Andromeda strain hits Peruvian village

Not quite, but a number of villagers have become ill with an unknown ailment after a meteorite hit their remote rural pueblo: Link. Crater shown in photo at left (image: © La Republica).

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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xadrian

This has got to be turned into a graphic novel. I’m sorry all those people are sick, but what a neat idea for a story.
Anonymous

Alarmist hypothesis:

Nuclear powered military/spy satellite makes unscheduled re-entry, crashes, releases remaining hydrazine or other toxic fuel. Core melts down and starts sinking, releasing large amounts of radiologically contaminated steam.

The townspeople better get out of there, pronto.
Dr. Atomic

I was wondering when Boing Boing was going to run this story.
Dennis

I wonder whether the heat is from underground geothermal activity in the area? I agree that most likely it’s some sort of chemical toxin, assuming that it’s not suggestion/ negative placebo.

It could also be a satellite with radionucleides as #2 said, but I doubt that you’d get the symptoms they are seeing. Any fuel in a satellite would have burned up.

I remember the Andromeda Strain. My favorite part is where the Atomic Self-Destruct gets activated and they’re racing around trying to cancel it.
Anonymous

hence the title “andromeda strain” which is an old movie based on the same basic premise…
Flying Squid

I wonder if the force impact and the heat from the meteor could have awakened some long-buried sort of dormant virus or bacterium to which we have no defence for…
Milo Minderbender

This scenario is outlined in Destructomundo Podcast’s episode “Rocks From Space”, they cover it pretty spot on.

That “strange odor” is the stink of invasion.
Lawrence

There was an episode of The Bionic Woman where viruses from a meteorite controlled people. I think it was The Vega Virus.
ill lich

I suspect the illness is more likely chemical-based and not life-based, in other words, not a virus, but something like copper-oxide poisoning.
Not a Doktor

“I wonder if the force impact and the heat from the meteor could have awakened some long-buried sort of dormant virus or bacterium to which we have no defence for…”

Or even something that’s ‘common’ like anthrax, aspergillous, etc.
Anonymous

There is a lot of speculation regarding if this was really a meteorite. It seems doubtful. According to spaceweather.com, if it created a toxix 30-meter wide crater it would have had almost 1 kiloton of energy on impact. This would have set of seismic meters and infrasound records.. but so far none have surfaced.