Mutant fruit flies created by radiation, would take over Earth within months

In May 1950, Whisper magazine warned its readers of humanity's impending doom — not from communism or atomic bombs, but from giant mutant fruit flies created in a Nobel Prize winner's laboratory.

"One of the most terrifying sights under the sun is that of billions of ants, in a solid column over a mile wide and several miles long, marching through the jungle in a ravenous quest for food, eating everything in their path, from leaves and grubs to animals," George Dempster wrote. "Brazilian explorers who have witnessed this spine-chilling spectacle say it lives with them forever after — in nightmares. For those who do not move fast enough, death comes in frightful form. The ants can strip a fuil-grown horse to its bones in six minutes!."

This serves as the appetizer for Dempster's main course — the idea that cosmic rays or atomic testing could create supersized versions of these creatures.

"This tragic drama that takes place every so often deep in the jungle might be a small preview of how man, himself, will be wiped off the earth —in the not far future! For this to happen, it's merely necessary for giant insects, that produce offspring at a rapid rate, to suddenly appear. There are many insects of course that propagate rapidly. And a giant strain might appear among them at any moment."

Dempster calculates that a single mutant fruit fly could produce "more than 25,000,000,000 monsters inhabiting the world" within two months. His solution to this impending insect apocalypse? Well… there isn't one. "Man would have practically no defense against the tremendous hordes of voracious creatures that would swoop down on him, avidly seeking food, eating every bit of organic matter in their paths."

The article ends with the cheery prediction that these monsters "could easily become masters of the world within a few hours or days!"

Dempster's article cites real scientific work by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Hermann Muller, whose legitimate research on radiation and genetic mutation gets drafted into service for this panic-inducing scenario:

By bombarding the flies with X-rays, he was able to produce mutations in the germ plasms of some of them. The rays had no apparent outward effect on the flies exposed to them, but some of their offspring turned out to be quite different from the parents. He produced flies without wings, with strange colorings and in many freak forms. The freaks usually reproduced children like themselves.

Dr. Muller said it is possible, in this fashion, to produce a monster from a normal parent. (In fact, not long ago, one scientist reported producing an insect the size of a chicken, but it died soon after birth.) The implications in such a statement are frightening!

Seventy-three years later, we can confirm that giant mutant fruit flies have not, in fact, taken over the world. Though given today's headlines, perhaps we'd prefer them to our current problems.

Previously:
Insects are going extinct eight times faster than other animals