Friday, April 27, 2012

Pentagon, defense industry, legislators respond to professor's warnings

WASHINGTON, DC (CJ Press) Distinguished Columbia chemistry professor Ronald Breslow recently predicted that there were advanced life forms on other planets, and that they would probably take the form of dinosaurs:
"...on a planet similar to ours without the asteroid collision it is unlikely that human types would be there, more probably advanced lizards (dinosaurs)... I just warn that they might well see us as food."
This news has struck Washington's defense community as a threat to be responded to. In response to queries, Dr. Jonathan D. Router of the Extraterrestrial Threats Institute noted that "If Professor Breslow is to be believed about the space dinosaur threat, we should be able to safely predict that these advanced lizards have also achieved intrastellar space flight. Our innocent, blue planet is completely defenseless against the space dinosaur threat and their ravenous ways. We need to prepare against this menace."

General Marcus Wolfson of SPACEDINOCOM (a sub-command of NORTHCOM) noted, "With the budget cuts that the Pentagon has been facing, we've scaled back our extraterrestrial threat defenses. We're really glad that Professor Breslow has warned the general public about these issues."

When reached for comment, lawmakers would not talk on the record; a distinguished senator was granted anonymity in order not to reveal conversations within Congress. Said the senator, "It's our understanding that SPACEDINOCOM is interested in setting up a base and a new section of NORTHCOM titled the Space Dinosaur Defense Forces. That base would be a real boon to our economy -- also, we'd like our state to be best defended against space dinosaurs. Wouldn't you?"

When pressed for details on potential defense strategies, General Wolfson would only reveal the following:  "We understand that their chemical makeup may be the mirror image of ours. We believe this is the key to our defense, and so we've set up a chemical synthesis laboratory to develop mirror image biomolecules (amino acids and sugars) such that we could better understand their biology and develop offensive techniques. We understand that there are a lot of unemployed chemists, so we're expecting to be able to hire people quickly to begin to deal with this threat." 

7 comments:

  1. "We've also started work on enantiomeric syntheses of all the big toxins, like ent-strychnine and (+)-aflatoxin."

    "We've also extended a $10 million grant to K.C. Nicolaou for ent-maitotoxin, which brought a smile...quickly fading when he realized he'd have to start over from the beginning."

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  2. I see these creatures every morning when I look in the mirror, at least it wakes me up!

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  3. Maybe we can send our best pharma management to visit their planet. After all, they are our most potent weapons for killing previously successful eco-systems.

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  4. Anonymous, I'm shocked, that would be cruelty to animals. Anyway if they all went who would decide on the job cuts etc.

    It may be better to send all the unemployed chemists, they may just find it more empathetic to their cause as I'm sure these dinos have solved the problem of pharma management (they eat them).

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  5. Has anybody read Harry Turtledove's World War series? Reptiles invade and interrupt World War II. Perhaps Breslow is aiming for the sequel.

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  6. The only thing I have to say to this is "What?"

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looks like Blogger doesn't work with anonymous comments from Chrome browsers at the moment - works in Microsoft Edge, or from Chrome with a Blogger account - sorry! CJ 3/21/20