Environmental disaster chain of events (for story)

[dysfunction]

I've written a scifi short story for a contest on the theme of environmental disaster, and I want to check the plausibility of the chain of events that occurs in the story.

1. It opens with a spill of massive quantities of methyl and phenyl isocyanate into a bay area on a planet in the process of being terraformed. The bay and a section of the river that empties into it make up the only region that is so far fully habitable, the environment maintained by a utility-fog bubble.

2. On contact, the isocyanates react violently and form urea compounds. This contributes to eutrophication.

3. This leads to increase in algal blooms, including toxic algae. Die-offs of animal species begin.

4. The protagonists try to deal with this using ultrasound to break up the algae, but they overshoot and cut it back too far.

5. Anaerobic bacteria move into the now anoxic waters and attack the reefs. Between this and the loss of algae and many sea plants, terraforming is set way back.

6. The protagonists engineer a facultative anaerobic bacterium that both photosynthesizes, and fixes nitrogen out of the water.

7. With little competition, it reproduces too quickly and depletes the bay of nutrients.

8. The protagonists seed the bay with nutrients, and start carefully reintroducing species.

Does any of this make sense? It is science fiction, but I'd like to be accurate. I had barely more than a month to write this story, so I didn't have nearly as much time to do research as I like.

 

[DDTea]

I really like sci-fi and this sounds awesome. Unfortunately, I won't be able to help much with the ecological aspects. But let's talk about methyl isocyanate.

It's poisonous and reasonably volatile. An industrial release of it would no doubt create a toxic atmosphere, especially within a fictional habitable bubble! The inhabitants would be promptly gassed and that wouldn't make a very interesting story...unless the chemicals somehow go directly into the water. I'd scrap that and go for something more "direct" (I mean, good fiction requires us to suspend our disbelief, right?).

What would be more plausible, I think, is if a cargo ship carrying urea fertilizer somehow broke up in the river and released its contents downstream and into the bay. After all, the place is being terraformed, right?

Anyhow, good sci-fi has a "moral" to it... What kind of message is this story trying to send?

 

[DaveC426913]

I had barely more than a month to write this story, so I didn't have nearly as much time to do research as I like.

Holy cr*p. This is about ten times more thought into a science fiction story premise than most amateur stories drum up in years of writing.

 

[dysfunction]

It's poisonous and reasonably volatile. An industrial release of it would no doubt create a toxic atmosphere, especially within a fictional habitable bubble! The inhabitants would be promptly gassed and that wouldn't make a very interesting story...unless the chemicals somehow go directly into the water. I'd scrap that and go for something more "direct" (I mean, good fiction requires us to suspend our disbelief, right?).

Actually, the initial sequence of events is this: water seeps into a mechanism that interfaces with drums of methyl isocyanate, resulting in a comparatively small explosion, which does injure or kill a couple dozen people. This explosion also weakens the support structures of several more drums, which then roll into the ocean.

Anyhow, good sci-fi has a "moral" to it... What kind of message is this story trying to send?

At simplest, one of good stewardship of that which has been entrusted to your care. But it's more complex than that; it's also about how good intentions can translate to terrible consequences, and redemption for those whose intentions were less noble. Each of the characters has their own complex motivations, and they each evolve quite a bit over the course of the story.

...the above makes me sound more than a bit pretentious.

 

[DDTea]

Forgot to mention: the reaction that forms urea derivatives from water and isocyanates also forms carbon dioxide. Depending on how much methyl isocyanate is involved, that could lead to an overall decrease in the pH of the water. Not sure how that would affect the plot, but it might help you select a viable antagonistic algae :P

Also, look into paralytic shellfish poisoning. Harmful Algal Blooms don't necessarily kill everything; filter feeders may still survive, but become toxic for consumption by predators, including humans, for weeks to years.