I don’t know if you guys are aware of this, but a giant 260-foot-wide crater just opened up out of nowhere in Siberia. That seems bad. Scientists have already offered up some explanations, including this one, which we brought to your attention earlier.
Anna Kurchatova from Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Centre thinks the crater was formed by a water, salt and gas mixture igniting an underground explosion, the result of global warming. She postulates that gas accumulated in ice mixed with sand beneath the surface, and that this was mixed with salt – some 10,000 years ago this area was a sea.
Yes. Fine. Okay. Whatever you say, scientist. But I still have a few questions.
What is going on in there?
Whaaaaaat iiiiiiiiiis goooooooooing onnnnnn innnnn therrrrrre?
What if a monster comes out of it?
What if two monsters come out of it?
What if a monster comes out but it’s, like, a friendly monster, and it just goes around helping old ladies get their cats out of trees and stuff?
What if the friendly monster gets way into modern American culture?
What if it gets a reality show?
Would you watch a reality show called Monster Makeover, in which the Siberian Hole Monster and Tim Gunn go around teaching schlubby dads how to dress?
What if they start each episode by taking a dad’s old clothes — slacks, miscellaneous three-button shirts that were given away for free at company golf tournaments, etc. — and having the monster set them ablaze in the street with its fire breath?
Why aren’t more monsters into fashion?
Is it so ridiculous to think a monster might want to look nice?
What if the government gets the monster and takes it to a secret Area 51 style facility in the desert?
And what if they try and try to reach it and unlock it’s secrets, but it refuses to cooperate?
And what if the only person it gets along with is an old janitor named Carl who sneaks him in fried chicken from Popeyes?
And what if Carl ends up getting killed by a stray bullet, a casualty of the increasingly dangerous gang violence that has been taking over the old neighborhood?
And what if the monster hears about Carl’s death and becomes enraged, breaking free of his shackles to seek justice on the streets?
And what if he buys sunglasses and a sweet XXXXXXXXL leather jacket and starts running around like Denzel Washington in Man on Fire, laying waste one-by-one to the guilty parties, often in the most violent manner imaginable?
And what he was voiced by Vin Diesel and this was all part of a pitch for a movie I’m working on titled Monster Revenge: Out for Blood?
THEN WHAT?
That thing where the scientists tried to calm us down by saying it’s probably just a giant underground explosion caused by global warming … uh, isn’t that just as scary as the monster?
Did you even know that could happen?
Why haven’t scientists been leading with this information when they warn us about global warming?
Like, don’t get me wrong, melting glaciers and rising ocean levels and sad polar bears floating around on tiny ice rafts are all very troubling, but wouldn’t “GIANT UNDERGROUND EXPLOSIONS LEADING TO GAPING — POSSIBLY MONSTER-FILLED — HOLES OPENING UP IN SIBERIA” move the needle a little more if you were trying to inspire people to take action?
Wouldn’t that make for really fun political debates?
I mean, what would be better than a debate where one candidate tries using the “all the science isn’t in yet” climate change defense and the other candidate starts hopping up and down and shouting “THERE’S NO TIME TO WAIT FOR ALL THE SCIENCE! THE MONSTERS ARE COMING ANY MINUTE! YOU’VE SEEN THE HOLES! ARE YOU WEAK ON MONSTERS, SIR?! YOU’RE RISKING THE LIVES OF THE CHILDREN”?
Would you vote for a candidate whose entire platform was based around monster preparedness?
What if he or she was, like, really convincing?
If you did, but he or she ended up losing, and our nation’s lack of adequate monster prevention strategies backfired and led to widespread monster-related suffering and destruction, would you drive around the wreckage in a car with a bumper sticker that said “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted For The Other Guy”?
Or would that be in poor taste?
Do you think we should put Michael Bay in charge of our global warning awareness program?
If you were a climate change denier and Michael Bay made a CGI-filled, three-hour, $300 million dollar educational film that featured dozens of very tan, very sexy supermodels running for cover while Channing Tatum fired shoulder-mounted laser bazookas at 100-foot-tall winged lizardsasquatches that rose from a gaping global-warming-created hole in Siberia, would it change your mind?
If not, what would it take?
Would it change your mind if Channing Tatum’s sidekick was a wise-cracking, half-cyborg golden retriever named Sergeant Kaboom?
Still not interested?
Well, now who’s the monster, pal?
If a big huge hole like this opened up on your property, what would you do?
Probably freak all the way out, right?
Assuming you had enough surrounding land and could verify — like, for sure — that it wasn’t a doom-filled Armageddon crater, would you consider filling it with water and turning it into a fun summer vacation getaway, with concerts and hotels and a little nightlife?
You know, like Lake Havasu or Lake Tahoe?
What would you call you it?
Do you think an eye-catching, provocative name like Lake Doom or Lake Hell would bring in more tourists or scare most of them away?
Or would you go in the other direction and give it a name like Lake Wonderful, complete with an informative slogan that assuages people’s fears, like “100% Monster Free”?
If you were booking a trip and came across a brochure that said “Lake Wonderful: 100% Monster Free,” would you think it was a trap?
It sounds like a trap, right?
What if there was an attractive couple water-skiing on the front of the brochure?
If five years went by and you turned Lake Wonderful into a successful tourist destination (not Disney big, but respectable), but you started hearing strange rumblings — like, monster-y rumblings — coming from the lake at night sometimes, what would you do?
Would you shut down the resort immediately and bring in a team of investigators to check things out, or would you just, you know, wait a little, to see if it goes away?
I mean, no need to scare everyone and dredge up all those monster-related fears again if it’s nothing, right?
And anyway, what are the chances a monster would just lay dormant under a busy lake for five years without making a peep?
Yeah, it’s probably nothi-… wait… what was that sound?
Oh God. OH GOD. IT’S HAPPENING. EVERYBODY RUN. RUN FOR YOUR LIVES. IT’S NOT SAFE ANYWHERE.