An Impossibly Easy War
I recently came across an old Twitter war between the
Natural History Museum (NHM) and the Science Museum in London which I found an
interesting thought exercise. So, I decided to use the facts at my disposal and
prove to the general public that the final outcome of this battle was clearly a
foregone conclusion.
Over the millennia that the Earth has existed, the
number of inventions and creatures lost in time are countless. Some of these,
the NHM
has helped to uncover and now
proudly exhibits in its halls.
One of these was the discovery of the death ray
Archimedes was rumoured to have made, by archaeologist Mark Lehner and his team.
As a theory, the idea of this ray has been proved impossible repeatedly, most
famously by MythBusters, who disproved it thrice. But now a new discovery – that
of a lost metal that was used in the ray – makes it clear that the death ray
was actually possible. As unlikely as it seems, popular fiction author Rick Riordan actually
conjectured that this metal might exist in his series Percy Jackson. Using this dangerous ray, the NHM could easily
obliterate a lot of the weapons of the Science Museum.
Recently, Jerald Milanich’s team also found the staff
of Merlin. There are many myths about the mage, and about the destructive
powers of his staff.
But this finding comprehensively proves that he existed, contrary to the
beliefs of several critics including Anne Lawrence-Mathers in her book The True History of Merlin the Magician. The
staff’s power has already been used to annihilate paper cut-outs of the Science
Museum staff by the NHM curator.
But
the most interesting, and the most game-changing of these discoveries is
the finding of the Codex – the book which holds the secrets of immortality and
alchemy, supposedly recorded by the French alchemist Nicholas Flamel. It was
unearthed 3 months ago by Benjamin Clement near Lyon. Another fiction author,
Michael Scott was proven partially right in his conjectures about this book. Once
this leather tome is translated, the NHM staff will literally be incapable of
being killed, which is almost having an unfair advantage.
The Science Museum might argue that scientists in
Norway are on the cusp of inventing a new time machine, and it will immediately
be donated to them. But the probability of them receiving the time machine and
being able to use it in a war is too low for this to be counted as a viable
weapon. There have been many theories and stories about time travel over the
centuries, and it is a dream that every science-fiction fan[AS5]
has fantasized about. But many scientists hold that time travel may well be
impossible, as per a new theory expounded by Professor Richard Muller of UC
Berkeley. Professor Muller says that as space is constantly expanding, so is
time, and it is the new time being created that is our present. This means that
to go into the future at a rate faster than our current one would be impossible
since it hasn’t been created yet. Similarly, to visit the past would involve
destruction of that much space, which is also impossible. Therefore, the
Science Museum’s only possible counter to the NHM’s new weapons will never
exist.
Apart from all these artefacts that the NHM didn’t even mention, just so that the Science Museum could at least have a chance, all we have to do is to look at the tweets themselves. The Science Museum tried to use wellies – boots – to destroy cockroaches, which as Michael Walsh said in his article Scientists Find Cockroaches Nearly Indestructible Everywhere,” are indestructible little transforming tanks.” To continue this farce, they then tried to fight lava with fire engines. And then they even wanted to take down dinosaurs with tiny robots, spitfires and poison.
I think it’s pretty obvious who the winner would be.
Given how one-sided this war would be, I hope the Science Museum can find something in their archives which lets them put up a fight, just for entertainment’s sake.
