RSSWhat Really Killed The Dinosaurs
Jun 18
kosmo - See all 763 of my articles
This story originally ran on July 24, 2009. I’m re-running it today because I’ve always liked it.
Dramatic poetic license has been taken with this story. The dinosaurs featured in the story would not have interacted with each other in real life.
General Al Osoris paced the corridor of his military headquarters in a bunker at the base of the canyon. The great general had won many great victories, and the superior Allosaur race had captured vast amounts of enemy territory under his leadership. Nearly half the land had once been controlled by the Tyrannosaurs, the archenemy of the Allosaur people. The Tyrannosaurs were now a beaten and bloodied race, now controlling just a small fraction of their previous territory. The Allosaurs had become the unquestioned leader of the dinosaur world.
In the east, however, trouble loomed. It seemed that one nation was indeed questioning the leadership of the Allosaurs. The Raptors, led by General Velo Seeraptor, were attacking Allosaur strongholds. The fortress at Dinosova was currently under siege. Dinosova, like many Allosaur fortresses, was defended by Apatosaur soldiers. The Apatosaurs, with their massive bulk and lethal tails, had been the soldier of choice for many generations of Allosaur generals.
General Seeraptor had been able to threaten the fortress by weakening the Apatosaur army with attacks by Stegosaurs and Triceratops. These mercenaries, previously aligned with the Allosaurs, had taken money from the Raptors and had switched allegiances. They suffered significant losses during their attacks upon the Apatosaur defenders at Dinosova. However, they greatly outnumbered the Apatosaurs, and many Apatosaurs were being killed or seriously injured by the attacks. Dinosova was in danger of falling into enemy hands within days.
If that news was not bad enough, yesterday General Osoris had received news of light attacks against the fortresses of Jurassia, Cretalion, and Triasso. In these locations, the Stegosaurs and Triceratops were attacking with far fewer numbers than they were using at Dinosova. While some officers under Osoris’ command felt that General Seeraptor’s supply of mercenaries had been stretched thin because of the massive attack upon Dinosova, General Osoris felt that the Raptor leader was simply using these attacks to gauge the strength of the defense before lunching a full scale attack.
The General’s radio crackled with static.
“General Osoris,” came a voice , barely audible over the static. “This is commander Carni at Jurassia fortress. We are seeing a tenfold increase in the number of enemy soldiers involved in the attack upon our position.”
General Osoris unleashed a torrent of profanity and kicked a filing cabinet, leaving a massive dent in the cabinet’s metal frame. Indeed, Seeraptor had simply been biding his time before lunching an attack. The General’s radio operator was able to reach the fortress at Cretalion. The fortress commander relayed a similar message – Cretalion was also under seige. The radio operator tried in vain to reach the fortress at Triasso, but the response was dead silence. General Osoris doubted that this was due to a technical problem with the radio equipment. He was quite certain that Triasso had already fall to General Seeraptor’s troops.
This was a critical time in the history of the world. The Raptor attack must be stopped now, before they were able to wrest power from the exalted Allosaur race. The time had some to unleash the secret weapon. The canisters were mixed and loaded, and General Osoris gave the word to scramble the Pterosaurs.
The Pterosaurs flew until they reached the Raptor settlement of Toronso. Each Pterosaur, in turn, dived in close to the city, dropped her payload, and then quickly ascended and rejoined the squadron’s formation. When each had completed her mission, the squadron veered sharply and headed backed toward the military base at Tulowitz. Their arrival back at the base was cause for celebration, and they were greeted with hooting and hollering from the support staff. They had unleashed the first chemical weapons in the long history of dinosaur war. They were war heroes – defenders of the Allosaur nation.
Within a day, Raptors within Toronso began to succumb to the chemicals. Within four days, only a handful of Raptors within Toronso were still alive. General Seeraptor saw the handwriting on the wall. The Raptors agreed to a peace settlement, and the attacks upon the Allosaur strongholds ceased. Once again, all was right with the world.
Except that the chemicals were having a slightly differerent reaction that they had exhibited in the laboratory. In the laboratory, the chemical mixture had limited mobility and began to break down within a few days. In the real world, the chemicals were being carried great distances by the winds, and the chemicals were considerably more stable than they had been in the lab. In fact, the chemical cloud had barely weakened at all.
Three weeks after the attack on Toronso, the first Allosaurs began to feel the affects of the chemicals. Two weeks later, there was scarcely a village that was unaffected. Ten days after that, all of the dinosaurs were dead.
