Every year around the end of the October, the red crabs of Christmas Island begin their march. Up to 100 million individuals leave their burrows in the forest and head to the shore in a scarlet tide of legs, claws and carapaces extensive enough to be seen from the air. They are driven by the most basic of biological imperatives: to spawn.

The islanders take the crustacean migration in good humour, closing roads and erecting diversions in an effort to curtail crab casualties and the tattering of motor vehicle tyres. After all, the annual show is a symbol of the distinctiveness of the Indian Ocean territory, and a big draw for tourists, naturalists, wildlife photographers, and documentary-makers worldwide.

Many visitors are impressed both by the size of the migration and by the islanders’ obvious concern for the crabs. Indeed, an outsider could be forgiven for believing that the spectacle has been an annual occurrence at Christmas Island since time immemorial, one surely destined to astonish countless future generations.

But the grand scale of the annual march– if not its very existence– is threatened by a foe far more ferocious than road traffic or the clumsy feet of camera-wielding tourists. And the origin of the migration itself is perhaps more recent, and more tainted, than many would believe. The story is one of inter-species meddling, conflict, and extinction, set in the context of a fragile island ecology. It involves protagonists of a two-legged, four-legged, six-legged and eight-legged variety.

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NORAD – Keeping an eye towards the sky to protect the United States.In the early dawn hours of November 9th, 1979, just a month and a half after the inexplicable Vela Incident, crews manning the underground missile silos along the American Great Plains received an urgent alert. Early warning satellites had detected that Soviet nuclear missiles were in flight, soon to rain apocalyptic fire and death upon the United States. This was not a drill (repeat, this was not a drill!). The soldiers manned their stations, and braced themselves for the unthinkable: the possibility of launching their ballistic nuclear missiles in retaliation. There was little time for considering options, as there were apparently hundreds of megatons worth of atomic weapons en route at high speeds. It seemed the world was about to end, courtesy of the world’s superpowers.

This alert was not limited to the US intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force. The entire U.S. air defense interceptor force was put on alert, and at least 10 fighters took off. The National Emergency Airborne Command Post– the “doomsday plane”– also took to the sky, although the president was not on board. The United States was falling into its doomsday contingency plan, preparing for the worst.

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Juan Fernandez IslandNow available in the Damn Interesting fragrance department: Ben Taylor’s “New Writer Scent.”

It’s a small spot on the map. Below the thirty-fourth degree south latitude, the island of Juan Fernandez casts a modest shadow in the vast eastern Pacific Ocean. In 1704, Alexander Selkirk, shouting from the beach of this forgotten island, saw a western breeze carry his ship and crewmates into the October horizon. His next four years would be in solitude as he struggled for survival and, in time, inspired Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe.

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Vela SatelliteOn 22 September 1979, sometime around 3:00am local time, a US Atomic Energy Detection System satellite recorded a pattern of intense flashes in a remote portion of the Indian Ocean. Moments later an unusual, fast-moving ionospheric disturbance was detected by the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, and at about the same time a distant, muffled thud was overheard by the US Navy’s undersea Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). Evidently something violent and explosive had transpired in the ocean off the southern tip of Africa.

Examination of the data gathered by satellite Vela 6911 strongly suggested that the cause of these disturbances was a nuclear device. The pattern of flashes exactly matched that of prior nuclear detections, and no other phenomenon was known to produce the same millisecond-scale signature. Unfortunately, US intelligence agencies were uncertain who was responsible for the detonation, and the US government was conspicuously reluctant to acknowledge it at all.

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In a world where everything from our automobiles to our underwear may soon run on electricity, more efficient portable power is a major concern. After a century of stagnation, chemical and ultracapacitor batteries have recently made some strides forward, and more are on the horizon. But the most promising way of storing energy for the future might come from a more unlikely source, and one that far predates any battery: the flywheel.

In principle, a flywheel is nothing more than a wheel on an axle which stores and regulates energy by spinning continuously. The device is one of humanity’s oldest and most familiar technologies: it was in the potter’s wheel six thousand years ago, as a stone tablet with enough mass to rotate smoothly between kicks of a foot pedal; it was an essential component in the great machines that brought on the industrial revolution; and today it’s under the hood of every automobile on the road, performing the same function it has for millennia—now regulating the strokes of pistons rather than the strokes of a potter’s foot.

Ongoing research, however, suggests that humanity has yet to seize the true potential of the flywheel. When spun up to very high speeds, a flywheel becomes a reservoir for a massive amount of kinetic energy, which can be stored or drawn back out at will. It becomes, in effect, an electromechanical battery.

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Damn Interesting is delighted to introduce Carol Otte, one of our brand-spanking-new contributors! Exclamation point!

Dictyostelium discoideum composite photo, Copyright © M.J. Grimson & R.L. Blanton; Biological Sciences Electron Microscopy Laboratory, Texas Tech UniversityOnce food had been plentiful, but no longer. In the early days of the colony, the amoebas had feasted on a rich supply of bacteria. But as the generations passed and the population swelled, they had hunted out their food supply. Now starvation threatens. Their home– a scrap of deer dung which once provided all their needs– has become a trap which they must escape if they are to survive. At last, one amoeba sends out a cry for help.

The starving amoeba begins to emit a chemical signal in the form of cyclic adenosine monophosphate, or cAMP. Nearby individuals sprout new pseudopods and crawl toward the source. They also begin to give off cAMP themselves, amplifying the call until the signal spreads to the far reaches of the colony. Amoebas cannot concurrently detect and produce cAMP, so they alternate, and the cells trace out intricate spiral patterns as they surge forward in waves.

The amoebas pile on top of one another in growing numbers until so many of them have joined the heap that this pile of microscopic single-celled organisms becomes visible to the naked eye. At first their behavior might seem odd; to gather together in the face of starvation surely ought to end in cannibalism or death. Not so, for they are capable of an extraordinary and rare transformation. The amoebas set aside their lives as individuals and join ranks to form a new multicellular entity. Not all the amoebas will survive this cooperative venture, however. Some will sacrifice themselves to help the rest find a new life elsewhere.

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This article was written by Scott Cianciosi, one of our shiny new Damn Interesting writers!

The Ruins of AlamutThe nobleman awoke on a sunny spring morning. Feeling uncomfortable, he shifted himself, only to notice an extra weight on his pillow. Groggily, he opened his eyes. The glint of a blade stared back at him, its handle leaving an indentation in the pillow’s surface. Horrified, he rushed to his guards to question them about the previous night. Confused, they assured him that nothing of note had happened. Further investigation found that the windows were securely fastened, and there were no signs of forced entry. Just as he was ready to tear the room apart, the nobleman noticed something. Tucked under his pillow was a note that simply stated, “You have been warned.”

Such an encounter may sound like bad fantasy fiction, but this was a very real fear of the rich and powerful during the first few centuries of the second millennium. Hundreds of nobles, merchants, scholars, and generals received these notes, usually delivered when the recipient was at his most vulnerable. Only the lucky ones were given the courtesy of a note, since the shadowy organization that delivered them often left their targets dead rather than merely terrified. The story of the Hashshashin, or Assassins, is cloaked in mystery, and much of the truth about them was long ago lost to war and time. Their influence, however, changed the course of history and spawned the very word we use today to describe calculated, politically-motivated murder.

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