The gas cloud rose at 62 mph. Not approximately 62, not 61 and surely not 63 mph.
This is what comes of reading books and listening to Dave Brubeck. The it’s kids going up to ‘Lover’s Lane’ and people buying one of those ‘big beds’, and next thing you know your polite little town is being ravaged by dinosaurs while aliens scoop up the fleeing survivors.
Stranger
Knock out the internet/web/whatever. After 10 minutes of non-connectivity, people will assume they are gone.
Pleasantville — an underrated classic, IMO. Loved it.
An over-precise unit conversion from “about 100 kilometers per hour”
Has nobody thought of calling David Copperfield? Making big things disappear is kund of his thing.
In this age of sensationalized media, probably not. However, definitely avoid fuel bombs, nukes, etc, or you’ll really have a worldwide media frenzy on your hands.
I’m sure the Necronomicon has info on how to accomplish this. Usually you’d have to search abandoned cabins in the woods to have a chance to find a copy, but you’re in luck! It’s on sale at Etsy for only $60.54.
But hurry-- only one copy left!
Yeah, but is it worth having your face melted off by an eldritch pan-dimensional creature or descending into the permanent madness in the existential void of horrors that are beyond the ken of mankind?
Stranger
A creepy way to do it would be gradually.
People with friends in the town slowly forget them, people with loved ones in the town either move to the town (and are forgotten) or have inexplicable estrangements with them.
Eventually someone wonders “Hey what happened to Town X”? and goes there to check, only to find a completely empty spot…
There are a vast number of books with the word Necronomicon in the title:
Well, it is almost Halloween, so…maybe? Gotta do something to top last year’s ‘headless horseman’ costume.
I could use it to cover everything up. Call it an “chemical explosion” caused by a freight train derailment or something.
I suppose I haven’t really thought through what I want to end result to be.
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Do I really want to keep it a secret from the world? That’s fine for a bunch of vampires collecting food who don’t want to get caught.
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Do I want to create some great mystery to keep people thinking about it over the years?
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Do I want to conceal some ancient evil? Maybe it might be better to keep most of the townspeople in place and they can just talk about how some factory or school for of kids explodes every 27 years or so.
Kipnuk recently got hit by typhoon Halong and was evacuated, but surprising (to me) it did make the news. It is small remote Alaskan settlement. I first heard about as a friend taught there.
Brian
Oh, aren’t there enough quirky billionaires by now? One of them decides to buy a town, and in order to get a great price for their place, residents sign iron-clad NDAs.
Maybe the residents get relocated to an exact copy of the town, but it’s all upgraded. So the Swansons and Stouphers still live next door to you, but you all have pools!
Leak that the town has been co-opted by a cult. Most outsiders and especially the police and even the media don’t want to delve into that too closely until defectors come forward. The townspeople will have already been lured into the disguised abattoir. When outsiders do discover the abandoned town, they will just assume the cult moved elsewhere enmasse.
You don’t even need to be billionaire:
Stranger
I know of a machine that can make a small town go away completely.
It was developed & built in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, in 1945.
I personally prefer the
Crescent Beach FL kind of disappeared this way and that’s not the only “ghost” town in the US.
(It didn’t literally disappear. There’s still buildings, ect)
Frankly the creepiest was the town that had to be evacuated because some body was using a toxic chemical to spray the roads