A Hundred Million Souls Sucked Down In One Breath

[Shiftkitty]

This is the line to a Bruce Dickinson song called "Star Children" (I think). He's the lead singer for Iron Maiden, so this line of lyric is not unexpected from him. What struck me about it was that it defined something that has fascinated me all my life: massive death on an unimagineable scale. Thousand of people suddenly sharing the same fate in the same instant. Airline crashes, hundreds of people taken out of circulation regardless of social class, religious beliefs, age, gender, intelligence, strength. The terrorists at 9-11, all those people, once strangers now sharing a terrible fate not of their own choosing. Jonestown, especially the children who had the poison forced down their throats. They're gone just like that.

I don't recall ever going through anything like that, but I do feel I may have witnessed such a thing and was left marvelling at how or why I was spared. I've tried to see if it's linked to what I believe was a PL in Pompeii (volcanoes are also fascinating, and I look at the castings from Pompeii and feel that I knew some of those people), but it doesn't feel right. Nor does the Holocaust seem to have any link.

What mass destructions of human life, and I mean practically all at once, have there been? I'm hoping something rings a bell.

 

[usetawuz]

I think some of the largest die-offs were created by meteorite strikes...while I really have no idea and my thought was only sourced through popular scientific television, it would certainly fit the mold...large scale, near instantaneous blockage of 90% of all light from the surface of the earth...who ever didn't get killed by the impact would soon die of starvation and cold.


Another line of thought from the individual standpoint...while immensely tragic and upsetting for those left to carry the torch, so to speak, from a spiritual sense, it is simply culling the population and allowing a fresh start with new opportunities for the creation of future societies. For some reason I don't have a sense of fear about such a demise. Almost as if I've done that before...hmmm, I might have to research that.

 

[Shiftkitty]

As I was driving my deliveries to day I examined it some more, and I get the feeling that the people saw it coming. I'm inclined to say it was a fire and people were scrambling, trying to find a way out, so maybe my mind is just amplifying the number of people involved. I have the distinct feeling of being the only survivor, but not of being met by rescuers or anything. I think I saw the aftermath and was just flabbergasted that I alone survived out of all those people. I then walked away with my mind agog and locked onto wondering how and why. I see myself hiding in a locked room. I could hear people just feet away screaming and dying, but if I opened the door, the rush of people looking for safety wuld have condemned myself as well as them. I remember it being a time to think and not to feel. It was the hardest thing to not open that door and try to save at least one person. I think I eventually found a way out from that room and got away from the place, but details are notoriously sketchy. Either my imagination is running away with me or else it's the result of shutting off everything but the survival mode.


I do know that I hate being inside of a building where my ability to get out quickly is not readily apparent.


Another thing that stuck in my head while I was exploring the mass-death was that of ships. They don't just sink, you know. They die. You can hear the groans as beams go under stress when the stern goes skyward. The hull starts breaking, the boilers go, shaking the ship like a death rattle, and finally, the electrical goes out and she's doomed. It's very sad.


I'll have to explore that one a bit more, too. (Yes, I saw 'Titanic', and the scenes of the ship dying were what stayed in my mind for awhile. Jack and Rose? Uh, yeah, there were characters by that name doing some stuff, but when the ship started sinking...*shudder*)

 

[Nightrain]

One possible event, of particular interest to me, which has not been specifically recorded in our known ancient world history, involves what may have been a nuclear event. "Mohenjo-daro (lit. Mound of the Dead), situated in the province of Sindh, Pakistan, was one of the largest city-settlements of the Indus Valley Civilization. Built around 2600 BCE, it was one of the early urban settlements in the world, existing at the same time as the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Crete. The archaeological ruins of the city are designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is sometimes referred to as "an Ancient Indus Valley Metropolis".


What is remarkable about this site is that it suddenly came to an end around 1,500 BCE. Radioactive skeletal remains have also been found at the site, suggesting that the area was somehow exposed to a nuclear event of some kind. In addition a passage found in The Mahabharata, an ancient Indian text, describes what some people have deduced to be a nuclear event of some kind in that area.


Although I don't subscribe to theories that this civilization was destroyed by nuclear weapons, I do believe that there is much more to our human history than is presently known. I would go further to say, it is quite possible that one or more civilizations could have been destroyed in an instant by cosmic or natural phenomenon including gamma bursts, cometary explosions, or even a possible spontaneous nuclear meltdown caused by an over abundance of a particular type of uranium.


There are any number of possible scenarios in which huge numbers of people may have been wiped out without warning. Even if they had any warning, I imagine that very few would have known how serious the events were. Death, for many, comes quickly; and prolonged terror, I believe, most often comes at the hands of our fellow humans. It is hard to imagine the psychic impression left in the collective memory of those killed in large numbers. But, for some reason, I can imagine being in such a situation.

 

[Shiftkitty]

Funny you mentioned that! I remember hearing something about it and I wrote the name down without even thinking about it. Mohenjo-daro. I think I'll sniff around that direction and see if anything gels. Thanks for bringing it back to mind!

 

[kemetic18]

I find the recent earthquake and tsumani disaster in Japan absolutely heartwrenching. Last I heard somewhere around 11,000 people are still missing. I really respect the Japanese people's dignity and strength.


This has probably happened many times throughout history, recorded and not, and wiped out villages and cities in a blink of an eye.

 

[Aaab]

I became interested in this event as well when I learned there was a possible radiation issue with Himalayan salt, which is apparently mined somewhere nearby. I have come across references that have also linked this event to Sodom and Gomorrah.


You will find many references to it by googling "Ancient Nuclear Event".

 

[Cryscat]

Lets not forget the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan.


There is also the intense bombing of Britain and the intense fireboming of Dresden, Germany to consider.

 

[dr_what]

Another thing that stuck in my head while I was exploring the mass-death was that of ships. They don't just sink, you know. They die. You can hear the groans as beams go under stress when the stern goes skyward. The hull starts breaking, the boilers go, shaking the ship like a death rattle, and finally, the electrical goes out and she's doomed. It's very sad.


I'll have to explore that one a bit more, too. (Yes, I saw 'Titanic', and the scenes of the ship dying were what stayed in my mind for awhile. Jack and Rose? Uh, yeah, there were characters by that name doing some stuff, but when the ship started sinking...*shudder*)

i know what you mean. when i saw Titanic, the sound of the ship dying stayed with me, and thinking about it now, i just shivered. i hate that sound with a passion, right along with my hated/phobia of water i cant see the bottom of. i can hear it in my mind when i think about it. dont remember anything else from the movie but the ship sinking and the sound in the desolate water that it made.

 

[Shiftkitty]

I watch "Deadliest Catch", and whenever they play a distress call I hold my breath.


I have never had much interest in Titanic herself, but shipwrecks are fascinating. I find images of the Edmund Fitzgerald haunting, and when the Kursk went down and those men were dying inside, I was furious at the political games both from a human standpoint and from a screaming inside about a responsibility to getting the crew out of there. I can see images of USS Arizona, especially the bubbles of oil that blurb out, like she's still slowly bleeding to death, and I can't help but think of the men that are still aboard her. I watch "Deadliest Catch", and whenever they play a distress call I hold my breath thinking about the skipper and his responsibility to get his men off that boat. Even when I see a documentary on ancient shipwrecks, old sailing vessels that have been sleeping for centuries, I still think about the crew.


Yet I have no fear of the ocean. When we would go to Santa Cruz, my oldest brother taught me how to body surf and I would paddle out dangerously far. I was 7 or 8 and would swim out until anybody calling to me from the beach was a mere murmur and almost indiscernible. As the waves would build I would pretend I was nowhere near shore. I could tread water for a long time, and all the while I was pretending to be the lone survivor of ship wrecked by a storm, I was waiting for a good wave. Then a big one would build and I would paddle along with it, letting the water pick me up and coast me along. It was great fun getting to the top of the wave and pretending I was Neptune coasting along on the waters. Then I'd start to get near the shore and turn into a human surfboard! Ah, but I ramble...


But perhaps my rambling is significant. Lone survivor of a large loss of life, perhaps magnified to "thousands" by my terror, knowing that not panicking was my key to survival. When I was "playing Neptune", I never felt afraid of drowning. In fact, I felt cradled by the waves, safe as a baby in her mother's arms. Even the one time an undertow got me, I could not panic. I dug my hands into the sand (I was close to shore) and held my breath, feeling the waters trying to pull me back but knowing that all I had to do was wait. My discipline was rewarded with being allowed to breathe again.


Perhaps the lone survivor of a ship lost at sea in a storm? I should investigate shipwrecks from storms a little more.


(I have no fear of storms, either. In fact, I rather enjoy them!)