Game Fodder / Story Fodder

[Setherick]

How to make a volcano erupt: http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/04/could-people-trigger-a-volcanic-eruption-on-purpose/

[Gorkamorka]

One for a horror game
A virulent cancer in the Tasmanian Devil population all as the same DNA independent of who the host is.
http://blog.ted.com/2011/09/22/fighting-a-contagious-cancer-elizabeth-murchison-on-ted-com/

[Setherick]

The Aokigahara Forest, otherwise known as the "Suicide Forest" of Japan: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2127414/The-suicide-forest-Japan-Mystery-Mount-Fuji-beauty-spot-100-bodies-year.html?ICO=most_read_module

And a wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aokigahara

[SageNytell]

Dinosaurs ruled in Hell:
http://io9.com/5900889/dinosaurs-were-surrounded-by-constant-fires?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

[Setherick]

Drug trafficking, human trafficking, and the most lawless place in America: http://www.mensjournal.com/150-miles-of-hell

[Setherick]

The great articles just keep coming today on my G Reader. An interview with a matador: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,826676,00.html

[Wooberman]

Just to repeat what i put on the RPPR facebook page

A quick guide for an awesome Horror game - Go and see "Cabin in the woods", make sure none of your players have seen it and then plagiarise the entire movie using a rules light Horror system like Fear Itself or Dread.

[Setherick]

The nodding disease: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nodding_disease

And recent news about an outbreak in Uganda: http://www.dailytech.com/Baffling+Illness+Strikes+Africa+Turns+Children+Into+Violent+Zombies/article24276.htm

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/why-are-ugandas-children-nodding-to-their-deaths-7628107.html

[Setherick]

For anyone interested in the history of religion and archaeology this is really interesting, but it also has some great potential for thinking through religions in gaming scenarios: http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,827144,00.html

[Henry Hankovitch]

I watched a low-budget sci-fi/horror flick called Alien Raiders, and was honestly surprised at how good it was.  Admittedly, I'm no aficionado of the b-movie world, but I think it deserves watching. 

Could make for a pretty good game scenario too.  You're down at the local grocery store when what seems to be a gang of criminals barges in and takes everyone hostage.  But instead of robbing the place or making demands, they start "testing" people...

[Setherick]

Introducing nanosponges: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/17/researchers-create-nanosponges-to-suck-up-oil-spilled-in-water/

[SageNytell]

Impressions on engineering archaeology and reverse corporate espionage: http://wrttn.in/04af1a

[Setherick]

Two good articles from Reuters (really I could post five or six Reuters articles a day).

The sources, who are familiar with operations at Iran's main export terminal Kharg Island in the north of the Gulf, said 14 of National Iranian Tanker Company's (NITC) fleet of 25 very large crude carriers, each loaded with about 2 million barrels of oil, are now at anchor acting as floating storage.

A further five of Iran's nine Suezmax tankers, with capacity of one million barrels, are also parked offshore with oil aboard.

That means that of Iran's 59-million-barrel fleet of VLCCs and Suezmax sized tankers, 33 million barrels of capacity are being used to store crude at sea in the Gulf, or 56 percent of the fleet.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/23/us-iran-tankers-idUSBRE83M0W220120423

But the wastewater generated by fracking and other extraction processes may play a role in causing geologic faults to slip, causing earthquakes, the report suggests.

"A remarkable increase in the rate of (magnitude 3) and greater earthquakes is currently in progress," the authors wrote in a brief work summary to be discussed Wednesday at a San Diego meeting of the Seismological Society of America.

"While the seismicity rate changes described here are almost certainly manmade, it remains to be determined how they are related to either changes in extraction methodologies or the rate of oil and gas production," the abstract said.

From 1970 through 2000, the rate of magnitude 3 or greater quakes was 21 plus or minus 7.6 each year, according to USGS figures. Between 2001 and 2008, that increased to 29 plus or minus 3.5.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/17/us-earthquakes-usa-idUSBRE83G1FL20120417

[Setherick]

Planetary Resources' first customers are likely to be science agencies, such as NASA, as well as private research institutes.

Within five to 10 years, however, the company expects to progress from selling observation platforms in orbit around Earth to prospecting services. It plans to tap some of the thousands of asteroids that pass relatively close to Earth and extract their raw materials.

Not all missions would return precious metals and minerals to Earth. In addition to mining for platinum and other precious metals, the company plans to tap asteroids' water to supply orbiting fuel depots, which could be used by NASA and others for robotic and human space missions.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/24/us-space-asteroid-mining-idUSBRE83N06U20120424

[Setherick]

At least twenty-five former truckers are currently serving time in American prisons for serial murder. There’s Robert Ben Rhoades, who converted his truck cab into a torture chamber, now serving a life sentence in Illinois. There’s Scott William Cox, a trucker who pled no-contest to two murders in Oregon. There’s Dellmus Colvin, who pled guilty in five murders to avoid the death penalty in Ohio; Keith Hunter Jesperson, serving life sentences from four different states; and Wayne Adam Ford, who finally got sick of killing and walked into a California sheriff’s office carrying a woman’s breast in a plastic bag. When trucker Sean Patrick Goble was arrested in North Carolina and confessed to several murders, ten states lined up to question him about their cold-case highway homicides. It seems our interstate highway system has become our Whitechapel, with truckers its roving Rippers.

http://thislandpress.com/04/04/2012/drive-by-truckers/