. This is a conspiracy theory that claims when you see the visible condensation a plane leaves in its wake, that’s actually some “chemical” “they” are spraying for “reasons.” HAARP is a real research program. Chemtrails are a vague conspiracy theory that I don’t completely understand about the use of (all?) planes. My landlady roommate explained that if she didn’t put some kind of vinegar mixture on the front lawn to protect from the “chemicals” she’d get migraines.
I didn’t move in.
But if the conspiracy theory is that humans have the power to control the weather, that’s neither a conspiracy, nor a theory, just something that can currently happen.
Here are some examples:
- After the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown
- Los Angeles 2016, to end drought
- Doesn’t specify why they’re doing it, but they describe their weather modification program in South Texas
- Whatever weather warfare was happening in the 1970s, the UN wound up banning the use of weather modification for hostile purposes
I thought I was being pretty clever in the mid-90s when I created the concept of weather modification and weather warfare as part of the cli-fi plot for Corporate Torsos Need Not Apply, but it turns out I was 40-50+ years late.
