David L. Wolper, long-time producer of documentaries has outdone himself on THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE, which is still playing local theatres across the country. Although it is factual, it’s conclusions are more chilling than most science fiction and horror novels.
The conclusion? That we will someday be replaced by insects. That insects are the really superior life species, and will outlive and outlast and outeat us, someday not too far away. How did they come up with such a conclusion? Well, here are the facts which THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE portrays for us on the moth-eaten silver screen…
Fifty million years before the first bird appeared on earth, the insect had accomplished flight.
Today, as most other animal species are diminishing in population, only two-MAN and INSECT are definitely on the increase. Man, because he is the only creature able to change his environment and the insect, because he is the only creature who can adapt to any changes man can make.
Insects can pull objects a hundred times their weight, jump a distance fifty times their size, consume as much as a hundred times their weight each day. The longest jump by a man is 29 feet, 2 1/2 inches.
In the time it will take a single human embryo to develop, the coddling moth could reproduce 401,306,000,000 of his kind.
The African termite carefully cultivates an underground mushroom garden for its food supply.
A plague of locusts can be considered a single animal; its body covers 400 miles, its mouth consumes 80,000 tons of food each day.
The queen termite, solely responsible for reproducing the species, can lay up to an egg a second-86,400 eggs a day. She has a normal size head and thorax, but her abdomen is 500 to 1,000 times larger than the normal termite.
When one bee finds a rich bounty of nectar, she shares it with all. In a dance of exacting language, she informs the tribe of its precise location-the distance, the direction, even the particular variety of flower.
When an ant wants to pass on important information, such as the news that a large amount of food has been discovered, it performs a kind of dance, akin to those used by bees to tell each other about the direction and distance of a good source of nectar.
On the march in their never-ending search for prey, the driver ants form a column one mile long, twenty million strong.
If our world was destroyed and only one man and one woman were left alive, it would take over a million years to put it back together the way it is today. Ants can re-create their society in two weeks.
Science has identified more than 600,000 species of insects, yet is estimate that only two-thirds are known and one-third is yet to be discovered.
These facts are distributed in lobbies by the producers of THE HELLSTROM CHRONICLE to those who see the film. We suppose they’re true, and have no reason to doubt, but gee! We sure hope they’re lying!