thedoomedhometown

[thedoomedhometown]

[thedoomedhometown]

My apologies

I'm entirely unable to continue with the Chrono Trigger analysis/post. I kind of just hit a wall with it. Would anyone still be interested if I just tried to move on to other stuff for a while? Like writing tips on writing disasters, trying to analyze other events in other games and books etc?

[thedoomedhometown]

(Also yes, I'm still here, just completely writer's blocked re Chrono Trigger and think I should just re-poll and move on to something else)

The thing about the naming of incidents is that it's a linear trade-off between crypticness and ominousness, and where you are on that spectrum depends entirely on the number of words in said name. "The Noodle Incident" is wonderfully vague, but if you're hearing about "the Sandstone Valley Incident of 1922", you know some Shit Went Down.

[thedoomedhometown]

Planet Eater Drops In (Chrono Trigger, Lavos - Part One, The Beginning)

So I'm going to lead here with some disclaimers and prefaces to address some possible problems with this event analysis - because they're things I've been working around writing it.

1: This event is two events we do NOT have very much observational or living experience on - (asteroid impacts and supervolcanic eruptions) - one that is a possible hypothetical only within the context of either (a Verneshot) - and one that's purely video-game logic/a wizard did it (alien invasion/sentient planet eating creature). So while I will try my best to focus on what can be explained or described or compared - at times (especially wrt the 12000 events) I will just shrug and go "a wizard did it" because, spoilers: a wizard DID do it. At the same time, even the disaster caused by purely impossible means shows us something about what often causes/worsens disasters, so I'll discuss that in those contexts.

2: I'm going with the timeline in Chrono Trigger and ending it with the defeat/non-defeat of Lavos in that game. If it's incongruent with Chrono Cross, that's why.

3: There will be spoilers for Chrono Trigger. I cut the post at this point for that reason: this entire post is probably a big spoiler.

A planet-eating creature encased in a large shell capable of surviving atmospheric entry lands on the planet in the game Chrono Trigger, impacting and burrowing into the planet in an effective asteroid impact, at the game's date of 65000. Humanity on the planet is changed, as are its climatic conditions, shifting tropical conditions to an ice age.

While the calculations don't exactly work as they would for Earth, I would assume the asteroid/Lavos shell would have been slightly smaller than the Chixculub impactor, because a) we only see one small area/one side of the planet in the game and b) the humanoids, which in the game's context, coexist with the dinosaurs and reptites, survive. So the impact must have been big enough to induce an ice age/nuclear winter, but not big enough (as Chixculub in reality was) to wipe out everything aside from fish/small lizards/the smallest mammals.

A couple of other unique factors for the planet in this particular setting is that it is both relatively new despite being over 66 billion years old and it is itself a living organism per the Gaia Hypothesis, plus what we see of the planet is only one side if we take Chrono Cross as canon, where its El Nido peninsula appears to be on the other side of the world. The planet is, due to this, very geologically active with a very close to the surface volcanic system and an accelerated rate of continental drift (e.g. with continental drift and weathering happening within 600 years)

When Lavos falls from space, it penetrates the atmosphere at a very fast rate - possibly due to a guided approach rather than the randomness of real-world impactors - and smashes into a mountain in a volcanic field, instantly sinking into the ground there (though unrealistically, obviously, your party can be right near that without being vaporized ;) ) - which might have possibly reduced the damage from a water impact or land impact, as it seemed to sink instantly, itself consumed in the soft rock and magma, which enveloped it akin to some materials in the superheated ball experiment genre, which would have reduced its immediate impact to that of a local/regional ice age from the ensuing eruptive activity, over an atmospheric breakup or the amount of debris thrown into space. (I could be wrong here, but it does seem an equally valid explanation for why as well as "magic," so I threw it in.)

As depicted in the game, the initial impact of Lavos is definitely not as dramatically world-ending as the real-world Chixculub impact, its only seeming actual damage (at least before we see the entire side of the world at 12000 in an ice age) being the defeat of the reptites and large dinosaurs, while the humans (which, in this setting, were co-existant with dinosaurs, unlike real humans which were not) and an abrupt end to a tropical climate. The caldera in which it landed seemed to contain the worst of its immediate effects, essentially mitigating the disaster in a way.

That's why I would consider the Lavos impact itself at the time not to have been the problem, as much as what it crashed into - a supervolcanic caldera, which would build up around itself as time passed, an accretion of rock layers and magma layers that slowly embedded into the planet. And here's where I want to introduce a very important concept, and one that anyone needs to understand regarding disasters of any kind: often, it is not always the initial event that causes most of the problems/damage/illness/injury as much as what that event leads to. Every disaster that cuts power will then lead to all of the consequences of a sudden, unexpected power outage, which will itself lead to other problems such as water/sewage failures, failures of life support machinery, etcetera. The number one cause of death in many disasters is diarrhea as a result of food poisoning or heat stress or bacterial infection. There are very few disasters that are "clean," e.g. one single incident that has no follow up or connected events for anyone involved, that all that needs to be done is a bit of cleanup and moving on.

Sometimes an event that seems like nothing at the time/a small problem at the time can become something, or a chain of somethings that expands well beyond the initial problem.

And that is what the next posts for Chrono Trigger's triple disaster will go into: what happens when human greed meets the capacity for something that seems to offer it encouragement? What happens when a long-forgotten disaster decides to pop itself out of the planet again?

[thedoomedhometown]

Started writing the Chrono Trigger post, realized it's basically three different disasters if not more, it's in drafts with a little done. Apologies for making everyone wait longer for it, I just hit some major writer's block + this is actually way more complicated than Doma was.

[thedoomedhometown]

As a side note… I am really annoyed by one thing about Star Trek.

“Replicated food is not as good as real food.”

That’s ridiculous.  In Star Trek, replicator technology is part of the same tech tree as transporters.  Replicated food would be identical to the food it was based on, down to the subatomic level. 

[thedoomedhometown]

tsunami zone that carries the corrosive substance in the waves

[thedoomedhometown]

And the poll winner is

Chrono Trigger, with the disaster being Lavos: an asteroid impact and the living being within the asteroid emerging billions of millennia later, creating a supervolcanic eruption and a verneshot (displacement of material into the upper atmosphere, for it to rain back down equivalent to an asteroid impact/meteor storm)

I'm going to be brushing up on research on this and writing it up as best as I can over this week - like some of our disasters (e.g. the close runner up of Xenogears' Disc 2 with nanomolecular gray goo/mutation zombie apocalypse) this is one that's mostly speculative/hypothetical - even the closest analog we have in real life (the Chixculub impact) is something no one living thankfully experienced, although there's smaller impacts that have been (Tunguska, Chelyabinsk) and a lot can be inferred from those and calculations from nuclear weapon yields and the like.

Similarly, no supervolcanic eruption has happened in the real world since Krakatoa, so while it's somewhat more easy to model from living memory than an extinction level asteroid (and we do know more about volcanoes and how they work than asteroids and comets) there has never been a true verneshot within human existence (which would require a lot more power than even Krakatoa provided, it would likely need at least a level of the Toba catastrophe)

Congratulations to the people who voted for Chrono Trigger, and I shall have this up sometime within the week: I'm going to do some more research, update what I know from what real events and science we do have, so while I'm obviously speculating, I'm not JUST regurgitating something like Supervolcano or History Channel Doomsday and covering the same territory they did but for the setting of Chrono Trigger. (And unlike Doomsday, I promise there will be NO CGI butt plugs presented as Balanced Rock at Arches National Park. Not even joking, I just saw that episode again...)

Also, to be truly pedantic, since Lavos is a "living being," this would also qualify as an "alien attack," but I'm going with "asteroid, supervolcano, and verneshot" since that's the apparent effects and how it did its damage - it didn't say release armies or biological substances, didn't intentionally terraform aside from the results of its arrival, didn't take over existing power structures (but did get found/used by them) and seemed to do most of its damage just from being an impacting object and then from coming out from the ground.

Although that might be an interesting point for the write-up about true accidents/purely natural disasters/competing access need events: e.g. disasters that no one could have prevented because everyone/everything involved was operating exactly as intended/just as it does, and the bad consequences could not have been reasonably foreseen/were foreseen way too late, or it wasn't really anyone's specific fault but just one of bad placement for population/competing needs - e.g. in this fictional scenario, a planet devourer that just needs a solid meal, unfortunately the place is populated.

[thedoomedhometown]

Poll update: Chrono Trigger is ahead again, with Xenogears slightly behind. Someone voted on open poll but suggested nothing.

17 more hours to vote :)

[thedoomedhometown]

Another reminder to vote in the poll.

If the poll stays where it is (the 50/50 split of Lavos and Deus) I will flip a coin to choose which goes first, then follow up with the other, then poll again after writing the posts on both. If one wins out, I'll go with it, then poll again including the runner up as I did before.

[thedoomedhometown]

Reminder to vote in the poll! 3 days left and we have a solid tie between

Xenogears Disc 2 (a Gray Goo nanomachine consumption/replication disaster combined with a genetic mutation/zombie apocalypse with the Wels transformations)

Chrono Trigger BC 65000 with Lavos impacting as an asteroid + 1999 AD if the future did not change with a Supervolcano/Verneshot disaster)

The runners up also at 7.1 percent each are

Star Ocean: The Second Story R's Kurik (An earthquake and generated tsunami disaster)

The Sims (Fire)

[thedoomedhometown]

some disaster writing tips in between

that conversation I had in notes with @mettasing actually reminded me of something you'll probably be seeing a lot here, and that I want to include as its own standalone writing tip/writing advice for writing disasters. In real life, every disaster has central, root causes: for example, pilot error sends a plane into a mountainside or another plane. A tornado (or straightline winds, but let's be honest, non weather people probably don't know or care especially if they've just been hit, and at a certain point the difference is academic) turns a mobilehome park into shreds of what used to be people's lives and possessions. A war breaks out because, in the end, one person or group of people decided that for whatever reason, their neighboring people did not deserve to live in peace. Etcetera.

That said, there is often a lot of contributing causes: the pilot was tired or had bad information from their instruments or the airline was trying to squeeze as much profit as possible and let safety lapse for it. People are living in mobilehomes or other substandard housing in a tornado prone area because it's the only thing they can afford, or their society decided that building earthcovered domes was ugly or not workable or whatever. An extreme rightist regime has taken over the government of the aggressor, and know war is a fairly reliable way to unite their country and shut up dissidents. Then there's mitigating factors and exaggerating factors: the plane only has a near miss rather than a crash because TCAS works and tells the pilot to pull up, or conversely turns into a flaming fireball with no survivors when it crashes because it just fueled up leaving the airport. Instead of hitting a mobilehome park, the tornado hits an empty field and only destroys already-harvested crops, or conversely the tornado hits the mobilehome park at full strength with no warning. The regime's war plans get leaked to such intense public outrage that they find themselves removed in one way or another, or conversely, they win the war with a near-instant crushing defeat and start going on an entire campaign to subjugate every single neighbor into an empire. These are something you need to consider the most when writing a fictional disaster - very few disasters happen in a total vacuum with nothing building up, no evidence of any sort of problem, solely being due to the root cause, and/or having nothing that in any way mitigates or exaggerates their impact. (the only ones that fall under this are typically things that are so overwhelming nothing can change the outcome - e.g. a massive asteroid impact on a society with no space capabilities at all, a black hole forming in close proximity to an inhabited planet whether Earth or your fictional setting, something happening before or after the capacity to understand what causes it or to prepare or warn for it has been developed) Writing these and showing them to some degree (or even just implying them) but just being aware of the geography of your setting, its economies and rich/poor divide, its political status, its level of scientific knowledge, all sorts of small details like that will feed into making a disaster in your story have a degree of depth and meaning to it that goes beyond "oh no, my entire village vanished off the face of the map, who knows and who cares why, on to the next quest!"

[thedoomedhometown]

Doma Castle from FFVI: Magical, Chemical, or Both?

The event: In FFVI, when the Gestahlian Empire decides to invade Doma Castle, a castle situated on a river moat with water running under it, Kefka decides to poison the entire castle via the water supply rather than engage in combat, therefore engaging in an act of chemical warfare.

The water of the river changes color (at least as well as we can see in pixel art), and people begin to succumb to the poison, with those closest to the river - the guards and such - falling first. Those in lower levels of the castle itself proceed to die, with effects ascending quickly but also dissipating quickly outdoors, while collecting indoors: the king is fatally poisoned, but a guard walking down through it survives long enough to die and, when the character Cyan runs downstairs, he seems relatively unaffected in that he doesn't show effects.

The analysis: First, let's just get the simplest Occam's razor out of the way, because that's not the point of this kind of analysis, but I'll acknowledge it once again for the sake of those who somehow missed the pinned post, the description, and everything else, to save you the effort of leaving such a low-effort comment and looking like a troll

Simplest Occam's razor: "It's only a game, a Wizard Did It , it was just magic, and Cyan had plot armor because him dying would have meant the end of the game."

Bad-faith Occam's razor: The above, but add "and it says SOMETHING about you that you'd put this much thought into it"

I am fully aware of both arguments, and I recognize the validity of the first as a possible and indeed probably the most likely interpretation. (it is, indeed, a game and a piece of fiction, the writers probably didn't care or if they did didn't expect anyone else to, it was just magic to advance the plot).

That said: if you're still here reading this, I assume you came for the deeper analysis. Then join me below the cut, to take apart the events of Doma Castle, as described above.

The geography alone is the first clue we would be looking at here: a moat of water likely connected to a water system of some sort, and the water color was changed. This would point to whatever substance/action was involved being capable of reacting with water. While the pixel depiction is purple, we'll just assume the color change could have been to any color because depicting simple muddiness or cloudiness would not have been able to depict well.

That contact with the poisoned water or consumption of it was not necessary to kill points to the next point: whatever went into the water had to be a substance that converted to a toxic vapor when combined with the water, or that displaced breathable air and created dead air.

Also, the deaths progressed inward and upward, yet dispersed quickly. The only character that died from exposure at the highest point indoors was the king, who was already older and weaker, and Cyan was either unaffected or less affected. This shows that whatever was involved was something that collected at ground level, blew through the castle, and dispersed with ventilation as it did, only strongly affecting weaker persons indoors once it reached height.

Generally, this would mean the substance either created dead air at low heights but didn't wholly displace oxygen the higher up and more indoors the characters were - similar to carbon dioxide in the real life disaster of [TW: graphic descriptions of real human death due to asphyxiant gas exposure] Lake Nyos's limnic eruption

OR

was a chemical substance that reacts with water, similar to the chemical "accident" due to utter negligence at [TW: graphic and very traumatizing depictions of real human death due to toxic chemical exposure, racism, corporate greed so bad it is indistinguishable from malice, enraging content] Bhopal, India involving the reactive chemical methyl isocyanate. [Interestingly enough, I wonder if, seeing with the name of the character involved, Cyan, this was actually partial inspiration if any of the canon writers knew of it? Although that is super speculative, and I do not have any proof of it!]

And this brings me to something to a theoretical way the characters could have survived the disaster -aside from having gas masks or other proper PPE - if you want to do an alternate take - those at the top of the castle should have moved indoors and sealed off the outside as much as they could immediately, and those already indoors should have moved upward and inward to the last of the safely breathable air for the time being, waiting for the concentration to disperse enough that moving down and out away from the water would be safer.

The geography was also probably what helped contribute to the survival of anyone who made it out and downward after such as Cyan - the flowing water and wind would have both contributed to dispersing either carbon dioxide and restoring survivable oxygen levels and/or dispersing MIC to a survivable level of immediate exposure, which, as time passed, would have made the source area that he ran past safer than the inside of the castle for a long period of time, where confined spaces would have remained "dead space" or toxic levels of MIC would have collected in less ventilated areas. By choosing evacuation rather than continuing to hole up in the castle once the outdoor amount had dispersed to a less-fatal level, even if inadvertently to go join the fight against the troops following up after the poisoning, he likely saved his own life.

So one takeaway I want to offer here is that even sometimes just the few smallest clues in your writing of a disaster can indicate what it is, what caused it, and what it does. You don't need to do an entire infodump like this analysis - just pick a few consistent things, a few consistent threads that can be picked out under examination. For example, the detail that the water changed color pointed out water reactivity as a component and that the guard near it died first followed how exposure generally works - e.g. had the king died first, or characters at distance died first like some random on the other side of the planet, that would have made this just "who cares, a wizard did it" rather than something that, the more you look at it, becomes an even deeper and more horrifying thing just because even a few, possibly research-informed, details were included, just enough to make it make a degree of sense.]

And because I want to offer some advice that might help you if you ever are unlucky enough to suffer a Bhopal or an East Palestine or [TW for lots of descriptions of human suffering and death] any of the other innumerable chemical accidents that have happened in the real world (since in the real world, you are FAR more likely to be the victim of corporate greed and unsafe practices than a psychopathic clown supervillain who won't stop at anything) OR if you're writing the survival or aftermath of a chemical-related disaster in a story of your own: If you see/smell something unusual or see a mist or fog or smoke - especially after a nearby explosion or fire or in a closed, confined space - and/or if you feel suddenly, overwhelmingly ill, or you see other people who seem unconscious or dead especially in a closed confined space or near it - Move as far away from the dead/dying/more severely ill as possible, do not go to help them because you will likely join them rather than be of any help. ideally upwind and into the closest, tallest indoor space with clean air, turn off HVAC systems, and wait for instructions on when/if to evacuate.]

[thedoomedhometown]

Only 5 hours left on the poll. So far, only two votes (one mine) but Doma from FF6 is ahead for our first disaster/event analysis.

Once the poll closes, I will likely begin writing the post within the next couple days.

Hopefully I followed those of you who liked from this blog - if I followed you from my main I apologize

[thedoomedhometown]

The Doomed Hometown FAQ, CW/TW, and other info pinned:

The Doomed Hometown (name taken from the trope, obviously) is a project I started because I find disasters and response to them an interesting field of study, and because I enjoy overthinking and worldbuilding for fiction, and at least a few other people do. The point of posts here is to take a given fictional calamity or disaster from anything (a book, a video game, a movie, a TV show, an anime or manga, whatever) and give it an analysis and in-depth deep dive with research, knowledge from real-world disasters, application of known scientific knowledge as of 2025, speculation on causes and effects, and more.

Along the way, hopefully, you will have at least read something moderately interesting. Ideally, you will have learned how to flesh out calamities and disasters in a way beyond how much fiction often handwaves them/doesn't deep dive them enough ("oh yeah, an atomic explosion happened in my backyard, now to the NEXT episode where we care more about the budding office romance filler!). Maybe, even, you'll have learned something that might save your or someone else's life if Shit Hits The Fan where you are in real life. (And to meet that quotient right here right now: Never stand near a glass window in high winds, during an active shooter event, or if things are exploding nearby.) ----- CW/TW for every post: the very nature of this tumblr blog means that there will likely be frank discussion of calamities and disasters both natural and manmade, injury, death, violence, greed causing human suffering, and almost all things related. Posts will have specific TWs/CWs if they go above and beyond that.

Real events will often be referenced but will be specifically tagged, and I will do my best to be respectful around referencing them (e.g. I will not post pictures of real dead bodies or real gore etcetera, though there may be textual references to such or reference links might show such if it is inescapable)

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Almost all content here aside from the event being discussed itself - which will obviously be a 10 on The Scale of Canon/Headcanon Likelihood will range from 3 (canon neutrality, not contradicted directly except, possibly, by "it's just a ____, who cares") to 9 (implicit canon, with proof). Average range however will be a 4-7, as the point is to death of the author the event and be "if I was writing this disaster with research, how would that happen."

On that note, if you are literally angry that someone is doing this and devoting time to it - I cannot help you with that except by advising you to block this tumblr and move on rather than get angry that someone cares Too Much about something you don't.

On the other hand, constructive, researched commentary, questions, and criticism (and participation via comments or reblogs) are very welcome! I only bite the heads off of trolls.

Political leaning by me (the only current poster) is leftist minarchist/socialist. Disasters are often inherently political both in real life and fiction, so that will be addressed and handled. That said people of almost all political leanings are welcome to read and interact, except fascists and nazis, who will be banned on sight for obvious reasons. Being an asshole to other people (including the use of slurs or blaming real marginalized people for any disaster *because* of who they are rather than any specific actions) will also get you a block.

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Finally, the Suggestion Box is named that because it's a place for you to suggest things for me to cover. Of course I may not (and I might do stuff out of order, or I might just not feel like it etc). If I don't really know or care about a specific thing enough to cover it and you do, I am potentially open to your submitting a post to be linked/reblogged. (For example, I'm not a Marvel superfan so if you want the Thanos Snap covered, I might ask for you or someone else to cover it, then link or RB your post.) You can also comment on posts I've made myself there, if you don't feel like adding your input in a comment or want to keep it private. That said, anons are OFF because I want to keep feedback on topic and constructive, something anons are notoriously bad at.

Anyway, that should be all, and now for my poll on what you want to see me cover. This will name some events, mostly from video games and one anime, but there's an Open Poll slot for you to choose and comment with something you would rather prefer.