I’m a huge fan of post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels, where everything is recognizable but just a shade crappier than the world in which we live. Anyway, I’d like to thank BP, a lax regulatory environment and our happy appetite for cheap energy for bringing us closer to the terrifying books I grew up on.
In the first video, a guy is wandering around Destin Beach in Florida, filming the blobs of tar all over the sand and the people who are inexplicably enjoying the surf. The green-brown, baby-shit-coloured surf. I’ve walked the white beaches of Florida, and I can confirm that the water is not supposed to look like it slipped out a diaper. Wait for the 2:25 mark, when the videographer engages a couple of women in conversation while a little kid screams about the oil clinging to the soles of her feet. “This stuff wasn’t here this morning,” they say. Yup.
The second video was taken on Pensacola Beach and should be watched in full. The quality of the video makes it difficult to discern the phenomenon of “surf boiling like acid” that he describes, but when he swings his camera around to take in the filthy black sand, the current and pending magnitude of this slow motion disaster becomes clear.