The Swarm is upon us...

If this has been posted already, or doesn't belong here, I apologize in advance.

A very interesting video has turned up, first on liveleak and then on youtube. It shows "An unknown lifeform picked up by sewer snakecam in North Carolina.", as stated in the video description.

Here's the LINK, though you may start feeling an acute loss of appetite after watching.

A conclusive explanation as to what the creature in question is has yet to be given by scientists. It is not a hoax or viral marketing, since the company conducting maintenance is 100% legit, and even one of their workers has posted a few comments on THIS FORUM, which you may also find interesting.

As a longtime fan of Starcraft, I naturally immediately had flashbacks of the Zerg creep, larvae, Cerebrates and even the Overmind after watching the video. Don't take me wrong, I don't think this is alien at all, but you must admit it is interesting generally, and even more so in the context of our beloved game.

Then again, we might all be in for some heavy Prottos bombing

Discuss...

 

The description of the video mentions the link uforadar.com and the forum seems to be a hatchery of conspiracy theorists which you can guess already by looking at its name. Am I the only one who is sceptical towards the authenticity of the video? Especially if I take into account that its posted by someone (no offence towards you artemis) who seems to have created the account in here for the sole purporse of spreading this video around here and used starcraft zergs as an excuse.
Now even if the video is to be trusted which I cant see any sane intelligent person doing at this moment with the information youve given us it doesnt show a lot, it can be just a bunch of s**t covered maggots for all I know.

 

I beat you to it! na na na na na na.

 

I don't take any offense from your post, be assured. I have created the account here TODAY, that's true, but not to spread this video, I'm indeed a true Blizz and Starcraft fanboy (as much as I hate that word).

As I stated above, I do believe the video is authentic and I am not a conspiracy theorist. There are a few fairly reasonable scientific theories as to what it may be (a tubifex worm colony or a bryozoan). The forum I've provided a link to may generally be a nest of conspiracy theorists, but this particular section (Cryptozoology) is actually full of people who take great enjoyment in discrediting supposed alien and monster sightings by providing a logical scientific explanation or by simply ridiculing them. This you can easily see for yourself if you read through a few pages there.

What I was hoping for is that people here would deem it as interesting as I did, especially the zerg fans, and would start an intelligent dialogue and possibly back it up with some of their own views on the subject.

Im truly sorry if I came off as an agent of some viral marketing machine or a paranoid X-Files fan.


Regards, ArtEm1s

 

Fair enough.
I am just excercising healthy scepticism so sorry if it might have come out as if I automatically treated you like a spam bot. By the way this reminded me of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oPxa3C3iu0 - in this case its clear that its a fake.
Anyways on the video youve posted, definetly interesting and Id love to know if its just overhyped hoax or some legitimate discovery. Either way until I see actual scientists writing papers on it Ill treat it with a great deal of suspicion.

Oh and welcome to the forums.

 

There either
A) Tubifex Worms stranded together
B) Are polution mutated a monstrocity
C) Alien *cough* not *cough*
D) Fake, although I highly doubt it

 

The tubifex theory doesn't really hold water, so to say. Here is a LINK to a video of a tubifex worm ball.

If you compare it to the one with the sewer mass, you can clearly see that in the tubifex video, individual worms that are poking out of the central ball are writhing around just like you would expect and can be clearly identified as individual worms.

Now for the mass in the sewers. It is suspended on the wall with a tendril-like formation which looks nothing like individual worms. These tendrils do not move around until the mass is disturbed by the light (or heat, or sound) of the snakecam robot. Then you can see, especially on the third creature, that the tendrils are slowly retracting into the central mas as it seems to contract.

There is no way tubifex worms would ever be able to suspend themselves on the sewer wall like this thing does. Besides, tubifex worms cannot survive outside of water for a long time.

Any other suggestions?

 

It definitely looks like a hoax.

Footage like that is not hard to fake, and the odds of it being an extraterrestrial or some random new lifeform are just plain ridiculous.

Also, youtube and abovetopsecret.com look like such accredited and trustworthy sources.

 

Wait, wait. How do you fake a sludge mass...? Also... I like how everything that's unknown to us turns into a conspiracy theory.

My suggestion? Just a new earth-born species we haven't discovered yet until that video. Simple answer really... And even if it was faked, what exactly does the company get out of it?

 

The same thing the programmers of malware which just destroy your system without actually looking for confidential information or profit - hype. Quite logical, really: if you did something that fooled thousands of people, would you not be entertained?

 

There were actually few viruses that were suspected to be created for certain companies selling anti-virus programs. Although its more of a speculation.
I dont think its necessarily fake as in completely staged but there can be some already known explenation or additional context that is missing from the video and information given. Anyhow suggesting its from outter space is simply laughable. It might be undiscovered species but I believe that its just a twist to something already known to us today.

 

Indeed.

Not surprising if its a unknown species, plenty to live on down there if you eat bacteria!

 

It wouldn't be unlikely for something like the organism in the OP to exist.

After all, there are bacteria that eat only Nylon, which has existed for less than 100 years. Also, the bacteria only exist in places where Nylon factories and clothes companies dump thier unused Nylon material.

Since Sewers have existed for thousands of years, and many sewers in large cities have existed for decades or centuries, it wouldn't be hard to believe that an organism could evolve to live only in a dark and damp place like a sewer.

 

If the muscular blob is to be a single organism then its most likely not some sort of newly evolved creature adapted to the sewers enviroment. The only thing that comes close to it is taking already existing simmilar organism which then adapts to the sewers enviroment. The question is from what would it evolve? Even with an optimistical prediction of several thousand years its still relatively shor period of time for a creature of that size to significantly change in appearence and I dont know of any blobs like these that are known to us today.

 

my guess is that it is bacterias which now have found out how to be a single mass. You know, before bacterias was 1 cell per mass, now they are millions of cells per mass, with different kind of cells.

maybe we dont know everything about evolution and that it is possible to evolute very fast. So it could be fun to go down in the sewers like every 3 month and watch if there is a very fast evolution going on.

 

There is no way that stuff evolved from single cell organism in such a short period of time. (assuming that the stuff is some sort of animal or compact organism which quiet frankly we have no details about thats why this videos validity is questionable.)

 

It is almost certainly large clumps of tubifex worms.

source

I'd say he's more qualified to identify this than the general public comparing youtube videos.

 

He may be an expert, but there has not been a single video that would show a mass of tubifex worms anywhere near similar to this thing. And there have also been numerous experts claiming it's a bryozoan colony. Both groups can't be right, can they?

I think these experts tend to look at things through the lens of their field of expertise, rather than trying to really get to the bottom of things. They simply think they necessarily must be able to define and categorize everything at once. God forbid an expert biologist would say "I have no idea what that is" and roll with that.

With that said, there is no footage of tubifex worms that looks remotely similar to this, and no way to explain how these "tubifexes" have managed to cling to the wall or why the tendrils holding the mass up look and behave nothing like individual worms would. Or how come they seem to live outside of water for the most part. They don't appear to be segmented either.

 

I think "ball of worms" is plausible enough. Maybe we've never seen this specific species of worms in this specific scenario, but it certainly does not appear to be outside the realm of worm-possibilities.

If it isn't worms, my next bet is that it is indeed a Creep Tumor.

 

Finally someone who caught the gist behind this thread :yes:

Seriously though, these so called experts should stop pulling definitions out of their asses. They need to get one of those critters in a lab somewhere and thoroughly inspect it. Then they need to back any claims they make with hard facts instead of saying "I'm an expert, tubifex worms are the closest thing known to me, so clearly this creature has to be a mass of tubifex worms, it's self-evident really".

That's bull**** and I'm not buying it unless they PROVE it.