Toxic Sludge: It's Not Just For B-Movies Anymore

Every now and then real life provides stories and circumstances that seem like they could only happen in a movie. I'm not talking about killers or heists, necessarily, but rather things like epic-scale riots and, now, the latest environmental crisis to befall the planet. For instance: When the New York Times publishes headlines that could just as easily have been plucked from the Troma back catalog, you know we've entered some pretty cinematic territory. Well, not "pretty," but you get the idea.

In case you missed it, a reservoir of toxic sludge -- a byproduct of aluminum manufacturing -- burst open this week in Hungary, sending thick red rivers of death and destruction through 16 square miles of the countryside. "The mud drowned at least four people and sent more than 100 to hospitals with burns, caused by a highly alkaline caustic substance," reports the Times. "[H]undreds of residents suffered mild burns or lung irritations, and many animals were killed." And now the substance has reached the Danube, where scientists are hopeful the chemical effects will be diluted a little more effectively than it was in the smaller tributaries where it wiped out virtually everything it touched.

As with the battles that overtook Toronto during this year's G20 summit, the images from Hungary are the kind of thing you would expect to be confined to the vision of, say, Roland Emmerich or some like-minded practitioner of glorified disaster. The AP in particular has been delivering raw footage with a rare knack for abject environmental horror and wry, almost ethereal spectacle. To wit, watch for a cameo by the unfortunate Sludge Frog at 0:24:

And the opening of this video is simply insane:

Anyway, sincere sympathies to Hungary. This is not the movie anyone wanted for it.