A lot was said about the giant rats found in the mysterious underground “city” located under the capital in the 80s of the last century. At that time it was strictly forbidden to publish notes about underground monsters, for this it was possible to "fly out" from the newspaper. Professional biologists also categorically refused to talk on this topic, so rumors began to circulate in Moscow in which the size of the rats increased with monstrous rapidity. According to the "eyewitnesses", the giant rats of the dungeons reached a meter in length and seventy centimeters in height
The first eyewitness accounts of the appearance of such rats in Moscow date back to 1989: they tried to attack the fitters serving the gas network. As usual, no one believed the stories. However, new evidence was emerging at an increasing rate. Giant rats came to the surface in the dump areas, attacked meat processing plants. Dogs, even the most ferocious, were terrified of them. The poisons did not work. " Newspaper "Pobratim", No. 5 dated May 28, 1990.
Moscow diggers, who appeared when the "epidemic" of rumors "had already passed, encountered rats on their underground journeys more than once, but estimated their size much more modestly:" The first time we met rats was completely unexpected - in the tunnels under the zoo. There were about 5 copies of them, and we saved ourselves by throwing crowbars in their direction and, without waiting, whether they wanted to chase us or not, quickly retreated. During 19 years of our descent into the ground, we have never met such large animals! Then they seemed to me just huge, although later, recalling the details, I determined that they reached no more than 65 centimeters in length (excluding the tail) and 25-30 centimeters at the withers: the size of an average fox terrier. At first we even thought that we were facing nutria, but then we looked more closely: no, after all, a rat! Anyway,the proportions are all rat, except that at the withers the mutants are a little more narrowed and do not have such a rounded rear …"
Horrified by this unexpected meeting with underground monsters, the diggers raised the alarm: “Having got out from under the ground, we sounded all the bells: they called riot police, television, and called the City Hall. However, the tunnels were blocked only 4 days after the incident, and of course, the rats did not wait for the journalists for so long …
They left through the tunnels leading towards the zoo, the White House and further to the American embassy …"
Where did the giant rats come from ? in the labyrinths of underground Moscow? Like Aphrodite from the sea; they "came out" of an amazing water broth flowing through the sewer pipes and containing the entire periodic table. The chemical substances arising in it, sometimes baffling scientists, and the total impact of the electromagnetic fields of the metropolis have generated amazing mutations in the underground inhabitants.
It's not just the rats that have changed. Here are the “monsters that Vadim Mikhailov, the founder of the Digger movement, met:“We called this monster a “large scalpendroid,” although there is little similarity with the latter. It looks more like a large earwig - a chitinous creature in a shell that seems to feed on insects. There are more than enough of them in the undergrounds of Moscow. Under the Izmailovo area live cave grasshoppers. Each specimen is about the size of a saucer. In all, a superpopulation of huge American cockroaches up to 12 cm long is developing near Moscow … There are also individuals of flying cockroaches … the size of a turtle. When a cloud of "cute" insects takes off - a sight not for the faint of heart."
Acquaintance with the products of human carelessness is very interesting, but let us return to the rats. According to V. Mikhailov, and given his vast underground experience, it is worth listening to him, in the origin of the population of giant rats … military scientists played an important role. A few days after the television broadcast about giant rats discovered in the area of the zoo, the diggers' headquarters received a call from former military personnel who did not give their names. Anonymous informants said that they know of several radioactive sedimentation tanks of city reactors located next to abandoned bunkers, and this is where all the hell happens.
One adventure story describes a deadly battle in the undergrounds of Moscow between giants of rats and special forces consisting of former Afghans: “The silence of the underground is suddenly broken by the roar of a machine gun fire. This Palyuchenko stops the grinning creature rushing at him from a niche in the wall. Moving such a column-M through narrow corridors is fraught with danger: after all, a frontal attack in cramped conditions is reflected by one, at most two guys … From the emptiness, from the darkness, grinning monsters with eyes crimson with blood and rage are climbing. Somewhere from the side, it is as if a whistling lightning strikes into the depths of the well: I have time to figure out that a flamethrower has been launched. The noise of the battle dies down as suddenly as it appeared.
Fourteen rats with bared mouths are scattered about where bullets hit them."
People, as it should be, in a fantastic story defeated the terrible underground monsters. But will this happen, as they say, in kind. According to the diggers, giant rats, in addition to their size e, have no fundamental differences from ordinary rats that prefer to live in the basements of residential buildings in grocery warehouses. But in order to become serious competitors of people, first in the underground part of the city, and then on the surface, the giant rats do not need any additional abilities … The rats already have them in abundance. Most people who only occasionally see gray, disgusting creatures with long tails, and do not suspect that they are dealing not only with the intellectuals of the animal world, but also with the owners of extraordinary abilities. People who fight them every day treat rats differently.
The head of the 4th department of the disinfection service of the capital, Larisa Darkova, for a week every night went down to the huge basements of the Yeleseevsky store. She wanted to understand how these long-tailed creatures manage to steal eggs from the store without breaking them. And this is what she once saw: “In order not to damage the fragile shell, these clever girls came up with the following: one rat lay down on its back and rolled a chicken egg with its muzzle into a hollow on its stomach. At this time, another "accomplice" grabs her by the tail and thus drags her into the hole."
A person, lulled by the consciousness of his superiority over animals, believes that only people can sacrifice their lives for the salvation of others. To prove this, numerous examples from the times of the Great Patriotic War are usually cited, when soldiers threw themselves under tanks with grenades in their hands, lay down with their chests on the embrasures of pillboxes. It's a shame to admit this, but disgusting rats are capable of the same actions. In the laboratories of the Moscow disinfection service, painstaking work is continuously going on.
It is here that new chemical weapons are being created to fight human enemy number one. But it seems that it is simply impossible to create an ideal anti-rat weapon, and for this reason.
Experiments have shown that rats do not pounce in a crowd on delicious food, generously flavored by people with a new poison that is not yet familiar to them. Everything happens in a completely different way. By order of the leader, the bait is tried by a kind of "kamikaze". Subjects then risked their lives for the prosperity of the rat kingdom to lie back in their burrows and intensively drink water in an attempt to flush their stomachs. And the rest go about their business, content with dried up pink salmon, they begin to eat the poisoned bait only if the "kamikaze" remain alive.
Human qualities: the quick wits and dedication that rats possess, one must also add qualities that humans do not possess. Biologist Nina Smirnova, who has been observing the life of gray pies for many years, and it is this type of rat that captures the dungeons of cities, she is sure that rats have … a collective mind that controls the actions of each individual. This hypothesis explains much of the behavior of rats, including the incredible speed with which they learn about the impending danger on them: the appearance of new traps, poisons and even the possible death of the ship on which they swim. Now multiply these properties and abilities by gigantic growth and figure it out for yourself: who will win in the war between people and rats if they come out of the dungeons.
Mikhail BURLESHIN
"UFO" No. 35 2009