True, but Fluffies have an advantage locusts and rats do not.
Their shit is mostly what went in, so god tier fertilizer if eating natural diets.
I am writing that into my Cleveland rewrite on why megaherds formed. Farmers were for them any time they weren’t against them, counting on them to eat decaying plant matter and roots to rejuvenate the soil quickly without burning or worrying about nitrogen buildup.
Hunting and agriculture are at a crossroads, and places like Idaho and Washington with mainly crops they don’t bother are antagonistic with Montana and California that do. This leads to naturally Hugboxy and Abusebody areas in the same world rather than all of humanity suddenly agreeing on something.
To be fair almost all the damage in Cleveland was Fuzzies, fireworks, and methane explosions.
Most of Cleveland makes poor sense when actually looking at Cleveland. Surrounded by shit tons of fast and wide rivers, lots of cities around it, lowlands where methane would dissipate eastwards into Pennsylvania very quickly, good infrastructure for fires, and its right on Lake Erie. Plus no place to put Spaghetti Land.
That’s why I set it in the Heights cities outside Cleveland. Wealthy neighborhoods next to parks, accessible by wider stretches of forest, much lower windspeeds so the methane would linger if it was low wind conditions long enough for explosions.
The “fall” is mostly economic. The actual destroyed neighborhoods are just wide swathes of abandoned housing.
Hasbio can plausibly get off on a bad smell in the air and huge algae blooms from Fluffy corpses in the lake. Not so much a mushroom cloud.
Corn stalks are very tough though. Even as a kid I had a hard time knocking them down without tools and a very difficult time cutting them with them, especially when there was a lot close together because you don’t have much room to move, and if a Fluffy eats the leaves, stalk, and corn hair then anything short of a megaherd can sate themselves for quite a while on a small number.
I do like the rework. I do agree that it is excellent fertilizer because of the frequency they crap, and them being a benefit, but how much lose would be needed to satisfy a herd? Like you said, a small hear of 4 to 20, isn’t going to do any major lose… you know what scratch that. I was going to include a mega herd, but the lore I like the most is more tribal than cooperative fluffies. Small herd fighting over small patches of territory is something I feel would be more common. I don’t see a super mega herd forming based of the power struggle of any and all smarties that stumble across each other.
So a rework of Cleveland would absolutely be needed to clear up some misconceptions and maybe solidify more of the accepted lore; however, the cause of Cleveland downfall could still be open to everyone else’s interpretation, or expectation.
I will recommend the Wellington comic (I forgot the comics actual name, but it is in images by others section). It does cover the mass overpopulation of fluffies in an urban environment with little to no sanitation. It really is a good read.
Right now I’m both figuring out how to distribute events in the US and how the megaherds moved.
I figured arid areas would work using buffalo for plausible numbers, and reindeer for the more coniferous regions.
Directly from my notes:
“Biggest buffalo herd ever was 4600, one buffalo equals 35? Fluffies, equals 161,000 from the third day herd that comes to Cleveland, biggest reindeer herd on record was 1000000 (Russia, North Am was 450000-ish) is and one reindeer is 25? Fluffies”
I don’t imagine the herds being more devastating than buffalo and reindeer, especially since Fluffies can access far less food sources from weakness and height.
Good to know. They’d be a bigger danger when it’s small and young at least. Also, maybe during harvest. That’s highly automated for big operations, no? Could a decent herd get killed and contaminate loads of corn harvested? Or should it be assumed that engineers will have worked on that issue?
That’s a very good retcon, especially given the bit re: Lake Erie and nearby rivers. Think I might adopt that explanation in my canon going forward as well. Economic fallout also makes more sense if you’re talking about hoity-toity neighborhoods in the 'burbs as well facing accidental devastation. More fitting that way, too, since the very thing meant to appeal to a demographic with enough disposable income ultimately becomes a victim of the very company that wanted to serve them so bad.
I kind of always just assumed Cleveland was chosen since it’s populous but not so populous as it would fundamentally make an unrecognizable fictional world if it got blown sky high.
Threshers mash feces from sheep used to keep the rows clean (even pygmy goats are more likely to get the stalk down), and a LOT of small animals like rabbits ands snakes get caught.
Corn harvesters are not super fast and not low to the ground though. Herds would probably have enough time to flee, unless they ran the wrong way right in.
Even then, the machine sifts the corn from the stalk and anything else it sucks up. Hell, a very lucky Fluffy could end up in the corn pile unharmed. Maybe get adopted as a barn Fluffy to chase away mice and sing songs to cows. I dunno.
I’m not duper knowledgeable on agriculture though across the board. You could probably find some crops they fuck up, and others they are a total benefit to.
That’d be interesting to explore. There is a Carpdime picture with fluffalos i like where there’s water paddies for growing something. Could be rice? And here in Hawai’i taro is traditionally grown like that too. It’d keep fluffies away.
I’m relying on basically all the small cities that get grouped into Cleveland because they look like part of the same city, mostly called Heights.
Especially Cuyahoga Heights. Sorry if anyone is from there.
Ohio & Erie Canal Reservation Park is where I’m picturing Spaghetti Land set up like a carnival rather than a Disneyland (but advertised as a Disneyland), the Southerly Wastewater Treatment Plant being the location of their Resident Evil style secret lab in addition to the infrastructure most likely to have failed first them become irrelevant as the population dropped from 500000 to 45000 of mostly poor.
Hasbio doesn’t get all the blame due to farmers using, and still using, herds. Cleveland is forgotten as fast as Centralia was in real life beyond an amusing story and cautionary tale nobody heeds.
