So very recently, after reading
this xkcd strip (and the bit about Colorado being a radioactive exclusion zone with some weird problem with spiders...typical offbeat xkcd humor there...), I got to Googling about exclusion zones, those special geographical places where people can't go hiking without dying, getting nabbed by the authorities or both, possibly even in that order.
There are apparently several types of exclusion zones. You have the radiation hazard type, like the ones that are going to surround Chernobyl and Fukushima for the next 100,000 years...pretty bad news for us human types.
You then have the natural disaster type. Remember how that big volcano in Montserrat blew its top back in the 1990's and buried half the island in lava, ash and really hot mud, including their capitol city Plymouth? The southern half's still pretty dangerous 20 years later, so it's still mapped as an exclusion zone.
And then we go to New South Wales, Aussieland, where they have a huge exclusion zone. Reason? Fruit flies.
...fruit flies. Those harmless, tiny little High School Biology Class refugees whose hobbies include getting caught in your nostril hairs and making you sneeze while you're sniffing a banana and trying to figure out if it's still good to eat. Sporkin'
fruit flies.What the hell is wrong with your fruit flies, Australia?!? It's not bad enough that Australia has about a thousand snake species that can kill you just by farting in your general direction; now they have giant, vampiric, radioactive mutant fruit flies stealing people's babies and eating their houses?!?
The end of the world will begin in Australia. Of that, I'm certain.
Come back to the Vale soon, Wraith and Shadow. Because among a host of other things, we
really need to discuss these Fruit Flies of the Apocalypse.