This is part 2 of 2. There was also a part 1, but it didn't actually get into much more than just introductory comments. Whetting the appetite, as it were. Setting the table.
Now! We get into the particulars: How The Blob Reproduces.
Don't ask me for my sources on this. It's something I can never reveal.
The Blob that we see on a rampage in 1958's classic The Blob is just the incipient stage of the organism. Albeit, every stage looks pretty much the same - a big ol' blob. But at each stage, how The Blob behaves - and what it consumes, and what it excretes - can be very different. The color varies as well, depending on diet.
Stage 0 Blob (spore): a small meteor with a thick shell makes planetfall, and cracks open. The meteor is a spore of The Blob. The shell is composed of dead protoplasm - hardened, thickened as all the moisture is drawn into the interior where the dormant organism waits.
Stage 1 Blob: this is the most active and fastest-growing developmental phase. Upon cracking open, The Blob begins foraging for prey. Soft-tissue organisms are sought out, engulfed and digested - their mass added to the rapidly-growing mass of The Blob. Its ability to convert carbon-based or silica-based life into its own biomass is disturbingly efficient, with apparently the entire organism digested and little or no waste excreted. Despite the clear advantages that splitting into multiple Blobs at this stage would give, The Stage 1 Blob exhibits a strong preference for remaining whole. If portions of The Blob are forcibly separated from the main mass, they appear to be unharmed, and are able to act autonomously, but they will rejoin the main mass at any opportunity. Unchecked, The Blob will continue growing and absorbing all soft-tissue life it can, becoming one enormous mass, sliding over continents and across sea beds.
Stage 2 Blob: Eventually there will be little to no soft-tissue life remaining. The Stage 2 Blob thickens, slows, and spreads out as it begins to digest harder cell-walled life forms such as trees and other vegetation. Stage 1 Blob may be red, on a planet where it gorges on carbon-based life with red, oxygenated blood. Stage 2 Blob on our world would probably have been tar black from the resins and compounds of our forests and plains, as it scoured every last vestige of natural life from the surface. It remains deadly to any animal life it encounters during this time - while slower to react, its continuous spread will eventually engulf any area within the temperate zone. During Stage 2, The Blob's metabolism no longer seems as efficient: there are now considerable waste gases being vented from the bubbling Blob. As time goes on (it can take decades), the buildup of these gases raises the global temperature. Icecaps shrink. The temperate zone - now The Blob's undisputed dominion - expands.
Stage 3 Blob: When there is no more sustenance to be had upon the planet's surface, a marked transformation occurs. The darkened, thickened Stage 2 Blob begins to aggressively seek the ocean. As more and more of it submerges, it begins soak up the sea water and expand many times in volmue. Its outermost portion seemingly dissolves out into the water, sending out thick, deadly, mucous-like tendrils that float everywhere and ensnare all aquatic life. When a creature sufficiently large is caught, there is a temporary reversion in appearance to Stage 1 Blob - fast-growing, all-consuming - but only until the unfortunate whale or shark is incapacitated, and sinks down into the deadly fathoms-thick ooze that now carpets the sea floor. Stage 3 Blob continues drawing in more and more water, binding it with the matter absorbed from the planet's biomass, until almost the entire mass of the planet's oceans have been replaced by a watery, bulbous, dilute and gelatinous Blob the color of mud and dreck.
Stage 4 Blob: By now the planet's global climate is tropical. Both the surface and the depths have been scrubbed free of life. Only the birds remain. No I'm kidding, those dudes would totally have died earlier! No safe place to land. Poor birds. Anyway, Stage 4 Blob pours from the oceans like an all-engulfing tsunami and begins to eat the planet's very surface. The Blob is now converting minerals to biomass. It is a far less efficient conversion process, but what it loses in efficiency, it makes up in savagery as it furiously attacks the land - sending tendrils deep into cracks to draw forth whatever substances can most readily add to its own mass. Cracking and pulling apart mountains. Inhaling lava. Its rippling surface now pocked with gas craters and crusts, The Blob itself resembles almost a congealed lava flow as it continues to eat into the crust, forcing fissures wide, consuming peat and sands and soils and oil and coal and breaking them down into elements it can either use or extrude into its crust. And it grows. It covers the entire surface of the planet. And as it digs deeper, and grows thicker, it begins to squeeze - a planet-girdling mass, miles-thick, squeezing and compressing the mantle and core, muffling the cataclysmic shocks that result while continuing to build up, increase the pressure - as if trying to rip the world apart with a planet-sized explosion.
Which is exactly what it is doing. As seismic shockwaves build up - the planet's tectonic forces seemingly trying to fight off this new, alien crust - the planet grows less and less stable and The Blob seems to be stoking the cataclysm while patiently awaiting its chance. Titanic forces are built up under the over-stressed and dwindling crust. At the moment of greatest instability, suddenly The Blob shifts all of its pressure to one side of the planet - releasing the other side. The crust buckles and ruptures like a popped balloon, cause the whole world to fly apart. Leaving very little behind: a debris cloud. A dead, spinning core of nickel and iron, perhaps.
The Blob itself is disintegrated in the explosion. Atomized into billions upon billions of particles flung out into space at incredible velocities - most of them ejected straight up and down relative to that solar system's planetary disc. The particles cool, then harden, into spores. Space is absolutely littered with them.
Know this: The Blob has been around far longer than any currently-existing sentient life. We search the skies for reasons why we find it so hard to locate planets that either harbor life, or appear to be suitable for harboring life. In many, many cases the answer is as simple as it is grim: The Blob has been there first.
The Blob is the dominant form of life in our galaxy.
Now! We get into the particulars: How The Blob Reproduces.
Don't ask me for my sources on this. It's something I can never reveal.
The Blob that we see on a rampage in 1958's classic The Blob is just the incipient stage of the organism. Albeit, every stage looks pretty much the same - a big ol' blob. But at each stage, how The Blob behaves - and what it consumes, and what it excretes - can be very different. The color varies as well, depending on diet.
Stage 0 Blob (spore): a small meteor with a thick shell makes planetfall, and cracks open. The meteor is a spore of The Blob. The shell is composed of dead protoplasm - hardened, thickened as all the moisture is drawn into the interior where the dormant organism waits.
Stage 1 Blob: this is the most active and fastest-growing developmental phase. Upon cracking open, The Blob begins foraging for prey. Soft-tissue organisms are sought out, engulfed and digested - their mass added to the rapidly-growing mass of The Blob. Its ability to convert carbon-based or silica-based life into its own biomass is disturbingly efficient, with apparently the entire organism digested and little or no waste excreted. Despite the clear advantages that splitting into multiple Blobs at this stage would give, The Stage 1 Blob exhibits a strong preference for remaining whole. If portions of The Blob are forcibly separated from the main mass, they appear to be unharmed, and are able to act autonomously, but they will rejoin the main mass at any opportunity. Unchecked, The Blob will continue growing and absorbing all soft-tissue life it can, becoming one enormous mass, sliding over continents and across sea beds.
Stage 2 Blob: Eventually there will be little to no soft-tissue life remaining. The Stage 2 Blob thickens, slows, and spreads out as it begins to digest harder cell-walled life forms such as trees and other vegetation. Stage 1 Blob may be red, on a planet where it gorges on carbon-based life with red, oxygenated blood. Stage 2 Blob on our world would probably have been tar black from the resins and compounds of our forests and plains, as it scoured every last vestige of natural life from the surface. It remains deadly to any animal life it encounters during this time - while slower to react, its continuous spread will eventually engulf any area within the temperate zone. During Stage 2, The Blob's metabolism no longer seems as efficient: there are now considerable waste gases being vented from the bubbling Blob. As time goes on (it can take decades), the buildup of these gases raises the global temperature. Icecaps shrink. The temperate zone - now The Blob's undisputed dominion - expands.
Stage 3 Blob: When there is no more sustenance to be had upon the planet's surface, a marked transformation occurs. The darkened, thickened Stage 2 Blob begins to aggressively seek the ocean. As more and more of it submerges, it begins soak up the sea water and expand many times in volmue. Its outermost portion seemingly dissolves out into the water, sending out thick, deadly, mucous-like tendrils that float everywhere and ensnare all aquatic life. When a creature sufficiently large is caught, there is a temporary reversion in appearance to Stage 1 Blob - fast-growing, all-consuming - but only until the unfortunate whale or shark is incapacitated, and sinks down into the deadly fathoms-thick ooze that now carpets the sea floor. Stage 3 Blob continues drawing in more and more water, binding it with the matter absorbed from the planet's biomass, until almost the entire mass of the planet's oceans have been replaced by a watery, bulbous, dilute and gelatinous Blob the color of mud and dreck.
Stage 4 Blob: By now the planet's global climate is tropical. Both the surface and the depths have been scrubbed free of life. Only the birds remain. No I'm kidding, those dudes would totally have died earlier! No safe place to land. Poor birds. Anyway, Stage 4 Blob pours from the oceans like an all-engulfing tsunami and begins to eat the planet's very surface. The Blob is now converting minerals to biomass. It is a far less efficient conversion process, but what it loses in efficiency, it makes up in savagery as it furiously attacks the land - sending tendrils deep into cracks to draw forth whatever substances can most readily add to its own mass. Cracking and pulling apart mountains. Inhaling lava. Its rippling surface now pocked with gas craters and crusts, The Blob itself resembles almost a congealed lava flow as it continues to eat into the crust, forcing fissures wide, consuming peat and sands and soils and oil and coal and breaking them down into elements it can either use or extrude into its crust. And it grows. It covers the entire surface of the planet. And as it digs deeper, and grows thicker, it begins to squeeze - a planet-girdling mass, miles-thick, squeezing and compressing the mantle and core, muffling the cataclysmic shocks that result while continuing to build up, increase the pressure - as if trying to rip the world apart with a planet-sized explosion.
Which is exactly what it is doing. As seismic shockwaves build up - the planet's tectonic forces seemingly trying to fight off this new, alien crust - the planet grows less and less stable and The Blob seems to be stoking the cataclysm while patiently awaiting its chance. Titanic forces are built up under the over-stressed and dwindling crust. At the moment of greatest instability, suddenly The Blob shifts all of its pressure to one side of the planet - releasing the other side. The crust buckles and ruptures like a popped balloon, cause the whole world to fly apart. Leaving very little behind: a debris cloud. A dead, spinning core of nickel and iron, perhaps.
The Blob itself is disintegrated in the explosion. Atomized into billions upon billions of particles flung out into space at incredible velocities - most of them ejected straight up and down relative to that solar system's planetary disc. The particles cool, then harden, into spores. Space is absolutely littered with them.
Know this: The Blob has been around far longer than any currently-existing sentient life. We search the skies for reasons why we find it so hard to locate planets that either harbor life, or appear to be suitable for harboring life. In many, many cases the answer is as simple as it is grim: The Blob has been there first.
The Blob is the dominant form of life in our galaxy.
Comments
Sometimes my self absorption is frightening. But I blame my feed reader for not informing me properly. Damn feed reader.
Awesome. Simply awesome!! To think you weren't going to do a part 2. Piffle!
I am so excited to know the complete blob reproduction story! That information was totally missing from the story before.
I was going to say please tell me you write this stuff for a living. But then I realized doing it for a living might kill its spark...so never mind.
Stupendous part 2. When you are going to spend your time with a part 2 it ought to be worthy of the time. This one was.
@Lunarchick: It is I who must thank you for the prompt! And the kind praise.
Hm. I don't think doing it for a living would kill it's spark, but I'm not sure that's what I'd want to do for a living either. I'm not sure how frequently I get a good idea for a "hard sci-fi" digression.
The Blob is the scariest monster there is.