Scans_Daily

I'm starting to get a bit self-conscious about debating the scientific integrity of a comic old enough to have its own midlife crisis.

Ha! Just forgive those of us who have been grousing about this same issue for almost that long.

I know that "planarian worms" thing was disproven, and I would kinda hope that our understanding on this front has moved forward too.

Yeah...but...IMO, this story overlooks major facts that Moore could have looked up in any encyclopedia since the 60s or 70s. I’m not talking about the details of ancient-earth biochemistry, but about things like oxygen not being a flammable gas. And Moore being Moore, I hold him to a higher standard than a lot of comic writers because the science seems to matter for him. Ditto for Morrison, Ellis, Waid...they write good science hero yarns, even if it’s not hard SF by any stretch of the imagination. So when they screw up on some well-established factoid, it’s jarring to me. (I will never stop being grumpy that Morrison once had Animal Man copy bacteria. Never.)

The fungi would probably have similar problems to those of animal life

They really wouldn’t, though. Most fungi are more resistant to oxygen poisoning than animals or plants, and they reproduce fast enough to bounce back after any series of fires. All they need are dead things to eat.

We can actually see this after a lot of ancient environmental catastrophes. Animals and plants temporarily vanish from the fossil record, but fungal numbers go through the roof. Supergod was dead right on that point.

and if plants could make enough CO2 to sustain their own photosynthetic needs, there wouldn't have been a great oxygenation in our planet's history.

Just to clarify, the great oxygenation occurred before plants and other CO2-exhalers even existed! The first photosynthesizers were anaerobic bacteria; oxygen was deadly to them, and they produced little or no CO2. But the eukaryotes—including plants, animals and fungi--evolved in the newly oxygenated environment, which is why our bodies can treat oxygen as a power source instead of a toxin.

In fact, there was a later period in the Carboniferous where oxygen levels were almost double what they are today...and both plants and animals thrived under those conditions. That was the era of the giant insects, and the vast rainforests that produced our modern coal deposits. And more wildfires, yes, but wildfires are pretty ineffective at causing mass extinction.

The one-celled creatures would probably thrive in this newly oxygen-rich environment, and EVENTUALLY life might restore some balance, but would that happen in time to prevent the end of humanity or a mass plant asphyxiation?

Re: the latter, yep, it absolutely would. Woodrue’s catastrophe would occur on the scale of months, as you mention, while most microbes can double their numbers in a matter of hours. Balance would be restored as soon as enough biomass burned or rotted, and Woodrue’s plan would produce a whole lot of fire and corpses. There would be no lack of CO2.

Now, whether humanity would survive...harder to say. We’re pretty fragile. People living at high altitudes would have the best chance--lower oxygen levels up there, and less wildfire risk. The real extinction threat would be that “nuclear” winter due to all that smoke.

(Of course, none of this really applies in the DCU. By the time the situation gets that dire, Green Lantern and Firestorm have recycled the planet’s entire atmosphere, the Flash and Superman have shrunk down all surviving humans and stored them in bottle cities, and then the Justice League starts clearcutting forests until the oxygen levels go back to normal. Man, now I want to see an Adventure-era version of this story where the heroes triumph by becoming complete anti-environmental maniacs. How’s that white kryptonite taste, you uppity ferns? Oh, the Green’s still trying to fight back? Toss the Amazon rainforest into the sun, that’ll send a message! We can always replace you with docile imported flora from Rann! MWAHAHAHA...I digress.)

Whether or not we agree on the science at the surface here, I think we can all agree it's only a veneer to dress up the fantasy, which is something you can say about most superhero or horror stories or a fusion like this one.

Eh, again, I don’t really agree with that. I don’t think Moore’s or Millar’s Swamp Thing runs would be nearly as compelling if there wasn’t an undercurrent of scientific reality, to them. This might be a really shallow example, but think of Woodrue’s climactic line when Swampy resurrects: “You can’t kill a vegetable by shooting it in the head.” That works because it’s true; it’s not just a superpower the author made up. Plant biology and ecology have all these stranger-than-fiction aspects to them, that we normally don’t think about, and Swamp Thing gets to embody that by going up against mutants and vampires and triumphing through his sheer plantness. Heavily embellished, I realize, but still.

Woodrue does not plan to ignite the world's whole atmosphere, exactly, just make it so dangerous that civilization as we know it is unsustainable.

But Woodrue expects all the animals to die, not just the humans. So there must be enough fires in enough places to cook or smother every critter on earth, directly or indirectly. Or else there must be enough oxygen to actually poison all those animals directly. And yet, the plants will be spared? Does not compute.