Fellow Science Lovers,
Game update: Still no updates on the game yet. If you smell smoke drifting from Virginia between 8p and midnight EST, that’s not a forest fire. That’s my brain melting during Scribes Emerge edits. Hopefully it can resume its normal operating temperature soon. 🧠🔥🔥🔥
Incendiary Insects
Speaking of fires and melting, you probably noticed the fire eem in chapter 9 of Scribes’ Descent and wondered where I got that idea. In this article, I confess that I plagiarized real-life science again. Let’s see how much…
In the Scribeverse, the fire eem is a worm that combines 2 chemicals stored in separate sacks to create a fiery explosion hot enough to melt granite. It kills the eem in the process–a way for a mother to protect its young in a final, desperate moment. I loosely modeled this after the bombardier beetle in our universe. And I do mean loosely. You’ll understand why after scrolling past the glorious photo of this article’s sponsor:
-the bombardier beetle. By Peter Halasz. CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons
From this table, you can see how I deviated from my insectile inspiration:
| Bombardier Beetle | Fire Eem | |
| animal type | beetle | worm (not an insect, but an annelid) |
| explosion type | hot liquid spray | flame |
| dies with use? | no | yes |
| produces extra heat all the time? | no | yes (though only a small amount) |
| number of explosion uses | up to 20 times without recharge | 1 |
| rare? | no | yes (at least on Daishon) |
| sound made when exploding | a small pop | a loud roar |
| number of reactants needed | 2 (plus catalysts) | 2 (plus catalysts) |
| how it starts the explosion | opens a valve | opens a valve |
| shape of explosion | directional spray (which can usually be aimed) | area burst (all directions) |
To see the bombardier beetle in action, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWwgLS5tK80 (trigger warning: bugs) Sorry that I don’t have video footage of the fire eem. If Mallory ever drags me into the Scribeverse, like she keeps threatening to do, I’ll be sure to capture some then.
Chemical Warfare
How does the bombardier beetle explode? Its abdomen has two sacks: one to store hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone reactants and another where the explosion happens. When the riff-raff come–as they always do–the beetle turns around and contracts a muscle. This opens a valve to send the reactants from the storage tank into the explosion chamber where they react with catalysts. The resulting explosion releases a boiling chemical spray out of its butt into the face of the enemy.
Many species of these beetles can swivel the opening to direct the spray across a wide arc. High pressure in the explosion chamber shuts the valve to protect the beetle’s internal organs. The beetle can pulse this spray in rapid succession.
So cool.
The resulting chemical, benzoquinone, is a common defensive chemical among insects, but bombardier beetles are the only ones that superheat and spray it. And if you’re wishing you could do this to your foes, the best we humans can do is carry pepper spray. I know that’s not as cool as squirting it out of your back side. Sorry.
I couldn’t find diagrams of the relevant organs under a creative commons license, so I drew my own:
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When swallowed by a frog, this beetle has been known to explode inside it to make the frog spit it out! But some predators have found ways to outsmart this little guy. Blue Jays will grab the beetle in its beak and rub it against its feathers to make it discharge safely, exhausting the chemicals to render the prey harmless. Other animals dunk the beetle into mud. Here’s an article with even more examples: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/226792271_Pre-inges…
Human See, Human Do
According to this article, someone built a chemical rig to mimic this explosion in a lab: https://bombardierbeetle.org/2018/06/ (this has photos and a video of it in action). I even found a detailed research article for pulsed chemical rockets proposed for space travel that mimic this reaction, though using proper propellants.
Random Questions
Q: What if I get sprayed by these butt juices? A: According to the internet, it won’t hurt you as long as it doesn’t get in your eyes, but it is very stinky.
Q: Do bombardier beetles ever spray each other? A: Yes, though not all that often. I’m guessing their society has steep penalties for such behavior.
Q: How long does it take these guys to recharge after exhausting their spray? A: 24 to 36 hours. That’s a long time to be vulnerable to predators, so I’m sure momma beetles sit their baby beetles down for a talk about conserving their spray.
Q: Do some people keep bombardier beetles as pets? A: Yes.
Q: Will some parents threaten me because their kids, having read this newsletter, are now begging them for a pet bombardier beetle? A: Probably. A few families come to mind. 😂
And you thought the critters in my books were weird. Our own planet has some doozies.
Hit me up with questions. You probably have a lot of them after reading this. I’m off to revise more Scribes Emerge and drown my editorial sorrows in chocolate. Andes mints, if you must know.
References
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/bombardier-beetle-and-its-…
https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/picture-of-the-week-b…
https://bombardierbeetle.org/2018/06/
Writing update: I’m on chapter 30 of edits based on Scribophile critiques. I’m going at a rate of 1 to 2 chapters a night. That means I should be done with this editorial pass in 12 days. Then I plan to do a couple more quick passes where I check for a list of cleanup issues before I send it to beta readers. The book is over 132,000 words long so far.
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