The Blob

Stripped Chapter: The Lifeguard

Photo: ESA:  In sincere gratitude = European Space Agency and Inmarsat.

(We are never alone out there, many thanks for guiding us home on countless occasions).

Ref:

https://www.esa.int/

In 1958 a low budget science fiction, horror, thriller titled the Blob opened in movie theaters all across North America and eventually made its way to Europe. It was a B rated movie for a fast growing young post WWII generation. The movie debuted a young actor that would go on to make movie history, Steve McQueen, and launched the TV career of Aneta Cousaut. It then become a stable for late night reruns and was remade in 1972, and 1988. In certain film buff circles, it was a cult classic.

The story is based on a meteor that crashes into earth near a rural community of the day, releasing an alien life form that consumes people in a sticky goo, gelatin, goop and grows rapidly and uncontrollably into a massive consuming  blob with seemingly no way to kill it. It appears, disappears and reappears again even more massive in size consuming ever more. A large part of the movie’s suspense is based on when and where the Blob appears next, tracking it, predicting its next move, and ultimately the fight against it.

There’s an uncanny prophesy in that B rated horror film as it relates to this situation, but no film stars made, no heroes, only victims.

Fast forward, present day, in real time.

During the past week Malta's Search and Rescue (SAR) Lifeguard Captain, DJ, and all the Mediterranean government agencies are observing via a stream of live satellite feeds, imaging that includes infrared, radar, high-res-stills, daily Ariel low altitude flybys, generating data, tracking and forecast updates, 3D computer prediction models in conjunction with EU meteorologist all focused on a bizarre weather event with a  massive garbage patch of mostly plastic combined with a dense toxic sewage run off caught in a circular current in what can be described an ominous, inauspicious swirling weather pattern that has all the markings of a cyclone low pressure pattern off the coast of Libya and Tunisia that is rapidly increasing in size.

 Nicked named........ The BLOB*.

Liken to the B rated movie, everyone is trying to predict where it will move next and how to defend against it.

02:30 at the Lifeguard station DJ is reclined back in his aged well-padded captain’s chair patched over with duct tape here and there. A piece furniture that was salvaged from the bridge of a decommissioned Naval vessel with that rough, raw, cool character of a nautical generation past.

Dressed in Lifeguard garb of thick fleece warm up trousers and hoodie sweat shirt, feet up on his desk sleeping as large computer monitors illuminate multi-image weather feeds, a text side bar on auto scroll moves with captioned updates, top to bottom much like a stock market ticker tracker on a financial news website.

There’s an unconfirmed report of a category F5 tornado about 150km South of the Libyan coast that erased a village off the map. F5 means those winds were between 270kph to over 320kph. The unverified twister coincides with 3D SAT image modeling, forming a wicked looking pattern that’s as frightening as any science fiction movie Hollywood can conjure up. 

A culmination of extreme North Sahara temperature swings of scorching heat waves during the day, unusual humid cool air blasting in from the north at night, brutal cloud burst of wind, rain, lighting and thunder, flash flooding and back to blistering heat waves.

There are no weather records in the past four century’s to compare this too.

Fact is we live in a new changing world we have to deal with. Mother Nature will make everyone pay in havoc regurgitating the filth that’s been strewn upon her over a century or so in this region and the warning signs have there for years.

No one really knows the lingering long term health effects from these kinds of toxic weather events.

Frankly, DJ and his crew really don't give a crap which side of the climate debate you are on. Climate activist, climate denier, climate don't know, climate don't care, climate pub expert, climate coffee shop critic, climate social media blogger, climate do nothing- or as they say; a climate zero soul.

The only time you're gonna get weighed and measured by this crew, when it comes time in a climate retaliated disaster event is; Can you help?

-Assist a senior citizen or a disabled person.

-Fill a sand bag.

- A cup of tea for a 24hr on call rescuer, help a 1st responder's kids after school while their working double shifts.

-That exhausted ER nurse that needs their laundry washed.

-The infrastructure worker repairing hot downed power lines trying to restore electricity, the police that missed their kids school event on emergency duty.

- A social worker consoling stricken souls, finding them a safe place for the night.

-Food bank volunteers praying they have enough for the homeless.

-Average citizens, the fabric, the soul of a community in need.

The rescuers/1st responders are the tip of the spear so to speak.

Its the fabric of a community that really counts when needed.

And DJ's favorite, common folk that pick up litter walking the nature trails, beaches and coast lines. 

Sprawled out half way on his desk, reclined in that Captains chair, DJ occasionally awakes, glances at the computer screens, chill lounge music in the background, taking a bite of some home made supper leftovers packed with love from his wife Portia and washing it down with coffee that’s hours old.

Even though DJ cooked that meal in what he calls “mostly his kitchen”. Portia tries hard in that kitchen too. DJ lovingly refers to Portia’s culinary escapades like a venture capital project.  Every time she’s inspired to create something in that professional kitchen he designed adjacent to the garden, it's risky and one out of ten is a winner. It’s all made with love and that’s good enough for him. But she can pack a to go meal really well, water and weather proof, due to her vast collection of snap top, slide lock, zip secure containers and she double wraps everything. Put it this way, if DJ was ever lost at Sea, they may not find him, but the food in Portia’s take a way containers would wash up somewhere days later, still eatable.

Tonight DJ’s crew is on 24 hour call. He’s got six (A) Team Rescue Lifeguards sleeping in bunk beds downstairs and the rest at home on standby ready to scramble in a moment’s notice. They already rescued a small Fishing boat in distress, recovered a crew from a capsized Sail boat grounded on a reef and strung about 50km of debris catching booms in an attempt to protect national park beaches, nature preserve coves and Sea turtle habitat.   

The satellite images are akin to a science fiction space movie.

Surreal...

Captain Kirk and all the "Star Trek Trekkies” would be on the edge of their seat for this vortex worm hole looking monster.

The swirl of the garbage patch mostly plastic is the real deal horror show here.

And that garbage patch holds heat from the sun during the day making the night infrared Satellite images glow an eerie, yet cool, mystic almost psychedelic hypnotizing pattern.

As DJ nods off again in his comfy reclined captains chair, the flash back dreams start;

DJ lost a Lifeguard a few years back in a garbage patch during a migrant rescue off the South Coast when an inexperienced NGO migrant rescue RIB boat operator drove over his Lifeguard because the boat pilot didn’t notice the Rescue Lifeguard’s neon Orange Helmut and neoprene suit in a sea of colored plastic. The rookie NGO boat operator was driving way to fast, trying to be a rescue hero for his crew shooting a video to raise money online for their charitable cause and Sea safari escapades.

DJ was reprimanded and fined a couple hundred Euros when he chased that boat down, boarded it, broke the driver’s nose and fractured his wrist in what DJ attributed to self-defense because of the fire extinguisher hurled at him.

The NGO crew, based from somewhere in land locked central Europe, claimed they were attacked and didn’t realize it was the Malta Sea Rescue Lifeguards. Even though DJ’s team was suited up in bright neon rescue orange and yellow, international rescue cross insignias, boats ID’d and flagged, warning flare shot in air and radio contact with their mother ship. In these parts anyone and everyone in Mediterranean rescue Biz knows the Maltese Cross with the Trident insignia, means, in Lifeguard slang; the bad ass pros are at work. Protocol demands, radio contact, be seen, ask where you can assist.

Gabby, DJ’s power girl First Lieutenant (1st LT) was with DJ that day. She was also reprimanded and fined as she leaped several meters from one boat to the other as they were plaining side by side in the chase in rolling Seas, landed in a perfect crouching position on deck like some super hero, grabbed the female Videographer by her safety life vest, lifted her off her feet and threw her overboard with the camera equipment and pulverized another woman for threatening her with a swinging oar. With one hand Gabby blocked the assault, head butted the female assailant knocking her into a stupor, lashed her hands to a gunwale grab handle, and forced her to watch as the other Lifeguards retrieved the maimed remains of their fellow Rescue Swimmer.

Sadistic?

Maybe so.

But 20 hours of Search and Rescue (SAR) at Sea, hyped on adrenaline, energy bars, sport drinks, saving desperate migrants, the floating dead, unstable weather, one Rescuer delivered a baby in a large rubber raft, packed with panicked souls screaming while swamped with water in a slow sink.

Most people are naive to the passion, professionalism, dedication and risk DJ’s teams operate in. And some of those so called rescue NGO’s create more problems than they solve. Even though their slick media promotions and emotional pleas draw in millions in tax exempt donations.

DJ smirks every time he recalls that encounter, the petrified shock and awe fear look of the rookie NGO boat crew as a tall dark lean athletically cut woman sprung from one boat to the other at speed, landing like wonder woman on the deck, commandeering a boat on the run from a crime scene. As fascinated as most people are with Gabby’s exotic North African mix appearance and tuned up athletic cut physique and charming smile, she can look like a demon from hell in a millisecond when she’s in the pissed off zone, and that’s what the rookies from the NGO rescue charity saw coming at them.

Some rescue NGO’s are real Pro’s. DJ and his crew appreciate and work well with a few. Never the less, it’s a lawless unregulated environment at Sea.

There are few enforceable laws of engagement in that vast open aqua environment, protocols and guidelines is what it amounts too. The result of that incident; Word circulated in the entire international Mediterranean rescue NGO network; don’t mess with the Malta Sea Rescue squad, you can work with them but don’t fuck with them.

"There’s no heroes in this business".

"It’s professional public service for highly trained professionals".

DJ actually said that to the judge in court room testimony as his eyes watered in a blank stare holding back tears, still mourning the loss of his team member.

“Every rescuer grieves for lost souls in one way or another, of course and especially for their own”.

DJ ended his testimony looking out into the court room;

“There’s just not that many of us, you count on us to be there, you want us to be heroes, you expect to be rescued. When one so called rescuer kills another rescuer by neglect, it doesn’t really affect the people here in this court room, it only weighs on us".

(pause)......

"There is no rescue for our souls and my team's trauma".

"Tomorrow we're back on duty, day and night, on 24hr call, we do it all again in the name of a professional public service, all of you here expect that”. 

There was a deafening silence in the court room, only to be broken by the Judge clearing his throat and asking for a tissue and a few sniffles and murmurs from reporters and observers in the gallery.

Gabby on the other hand expressed it differently in the witness box. On cross examination by the defense for the NGO rescue charity, Gabby is on record; answering for her behavior springing to her feet, pointing one of those long dark fingers at the sponsored legal team from some brand name law firm;

“The swimming pool Lifeguard landlubber bitch swung an oar at a former two time beach volleyball Olympian, Ocean Search and Rescue Team Leader with over a thousand lifesaving rescues and over four hundred migrant rescues and assist, delivered three babies at sea and been threatened  twice at gun point by human traffickers - smuggling gangs for witnessing and reporting their operations on patrol and detained by Libyan Coast Guard for an out of bounds rescue for a week, in a jail cell with rats and now I’m in court up on assault charges because, Save The World Band-Aid-Barbie-Boobs here tried to assault me with a weapon, trying to escape on a reckless boat, after killing my colleague!

"All for a Fucking Video?!"

"Come on Barristers! Strip down and suit up with me for a week and you’ll be my rescue bitch’s! Let’s see if you can take it”!

The Judge intervened, security forced Gabby back to the witness chair, the defense council was visibly shaken breaking a sweat, the NGO rescue ship was impounded, the crew arrested and banned from all territorial waters. Six other countries followed suit on the same NGO.

04:00. DJ quick scans the data feeds and nods off again.

The contributing factors to the Blob was a series of unusual late heavy spring rains and gale force winds in North Africa with several brutal record setting flash floods producing a massive run off wiping out regional infrastructure from coal fired and diesel power plants, sewage treatment facilities, toxic landfills, port chemical-fuel storage tanks, etc. Resulting in a garbage runoff on a biblical scale with a translucent rainbow color chemical-petroleum slick congealed to floating debris. The Sea borne mass slowly swirled East merging with other run off garbage debris off the Libyan coast.

To make things worse; Libya is in a state chaos and can barley feed its own people, a state of internal conflict. There are no Government aid agencies nor NGO’s that will even get close for an environmental cleanup in this unstable region crawling with pirates, rebels and corrupt officials that hijack and demand bribes for everything from ships, boats, food and medical supplies bound for the struggling country.

If the Blob hits the Malta coast, it will deposit a condensed massive wave of debris in light brown foam slime, goo taking months to clean up on what the government deems top revenue generating recreational areas and UNESCO nature preserves.

On some coastal clean ups you can feel the fumes toxicity irritate your eyes in a slow burn on a full day working in the sun, not even a long shower can wash the smell out of your skin.

DJ hopes the Blob will change course and pile up back on the North African coast.

It’s a real time man made horror show.

Although the politicians talk a good game and there’s a list of logical steps to de-risk such a crises the companies that produce this refuge have no incentive to change. Unlike big tobacco or big pharma that paid-up for producing health hazardous and deadly addictive products, the plastics industry is immune.

It is what it is.   

Liken to the Global Financial Crisis, in the end the tax payers foot the bill.

04:45. A reoccurring chirp from DJ's computer sounds waking him, he has his notification settings set on a sector South West of Gozo Island on the edge of the storm far out at Sea from territorial waters. It seems, or there was a vessel or object with no ID, AIS (automatic identification system) Satellite ID standard supplemented by marine radar..... hmmm... he switches to another screen, there was a radar signature but now its gone, a trace recorded on radar SAT, but no more, and no infrared signature data.....

At least he got a signature for a few seconds, a small digital data trail of whats suspected heading their way. 

There’s something else out their DJ is looking for in those streaming satellite images tracking boats, ships, aircraft, weather and debris. It’s what DJ and his best mate, Chief Constable Ryan, call a black ghost. Possibly related to their past. It seems to be using the Blob as cover.

Both men will have to decide if they allow it to perish in the storm, or rescue it. The Mediterranean Sea holds many hidden secrets, some are better left alone. And some rescues are like opening Pandora's box.

Maybe its not who but what gets rescued?