The Event Horizon

3. Voices From The Edge

3.1 [Article not published on the web at author's request]

3.2 Godzilla - US Army Secret Weapon by Yuen Kit Mun

Any biologist or geneticist will tell you that Godzilla cannot be a radiation-induced mutation. The chances of a successful mutation, in one generation, from iguana to giant skyscraper buster, are vanishingly small.

Instead, Godzilla is obviously man made - genetically engineered - to have suddenly appeared full sized without gradual evolution. But why go to so much effort and expense? What possible use could such a monster be?

As a city-buster, built for plausible deniability. Want to bomb an enemy city without being criticised for killing civillians? Easy, just sic Godzilla on it and blame everything on the French, on their nuclear testing which ``created'' him.

Who would have such a need, and have the resources to create Godzilla? The Americans, of course, being global policeman and the world's last superpower. History shows them to be the leading exponents of city bombing. From the Eighth Air Force over Hitler's Europe; to Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki; to Indochina, Libya, Bosnia and Iraq. No other nation has bombed even close to as many targets, or dropped such a weight of high explosives.

So, as they say in law courts, we have motive. What about means?

America is known to be a leader in genetic engineering. But there is stronger evidence than this. Does anyone seriously believe that all those dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were computer generated? So why don't other countries make dinosaur movies? Buy a few Silicon Graphics workstations, Soft Image software (which is Canadian, making the American monopoly on dinosaur movies even more inexplicable) and you have a blockbuster movie generating hundreds of millions of dollars.

The dinosaurs must therefore be real. The movies were made to help finance the development of Godzilla (US military involvement in movies is not new, just look at Top Gun). They must have used real dinosaur DNA at the start, then modified it to create Godzilla, optimising him for city-busting and to look less dinosaur-like in order to not give the game away. Not only did they do this, but they also cleverly slipped in some disinformation into Jurassic Park - no dinosaur DNA has yet been recovered from mosquitos trapped in amber, imagine a mosquito penetrating the thick hide of a T-Rex - hiding their true dinosaur DNA recovery technique, whatever that might be. Note the Velociraptor-like way in which the baby Godzillas pounce upon their victims. This is not a coincidence but an indication of Godzilla's genetic heritage.

Godzilla's capabilities are suspicious. An iguana just happens to mutate into a fire breathing monster that can tunnel underground? This only makes sense in terms of destroying underground Iraqi chemical and biological warfare factories, incineration being a standard industrial technique to decompose toxic chemicals into their harmless constituent parts.

Godzilla's behaviour is equally anomalous. Squeeze through the busy Panama Canal and its multiple canal locks? Choose a cold, noisy inhabited island to lay eggs underground instead of warming them on a tropical beach? Squeeze yourself into Madison Square Garden, stooping uncomfortably to lay eggs? Hang around your hatched babies even though other reptiles do not?

We can go further and deduce that not only was Godzilla Made In America, but also Made by the US Army. Why else would a world-beating army bungle the destruction of Godzilla? If they were seriously out to destroy him, would they have let a mere sergeant (O'Neill) be in charge of the ambushes on the ground? Why is the army in charge of investigating a sea monster that attacks ships? Why not the navy?

Alone amongst the three armed services, it is the army that does not have an independent inter-continental strike capability. They are dependant upon the air force and navy to transport them overseas. It is therefore the army that has the most to gain from developing Godzilla. The air force and navy would just be cannabilizing their existing capability (apart from the plausible deniability aspect). They actually have a vested interest in stopping Godzilla due to the inter-service competition over a smaller post Cold War military budget.

This is why it is the navy that was successful in combating Godzilla. Not just the F18 jets at the end, but also the submarines that temporarily knocked him out underwater. The navy admiral had to tell the army, ``Don't worry, the navy has a little something waiting for him'' because the navy did not trust the army with prior information about the submarine deployment, fearing that the army would insist that they be withdrawn to enable their city-busting experiment to continue.

Compare the navy's performance with the Keystone Cops routine of the army. Why wasn't continuous aerial surveillance carried out, pinpointing Godzilla's location whenever he surfaced? Why didn't the army attack helicopters simply fly higher to avoid Godzilla instead of unsuccessfully running away from him at low level? Why shoot air to air missiles when army helicopters are normally fitted with air to ground missiles with larger warheads, such as those used successfully by the navy F18s (air to air missiles have smaller warheads because they have to accelerate to supersonic speeds to catch enemy jets)? The small air to air missiles would not have been powerful enough to topple the Chrysler building (the much larger terrorist bomb in the World Trade Centre did less damage). The army must have planted explosive charges in the skyscraper, blowing them on cue to give the impression that they were hunting Godzilla with more powerful weaponry than was the case.

Godzilla managed to dodge the land based rockets. The army deliberately used these slow and highly visible missiles instead of the cannon fired supersonic armour piercing 120 mm rounds from their main battle tanks. Not only would Godzilla be unable to dodge these shells, but they would also have penetrated his thick hide, being capable of defeating steel armour over a metre thick. The army could have easily brought Godzilla down, but chose to not do so. Their intention was to train Godzilla to avoid such ambushes, not to kill him.

The involvement of the French Secret Service is another giveaway. Why risk an international incident by sending armed men to America? Especially after all the bad publicity from the sinking of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior? Because they did not trust the American army to destroy Godzilla, knowing that they would allow Godzilla to rampage through New York as an experiment and blame him on the French. The French were therefore out to sabotage the army's field trial, and also show the Americans that they could obstruct Godzilla if ever he were unleashed for real.

With New York being evacuated, would the phone lines from Madison Square Gardens be busy? This must have been a precaution to prevent the French from calling in a navy air strike, the French and the US Navy having a common interest in having Godzilla and his babies destroyed. If the French really were working in secret, how could they hope to call in an air strike? They must have had a prior arrangement with the navy, which explains the contact telephone number. Note the army's reluctance to believe in the existence of Godzilla's eggs. They might not even have relayed the air strike request to the navy F18s if the request had not been publicly broadcast over television.

If the Americans had to blame someone for Godzilla, the French would be ideal. From the American invasion of Vichy French North Africa, to the French boycott of American dominated NATO to the sucking in of the Americans into Vietnam after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, there must be little love lost between the armed services of the two countries.

The other side of the coin is the attack on the Japanese fishing ship. Japan being America's staunchest ally in Asia, which other neutral party could be better trusted to establish Godzilla's origin in the Pacific? The reportedly drowned sailors are probably enjoying big fat pensions somewhere. That it is an American set up can be seen from the ``sole surviving sailor'' ignoring questions in Japanese, until being asked in English, ``What did you see, old man?''. And why would the French Secret Service agent think of asking him in English if he did not suspect that the Japanese sailor had been briefed by the Americans?

The circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. Godzilla is a secret US Army weapon, designed to destroy enemy cities. Do not be surprised if his progeny is next seen mauling a country that just happens to be hostile to America. The truth is in the movies. You have been warned.

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