As the world crashes and burns thanks to leaders with funny blonde haircuts and an overinflated sense of their own self-worth, it seems many people want to spend their last days on Earth uncovering some of its greatest mysteries.
Though we’ll have to wait until September before we see whether the plan to storm Area 51 comes to fruition, the idea to gather as many people as possible and ‘storm’ various mysterious places around the world, to uncover the secrets they’re hiding, has caught on.
Now, Loch Ness in Scotland is the latest, as some people are apparently planning to descend on the freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands in search of the fabled Loch Ness Monster.
Public DomainThe Facebook event is titled ‘Storm Loch Ness, Nessie can’t hide from us all’, with a description which reads: ‘The time is now for us to find dat big boi’.
So far, more than 24,000 people have said they are ‘going’, and 48,000 clicked ‘interested’ (though everyone knows the ‘interested’ button is BS).
Still, if 24,000 people did flock to Loch Ness all at once, there’s a fair chance at least one of them would spot the huge monster apparently lurking in the murky waters there.
PixabayWhile the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) said the ‘Storm Loch Ness’ event would not pose as many problems as ‘Storm Area 51’ – Loch Ness is a public area and not guarded by the US military, after all – they did say there were still a number of risks involved.
A spokesperson for the RNLI told BBC News:
With no US Army involved, Loch Ness looks a little less hazardous than storming Area 51, but here we have our own set of problems. Our Atlantic 85 lifeboat has an impressive survivor-carrying capacity, but even that will be stretched by the ‘attendees’ of this event.
Gemma McDonald, from the RNLI, told CNN:
There’s really no need to ‘storm’ Loch Ness, given that it is open to the public 24/7, 365 days a year.
However, Gemma added:
Our team knows the Loch incredibly well, but they would never be complacent about it and would say themselves that Loch Ness’ real monster is cold water shock.
Though they recognised the light-hearted nature of the Facebook event, the RNLI said ‘jokes aside’, some ‘quick facts’ about Loch Ness reveal how dangerous the waters can be there.
For example, the loch has a surface area of around 22 square miles, and at its deepest point is 230 metres (755ft) deep – two and a half times the height of Big Ben.
While waves at the lock can reach heights of around 4 metres (13ft) and, because it is a freshwater loch, it is less buoyant than the sea, meaning someone could struggle if they were in danger and tried to float.
The RNLI signed off its warning: ‘Nessie 1 – 0 Bandwagon.’
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.