1-A planet that has plant lifes that can grow in every organic substince very fast. Resulting everyone who set a foot in this planet devored by untold billons of micro seeds on the skin. Sucking up nutritions And killing them.
2-The planet has massive, godzilla like creatures roaming around and stepping on everything
3-The planet is house to untold trillons of diseses, bacteria, parasites And viruses
4-The planets weather changes rapidly. One seconds its hot enough to boild your blood, another second is cold enough to freeze it.
5-A planet with massive solar waves And ion storms that result it giant storms And perventing technology to function properly.
6- The planet has suffered a supervolcano eruption, burying the cities in ash and reducing the sun to a dim bulb in the sky even at high noon.
7- The planet was host to a botched gravity manipulation experiment, and now shifts in the gravity are as frequent as changes in the weather, including brutal "grav storms" that will literally fling anything not bolted down into orbit.
8- The planet is a hazardous waste dump for an advanced species. Anything from yesterday's lunch, to surplus military weapons, to small quantities of anti-matter in expired containment units could be going to the surface to become someone else's problem.
9- The entire planet has been declared a memorial to the intelligent species that once lived there. Their cities and homes are kept pristine by an army of robots... which will brutally expunge anything disrupting the sanctity of the memorial.
10- The planet is tidally locked to the sun, resulting in a blasted day-side hellscape and a cold perpetual night on the opposite side.
11- A planet with extremely fine and sharp dust due to a lack of any binding water. This dust would wear down anything rather quickly and it would end up everywhere. They would also create thunderstorms due to static electricity.
12- A planet with extremely a high density atmosphere.
13- A planet with vast deposits of Gallium. During summer when the heat builds up entire land masses shift over the molten metal, every year the geography of the entire world shifts and rivers of liquid metal make certain areas uninhabitable.
14- A planet where terraforming efforts have catastrophically failed.
To resolve, roll again. The second result is an unexpected side effect, which appeared late in the process. If not for this side effect, the planetary environment would have been very pleasant for a variety of lifeforms.
15- -This planet is a jungle world so choked with vegetation the planet's earthen surface can't be found. The canopy layers are similar to the layer zones of oceans; the deeper one goes the less light there is, the stranger the life becomes, and the more hostile the conditions get.
16- -A dry desert planet with no resources of any kind, but is used as a testing ground for many experimental military equipment and munitions. Expect unexploded ordanence, rouge AI with guns, unstable energy weapons, and random blasts from orbital weapon platforms.
17- -The planet teeters dangerously close to a black hole but is held in place with a 'spatial anchor' on it's surface. Everything else that comes close to the black hole is sucked in so the planet is constantly bombarded with chunks of other broken planets
18- -A rouge planet that has no light of any kind. The clouds prevent any stars from being seen. It's totally silent here. There is something down there. Darkness equals death. Don't take your eyes off the light. Don't shine light into the dark.
19- Planet which is covered by a green mold that has completely encased everything
20- A planet covered in self replicating nanites. Any thing that touches the surface gets dissolved by the nanites.
21- A planet with permanent extremely violent storms.
22- A planet surrounded by killer satellites. The satellites fire on any non-native lifeforms on the planet.
23- A planet that was used for biological weapons testing. Horrific mutated monstrosities hunt and kill anything on the surface.
24- A planet that was used for robotic weapons testing. Prototype war machines hunt and kill anything on the surface.
25- Hordes of ghost wander around the planet and suck the life out of the living.
26- The entire planet is booby trapped.
27- The planet is a nuclear wasteland. Most of the world is covered in lethal levels of radiation.
28- The planet passes through a debris cloud. The ground is regularly hammered by meteorites.
29- The planets atmosphere acts like a drug. Drug causes (apathy, euphoria, mindless rage, paralysis, sleep, weakness).
30- The planets atmosphere is acidic.
31- The planets atmosphere is saturated with mutagens. Any person or creature exposed to the atmosphere mutates into horrific a creature.
32- The planets atmosphere is toxic.
33- The planet is covered in a fungal forest. The surface is constantly covered in a cloud of spores. The spores are lethal to those who breath them.
34- The planet suffered a zombie apocalypse. All the people and creatures on the planet are mindless zombies that attack the living.
35- The planet was host to a dimensional gateway experiment. Gateways randomly appear and disappear all around the planet. The gates often open to something dangerous (in or near a black hole / in or near a star / in a magma pocket / in the vacuum of space).
36- A planet that recently drew a moon into its Roche limit, ripping it apart. There's a belt around the equator where moon debris the size of Alaska rains down on all sides constantly, and will for the next 100,000 years.
37- • ⁠The planet is travelling through time at an accelerated pace. Days pass in seconds, and years pass in minutes. Before you can find out what's going on, it's too late. you've arrived at the heat-death of the universe
38- • ⁠The surface is covered by a relatively thin membrane separating the dangerous liquids from the atmosphere. From the outside, it appears that life can thrive on this planet, but only if it can distribute its weight well enough.
39- • ⁠This planet has converted its entire population into pure energy by mistake. Given the continued absence of life on the planet, it's safe to assume the machine is still active.
40- The planet had a breathable atmosphere, earth-like gravity, and a lush biosphere. However, due to the combined action of it's moons and the activity of the star it orbits, surface wind speeds seldom drop below 320km/h, with average rainfall over 12m/day. While the planet is theoretically habitable, attempting a landing is suicidal.
41- This planet is in a hyper-elliptic orbit around a massively dense star, being flung into the deep reaches of space, cold and freezing, before eventually reaching its apex, and beginning a gradual increase in speed until it is hurtling through space, briefly passing so near the star the atmosphere boils off, before being flung off into deep space and freezing over once again.
42- This “planet” is the body of a long dead gigantic being. It’s festering corpse was big enough to hold an atmosphere, and its rotting body produced fumes that made up a sickly yellow sky full of toxic gas. The ground is soft and mushy due to the decayed muscle underfoot, and may swallow you like quicksand. The life forms found here are mostly descended from gigantic parasites that were in the original creature. These parasites have evolved into different things, but still keep many parasitic features, making even the smallest plant dangerous. The seas are made a mix of body fluids, which rain down from blood red clouds. They are extremely acidic and contaminated with all sorts of bacteria, so caution is required in making any sort of water here. The surface has many great gaps and holes, leading into the dark abyss below. This underground houses the most predators, who consume the “planet” from the inside out.
43- Most of the animal life has evolved to be hyper-intelligent when it comes to survival. The simplest predator is as smart as the average teenager and there seem to be plenty of species that hunt for fun.
44- Planet was hit by a gamma ray burst that scourged it of most life either recently or long ago
45- Planet was terraformed by a long-dead race leaving relics like island size nuclear reactors, ancient machines waiting to be rewoken (Illus from the Expanse)
46- An arid planet with seas made of acid that rotate around the planet with the gravity of its moon wiping out everything in cycles
47- A planet that, at random times at least once per week, incenses it's gravity tenfold for one minute. Makes life near impossible and a death sentence for any travelers
48- The entire planet is constructed of thin sticks of balsa wood and canvas, painted to look like mundane rocks, ground and flora. A single wrong step upon its surface may lead to a lengthy and very crunchy fall to the planet’s core. It’s obvious that some force created this world as some sort of insane art project, but for what purpose?
49- A planet where every plant, animal and even the very earth had some form of venom or poison. It was very popular in Koronus for assassins. However, it was difficult to get to.
The equatorial ring was the only place habitation could occur, any attempts to expand further into the jungles and forests of the planet lead to extreme casualties.
Eventually a bunch of various manufactorums spread across the equator, however greed lead to war. To solve this issue, each manufactorum had a specific plot of land surrounded by a massive wall. They were separated from their neighbouring facilities by demilitarized zones.
50- An unstable planetoid whose atmosphere is held together by a supermassive core, resulting in a stable accretion disk of massive islands and chunks of rock and metal
51- The planet is full of vast deserts on one side of the planet and a massive ocean of salt water on the other no fresh water exists. All creatures hardy enough to live on this planet kill anything not part of their species on sight.
52- Two connected ideas:
-The planet was once alive; both the planet itself and all live living on it were a linked hive-like intelligence. Unfortunately, this intelligent met a terrible fate. The planet's life network is now either...
...a ghost: the planet appears translucent on a visual scan. Attempts to land a craft on it result in the craft passing through the planet, and the aura of undeath surrounding the planet causes severe damage to any living crew as the planet attempts to consume their life energy.
...or...
...a zombie: the planet's flora and fauna appear necrotized and crave flesh. The planet emits eerie signals into space, luring organic beings to approach it and be consumed.
53- Oh, I’ve got a good one!
The planet is under the control of a lovecraft monster. It seems like a generic medieval world, but nothing in it is real, and the longer you stay on the planet, the longer it becomes obvious. Mountains may end up becoming more numerous out of nowhere, the townsfolk begin to look and talk the same, and freak accidents start becoming much more occurent
54- Spatial rifts whip across the planet surface like knives. Being hit with a rift edge will slice anything into pieces and displace the pieces as far as 200m away, though most displacements are only 5m or less.
55- The entire surface is an acidic quicksand type of soup. This is even riskier because the surface churns so violently that tidal waves upto 5km high move chaotically at upto 250kph around the globe.
56- The planet is very young and still in the accretion phase so that thousands of massive asteroids impact the surface on many days. The atmosphere is highly toxic, filled with heavy metals, and radioactive isotopes.
57- The planet is within the blast wave of a supernova.
58- This was a ring world built by an advanced civilization over a Millenia ago. It is very broken. Pieces of the ring grind each other into asteroids continuously.
59- A planet with a surface made of clay that excretes acidic substances that dissolve all living matter into more clay.
60- A planet with an odd magnetic field that has caused large plates of sharp metal to become suspended in air. This same magnetic field is responsible for rushing winds that cause the plates to smash together, shredding anything in their path with deafening metallic ringing
61- Something living within the core of the planet releases psionic energy that drives the inhabitants mad
62- Poisonous mist hangs in the air, infecting wounds created by the needle sharp spines that cover the surface of this planet.
63- A planetoid made of diamond or precious metals that is caught within an asteroid field, causing the surface to be pelted nonstop by large chunks of space debris
64- An ocean planet where the ocean is made up of sulphuric acid due to volcanic activity in the depths. The acid is not strong enough to immediately dissolve you, it will take at least 10 minutes to get through your skin. But once it is through your skin, you will not last long... The ocean is also at least 1 km deep everywhere.
65- No oxygen in the atmosphere.
66- A dry, dusty planet that exists mostly of quicksand on the surface, though there are some rare oasis-like areas with a bit of water and plant life to stabilize the soil.
67- Cyanide-rich atmosphere.
68- A planet where carbon is scarce and the inhabiting lifeforms (mostly bacteria but also fast-growing fungi-like lifeforms) have a taste for it.
69- A planet with high radiation due to nuclear wars from past civilizations. There is life left, though heavily mutated and mostly sick.
70- A planet with high seismic activity; severe earthquakes and volcanic activity are prominent.
71- A planet with high wind speeds. The wind will blow away a full-sized orc at it's strongest. There are a few caves, which offer shelter from the wind, though the howling is insanely loud due to the corrosion it has caused on the landscape over the centuries. Long exposure to the howling wind will damage your ears severely, causing them to bleed after an hour and a half. Further expose will result in permanent deafness.
72- Hydrogen chloride-rich atmosphere (on contact with water or bodily fluids it will create highly concentrated hydrochloric acid. Eyes, nose and mouth will melt away first, and the rest follows soon after.
73- • ⁠This planet is a sentient gaseous giant although it has no voice to speak it attempts to communicate with other life forms by delving into their memories and bringing into existence the form of someone they were most attatched to, this more often that not is someone that the life form has lost and therefore drives the majority of life forms insane ( roughly adapted from the book solaris)
74- • ⁠A planet harsh and cold , the surface of which entirely covered in ice. Its ice storms blow so cold they can freeze objects/ships/lifeforms in seconds , deep beneath within the core is warm enough to support life . However through lack of food its inhabitants have devoured one another leaving only a large sea serpent within devouring parts of it's own tail in order to survive.
75- • ⁠an Orb of black obsidian this world makes a pass through its suns great solar flare once every 100 years.... some how it manages not to burn up and is instead supercooled creating a world of Black glass.
76- • ⁠a massive crystal imprisons a great titan. It is long dead but fiercely defended by a race that believe it to be a sleeping god
77- • ⁠a violently reactive newly formed world.. its plates shift so violently that it is almost constantly quaking. Its surface is hot and borderline molten and geothermal activity causes a constant spray of molten lava and ash into the upper atmosphere that is beginning to cool and harden, as it begins to seperate into 2 smaller bodies It resembles a mushroom cloud.
78- A planet with released clouds of experimental mind altering drugs. Since many of these were failed combat stimulants most increase aggression to extreme levels.
79- The planet was previously involved in a rebellion, one that failed with the most horrific outcome as the planet's surface was bombarded with nuclear detonations. All life that remains is grown underground in a complex of tunnels beneath the irradiated surface. People are not born, but rather grown in vats in bulk as tithe to those who won as tribute. Those who come from this world are very likely to join the bulwark of the current regime's army, and die whilst being trained in the harshest conditions possible. Those who make it beyond this grueling training regiment go on to usually die in service to the ruling faction's army, as an insignificant cog in the unstoppable, unending hordes of flesh that the ruling regime throws at its enemies.
80- The planet was host to a telepathic transmitter experiment. Unfortunately, the power is turned up so high that it literally fries the brain of anyone within high orbit of the planet.
81- An ancient precursor race built a machine on the planet that makes their thoughts into reality. They were destroyed by nightmares (made into reality) created by negative thoughts and emotions. The machines still function and will likely continue to function for millions of years. Credit: 1956 film "Forbidden Planet"
82- The planet is very placid and peaceful, but with no sapient life on it. The planet is so rich in natural resources that a pound of wood burns like 10 pounds of pure coal and its native animals’ meat is so nutritious it actually improves health. However, the planet is inhabited by hibernating superpredators that ruthlessly hunt down any foreign life form attempting to harvest its natural resources. They are completely immune to all forms of conventional weaponry.
83- The planet appears normal and Earthlike, however, there is no land-based animal life. Above the water, only plants and fungus live. This is because the planets star, which is normally quiet, is actually variable and goes nova ~ every 100 years, sterilizing the surface. Plants and fungus that regrow from their roots simply replace the dead tissue on the surface, and aquatic life is generally fine, but any colony established here is on a clock from day one.
84- A planet that is very rich in pure sodium on the surface. The atmosphere contains no oxygen. There are a few caves with bacterial ecosystems that are very rich in oxygen. However, should the oxygen ever reach the surface and come into contact with the sodium, the slightest spark will set it off and explode. This will cause a chain reaction by exposing other caves with oxygen. There are a few large (thousands of square kilometers) craters on the surface indicating this has happened before.
85- A planet inhabited by an intelligent species that will capture any alien lifeform to examine, usually with fatal consequences.
86- A planet that has near-constant thunderstorms, leaving no space for life to sprout other than underground. Life has adapted and can actually use the electricity as an energy source, but for earth(-like) life, the electrical currents in air will be lethal after a while.
87- A huge planet with gravity 5 times as strong as on earth. Only small plants and animals can survive (and bacteria and fungi-like lifeforms of course)
88- An icy planet that is warming up and the ice has started to melt. Ancient bacteria in the ice disrupt the water's eco-system and cause many species to die out. This world isn't immediately deadly, but it is a dying one.
89- A planet inhabited by robots who hate biolife as it used to treat them badly and slay any biolife that lands on their planet.
90- A planet involved in a violent interplanetary-wide war. Not as deadly as some planets, but not a very safe place to be for very long as there are no neutral countries and all sides commit regular war crimes
91- A planet that over a very long period of time spiraled inwards towards it's sun. The life either died or fled in starships. One half of the planet is a tide locked sea of lava and the other half is freezing ice.
92- The planet had been used as an insane asylum for the galactic governments for some time. It was practically a lone moon without a planet, massive complex buildings were erected on its surface, composed of only archways, staircases, compact cells (of course cells did vary for species), and small hallways. Using advanced technologies, a form of biological stasis fluid, that did not need changing, was administered to the ill. Essientally, the fluid kept the patients vitals stable and would repair any self inflicted wound and, in addition, rendered them relatively sedated, yet allowed them to remain conscious as the same time. The fluid was administered by a pack that would be inserted into the back and was wirelessly hooked onto a mainframe that insured each patients pack cycle the proper chemicals.
Unfortunately, due to a malfunction in the mainframe (that is still being investigated to this day), the sedative chemicals that were adminstered and cycled by the pack one day began to be filtered out of the blood stream and back into the pack. While the body stasis and regenrative functions remained stable, the patients then fell back into their own respective delusions and conditions. This incident caused the deaths of almost all staff at the facility (of which there were few), mainly due to patient voilence.
Since then, the facility has been abandoned and the only use its seen to date has been by corrupt governments dumping political prisoners on the surface of the planet. Currently there is a reward for the where'abouts of several political figures on the planet. There is also a incredibly large reward for anyone party that is able to repair the mainframe, located in the center basement of the planet's complex.
93- The planet is actually a pocket dimension controlled by what a thirteen year old author is writing on her newest Wattpad story. She’s going for a mixture of atomic horror and romance, and while the writing isn’t great the monsters are certainly awful. Also, random NPCs are constantly falling in love with the party. About half of them are obviously based on vampires and werewolves.
94- On #10, there exists one city that is built right on the border of night and day, all on top of a high-tech lazy Susan that slowly turns the city, maintaining an artificial night/day cycle. Life is a consistent struggle to maintain the rotation. Players will be rewarded if they go on a series of highly dangerous expeditions into the night/day sides of the planet in search of raw materials.
95- A planet that was once largely populated, until a strange ooze was birthed or created somehow with the ability to ingest any living matter and grow in size as a result. Over time, the ooze grew and grew until it became the size of a mountain, eventually gobbling up every other living organism on the planet. The ooze eventually died after running out of any organic matter to sustain itself, and it’s gargantuan amorphous corpse surrounds the entire planet, creating extremely interesting and unique landscapes.
96- A dry desert world with massive weather systems. Sandstorms the size of small continents constantly sweep across the world. Despite this, life survives on the planet, riding out the storms in armored shells, burrowing beneath the sands, or in extensive cave systems.
97- A metallic planet with a liquid interior. A current regularly cycles across the surface of the planet, causing anything on it to experience major electrical damage.
98- A planter that has two distinct magnetic fields on its poles alternating between attracting and repulsing each other at random times. Anything on it runs the risk of being flung into outer space or dragged into the rubble of the surface.
99- The planet's atmosphere contains a hive mind virus that quickly assimilates any visitors.
100- A species of practically indestructible predators methodically sweeps across the surface from west to east, consuming or killing almost every living thing. It takes them thousands of years to cross the ocean beds, but they scour the terrestrial surfaces within weeks.
101- The planet is an interstellar disposal grounds for radiation-contaminated material.
102- The planet periodically phases through into a dimension where life cannot exist, killing everything on it.
103- Rumors of a rift into a universe of Quantum Fatality. It's like the universe of Quantum Immortality, where every possible version of you that survives... survives - but opposite. The rumors of this rift somewhere in space are actually the spookiest part. No one is looking for it. Any real solid leads that definitely confirm or deny its existence remain behind, waiting to be read and understood, but they're covered in dust.
Apparently, anyone who gets close to even consider going to find if the rift is real or not... some version of them actually goes there... and the nature of Quantum Fatality snuffs that person out of existence and all living versions of them out of existence, back into the rest of the universe backwards and forwards throughout all time. Then, we never even know they existed.
But it's just a rumor. Right?
104- Planet is covered in millions of constantly firing machine guns.
105- Planet is covered in desiccant sand. Liquid is constantly being absorbed from the air, dehydrating anyone and anything in the atmosphere.
106- Planet vibrates at its core at a rapid rate. Anything remotely fragile is shaken to pieces in a short time.
107- The planet is a “Rogue Planet”. Whether it’s star burned out or the planet escaped it’s orbit, it’s sun is now missing. The entire planet is frozen over.
108- Everything on the surface of the planet has been turned into a giant desert due to the passing of gigantic robotic worms seeking to consume all metal they can find. Even the mountains have been worn away. (Credit to the movie Vexille).
109- The planet is a prison-planet that forces its residents into an infinite gladiatorial free-for-all
110-
• ⁠The planet is trapped in a forever war between two robot armies. Their creators have long since died off but the war machines will continue to fight in their name until everything not on their side is eradicated
111- • ⁠The entire global population has converted into worshipping an eldritch trans-dimensional horror and turned the planet into an elaborate temple/ritual ground. The stars are aligning allowing terrible things to enter our dimension and are helping the cultists open a light years wide hole in reality to let their dark master through.
112- • ⁠Every landmass on this planet is in fact the back shell of colossal mega fauna swimming on the surface of the planets shallow acid ocean
113- • ⁠A tropical planet with shallow seas that seems pleasant at first glance. On this planet is a singular 'ultimate lifeform' that causes life to flourish around it. When it dies, all life on the planet descends into a blood crazed killing frenzy attacking anything that lives. When there is one final living creature it rapidly evolves into an entirely new ultimate life form to bring life back to the dead planet.
114- An unknown intelligence has begun to take over the minds of the creatures on the planet. This hivemind seems virulent making many authorities to consider strict planetary quarantine or eradication.
115- A planet that a hyper advanced alien species attempted to teleport across multiples solar systems, however this catastrophically failed, and now all foreign matter immediately phases through the planet and is lost in its internal maw. It is nearly impossible to know about this planets side-effect without one observing it themselves which leads to many seeking refuge or adventure to being lost in its maw, as the aliens who caused the said side-effect are too ashamed to inform the public.

I need to talk. Like, I really need to talk.
The trouble is, I don’t have anybody I can talk to. My family’s estranged, my friends are all gone, and the authorities think I’m a lunatic.
It's just five days from Christmas, and I’m alone. Isolated. If I don’t get this off my chest though, I’m afraid it’s going to start festering in my mind like a decaying carcass; I’m afraid it’s going to sink its teeth in.
So I’ll talk to you. All of you. It’s not perfect, but it will do.
My name's Terrance Sims. I’m sitting in my rocking chair, rifle draped across my lap, in bloodstained pyjamas that still reek with last night’s piss. I haven’t slept in two days, and I might not sleep for two more. Last night something came down my chimney, and I think it’s coming back.
I’m getting ahead of myself, so let me paint you a picture. I live alone, up in the mountains where the pine trees are draped in snow, and the rivers are an icy blue. I could be a bit more specific, but I don’t think it’s warranted. Besides that, I like my privacy.
All of this to say, where I am isn’t important. What matters is what I have to say.
I’m a researcher. Or at least, I was once upon a time. My funding has long been cut, and my job along with it, but I've stayed out here because I believed in the research my team was undertaking. It was revolutionary. It meant the possibility of bridging worlds, of seeing new forms of life.
Now I’m terrified that research has found me.
You’ve probably heard of monsters, or urban legends, of things that claw at our imaginations and lurk in the dark recesses of our minds. Perhaps you’ve even felt one. They wait there sometimes, prowling just beyond our vision, tearing at the fabric that holds our realities together. Desperate. Hungry.
My job was to study these beings. I was tasked with developing an understanding of not only what they wanted from us but how to gain access to their world: the place Beyond the Veil.
Needless to say, I wasn’t successful. The organization I worked for, the Facility, poured millions into my ideas and wasn’t forgiving of my failures. When my theories came up short, they cut ties with me -- he cut ties with me.
‘It’s unfortunate, but it’s business,” Mr. Reid had said, feet on his desk, long hair pulled back in a ponytail. “Your failures reflect on me, Terrance, and they’ve become an accounting nightmare.”
I had begged him. Groveled. It didn’t matter. I was terminated along with my research, and when you’re studying the kind of things I am, they don’t want that information leaking out into the world. It’s what they call a liability.
So I was blacklisted. Facility teams picked away at my reputation, whispering in the back corners of universities and at the water coolers of laboratories. My name became synonymous with paranoia and madness. I was a laughing stock among my peers. A joke.
It was the end of my life.
Only one person cared to associate with me afterwards, a junior colleague and a brilliant young man named Alexi Azimov. He believed in the research nearly as much as I did, and luckily for him, his name wasn’t attached to the project.
When the Facility pulled the plug and dragged my name through the dirt, they simply moved him to a new department, and that was that. Despite it, he spent his vacation days returning to the mountain, assisting me with further study whenever he could.
Until last year, when even he abandoned me too.
But now I’ve shown all of them. I’ve proven they were wrong -- dead wrong. It’s here. He’s here. I always suspected he lived among these mountains, or at least that his Bridge was located within them, but I had given up hope for so long. It had been years, after all -- damn near a decade. They called me absurd. Insane.
Then, last night everything changed.
I was lying in bed, winding down after logging the readings on the temporal measurement equipment, when the cabin shook. At first, I thought an avalanche had struck it, but then I heard it: a clatter of hooves upon the roof.
I shot out of bed, my breath trapped in my chest and my body cold with sweat. I sprinted to the closet and pulled out my hunting rifle. Outside, a blizzard howled, but all I heard was the voice, a menagerie of tone and emotion, high and low, guttural and smooth. It rang out from above me.
Ho ho hO.
My first thought was to contact the Facility, but my satellite internet wasn’t functioning in the storm. Even if it were, I knew better. I was too far. Too isolated for help.
The mountains I study in are remote, and the cabin even more so. It was chosen for its seclusion as a means of observing the being known as the Sleigh Father, but the circumstances were meant to be different.
Much different.
Above me, the ceiling creaked, and dust drifted down from the rafters. Boots crunched upon the snow-caked roof. You always think you’ll know what to do when the moment comes, that your training will kick in, and you’ll just go through the motions like some kind of pre-programmed robot. I wish that were true. I really do.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think.
I’d spent the better part of my career chasing that monster, and now that it’d found me, I was lost. My fingers played against the trigger of my rifle, my mouth dry, and my eyes latched open. Inside of me, my body thrummed with terror. My fight or flight response oscillated between cowardice and impulsive foolishness. I was paralyzed. Alone.
A chorus of chattering pierced the screaming wind. It came fast and jittery, like a ticking clock marking time in microseconds. I knew what it was before the hoofbeats followed. It was them, the creatures the Sleigh Father commissioned in the First Days when people still feared the night and all the horrors within. Eight abominations, stitched together by the innards of mutilated children.
Their agony acted as his gateway -- his Bridge between worlds. The souls of the children lived on in the beasts, while their vacant spirits stalked the earth, lost and hopeless, seeking the missing piece that would finally grant them rest. Their tortured existence was his Link to our reality. The sleigh the abominations drew, his Bridge.
The thought shook me from my trance. I’d spent years waiting for this—a chance to see the other side, to see other worlds.
I had to act, so I lurched forward, moving through the lonely cabin while the Sleigh Father’s footsteps creaked above me. HO hO ho. He lumbered toward the chimney while I shivered down the cold hallway, rifle trembling in my skinny arms.
It took me only a few moments to reach the living area, and when I did, I settled there, just behind the corner of the wall. I kept my gun levelled at the fireplace, and my eyes plastered open. A crackling blaze danced in the hearth. It cast the sparse furnishings in an orange glow, throwing shadows across the loveseat and the messy desks.
The night became still.
The snowstorm quieted. The hoofbeats vanished. There was no sound of boots, no sound of laughter, only the snapping flames and my heart pounding blood through my skull. My mouth moved, and words spilled out. Affirmations. Come on, I muttered. Slide down the chimney, you beast. The fire’s waiting for you.
I knew better. Of course I did. I’d spent years researching the Sleigh Father, consumed tireless hours reading into his history. Of all the monsters the Facility had dealt with, the terrors that haunted old email chains and the urban legends that spread through panicked breaths, he was the anomaly. He was celebrated.
Santa Claus, they called him.
It was an error I traced back to centuries ago when a young girl witnessed her abusive father taken by the Sleigh Father. The creature devoured him and left the man’s skull as a parting gift, having taken what he came for: a human soul. To the girl, the beast was a saviour.
A saint.
The words she spoke in the following weeks, months, and years became immortalized. They became history, and then they became legend. A jolly being, laughing and hungry, coming down the chimney and leaving gifts in its wake. It was as tantalizing a tale as they come, especially to young children, eager to be appeased in their search for comfort and joy.
Now he was here with me, looking for another soul to add to his collection.
Seconds stretched into minutes as I waited, tucked quietly behind the corner of the wall, rifle in my arms, elbow steadied upon my knee. Once, we had contingencies for this. Plans in place that provided the means to incapacitate the Sleigh Father should he pay us a visit, but those plans involved government agents no longer in my employ. They involved expensive technology and complex spells. They were a last resort.
A clump of snow fell down the chimney, and the fire responded with a hiss of steam. Its flame retreated for a moment, flickering, before lashing back in anger. Something heavy shuffled above—the Sleigh Father.
Emotions swam inside of me. Regret. Anger. Fear. Why had I stayed out here? How could I have been so stubborn, so goddamn arrogant?
The answer was obvious: my old boss, Donovan Reid. His mockery, his wanton destruction of my life. It left me with no other option. Either I remained on this mountain, burning through my life’s savings and hunting wayward game, or I returned home. One meant a chance at redemption, the other guaranteed humiliation and disgrace.
I hated Mr. Reid more than words could say. Alexi had seen it. He’d seen how much my loathing distracted me, and so he recommended methods to help get the snake off my mind. A list, he’d said in an email last month. Write a list of all the ways you want to hurt him. Write a list of all the horrible things you want to happen to him. I think it could help you get him out of your head and free up your attention.
It helped—a little.
hO ho HO.
The laugh came high and low, husky and slick. A crunch followed it, like something digging into brick, and panic found its way into my bones. Dust and debris fell into the flames. The Sleigh Father's legend was explicit in his form of entry: if possible, it was always the chimney.
A grunt came down the flue, followed by more pebbles and stones. Then, the cabin shook. It was as if something heavy had jumped from the roof -- and what comes up must come down.
A pulverizing cacophony filled the night like cannon fire. Rubble tumbled into the blazing hearth while the bricks of the chimney bulged outwards, crumbling as something massive shot down it. I barely brought my rifle on aim before a figure crashed into the flames.
Burning logs shattered with a thunderous crack, plunging the cabin into inky darkness. Wooden splinters ricocheted around the room like blazing shrapnel, their slivers slashing at my face and tracing my skin in searing agony. I swung back behind the protection of the hallway wall, rifle clutched to my chest.
My thoughts raced. This couldn’t be happening, I said to myself. It couldn’t. I slammed my eyes shut, trying to get my out-of-control breathing back in line. I was hyperventilating. Panicking. I had to calm down because if I didn’t, I would start making impulsive decisions, and impulsive decisions were a good way to die.
I opened my eyes.
The fire was gone. I could barely see a thing. A short distance away, boots groaned against hardwood, kicking past broken logs in the hearth. My finger quivered against the cold steel of the rifle’s trigger, and I desperately wanted to pull it, but I knew that if I did, then it was over. Either the Sleigh Father would die, or I would. The odds, I decided, were not in my favour.
So I waited.
A piece of me, infinitesimally small, wanted to see him, wanted to flick on a light or blindly fire into the darkness. I wanted to witness the monster that possessed my life for so long -- if only for a second. But I didn’t. It’s not worth it, I told myself. It’s not worth it.
The footsteps stalked to the window, dragging something heavy behind them. Against the faint light of the moon, I made out the Sleigh Father’s silhouette. He was tall, inhumanly so. His neck craned forward, pressed against the top of the high cabin ceiling. A cloak was draped across his broad shoulders, and from his head slumped the pom of a stocking cap. Beside him sat a large sack.
“NaUghty oR niCe?” his voice hummed, in discordant melody.
I didn’t reply. It seemed impossible, but a part of me held onto the belief that maybe he wasn’t speaking to me. Maybe he didn’t know I was there. It was just a monologue, perhaps—words for the night.
I raised the rifle, aiming it toward his massive figure. I could do it now, I reasoned. I could pull the trigger and hopefully make this nightmare disappear.
Ho HO hO.
The silhouette turned, its face masked in shadow, save for a single glint of bobbing light. “CaReFuL wiTh tHaT,” it said.
A cold breeze swept across me, and suddenly my fingers burned with agonizing frostbite. My rifle clattered to the floor while my hands trembled in pain. “YoU’ll TaKe yOur eYe OuT.”
“W-what do you want?” I stuttered, stumbling backward. My feet croaked on the floorboards as I came up against the back of the hallway. My heart hammered. Tears filled my visions as I cradled my cold hands against my stomach. “Please,” I whimpered.
“NaUgHty?” he sang. “Or NiCe?”
“N-nice,” I said. “I’m a good man. I just wanted to l-learn about you.” The words stumbled out of my mouth like lemmings falling to their death. “I don’t mean any harm. I swear--”
The footsteps creaked closer, and as they did, the silhouette vanished from the window's moonlight. All that remained of it now was sounds it made. I listened intently to the burdensome echoes of boots on hardwood and the heavy scratching of coarse fabric being dragged across the floor.
ho Ho hO.
He was close. So close. I slammed my eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable, waiting to die. Warm piss spilled down my leg, and my face screwed up as I fell to my knees, bawling on the floor. “Please,” I begged. “I'm a good man! I told you -- please!”
The rumble of footfalls stopped, and in their place came the sound of rustling fabric, like somebody opening a sack.
“NiCe, yOu sAy?”
A dim light formed, radiating out of a burlap bag some five feet away. Behind its glow, I could make out a white, singed beard hanging over a red suit. The Sleigh Father’s face was otherwise indiscernible amidst the suffocating shadow, save for one dancing speck of light.
“WoULd yOu LiKe a GiFt?” he asked.
My mind raced. Was there anything in the mythology that warned against accepting gifts? I couldn’t recall. “Yes,” I hazarded, in a small voice. "Yes, please." It seemed unwise to refuse the creature.
hO ho Ho.
A massive, red-jacketed arm reached into the burlap sack. My eyes widened in horror as I realized the sack was moving. Kicking. Like there was something alive inside of it. Muffled screams followed, and the great arm pulled back, clutching a man by his long, blonde hair. The man thrashed and whimpered. Tears soaked his pale face.
Our eyes connected, mine and the man’s, and something ran through me. It was a feeling I’d never experienced before, a mixture of dark excitement and absolute loathing.
“You,” I said slowly.
The light from the sack was dim, but to the man, it was all he had known. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the heavy darkness of the cabin, and as they did, he peered toward me, eyelids pinched together to discern the voice speaking to him.
“Who’s there?” he whimpered.
I gazed forward in stunned silence. Was this real? There was no way. He dangled in the Sleigh Father's grasp like the finest Christmas present I'd ever seen.
“Hello?” his voice called. “Please, I have resources -- more than you could imagine! I’m a powerful man in government! Just get me the hell out of here, and I’ll give you whatever you want.” His voice turned weak, broken. “Please… please get me out of here. I have a family.”
I opened my mouth, but if words were there, I didn’t speak them. No. It seemed wasteful, at this moment, to reply so thoughtlessly. This moment necessitated careful words and a measured tone. It required my best.
“NauGhtY,” the Sleigh Father hummed. “So, sO NaUgHty.”
I found myself nodding along. Yes, the man was naughty. The worst. He was an abomination, fit for disposal. He’d doubted me -- made a mockery of me, and torn apart the life I’d so carefully built.
“Donovan,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice level. “Donovan Reid, isn't it?”
The light was faint. So faint. In spite of it though, I could see Mr. Reid had finally realized who I was, whether because his eyes had adjusted or he recognized my voice. Perhaps a combination of the two. His expression fell.
“That voice…You used to work for me,” he choked out. “Didn’t you?”
I gazed at him, something horrible growing inside of me. It ate up all of my fear, my regret, my rage and it left only hunger in their wake—a desperate desire for retribution.
“I did.”
​
[X.X]
TCC

No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves.
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring

 

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals; or collectively: the land.
This sounds simple: do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what and whom do we love? Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species. A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these 'resources,' but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state.
In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to plain member and citizen of it. It implies respect for his fellow-members, and also respect for the community as such.
Aldo Leopold, The Land Ethic

 

The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969

 

Purpose

The purposes of this Act are: To declare a national policy which will encourage productive and enjoyable harmony between man and his environment; to promote efforts which will prevent or eliminate damage to the environment and biosphere and stimulate the health and welfare of man; to enrich the understanding of the ecological systems and natural resources important to the Nation; and to establish a Council on Environmental Quality.
 

Title I: Declaration of National Environmental Policy

The Congress, recognizing the profound impact of man's activity on the interrelations of all components of the natural environment and recognizing further the critical importance of restoring and maintaining environmental quality to the overall welfare and development of man, declares that it is the continuing policy of the Federal Government, in cooperation with State and local governments, and other concerned public and private organizations, to use all practicable means and measures, including financial and technical assistance, in a manner calculated to foster and promote the general welfare, to create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and other requirements of present and future generations of Americans. Furthermore, The Congress recognizes that each person should enjoy a healthful environment and that each person has a responsibility to contribute to the preservation and enhancement of the environment.
In order to carry out the policy set forth in this Act, it is the continuing responsibility of the Federal Government to use all practicable means, consistent with other essential considerations of national policy, to improve and coordinate Federal plans, functions, programs, and resources to the end that the Nation may:

• fulfill the responsibilities of each generation as trustee of the environment for succeeding generations;
  
• assure for all Americans safe, healthful, productive, and esthetically and culturally pleasing surroundings;
  
• attain the widest range of beneficial uses of the environment without degradation, risk to health or safety, or other undesirable and unintended consequences;
  
• preserve impprtant historic, cultural, and natural aspects of our national heritage, and maintain, wherever possible, an environment which supports diversity and variety of individual choice;
  
• achieve a balance between population and resource use which will permit high standards of living and a wide sharing of life's amenities;
  
• enhance the quality of renewable resources and approach the maximum attainable recycling of depletable resources.
  

 
The Congress authorizes and directs that, to the fullest Administration extent possible, all agencies of the Federal Government shall:

• utilize a systematic, interdisciplinary approach which will insure the integrated use of the natural and social sciences and the environmental design arts in planning and in decisionmaking which may have an impact on man's environment;
  
• identify and develop methods and procedures, in consultation with the Council on Environmental Quality established by title II of this Act, which will insure that presently unquantified environmental amenities and values may be given appropriate consideration in decisionmaking along with economic and technical considerations;
  
• include in every recommendation or report on proposals for legislation and other major Federal actions significantly affecting the quality of the human environment, a detailed statement by the responsible official on the short-term and long-term environmental impact of the proposed action.
  

 

Title II: Council on Environmental Quality

The President shall transmit to the Congress annually beginning July 1, 1970, an Environmental Quality Report (hereinafter referred to as the "report") which shall set forth

• the status and condition of the major natural, manmade, or altered environments of the Nation;
  
• current and foreseeable trends in the quality, management and utilization of such environments and the effects of those trends on the Nation;
  
• the adequacy of available natural resources for fulfilling human and economic requirements of the Nation;
  
• a review of the programs and activities (including regulatory activities) of the Federal Government, the State and local governments, and nongovernmental entities or individuals, with particular reference to their effect on the environment;
  
• a program for remedying the deficiencies of existing programs and activities, together with recommendations for legislation.
  

There is created in the Executive Office of the President a Council on Environmental Quality (hereinafter referred to as the "Council"). The Council shall be composed of three members who shall be appointed by the President to serve at his pleasure, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. It shall be the duty and function of the Council to:

• assist and advise the President in the preparation of the Environmental Quality Report;
  
• to gather timely and authoritative information concerning the conditions and trends in the quality of the environment both current and prospective, to analyze and interpret such information for the purpose of determining whether such conditions and trends are interfering, or are likely to interfere, with the achievement of the policy set forth in title I of this Act, and to compile and submit to the President studies relating to such conditions and trends;
  
• to review and appraise the various programs and activities of the Federal Government in the light of the policy set forth in title I of this Act for the purpose of determining the extent to which such programs and activities are contributing to the achievement of such policy, and to make recommendations to the President with respect thereto;
  
• to develop and recommend to the President national policies to foster and promote the improvement of environmental quality to meet the conservation, social, economic, health, and other requirements and goals of the Nation;
  
• to make and furnish studies, reports thereon, and recommendations with respect to matters of policy and legislation as the President may request.
  

There are authorized to be appropriated to carry out the provisions of this Act not to exceed $300,000 for fiscal year 1970, $700,000 for fiscal year 1971, and $1,000,000 for each fiscal year thereafter.
 
 

Let's put our heads together and start a new country up / Our father's father's father tried, erased the parts he didn't like / Let's try to fill it in, bank the quarry river, swim / We knee-skinned it you and me, we knee-skinned that river red
...
Cuyahoga / Cuyahoga, gone

 

The Clean Water Act of 1970

Title I: Research and Related Programs

The objective of this Act is to restore and maintain the chemical, physicalj and biological integrity of the Nation's waters. In order to achieve this objective it is hereby declared that, consistent with the provisions of this Act:

• it is the national goal that the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters be eliminated by 1985;
  
• it is the national policy that the discharge of toxic pollutants in toxic amounts be prohibited;
  
• it is the national policy that Federal financial assistance be provided to construct publicly owned waste treatment works;
  
• it is the national policy that waste treatment management planning processes be developed and implemented to assure adequate control of sources of pollutants;
  
• it is the national policy that a major research and demonstration effort be made to develop technology necessary to eliminate the discharge of pollutants into waters.
  

 
The Administrator shall establish national programs for the prevention, reduction, and elimination of pollution and as part of such programs shall:

• in cooperation with other Federal, State, and local agencies, conduct and promote the coordination and acceleration of, research, investigations, experiments, training, demonstrations, surveys, and studies relating to the causes, effects, extent, prevention, reduction, and elimination of pollution;
  
• initiate and promote the coordination and acceleration of Report to conresearch designed to develop the most effective practicable tools and techniques for measuring the social and economic costs and benefits of activities which are subject to regulation under this Act; and shall transmit a report on the results of such research to the Congress not later than January 1, 1974.
  

In carrying out the provisions this section the Administrator is authorized to:

• collect and make available information pertaining to research and other activities;
  
• cooperate with other Federal departments and agencies, State water pollution control agencies, interstate agencies, other public and private agencies, institutions, organizations, industries involved, and individuals, in the preparation and conduct of such research and other activities.
  
• make grants to State water pollution control agencies, interstate agencies, other public or nonprofit private agencies, institutions, organizations, and individuals, for purposes stated in this section;
  
• contract with public or private agencies, institutions, organizations, and individuals;
  
• establish and maintain research fellowships at public or nonprofit private educational institutions or research organizations;
  
• develop effective and practical processes, methods, and prototype devices for the prevention, reduction, and elimination of pollution.
  

 

• The Administrator shall, after consultation with appropriate local, State, and Federal agencies, public and private organizations, and interested individuals, develop and issue to the States for the purpose of carrying out this Act the latest scientific knowledge available in indicating the kind and extent of effects on health and welfare which may be expected from the presence of pesticides in the water in varying quantities. He shall revise and add to such information whenever necessary to reflect developing scientific knowledge.
  
• The Administrator shall, in an effort to prevent degradation of the environment from the disposal of waste oil, conduct a study of the generation of used engine, machine, cooling, and similar waste oil, the long-term, chronic biological effects of the disposal of such waste oil, and the potential market for such oils, including the economic and legal factors relating to the sale of products made from such oils, the level of subsidy, if any, needed to encourage the purchase by public and private nonprofit agencies of products from such oil, and the practicability of Federal procurement, on a priority basis, of products made from such oil. In conducting such study, the Administrator shall consult with affected industries and other persons.
  
• The Administrator shall conduct research and investigations on devices, systems, incentives, pricing policy, and other methods of reducing the total flow of sewage, including, but not limited to, unnecessary water consumption in order to reduce the requirements for, and the costs of, sewage and waste treatment services. Such research and investigations shall be directed to develop devices, systems, policies, and methods capable of achieving the maximum reduction of unnecessary water consumption.
  

The Administrator shall report the preliminary results of such studies and investigations to the Congress as soon as practicable but not later than January 1, 1973.
 

Title II: Standards and Enforcement

• The discharge of any pollutant by any person shall be unlawful.

In order to carry out the objective of this Act there shall be achieved:

• not later than July 1, 1977, effluent limitations for point sources which shall require the application of the best practicable control technology currently available as defined by the Administrator;
  
• not later than July 1,1977, any more stringent limitation, including those necessary to meet water quality standards, treatment standards, or schedules of compliance;
  

The Administrator shall promulgate any revised or new standard under this paragraph not later than ninety days after he publishes such proposed standards, unless prior to such promulgation, such State has adopted a revised or new water quality standard which the Administrator determines to be in accordance with this Act.

• Each State shall establish for the waters, and in accordance with the priority ranking, the total maximum daily load, for those pollutants defined by the Administrator as suitable for such calculation.
  
• Each State shall estimate for the waters the total maximum daily thermal load required to assure protection and propagation of a balanced, indigenous population of shellfish, fish and wildlife.
  

Whenever required to carry out the objective of this Act:

• the Administrator shall require the owner or operator of any point source to establish and maintain records, make reports, install, use, and maintain monitoring equipment or methods, sample effluents, and provide such other information as he may reasonably require.
  
• the Administrator or his authorized representative, upon presentation of his credentials shall have a right of entry to, upon, or through any premises in which an effluent source is located or in which any records are located, and may at reasonable times have access to and copy any records, inspect any monitoring equipment or method, and sample any effluents which the owner or operator of such source is required to sample under such clause.
  

 

Title III: General Provisions

• The Administrator is authorized to prescribe such regulations as are necessary to carry out his functions under this Act.
  
• The Administrator, with the consent of the head of any other agency of the United States, may utilize such officers and employees of such agency as may be found necessary to assist in carrying out the purposes of this Act.
  
• Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the Administrator upon receipt of evidence that a pollution source or combination of sources is presenting an imminent and substantial endangerment to the health or welfare of persons may bring suit on behalf of the United States to immediately restrain any person causing or contributing to the alleged pollution to stop the discharge of pollutants causing or contributing to such pollution or to take such other action as may be necessary.
  
• Any citizen may commence a civil action on his own behalf against any person, including the United States and any other governmental instrumentality or agency to the extent permitted by the eleventh amendment to the Constitution, who is alleged to be in violation of an effluent standard or limitation under this Act or an order issued by the Administrator or a State with respect to such a standard or limitation, or against the Administrator where there is alleged a failure of the Administrator to perform any act or duty under this Act which is not discretionary with the Administrator.
  
• No Federal agency may enter into any contract with any person, who has been convicted of any offense under this Act.
  

There are authorized to be appropriated to carry out the provisions of this Act not to exceed $650,000,000 for fiscal year 1970, $800,000,000 for fiscal year 1971, and $1,000,000,000 for each fiscal year thereafter.
 
 

There's the progress we have found (when the rain) / A way to talk around the problem (when the children reign) / Building towered foresight (keep your conscience in the dark) / Isn't anything at all (melt the statues in the park) / Buy the sky and sell the sky and bleed the sky and tell the sky
Don't fall on me (what is it up in the air for?) (it's gonna fall) / Fall on me (if it's there for long) (it's gonna fall) / Fall on me (it's over, it's over me) (it's gonna fall)

 

The Clean Air Amendments of 1970

Title I: Ambient Air Quality and Emissions Standards

For the purpose of establishing national primary and secondary ambient air quality standards, the Administrator shall within 30 days after the date of enactment of the Clean Air Amendments of 1970 publish, and shall from time to time thereafter revise, a list which includes each air pollutant:

• which in his judgment has an adverse effect on public health or welfare;
  
• the presence of which in the ambient air results from numerous or diverse mobile or stationary sources;
  
• for which air quality criteria had not been issued before the date of enactment of the Clean Air Amendments of 1970, but for which he plans to issue air quality criteria under this section.
  

The Administrator shall issue air quality criteria for an air pollutant within 12 months after he has included such pollutant in said list. The criteria for an air pollutant, to the extent practicable, shall include information on:

• those variable factors (including atmospheric conditions) which of themselves or in combination with other factors may alter the effects on public health or welfare of such air pollutant;
  
• the types of air pollutants which, when present in the atmosphere, may interact with such pollutant to produce an adverse effect on public health or welfare;
  
• any known or anticipated adverse effects on welfare.
  

The Administrator within 30 days after the date of enactment of the Clean Air Amendments of 1970, shall publish proposed regulations prescribing a national primary ambient air quality standard and a national secondary ambient air quality standard for each air pollutant for which air quality criteria have been issued prior to such date of enactment.
 

Title II: Hazardous Air Pollutant Standards

The Administrator shall, within 90 days after the date of enactment of the Clean Air Amendments of 1970, publish (and shall from time to time thereafter revise) a list which includes each hazardous air pollutant for which he intends to establish an emission standard under this section.
After the effective date of any emission standard under this section, no person may construct any new source or modify any existing source which, in the Administrator's judgment, will emit an air pollutant to which such standard applies unless the Administrator finds that such source if properly operated will not cause emissions in violation of such standard.
 

Title III: Enforcement

For the purpose of developing or assisting in the development of any implementation plan, any standard of performance, or any emission standard, or of determining whether any person is in violation of any such standard or any requirement of such a plan:

• the Administrator may require the owner or operator of any emission source to establish and maintain records, make reports, install, use, and maintain monitoring equipment or methods, sample emissions, and provide such other information as he may reasonably require;
  
• the Administrator or his authorized representative, upon presentation of his credentials shall have a right of entry to, upon, or through any premises in which an emission source is located or in which any records required to be maintained under this section are located, and may at reasonable times have access to and copy, any records, inspect any monitoring equipment or method, and sample any emissions which the owner or operator of such source is required to sample.
  

 

Title IV: Motor Vehicle Emission Standards

The Administrator shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) in accordance with the provisions of this section, standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment causes or contributes to, or is likely to cause or to contribute to, air pollution which endangers the public health or welfare. Such standards shall be applicable to such vehicles and engines for their useful life.

• The regulations applicable to emissions of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons from light duty vehicles and engines manufactured during or after model year 1975 shall contain standards which require a reduction of at least 90 per centum from emissions of carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons allowable under the standards under this section applicable to light duty vehicles and engines manufactured in model year 1970.
  
• The regulations applicable to emissions of oxides of nitrogen from light duty vehicles and engines manufactured during or after model year 1976 shall contain standards which require a reduction of at least 90 per centum from the average of emissions of oxides of nitrogen actually measured from light duty vehicles manufactured during model year 1971.
  

 

• It is unlawful for a manufacturer of new motor vehicles or new motor engines to engage in the distribution in commerce, the sale, or the offering for sale, or the introduction, or delivery for introduction, into commerce, or (in the case of any person, except as provided by regulation of the Administrator), the importation into the United States, of any new motor vehicle or new motor vehicle engine, manufactured after the effective date of regulations, which does not comply with the standards set out by the Administrator.
  
• It is unlawful for any manufacturer or dealer knowingly to remove or render inoperative any pollution control device or similar element of design before or after such sale and delivery to the ultimate purchaser.
  

 

Title V: Emission Standards for Aircraft

Within 90 days after the date of enactment of the Clean Air Amendments of 1970, the Administrator shall commence a study and investigation of emissions of air pollutants from aircraft in order to determine the extent to which such emissions affect air quality in air quality control regions throughout the United States, and the technological feasibility of controlling such emissions.
Within 180 days after commencing such study and investigation, the Administrator shall publish a report of such study and investigation and shall issue proposed emission standards applicable to emissions of any air pollutant from any class or classes of aircraft or aircraft engines which in his judgment cause or contribute to or are likely to cause or contribute to air pollution which endangers the public health or welfare.
 

Title VI: Regulation of Fuels

The Administrator may by regulation designate any fuel or fuel additive and, after such date or dates as may be prescribed by him, no manufacturer or processor of any such fuel or additive may sell, offer for sale, or introduce into commerce such fuel or additive unless the Administrator has registered such fuel or additive. For the purpose of registration of fuels and fuel additives, the Administrator shall require:

• the manufacturer of any fuel to notify him as to the commercial identifying name and manufacturer of any additive contained in such fuel; the range of concentration of any additive in the fuel; and the purpose-in-use of any such additive;
  
• the manufacturer of any additive to notify him as to the chemical composition of such additive;
  
• the manufacturer of any fuel or fuel additive to conduct tests to determine potential public health effects of such fuel or additive (including, but not limited to, carcinogenic, teratogenic, or mutagenic effects), and to furnish the description of any analytical technique that can be used to detect and measure any additive in such fuel, the recommended range of concentration of such additive, and the recommended purpose-in-use of such additive.
  

 
The Administrator may, from time to time on the basis of information obtained under this section or other nformation available to him, by regulation, control or prohibit the manufacture, introduction into commerce, offering for sale, or sale of any fuel or fuel additive for use in a motor vehicle or motor vehicle engine if any emission products of such fuel or fuel additive will endanger the public health or welfare, or if emission products of such fuel or fuel additive will impair to a significant degree the performance of any emission control device or system which is in general use.
 

• The regulations applicable to emissions of lead from motor fuels shall contain standards which require a complete elimination of lead from motor fuels, applicable not later than January 1st, 1971.

 

Title VII: Noise Pollution

The Administrator shall establish within the Environmental Protection Agency an Office of Noise Abatement and Control, and shall carry out through such Office a full and complete investigation and study of noise and its effect on the public health and welfare in order to identify and classify causes and sources of noise, and determine:

• effects at various levels;
  
• projected growth of noise levels in urban areas through the year 2000;
  
• the psychological and physiological effect on humans;
  
• effects of sporadic extreme noise (such as jet noise near airports) as compared with constant noise;
  
• effect on wildlife and property (including values);
  
• effect of sonic booms on property (including values);
  
• such other matters as may be of interest in the public welfare.
  

In conducting such investigation, the Administrator shall hold public hearings, conduct research, experiments, demonstrations, and studies. The Administrator shall report the results of such investigation and study, together with his recommendations for legislation or other action, to the President and the Congress not later than one year after the date of enactment of this title.
 

Title VIII: General Provisions

• The Administrator is authorized to prescribe such regulations as are necessary to carry out his functions under this Act.
  
• The Administrator, with the consent of the head of any other agency of the United States, may utilize such officers and employees of such agency as may be found necessary to assist in carrying out the purposes of this Act.
  
• Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the Administrator upon receipt of evidence that a pollution source or combination of sources is presenting an imminent and substantial endangerment to the health or welfare of persons may bring suit on behalf of the United States to immediately restrain any person causing or contributing to the alleged pollution to stop the discharge of pollutants causing or contributing to such pollution or to take such other action as may be necessary.
  
• Any citizen may commence a civil action on his own behalf against any person, including the United States and any other governmental instrumentality or agency to the extent permitted by the eleventh amendment to the Constitution, who is alleged to be in violation of an effluent standard or limitation under this Act or an order issued by the Administrator or a State with respect to such a standard or limitation, or against the Administrator where there is alleged a failure of the Administrator to perform any act or duty under this Act which is not discretionary with the Administrator.
  
• No Federal agency may enter into any contract with any person, who has been convicted of any offense under this Act.
  

There are authorized to be appropriated to carry out the provisions of this Act not to exceed $450,000,000 for fiscal year 1970, $550,000,000 for fiscal year 1971, and $700,000,000 for each fiscal year thereafter.
[M] Like the previous policy megapost in this format, the text is almost entirely lifted from the text of various real-life bills passed around this time. In this case, I've made even fewer changes, and so the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act, and Clean Air Amendment of 1970 are basically unchanged from real life, obviously excluding the massive omissions of various overly specific provisions, implementation procedures, and legal liability clauses which have to occur in order for about 140 pages of legislation to fit within a single Reddit post. Nevertheless, I'm reasonably confident that the key provisions of each bill and their overall purpose have been communicated relatively well by my adaptation. Certain minor additions have been made; for instance, I've officially banned leaded fuel, and of course the Clean Water Act has been passed two years early. Additionally, a lot of environmental legislation from this era I'd like to do someday is missing, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Lead Paint Ban, the Federal Pesticide Act, and the Endangered Species Act, and will probably be addressed in the form of short paragraphs in yearly news updates.

I'm going to start this post off with a few disclaimers:

1. A good amount of my information comes from The Color of Law, by Richard Rothstein. I tried to find as many direct sources for the relevant topics brought up in the book as I could, but they weren't always readily availible. I highly encourage you to read the book itself if you want more details and his sources.
   
2. While I am going to try to use Atlanta-specific information as much as possible, there are some things that I can only provide evidence for in general, not to mention that I have to discuss this with the wider national historical context as well since Atlanta was but one part of a massive racist horror show.
   
3. I am by no means claiming to be an expert on this material. It's just what I have the most supporting information already at had for. Again, if you want to read more details from someone who spent much more time researching than I have, pick up a copy of The Color of Law.
   
4. I am by no means claiming that fixing zoning will be the end-all-be-all of segregation legacy, nor that it will singularly solve disparities for minority populations compared to white populations within the city. Undoing the sheer scale of bullshit put in place to codify segregation and racial suppression as it manifests today is an undertaking requiring effort on par with something like the Green New Deal (coincidentally, there can be quite a lot of overlap in with a GND, and that's why climate and social justice are so often packaged with various versions of a GND). Fixing the legacy of racist zoning's impacts is just one part to an incredibly complex system, but it's still one worthy of doing. Gotta start somewhere, right?
   

Alright, on to the main content... ^{Buckle up kiddos, we're going for a fuckin ride!}

Why the Fuck are you Talking About Zoning Right Now‽

The country is, to use an incredible amount of understatement, in a bit of a pickle right now. We're in the midst of a global pandemic that's surging, and resurging within our borders. We're reeling at a seemingly never ending parade of tragedy and failure of composure from the very police forces sworn to protect us. We're dealing with an ever escalating push back and response from a federal government that is attempting to label protesters as terrorists. We've had impeachments, assassinations of foreign political operatives, the emboldenment of out-and-loud racists, foreign bounties on our military, historic Supreme Court decisions, and record stock market crashes. We're staring down the barrel of a depression, and there's a looming climate catastrophe that's been burning in the background of all of this.
So why, in the middle of all of this, am I bringing up zoning of all things? How could that possibly be relevant to any of this?
Well... as it turns out... quite a bit. See, zoning is one of those core functions of government, generally on the local level but not always, that just kinda exists. It's a long, boring, complicated mess of legal code that just doesn't come up all that often in our every day discussions (unless you're a nerd like me who keeps trying to shove it into every conversation... ahem...).
No matter how innocuous or intangible or boring zoning may feel, though, it actually has massive ramifications for how our build environment is shaped. That is literally its job, after all: codifying what is and isn't allowed to be built, where, and how. That build environment then has massive ramifications on a whole pile of social, economic, and environmental issues.
A good zoning code balances public desires for safety, health, and environmental protections, while also helping to ensure various amenities are provided, ideally outweighing any downsides of development with benefits to the community at large. Unfortunately, most zoning systems fail at this balance, often focusing on the wrong components as perceived negatives when they're actually benefits, while codifying build requirements that actively make things worse for the communities around them. A bad zoning code can make housing more expensive, make it harder to meet climate and environmental goals, make the general population more sickly, impede the ability of persons to generate generational wealth, and horrendously damage the tax base, making it harder to fund public projects.
As it turns out, most of these issues trace back to a few core ideas of the initial model zoning systems, and were originally put in as features of the codes. The intent at the time was mainly focused on creating a few specific negative outcomes, with many of the others having taken decades to fully manifest and be recognized. Yet, the original structure of the codes remain, bureaucratic momentum and an incomplete understanding of justice keeping them in place, dragging out the problems for years and years and years.
So what were those features, and what specific negative outcomes were they trying to achieve?

Setting the Stage for Segregation

First, we have to step back, and take a bit of a historical run up to provide proper context.
In 1877, Reconstruction ended. Federal troops, who had defeated the Confederacy, packed up and left the south after 12 years of postbellum occupation (14 if you include overlap years of occupation before the war's end). Reconstruction, though certainly not perfect, had been a time of relative empowerment for black Americans. Backed by federal troops, integration and political power was actually in reach. It wasn't 40-acres and a mule, but it was an incredible leap forward as the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were enforced in about as blunt a way as possible: at the muzzle of a rifle. That all came to a painful and tragic end with the election of Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who had promised southern Democrats the end of occupation in exchange for electoral support.
Almost immediately, black Americans suffered a bloody, violent resurgence of oppression, with segregation becoming standard practice, and enforced both at the hands of local law enforcement and mobs of white Americans. Worse yet, as Jim Crow laws and their efforts anchored themselves across the south, previously diverse and inclusive (relatively speaking) parts of the country began to follow suit. All over, towns and cities undertook the effort of removing, or isolating their black populations, using similar tactics learned from the southern states.
Like a cancer, segregation spread far and wide, becoming more and more recognized and acceptable. By 1913, freshly elected president Woodrow Wilson and his cabinet approved the implementation of segregation in federal offices, marking about as drastic a change in federal priority as you could take over the course of three and a half decades.
It is in this atmosphere of invigorated racist bullshit that zoning rises within the policy consciousness.

The Original Sin of Zoning

As a concept, zoning ordinances within the U.S. were rather new, with the 1908 Los Angeles municipal zoning ordinances being the first of their kind. The LA laws were a formalizing of existing nuisance laws, meant to create separations of land use and buffers between the harmful effects of industries and residences. Though specific business classifications (such as unnecessary prohibition of laundries, which were predominantly owned by Chinese immigrants at the time, in certain areas) did come with racial issues, they were quite tame by the standards of the time, as we're about to see.
Prior to the rise of zoning as a popular government effort, it was fairly rare to see actual legal code dedicated towards segregation, instead focusing efforts on government-endorsed vigilantism and governments not enforcing equality laws already in place. This began to change, however. In 1910, a few years before the federal government would make official its office segregation, and two years after the LA zoning system was established, Baltimore became the first city in the nation, (as stated by the New York Times), to create an explicit law mandating the segregation of city areas. The city ordinance dictated that blacks could not buy homes on blocks where whites were the majority, and vice versa. The law was... horribly broken, and judges had to grapple with the complex, integrated reality of the city, trying to adjudicate who could and couldn't live where, or buy property where, creating an incredible mess of legal issues across the city.
The practical problems with the law did not stop other cities from copying the effort, though. Invigorated by Baltimore's example, Birmingham, Dade County (Miami), Charleston, Dallas, Louisville, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Richmond, St. Louis, and others all made their own version of racial segregaition mandates within landuse. Amungst this list was, in fact, the City of Atlanta, whose ordinance virtually copied the Baltimore law, with the added provision that a person of one color occupying a house in a mixed block could object to one of another color moving next door.
Unlike the initial LA zoning laws, the systems put in place following Baltimore's example were specifically racially focused, with more familiar zoning laws taking shape in the years to come. These initial racist laws would persist until the 1917 Supreme Court decision that such laws were unconstitutional in Buchanan v. Warley. However... the decision was based around the freedom of individuals to buy and sell property to whomever they wished, rather than a denunciation of segregation within law itself. Many cities simply ignored the Supreme Court ruling, and moved ahead with their segregationist laws, while others claimed that slight variations in the ordinances, such as the difference between block level and larger zoning styles, meant they didn't have to follow the ruling.
The City of Atlanta was, once again, one of these cities. In The Atlanta Zone Plan: Report Outlining a Tentative Zone Plan for Atlanta (1922), written by Robert H. Whitten as a consultant for the the City Planning Commission, explicit residential districts were outlined by racial makeup, with R1 as "white residence district", R2 as "colored residence district", and R3 as "undetermined race district". It was nice enough to allow servants' quarters remain open to either race. The plan justifies this by saying:

the above race zoning is essential in the interest of the public peace, order and security and will promote the welfare and prosperity of both the white and colored race.

Additionally, Whitten defended his zoning plan in professional publications by saying that "[e]stablishing colored residence districts has removed one of the most potent causes of race conflict." This, he added, was "a sufficient justification for race zoning.... A reasonable segregation is normal, inevitable and desirable."
Here is a map of the proposed zoning system within the then city limits. You can get an idea of just how limited housing areas for blacks were, just how much of the city was to be dedicated to single family housing compared to apartments, and how relegated commercial uses would be. Incidentally enough, this is where the City of Atlanta begins to see a zoning code similar to modern codes. We'll get to that in a moment. For now, note how closely this map matches some of the racial demographics of the city today, oh, and (just coincidentally I'm sure) how the largest 'Colored District' in the city was to be essentially bordered on three sides by industrial areas. Other zoning maps from the same time would go further with encroaching industrial zones, limiting colored areas, and limiting apartment areas.
^{Can I just take a moment to say how much I fucking love the Atlanta History Center and its archives? Okay, moving on.}
At the same time that Atlanta was ignoring its constitutional duty to not segregate its people, the federal government was stepping into the zoning game. In 1921, then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover organized an Advisory Committee on Zoning to develop a manual explaining why every municipality should develop a zoning ordinance, with an eventual goal of developing model legislation that could be easily adopted. This committee had such members as Frederick Law Olmsted, who argued in 1918 that not only were certain housing types "coincident with racial divisions", and, since it was undesirable to "force the mingling of people who are not yet ready to mingle", great care should be take not to mix housing types, and Irving B. Hiett, who was the president of the National Association of Real Estate Boards, an organization who would produce a code of realtor ethics stating that "A Realtor should never be instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood... members of any race or nationality... detrimental to property values" just a few years later. By 1922, the committee had developed A Zoning Primer, which argued that zoning was required to preserve property values, and which was widely distributed across the country. The policies would push out wide and far across the nation, following the federal government's example.

Pretending as if Racist Plans Aren't

In 1924, the Georgia Supreme Court struck down the City of Atlanta zoning code due to its racial components. Despite this, the underlying plan and map developed with segregation in mind, would act as the basis for future plans. Indeed, there are many overlaps with the 1922 plan, and even zoning designations today.
Keep Whitten's and the Zoning Commission's mentalities concerning the importance of racial segregation when looking back through the rest of the initial Atlanta zoning proposal. It provides leading anecdotes (without apparent supporting evidence beyond some photographs that don't really seem to match the narrative) of the dangers of mixing small stores, and low-rise multi-family housing with lower densities, primarily focusing on the perceived loss of value of adjacent properties, while framing the persons who make such developments as greedy speculators only out for a quick buck (rather than look at the economic benefit to the store owner, the new access to the store that surrounding areas get, and the housing relief the apartment dwellers experience).
Still without apparent evidence, the proposal makes sweeping, generalized statements about the need to preserve neighborhoods' character, and preserve property values. It proposes to do this by dividing the city into use, height, area, and race categories, with each mixing with the others to dictate specific allowances. The racial categories were removed, yet the remainder of the plan's suggestions would persist.
Even in 1917 it was understood that density was a major component of affordability. Special City Plan Adviser for the City Plan Commission of Cleveland Ohio Robert H. Whitten's essay The Zoning of Residence Sections, where Olmsted argued the merits of preventing the mixing of people and their racially pre-dis-positioned housing preferences, outright states:

We want to distribute the population as much as practicable, but at the same time we do not wish to force people who for business or other reasons need to live close to the central business sections either to pay very high rents or to go to much less convenient locations. As a city reaches metropolitan size, the demand for housing space near the central area becomes so great that the only way to make that location available to any but the wealthy is to permit a more intensive utilization of the land. Were it not for the ability to pile one dwelling on top of another, rents would be prohibitive in these central locations for the great mass of the people.

Even while expounding on the virtues of low-density housing, Whitten takes effort to acknowledge the economic need for multi-family housing to maintain affordability. Yeah, it's done in a condescending way where he can only imagine a case where being adjacent to the central business district is a legitimate reason for housing density, but he at least still accepts it as reality.
Yet, dwelling house districts, from which apartment houses would be excluded, were to include the larger portion of the area of Atlanta, and were to primarily be made up of the largest area class, requiring at least 5000 sqft per family of lot area. The code outright targets 2-3 story buildings with families living over a store (generally which they would operate) as being undesirable, and thus is explicitly designed to prevent such outcomes. All of these things drove up the per-house price, requiring a family to pay for a significant amount of land, as well as an individual house, in the majority of the city's residential area. In the maps I linked above, you can see just how few areas were allowed to have apartments compared to the wider single-family zones.
The federal zoning primer includes similar sentiments, telling an anecdote of how an apartment house built next to a home would destroy values by becoming 'a giant airless hive, housing human beings like crowded bees', as well as lumping 'sporadic stores' in with 'factories or junk yards' as a contributing factor of blight within a residential neighborhood.
It's important to note that none of these codes tried to make improvements to living conditions through legislation like building codes, which could have helped prevent the squalor conditions that were so readily associated with apartments, and which had been present in the U.S. since at least 1859, in Baltimore, choosing instead to essentially quarantine apartments to prevent their spread into single family areas.
As I laid out above, these are all value judgements made by people who viewed the mixing of races as something to avoid, as something that itself would contribute to a loss of property values (rather than recognize that self-fulfilling white panic, was the actual source of value drop, and that the constrained black populations were willing to pay higher prices because there were so few homes they could even get into, actually raising prices), and even made racial connections to types of housing to keep separated. But, because of the insistence of the courts, their policies were forced to take on an air of race neutrality. Thus, explicit race-based zoning was stripped from the codes, and the far more familiar forms of space and use based zoning were established. Those forms just so happen to harshly restrict the kinds of housing openly accepted as being affordable to the masses, and, in particular, the demographics of people who were least economically able to choose elsewhere.
As the federal zoning primer said: Zoning Is Legal
This is not to say that exclusionary zoning was not without its legal challenges, of course. In the 1926 Supreme Court case of Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty Co., 272 U.S. 365, the court upheld the constitutionality of exclusionary zoning, using as part of its opinion the argument that "very often the apartment house is a mere parasite", and that, if allowed to mix with single-family houses, "come very near to being nuisances". The case was brought to the Supreme Court as an appeal to a U.S. District Court of Ohio ruling against the constitutionality of exclusionary zoning, stating that "the blighting of property values and the congesting of the population, whenever the colored or certain foreign races invade a residential section, are so well known as to be within the judicial cognizance." Essentially, while the Supreme Court decided that exclusionary zoning was based on inherit issues with mixing building types (even though 1) the issues aren't inherit, and 2) the exclusion argument is based on a slippery slope fallacy), the District Court had (correctly) identified an underlying racial motivation for preventing mixing.

When the Pretending Becomes More Overt

Were all else equal, we might be able to ignore the initial racial components of exclusionary zoning, and merely call the resulting codes classist (the reality is that racism and classism were/are tightly intertwined, with each giving perceived justification to the other), but things weren't equal. The median household income for a black family in 1947 (the earliest year I could actually find data) was just 51% of a white household (it was only up to ~63% in 2018). Even though modern discussion around apartments tends to bemoan the 'luxury' branding, and how accurate it may or may not be, the hard reality is that living in an apartment is cheaper than buying a house, at least in the immediate. For lower income people, it's pretty much the only option. For poor, and thus disproportionately black, people, the primary need for housing affordability was in the form of apartment buildings and residential density, even if that was only desired as a stepping stone. But that's not what the zoning system provided.
Overwhelmingly, the city's land was designated for single family homes. Large lots, and individual homes drive up the per-unit costs of housing, locking poorer people out of being able to buy into neighborhoods. Worse yet would be the zoning systems of suburban and smaller towns, which would eliminate the ability to build apartments all together, essentially locking lower income, and thus disproportionately black, persons from being able to relocate there at all. This lead to crowding in the limited apartments, and, since the building codes hadn't been adequately updated to actually prevent it, the very slum conditions used as a justification for preventing apartments in the first place became self-fulfilling.
Of course, not all black people were so poor that they couldn't afford to buy a single-family home, and quite a few did look to leave the limited availability of apartments. They were not met well, and indeed, in the years following the installation of exclusionary zoning systems, the federal government would essentially codify black exclusion from single-family neighborhoods, with cities clinging to the federal policies as justification for blocking black and integrated housing.
Property (particularly home) mortgages used to be very, very different than how we think of them today, which locked many people out of the ability to get them. High-interest rates, huge down-payments, interest-only payments, and short (5-7 year) payback periods. These terms kept middle and low class persons (of all races) from being able to afford to buy property. As part of the New Deal, the Home Owners' Loan Corporation was established. The loan system was restructured to be closer to the lower rates, lower down-payments, overall payment, and long-term periods we're more familiar with today. Additionally, many existing mortgages were bought and restructured to save property owners from foreclosure.
In the process of this, though, HOLC wanted an inventory of risk across the nation, so it could manage these new loan terms without crippling itself financially. This is where the kinda okay policy stopped. The risk inventory was carried out by local real estate agencies, who had national ethics codes and local policies for their agents to explicitly consider race when evaluating risk. So much so that they were actually under direction to maintain community segregation when otherwise selling properties. The inventory took the form of color-coded maps, where red sections on the map represented high-risk (don't loan people money / bail them out here). Many, many of these red areas were based on racial prejudice, with even wealthy / middle class integrated or black communities being rated far worse than equivalent income white areas.
Here is a database of maps across the U.S., overlaid against modern areas. Here's a fun game: compare the Redlining Map for Atlanta to the initial racial zoning map! No it's not a 1-1 match, but it gets awfully close, particularly if you start to include initially designated areas for apartment buildings.
This entire mess was made even worse with the establishment of the Federal Housing Authority, which was intended to insure private bank loans to first-time home buyers. Even though the FHA had its own auditing system separate from the HOLC, it still had direct segregation and whites-only policies. Additionally the FHA very specifically did not insure mortgages within urban centers. This meant that both HOLC and FHA services were denied to nearly the same areas: black or integrated neighborhoods, most often in urban centers.
The FHA justified its racial rules by claiming that black people ruined property values. This was actually backwards, as the limited options available to black people meant that black and integrated properties were in high demand, and thus could be sold at a much higher price. What did happen, though, was 'block-busting'. So, because the FHA (and other organizations) continuously sold the idea that black people ruined property values, as well as the base-level racism, this left white neighborhoods vulnerable to manipulation. Speculators would buy up properties in blocks on the border of black / integrated and white areas, and then rent / sell them to black people. These speculators would also hire black people to walk around white neighborhoods asking about home sales, and looking like they lived there. Then the speculators would go around warning white property owners that their housing values would tank with all the black people moving in, and make stupidly low offers, buying out white properties well below the actual value (this is where the FHA was getting its data). Then the speculators would turn around and, because there were so few other options, sell the same properties above their actual value to black people at bad rates. This drove up costs for black people who otherwise just wanted a home, and the high prices contributed to perpetuating poverty and again creating self-fulfilling slum conditions.
Many cities, private lenders, and other government agencies (like Veterans Affairs) anchored their lending and development approval processes on the FHA backing of home loans, which meant that blacks were barred from even the opportunity to really leave parts of the city within which they lived.
It's worth reiterating that the HOLC and FHA policies were targeted directly at owning private homes, working off of a national policy that private homes were less communist than apartments. No, I'm not kidding. The U.S. Department of Labor distributed pamphlets entitled We Own Our Own Home to schoolchildren stating that it was a "patriotic duty" to cease renting, and to buy a house. Millions of posters were printed, and hung in factories and other businesses, while newspaper ads were run throughout the country. This national housing direction propped up single-family residences, and the infrastructure to support them, while leaving pretty much everything else to languish.
Then there were the racial covenants, where individual properties were made unavailable to black people by deed restrictions, and which were often implimented on neighborhood scales.
Then there was the New-Deal, where the Civilian Conservation Corps abided by local segregation policies for its camps and worker housing, further entrenching local segregation.
Then there was the issue of cities targeting black and low-income areas overwhelmingly with zoning variances for industry and toxic waste disposal sites, exposing those persons to much higher quantities of toxins and pollutants.
Then there was public housing which eliminated mixed-income tenants, was often explicitly segregated, often resisted adding housing for black people, and, when they did add housing open to blacks, located overwhelmingly in already black and poor neighborhoods, effectively concentrating poverty and increasing segregation.
Then there were Interstate Highways, which were explicitly used for 'slum clearing' in many cities (including defining slum based on racial makeup rather than socioeconomic status of the persons living there), which were massive transportation subsidies to the very same segregated low-density suburbs already built with federal loan backing while public transportation languished, and which were actually used as physical barriers between parts of the city.
Frankly, the list kinda just keeps going, and so I'm not going to try and fit it all. Seriously, go read the Color of Law for more explicit details. My main point with all of these is that, when you combine the initial versions of the zoning codes, the opinions of the people who made them, and the wider reactions and policies that came after the codes proved not to 100% segregate black people from white people, it becomes clear that a major component of the zoning system was established not actually to prevent health or value issues, but rather to maintain the separation of races.

That was a lot of words...

Right, so here's the summary:

1. After a decade of relative progress, the federal government abandons Reconstruction
   
2. Almost immediately, communities, including previously inclusive ones, begin to force their black populations out in a renewed effort of segregation
   
3. At first this is done outside of the law, but eventually cities get the idea to literally codify segregation through ordinances
   
4. That codified segregation was struck down in the Supreme Court, so cities are forced to find a proxy method of enforcing segregation
   
5. Cities used the separating of mixed-use developments and multi-family apartment buildings to create racial segregation through the proxy of economic segregation
   
6. When this doesn't work 100%, the federal government established home mortgage support systems that directly excluded black people, preventing them from buying into single-family neighborhoods even if they could afford it
   
7. There was a lot of other shit that happened to basically show that zoning was not the unbiased system it was pretending to be
   

Persistence of bad policy

Even though many of the explicitly racist policies have been removed or overturned, and what progress there has been in raising the wealth of black persons has helped with some racial mixing, it's clear that the proxy methods for discrimination persist to this day, with visible segregaition outcomes. Even when we do see integration, it is often in the form of wealthy white people moving into the limited new developments allowed in previously majority black areas (AKA 'Gentrification').
Today, Atlanta is still overwhelmingly zoned for low-density, single-family residential, even if some of those zones allow up to Accessory Dwelling Units (such density, much urban). Lot sizes in much of the city are still mandated to be quite large, and height planes still overly limit the number of stories buildings can be. What apartment buildings are allowed are constrained by cumbersome parking requirements (both codified and required by private lenders), and property setbacks. Mixed uses are often restrained on individual properties, requiring a specific zoning designation to be allowed. Even the city's plan for handling future growth still relegates nearly 75% of the area to relatively low-density housing as 'conservation' areas.
Metro-wide, not nearly as many homes are being built as were pre-recession. While home prices are increasing back to pre-recessionary levels, housing inventory in metro Atlanta is constrained – partially due to a lag in residential construction. Prior to the recession, it was not uncommon for residential building permits to exceed 5,000 per month (in some cases, reaching over 7,000). After May 2007, the region experienced a steep decline in residential building permits, which persisted into early 2012, when the region began seeing modest increases. Though residential permits have trended upward since 2012, they have yet to reach pre-recessional levels, hovering instead between 2,000 and 3,000 permits per month. Because of this, all counties in metro Atlanta are experiencing the a decline in housing inventory. One of the main summary points of that report was: "Home prices rising significantly – faster than wages – due in large part to dwindling supply" ARC Regional Snapshot: Affordable Housing While the metro itself has been pretty easy to build new housing within (atleast from 2000 to 2015) compared to other metros, the parts of the city and close-in suburbs tend to be the hardest within which to add new supplly (of the 10 hardest zipcodes to build, the top 3 were partially in the city, and another three were in or partly in the city).
Indeed, inflation-adjusted housing prices are rising quite quickly in the Atlanta Metro, even including months during this pandemic. Prices are looking to pass pre-2008 peak in 2023ish. Only, this time, vacancy rates for both renters and homeowners have been nearly at all-time lows for the metro (Source: Census Bureau). Many of the most intense price increases happening within the core city.
At the same time, affordable housing initiatives are proving to be far too few to handle the rising costs, with recent 'Inclusionary Zoning' rules, as well as the wider public housing program failing to close the need. We're talking programs considering themselves successful at a few thousand units, when the demand for affordable housing (let alone total housing) is in the hundreds of thousands.
The simple reality is that the racism of our past is leading to an over-all affordability crisis today. While, as usual, the hardest hit are African Americans, this affordability crisis has far reaching impacts across the demographic spectrum, including poor whites, and, particularly, poor Latino populations as well, locking out a wide variety of people who would otherwise want to live in the kinds of dense, walkable, urban areas the City of Atlanta uniquely offers within the metro.
Not only that, but the very types of low-density developments so widely codified across the city and nation do not generate enough economic activity to actually pay for the infrastructure needed to support them, propped up by piles of hidden subsidies, all resulting in cities being effectively bankrupt. (Here's another real-world example) Even some of the most 'wealthy' of towns are having to seriously reconsider their historic development patterns to close out financial gaps. In Atlanta, this leads to things like a massive backlog of maintenance issues that even recent bonds and tax increases can't fully handle. Again, policies of a racist past are hurting everyone today. Undoing those policies, and transitioning back to tried-and-true development styles would greatly help fix financial issues.
Additionally, as we work to overcome challenges with climate as a whole, we need to be seriously looking at our build environments, and just how much low-density development contributes to emissions compared to higher-density parts of the metro, and even the city itself. At the same time, moving away from cars would help reduce respiratory issues for poor and minority persons who are disproportionately affected by road-pollution, and generally moving to cleaner industries while cleaning up legacy pollution sites can help undo the years of inequality through industrial exposure..

Okay, so what do we do?

We need to have a hard discussion about zoning policies: their origins, their purposes, and their effects. We need to be prepared to recognize when policies were built on hate, and where they have lead to harm, just as much as we need to be ready to recognize that not every aspect of the zoning system is bad. We need to be willing to change, and be proactive about fixing the failings of previous generations. Ideally for the net benefit of all of us.
As part of this discussion, though, we are going to have to really, truly consider what 'character' of this city are valuable. What are tangible goals, what are the potential negative outcomes, and what can be done to mitigate those outcomes, ideally while actually adding to the 'character' of the city. Again, we needs to be willing to change here. Not everything wrapped under the broad umbrella of 'character' is actually worth keeping, particularly given how I could probably copy and paste some of the 'neighborhood character' arguments from the initial racial zoning codes into places like NextDoor or Facebook or even here on Reddit without anyone suspecting they are nearly 100 years old.

The End!

Holy shit! You made it to the end! Thanks for putting up with so, so many words... Here's a video of a little girl way too excited to get on a train as a reward.

Efforts are the best indicator of interests, and putting them where they will do you maximum good adds on to putting in more and more each day. Since the last few decades environmental issues have been rising, and are spreading faster than forest fire! With the ongoing hustle and bustle about generating awareness for the environment or the depreciating environment, different stakeholders like the government and the customers have started pressurizing the businesses to act responsibly. Indeed, corporate sectors have started putting efforts in integrating their business with green supply chain practices. Such practices are a boon to mitigate environmental degradation and in the process control air, water, and waste pollution through sustainable efforts in the right direction, thereby adopting and implementing green practices in each and every business operation.
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A supply chain is a network that consists of all parties involved like the supplier, the manufacturer, the distributor, the wholesaler, the retailer and the final customer either directly or indirectly, in producing and delivering products or services to ultimate customers. Now, delving into green supply chain practices; it is simply integrating environmental practices into the traditional supply chain practices. Reducing and controlling the harmful impacts of supply chain on the environment, adoption of ecological design, sourcing green materials, and providing green training under ethical leadership is what constitutes green supply chain. This can include processes such as supplier selection, purchase of material, product design, product manufacturing, packaging, and assembling and distribution which together result in value addition or value creation. Adoption of such green supply practices like designing eco friendly products using less material, minimum operations, implanting green purchasing policies to reduce harmful emissions and proper and careful use and disposal of hazardous materials can also help in achieving economies of scale. Optimizing truck loads, routing of distribution and moving over to fuel efficient tools and machines in case of logistics are some simple yet very efficient ways to contribute towards a safer and better environment. It comes as a win-win situation for both the business as well as the environment, because adhering to green supply chain practices can not only reduce the environmental pollution and production costs but can also spur economic growth, and eventually help the business create a competitive advantage in terms of having a reputable brand image, satisfaction and hence loyalty and better business opportunities. A lot of times, especially in such a competitive environment, looking at other businesses’ practices triggers firms to act in a socially responsible and ethical way themselves. Green supply chain management comes with a host of benefits that include financial, social and of course environmental benefits. When we talk of financial benefits they can be: • increased revenue • reduced costs • enhanced customer service
Social benefits include:
• reduced undesirable community impacts • enhanced security • increased safety • superior health benefits
Environmental benefits can be summarized as: • reduced waste • increased energy efficiency • reduced water, air emissions • reduced fuel consumption Apart from these advantages, channelizing your efforts in the right direction can also improve operations and agility by speeding up innovation, increase adaptability in terms of continuous and innovative improvements and finally aid in better alignment of business processes and principles. There are a few players in the industry who religiously follow such practices. Safexpress, one of the leading logistics providers in the country has totally redefined the way supply chain functions in the country through their pioneering initiatives. The company has designed and developed an in-house mobile app called the ‘Green App’ which is centered around productivity and optimization, and has immensely helped to reduce its carbon footprint by digitizing its business process instead of relying on paper. Safexpress has been driving its ‘Go Green with Safexpress’ campaign for the last decade. In the process, it has educated millions about the importance of going green and has helped countless firms develop a Green Supply Chain.
Source: https://safexpressblog.com/2020/02/11/put-your-effort-where-it-will-do-the-most-good-green-supply-chain-practices/

This is a form of claptrap that is based on the notion that spent fuel from nuclear reactors will remain dangerous for tens of thousands of years. Consequently repositories must contain warnings that will remain interpretable by our (supposed) degenerate offspring.
Of course, the initial premise is based on error: After 1000 years, the level of radioactivity in spent nuclear fuel has decreased to approximately the level of the raw ore when it was mined. There is no real need to sequester it over geologic time periods. The fact is that it gets less dangerous over time. The cadmium and the mercury released by coal combustion sitting in open ash ponds will remain toxic forever.
On top of which it is hubris to the extreme to assume that those that follow us will be less able to deal with radioactive materials than we are, or that we can do anything now to prevent them from forking through our leavings if they want to. And why would we want to given that they may well be advanced enough to make some use of it?
This is the equivalent of some Bronze age civilization arrogating itself the right to dictate similar terms to us. The ancient Egyptians intended to bury their rulers indefinitely, intentionally sealing walls and stamping grave warnings onto them. Despite their best efforts, ancient civilizations never seem to have been able to stay buried. So how, when we become the ancient civilization, do we think we can we stop those in the future from digging up our buried nuclear material?
The whole field is a ridiculous exercise whose only function is to maintain an elevated level of fear in the public mind over all things nuclear as part of the greater propaganda effort to protect the market of fossil fuels.
ADDENDUM: Since there seems to be some issue with the 1000 yr until it is safe that I used this needs to be put in perspective.
Because it emits alpha particles, plutonium is only dangerous when inhaled. When plutonium particles are inhaled, they lodge in the lung tissue. The alpha particles can kill lung cells, which causes scarring of the lungs, leading to further lung disease and cancer.
What it is not is a source of prompt gamma which is what is really hazardous with spent fuel.
Asbestos, too if inhaled, can cause cancer and other lung diseases. While Pu has a half-life of 24,100 years, asbestos lasts forever, and the volumes of it that exist in the biosphere through human activity is several million orders of magnitude than all the Pu that has ever existed on this planet.
Now asbestos is illegal to use in most places, and existing asbestos removed is sequestered by disposing of it in designated landfills. Compared to facilities for radioactive waste geosequestration facilities, the asbestos ones are quite shallow. On top of which, unlike solid spent fuel rods, the very act of removing asbestos renders it friable and thereby far more bioavalable.
Yet in spite of the fact the asbestos in these will be dangerous, by definition, until the Earth gets swallowed by a red Sun, no one is wringing their hands over these, or planning symbolics that will be understandable over that timespan.
An inhalation hazard is far less immediately dangerous than exposure to high flux energetic gamma rays. Those have all but vanished from spent fuel well within a thousand years.

To start off, this is a throw away account (not deleting, but anonymous). I live in a rural Oklahoma community and I am concerned about blow back from neighbors, oil & gas operators and contractors that live and work in our town. For this reason I created a brand new reddit account.
A little back story to bring everyone up to speed. We moved to south central oklahoma five years ago to get away from the big city (Dallas), lower expenses and raise our children on a small ranch. Think of the movie Money Pit crossed with Field of Dreams. We found a beautiful 160 acre (1/4 section) with a modest ranch home perched on a small hill surrounded rolling hills, wheat field and trees. Great place to relocate: safe, good community, decent school and reasonable pay in town at a local firm. We spent the first severals months in a dream world thinking we had found paradise, and always worried the secret would get out and ruin it for us. This all came to an end when a local oil & gas operator put stakes in the ground of our neighbors property, and shortly after a drilling rig was moved in to drill four wells.
Let me provide a little side note after that statement. My wife and I are not against domestic exploration and production of natural resources. We didn't even raise an eye when we learned that a well would be installed over the fence line. We knew, and had been told by friends in the area, that in 90 days all the trucks and large equipment would "move on" and won't create a longterm distraction or eyesore since the drilling pad was shielded by dense cedar trees. All of this was true, but no one told us about the practice of drilling waste disposal referred to as "soil farming".
The technical term for soil farming is "land application" by the OCC, Oklahoma Corporation Commission. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission is responsible for the regulatory oversight, rule making and enforcement of Oil and Gas activity within Oklahoma, which includes waste disposal practices (along with other industries). As many of you are aware, the Oil & Gas industry has an exemption to the clean water act and exempts their waste from the RCRA (hazardous) standards set by the EPA (subtitle C Exemption, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act). Details can be found here if interested (Link to EPA document). layman's terms: All exploration waste is non-hazardous, and regulated by the states and not the federal government.
"Soil Farmers" throughout Oklahoma spread drilling waste on land with virtually no oversight, testing or rules. This drilling waste comprises of drilling fluid and solids extracted several miles below ground. The drilling fluids are separated into two types: water base and oil base. Water base is a mixture of fresh water (sometimes brine) and various chemicals. The oil base is comprised of 80% diesel fuel and 20% fresh water and various chemicals. You read that correctly, the state of oklahoma allows oil & gas operators the ability to spread diesel fuel, untested mind you, on soil that we grow crops or graze livestock that feeds the entire country. Unfortunately that is not the worst of it. Once the drilling mud and solids are discharged from the rig they now contain metals (Lead, Arsenic, Silver, Barium, Cadmium, Chromium, Zinc and Mercury) along with salt (sodium chloride). I learned all this from publicly available information on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission website along with visiting with a neighbor that works as a "mud engineer" in the industry. So not only are we spreading diesel fuel daily, but we are polluting the agricultural land with metals and salt.
I'm not talking ten gallons, but tens of thousands of barrels (42 gallons per barrel) per well. These are several tons of waste diesel and metals, not a few pounds. The problem is this disposal practice is done every day and no one seems to care or talk about it. Most use keywords such as "fracking", but don't take the time to look into the everyday issues that are on the surface and pollute our land, water, air and the food we eat. I've reached out to newspapers, investigative journalists in Oklahoma and Texas and no one has been interested. I don't know what to do, and I am looking for advise or direction on how to make people aware and ultimately create a positive change for the state. Any help you can provide or insight is much appreciated!
I am concerned for my wife and I's health, but I am more concerned for our children. Soil Farming takes place throughout Oklahoma and I cannot begin to fathom the damage this has created to our water, food and public health. We are talking hundreds of millions of gallons of diesel along with countless tons of metals and salt. I have a lot more to tell and share, but I worry this post is too long already and may not be read, but I hope not! Please respond to post if interested to learn more or directly message me.
Thanks!

Peacock Patricia "Peacock" Watson Gallery | Quotes | Move List Peacock action portrait by oh8-d2qigab.jpg Murder-Go-Round Information Peacock (JP: ピーコック) was originally a human girl by the name of Patricia Watson who was turned into an Anti-skullgirl biomechanical weapon by Dr. Avian. Her arsenal consists of the Argus System, a synthetic Parasite, and her "gang", which includes the Avery Unit, Andy Anvil, Tommy Ten-Tons, George Bomb, and Lonesome Lenny.
General Information Peacock is one of the original eight playable characters in Skullgirls, standing out as having the most (unique) assist characters, and was among the first characters ever conceived by Alex Ahad. Her backstory was revealed in detail in the "Meaner. Better. Faster. Stronger" Origin Story in Skullgirls Mobile. Her homestage is Lab 8.
Peacock is capable of aging. Some of her parts may need to be re-fitted because of this.
Peacock took up smoking after her transformation. They are imaginary cigars that are created in a similar manner to her other summons.
Alex Ahad has stated that Peacock will never stop believing in imaginary friends.
Peacock's favorite television program is "Annie: Girl of the Stars". She is shown to own merchandise from the show as she is seen wearing Sagan slippers while in her sleeping attire.
Personality Nothing sates Peacock's boredom more than a good cartoon and laying waste to anyone or anything in her sight. Brash, combative, and impatient, Peacock is easily the most outspoken and infamous member of the Anti-Skullgirl Labs, as well as the most prominent. Peacock is also, for the most part, optimistic and light-hearted, and considers imminent threats more of invitations to brawl. Her tendency toward violence is a reflection of both her tragic past and near-death experience as well as the cartoons she cherishes.
Despite having a damaged psyche, Peacock does not attack people out of sheer randomness or without provocation. Although rude and impersonal to fellow ASG Lab 8 members (and most people in general) superficially, Peacock still very much considers them family, and will go to certain lengths to protect them from harm (or in the case of her and Big Band's story mode, further harm). Dr. Avian was particularly close to Peacock, and his death sent her into an outrage to search for his murderer.
None, however, are closer to Peacock than Marie Korbel, her one true friend from her past and the Skullgirl she was tasked to destroy. In the end, she disposes of Marie as she was instructed, but personally sees to it that Marie's wish to end the Medici Mafia is carried out.
Character Basis Origin Peacock's dialogue and animations reference multiple cartoon eras, but chiefly feature 40's-50's era cartoon violence and slapstick.
Name Her true name is Patricia Watson, while she herself came up with Peacock. The word "peacock" is the more commonly known name of the peafowl, but is actually the term for the male bird.
The name Patricia is derived from the Latin word "patrician" and means "noble". Watson is a patronymic surname meaning "son of Walter". It should be noted that Walter means "ruler of the army", which accurately describes her relationship with her gang.
Being once close friends, Marie continues to address her as Patricia. Her gang typically refer to her as "boss".
Design Her natural eye color used to be green before they were gouged out by slave traders. The Argus System is Peacock's only means of sight, as the ones on her face are actually empty eye-sockets. The holes left are also a visual pun: Due to her design being based on American cartoons, her eye-sockets could easily be interpreted as though they are natural eyes; drawn in the style of a 1930's cartoon character. The joke is how similar styles of drawing can offer different perceptions on how something looks. Her references are similar to the 30's such as Mickey Mouse.
Her cartoon revolver bears resemblance to the Smith & Wesson Model 29, a .44 Magnum revolver made famous by Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry.
In older design concepts, Peacock was intended to be a more "demented type" character, originally being envisioned as a scarred, sociopathic individual due to her experience as a slave. At one point, she was considered to be a boss alongside Marie. Her design was changed to be more 'cartoony' and lighthearted. These design documents also included references to her abilities being part magic with spells being carved onto her bones.
Story Patricia once lived with Marie in an orphanage, which was originally a nobleman's house, in Rommelgrad. Having to make do with what was available, both girls used to dress in maid outfits that they found within the house. At some point, they were captured by slave traders, but because Patricia was too defiant to be a slave, she was mutilated as an example to the others: Her eyes were gouged out, and she was also maimed.
Patricia before peacock.png Patricia as a patient at Lab 8 One year prior to the events of Skullgirls, Lab 8 teamed up with Lab 0 and the Last Peacock Hooded.png Patricia before becoming Peacock Hope to infiltrate the Medici warehouse said to be containing Rommelgrad's refugees. Although Valentine and the rest of her gang safely rescued the refugees, there was very little Valentine could do to repair the damage done to Patricia's body and was even willing to abandon her as a casualty of war. Big Band, however, believed that Dr. Avian would be of help and took the girl back to the Anti-Skullgirl Labs. The doctor informed him that Patricia would adapt well to her new eyes and that she would be walking in no time. Patricia became insistent on becoming an ASG soldier after the impression left on her by Lab 8's team. Despite that, Avian was wary about giving her too much power, while admitting her compatibility with the Avery Unit is strong. After some tests, Patricia's Argus System and Avery Unit were completely installed, and the combination proved to make her more powerful than the scientists had anticipated. Instead of being able to bend only space, Patricia could also bend other aspects of reality, spawning Tommy and Andy during her training. Eager to sign up for Lab 8's team, she assigned herself the name "Peacock".
She later vanished into the city with her gang, causing Lab 8's crew to worry immensely about her safety and condition after her surgery, and Stanley insisted that Big Band find her as soon as possible. Following her trail, Big Band stumbled upon an ice cream stand from which Peacock and her gang ate all of the ice cream except for Rocky Road. He considered this a clue, but later assumes that she was merely stress eating due to all the strange new occurrences happening to her all at once. He finally arrived at a movie theater, where he found the "clown car" that Peacock was said to have driven away in. As the vehicle appeared damaged, he burst into the theatre, assuming that the Medici may have returned for her. Peacock is revealed to be perfectly fine, having gone around the town because she felt she needed a break from the labs. The two begin to hit it off; although Big Band tells her she could have taken a break without causing property damage, they begin to connect through what they like most in a movie.
Ending: After defeating the Skullgirl, which turns out to be her best friend Marie, Peacock destroys the Skull Heart, though the skull heart claimed her act to be "foolish" and that this will "not be over". She and Marie have a friendly conversation before Marie disappears from the world, and Peacock vows to take revenge on the people who made both their lives miserable.
She is seen confronting the true head of the Medici family and his own secret weapon (Black Dahlia) and the two duke it out.
Abilities & Fighting Style With Peacock's physics-bending arsenal, nothing is sacred. She is a kind of character that will exploit any opportunity to its maximum and get away with it. No enemies of hers last long against her sharp eyes and sharper gun...blades. Her opponents last even shorter against her array of flower pots, baseballs, bowling balls, combustible toy cars, and countless other hazards that fill the air. Peacock never plays fairly, and isn't afraid to call in her goons to fight with her. In the rare occasions when Peacock can't topple her opponent, she can simply stall the battle until the timer runs out.
The Avery Unit has the power to “distort” which is a side effect of Peacock’s insanity. She can’t create things out of thin air, but rather modify Lab 8’s range of specialized arsenal. There are certain limits and her summons are only temporary. Her power is still growing so she may be able to summon more things in the future. This is suggested in Big Band's story mode, were he warns Peacock that she 'ain't ready' yet and has to be taught her 'limitations the hard way', but understands her potential in the future by saying 'we're gonna need those girls if we don't want to lose the last of the light'.
Trailer Skullgirls Introducing Peacock!Skullgirls Introducing Peacock! Color Palettes Peacock's Color Palettes.png Peacockcolors23-25.png "Rerun" - Default colors "Inkling" - Original colors "Untouchable" - Alucard (Hellsing) "Sketchy" - Original colors Original colors "Pea Shooter" - Lucky the Leprechaun (Lucky Charms cereal) "Dream Catcher" - Peacock's story mode intro pajamas "That's All Folks!" - Black-and-white cartoons "Freeze Frame" - Cirno (Touhou) Original colors Milk-Chan (Super Milk-Chan) Original colors Easy Default colors Hsien-Ko Original colors "Ultraviolent" - The Warden (Superjail) Inspector Gadget (Inspector Gadget) Sayaka Miki (Puella Magi Madoka Magica) Raspberyl (Disgaea series) - Indiegogo backer color ”Mean One” - The Grinch (How the Grinch Stole Christmas!) Princess Daisy (Super Mario series) Indian peafowl - Indiegogo backer color "Wildcard" - The Joker (DC Comics) - Indiegogo backer color Nonon Jakuzure (Kill la Kill) Annie Cuphead (Cuphead) Woody (Toy Story) Trivia Peacock's Ant Wasted move (c.MK) does not kill the ant, but rather the beam from the magnifying glass teleports it back to a safe area. In addition, all ants (if Peacock summons multiple through cancelling the move repeatedly) are the same ant, summoned from alternate universes. People who donated $50 to the Skullgirls Evo 2013 Breast Cancer Donation Drive could request a personalized voice mail message from one of the game's voice actors. Peacock's voice actress was requested to sing "Yakko's World" from the cartoon show Animaniacs and two versions of this cover exist, the original with the voice unmodified and the Lab Zero edit which has the voice modified to match the filter Peacock's voice has in-game.[1] The name of Peacock's "Robo With a Shotgun" move is a reference to the 2011 film "Hobo With a Shotgun," which in turn is based on a fake trailer in the intermission of the Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez double feature film Grindhouse. In an unused alternate ending, Peacock decides to "wish for something cool" and proceeds to make numerous outrageous wishes (such as turning the world's oxygen into chocolate), which the Skull Heart is unable to fulfill. Comically frustrated, she begins questioning its legend, and the Skull Heart laments that, in the thousands of years it has been doing its work, Peacock is the worst wisher it has met.[2] Peacock originally had an aerial move where she would fire one of her eyes off her Argus arms in a similar fashion to a bow and arrow. This move was dropped for being useless.[3] Peacocks's alternate title, The Murder-go-Round (and the full phrase from her character poster, "The 'Murder-go-Round' Broke Down") is a reference to the Looney Tunes theme song, from 1937 to 1969, known officially as "The Merry-go-Round Broke Down", reflecting her vintage cartoon theme.[4] Her Shadow of Impending Doom Level 3 - Avery drop is a reference to DIO's 'Road Roller Da!' super move from the 1998 arcade game JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. References ↑ Original Post of the Song Cover & Later Post with the Lab Zero Edit ↑ Alternate Unused Story Endings in the Game Data ↑ Skullgirls E3 2011 Peacock gameplay revealed - YouTube ↑ Wikipedia article v • d • e Skullgirls Games Main Editions Skullgirls • Skullgirls Encore • Skullgirls 2nd Encore Spin-offs Skullgirls Mobile Characters Main Cast Filia (Samson) • Cerebella • Peacock (Avery) • Parasoul • Ms. Fortune • Painwheel • Valentine • Double DLC Squigly (Leviathan) • Big Band • Fukua • Eliza (Sekhmet) • Beowulf • Robo-Fortune • Annie Other Adam • Aeon • Albus • Andy Anvil • Beatrix • Black Dahlia • Brain Drain • Delilah • Dr. Avian • Dr. Geiger • Feng • George Bomb • Grendel • Hive • Horace • Hubrecht • Ileum • Irvin • Isaac • King Franz • Lawrence • Leduc • Lonesome Lenny • Lorenzo • Marie • Minette • Molly • Mother • Mrs. Victoria (D. Violet) • Ottomo • Panzerfaust • Queen Nancy • Rachel Wong • Regina • Riccardo • Roberto • Roxie • Scythana • Selene • Stanley • Taliesin • Tommy Ten-Tons • Umbrella • Venus • Vitale • Yu-Wan • Misc. Archives Terminology Skullgirl • Skull Heart • Parasite • Living Weapon • Medici Mafia • Anti-Skullgirl Labs • Black Egrets • Cirque des Cartes • Fishbone Gang • The Last Hope • The Trinity Stages Streets of New Meridian • River King Casino • Medici Tower • New Meridian Rooftops • Rooftops Assault • NMO Arena | (Empty) • Bath of Tefnut | (Sekhmet) • Maplecrest • Nightmare Crest • Grand Cathedral | (Empty) • Final Atrium • Gehenna • Under the Bridge • Meridian Area Rapid Transit • Little Innsmouth | (Night) • Lab 8 | (Empty) • Glass Canopy • Class Notes • Sound Stage 15 Misc. System HUD • Controls • Basic Mechanics • Advanced Mechanics Extras Art Gallery • Marie 300% • The Typing of the Skullgirls Music Skullgirls Original Soundtrack • Skullgirls Original Soundtrack PLUS • Skullgirls Soundtrack Listing • In a Moment's Time • Hitomi No Kioku Character Quotes • Scripts • Galleries • Relationships • Move Lists Other Media SkullgirlS • Skullgals • Keep Skullgirls Growing! • Digital Art Compendium