Mankind’s Relentless War on the Sea or Why the Mermaids are Silent

In the same vein as Zombies AttackAmerica and Lights, Camera, Cue the Alien Invasion I bring you, Why the Mermaids Are Silent.

You have been an unwitting participate in Humanity's longest war, you and, most likely, all of your ancestors. In the dawn of time, once humanity began to come into its own, to develop trade, travel further, and finally started to use the seas for trade, we were approached by emissaries from under the sea. At first they were welcome allies, beings who were civil in the world of nature that is not.

The merpeople escorted our ships, guarding them from pirates using their awful spears. After a time, the sailors began to notice that when they were accompanied, the weather was more likely to be fair and there was often a favorable wind. Sailors grow lonely in the watches of the night and so grew used to the merpeople's presence and developed friendships of a sort (at least as close to a friendship as you can come with having very little in common in terms of means of communications). Because the merpeople revealed their powers gradually and in subtle ways, they were merely incorporated into sailors superstitious ways, instead of being feared.

As you can imagine, the merpeople's technology is very different than our own. Though they developed means to go about on land, it was cumbersome and uncomfortable, besides, most of the world is made up of water, so they left the dry dirt to us. As well as developing ways they could go ashore, they made ways in which man could visit underwater. Over time the story of Atlantis has gotten twisted, it wasn't that the city was buried in water, it had always been underwater. And it wasn't the city that was destroyed but rather our means to get there and the ties which allowed us to go.

Merchants have always dealt in stories, as well as goods, and they began to tell of the powers sailors spoke of their guardians having. Also, those few merchants who had visited the underwater cities boasted of the wonders and power they saw there. These stories filtered up to kings and queens and those kingdoms which had coastlands began look from their tallest towers at just how much water there was, some dwelt in lands with water that went on forever and spread news of this neverending water to those who had never seen such a thing. From everywhere there was water came also tales of merpeople, with their weather controlling power, their spears which could go further than any weapon of our own, and their otherness. As often happens when we are confronted by things we do not understand, the rulers became suspicious and fearful of the merpeople.

Sailors had quickly learned, when they were accompanied, they could not throw their waste overboard. Their companions conveyed they could grow sick from this refuse. Well, some merchants had learned of these things and had also heard their rulers fears, so they sold this information along with an idea to weaken the ones their rulers feared.

So mankind began the most continuous onslaught of any war, and began using biological and chemical warfare before they learned of germs or really knew what chemicals were. Mankind became the merpeople's enemy. Mankind was encouraged to throw their filth into their freshwater sources, because all streams lead to the sea and, thus, would weaken our enemies. Sailors were told to throw their waste overboard to chase away their guardians.

Merpeople began hiding their dead so we could learn no more weaknesses, developed means to keep areas of water pure enough for them to live in, and, mostly, withdrew into themselves. Though occasionally a particularly hardy young one rose to the surface to seduce and drown lonely sailors. Also, the legends of Selkies or Seal Wives make me wonder if they continued to develop less cumbersome means of venturing on land.

Merpeople are a farseeing people, so as well as immediate attacks using storms, drought, and other means, they use acid rain which strip our monuments and weaken our buildings.

From the side of the merpeople, it has never been an all-out war, just an occasional extra storm or discouraged raincloud on a parched land. But then things changed. The US launched a sustained nuclear attack starting in 1946 which lasted over the course of 15 years guised under the claim of “nuclear tests” at the Pacific Proving Grounds until the Partial Test Ban Treaty finally put a stop to it in 1963. Starting at the same time Russia decided on a more passive attack of dropping their waste from their nuclear power plants into the sea and, because it was passive and used less resources, was maintained for an even longer time than our attacks.

Since then the merpeople have become more invested, causing tsunami, earthquakes, tornadoes where they have never been before and increasing the frequency of “natural disasters” in general.

Also, they are in the process of melting the icebergs and glaciers in order to devastate our coastlands. Because of this, many governments have reevaluated in the last few years, instigating clean water acts, striving to “go green;” in other words, trying to appease a species we cannot seem to destroy that is capable of destroying us.

Now the question is, is it too little too late? Have the merpeople's hate built up for us to such a degree that they are willing commit mass suicide in their attempt to enact their revenge by shutting down the global conveyor belt, canceling out Thermohaline Circulation by raising the temperatures at the poles. This would basically kill the wind, dramatically change the weather (or make the weather stop), and stagnate the oceans...in other words, change the world as we know it and turn it into a far less friendly place.

So push for peace with the merpeople, take care of your planet, or you may have a lot of help bringing about its end. Also, push for relationships with them, we all know the best way to overcome old hates and prejudices is to get to know entities from the group you hate. Maybe if they get to know a few of us who are decent, who care about them and our planet, we can all work together in preserving our planet instead of destroying it in our attempts to destroy each other.

Oh, and if you doubt that merpeople are real, how you account for the fact that mankind has so thoroughly dirtied our waterways for so long? Whether humans knew of germs or not, they had herders and merchants who told tales of how refreshing and wonderful unpolluted springs and mountain streams were. Even if you knew nothing of the benefits of clean water, you could see and taste how much better water was that did not have animal feces and all of mans waste in it. There had to be a reason to account for this madness.

P.S. I recently told my brother I don't need pre-established conspiracies...I can make up my own. :)