This week I’m going to spend a little bit of time talking about cows. I’m sure, if you’ve GMd, you have (or at least been tempted to) drop a cow on one or more of your PCs. I’m sure there are even a few GMs out there who are calculating the physics necessary to loft a cow the size of Seattle into space so you can not only take care of the PCs, but all the idiotic results of their petty existence as well (i.e. fortified apartments they never leave, cyberdecks coated in Orichalcum, motorcycles equipped with SAM tubes, etc.)

The main reason I’ve chosen cows as this week’s discussion topic is because I’ve recently encountered an bit of frightening, reality based cow information which I believe everybody should know, lest they be crushed or otherwise killed by a ton of bovine muscle and flesh.

My concern arises from a news story E-mailed to me by a variety of individuals concerning the ‘inadvertent’ bombing of a Japanese trawler by a group of irresponsible, cow wielding Russians. The fact that these Russians were members of the military should also present the United States, and other countries, with a good reason for keeping our war technology up to date. A member of the Russian military capable of pushing a cow out of a flying aircraft is more than capable of ‘bumping’ the LAUNCH MISSLES button.

(NOTE: I have nothing against Russians. They seem to be hard working, nice people and they make some pretty good Vodka. My concern rests solely with Russians who have access to cows. Just thought I’d let everybody know.)

Anyway, there seems to exist not one, but TWO versions of the Russian cow story. The first version was sent to me a long, long time ago by somebody whose name I can’t for the life of me remember. I hunted around the web and eventually came across the article he (or she) had mailed. Here’s the gist of it (Obtained from somebody who obtained the article from the Navair Weekly Bfm Wrapup; whatever the hell that is):

Cows Away!

Earlier this year, the dazed crew of a Japanese Trawler were plucked out of the Sea of Japan clinging to the wreckage of their sunken ship. Their rescue, however, was followed by immediate imprisonment once authorities questioned the sailors on their ship's loss. They claimed that a cow, falling out of a clear blue sky, had struck the trawler amidships, shattering it's hull and sinking the vessel within minutes.

They remained in prison for several weeks, until the Russian Air Force reluctantly informed Japanese authorities that the crew of one of its cargo planes had apparently stolen a cow wandering at the edge of a Siberian airfield, forced the cow into the plane's hold and hastily taken off for home. Unprepared for live cargo, the Russian crew was ill-equipped to manage a now rampaging cow within its hold. To save the aircraft and themselves, they shoved the animal out of the cargo hold as they crossed the Sea of Japan at an altitude of 30,000 feet.

So there you have it. A innocent, confused cow brutally kidnapped and then thrust into the ozone when the kidnappers found it ‘too difficult to handle’. Now, from this story we may conclude that, hey, it was a single cow and an isolated accident. I mean, how much damage could one cow do? Such an act of bombing would have been futile if the target had been, say, the South Korean army.

Well, that’s how I felt: Until I received an even more disturbing version of the bombing incident from a nice man named Ronald Boehm who obtained his version of the story from a German newspaper. Mr. Boehm resides in Germany (hence the German newspaper) which, as many of you know, is located so close to the former Soviet Union that it routinely receives fallout from that fragmented nation’s numerous faulty nuclear powerplants. (Ok, this is an exaggeration; Germany will eventually receive large amounts of fallout when the faulty Soviet powerplants suddenly blow up.)

Anyway, as you will see from the following article, the Russian cow bombing incident may be more insidious than we thought:

"Ploetzlich regnete es Kuehe vom Himmel” (Cows Raining from the Sky)

In the Ochotskische sea near the Sachalin island a cow fell from the sky and sank a Japanese fishing boat on impact. This was stated in a confidential report from the German embassy in Moscow to the "Auswaertiges Amt" (German State Department). This event was given as one of many examples of the desolate state of security in Russian air traffic. According to this report, Russian soldiers had stolen a herd of cattle and wanted to remove them in a transport aircraft - a kind of theft not uncommon in Siberia. However, the soldiers failed to tie up the animals. When the cows got nervous and began to move, the plane became unstable as well. The Iljuschin was so hard to control that the pilot feared to crash and ordered the crew to open the tailboard and to chase the cattle (25 to 30 animals) out of the plane from an altitude of about 8000 meters. Accidentally, one of the cows fell onto a wooden Japanese fishing boat that could not bear the impact and sunk. Though the fishers were rescued some hours later by a Russian patrol boat, they were arrested because their story was not believed. Russian authorities then checked their statements and found that they were true. The pilot was able to make an emergency landing with open tailboard."

Did you see that? A HERD of cows! Twenty five to THIRTY of them! Pushed out of a plane! Accident my ass.....

Now I have to admit that I’m much more inclined to take the article submitted by Mr. Boehm as truth than I am the one produced by Navair Weekly Bfm Wrapup people, primarily because I think that ‘Navair Weekly Bfm Wrapup’ is an unnecessarily long and annoying name for any news oriented organization. Besides, Mr. Boehm said he liked my page.

So here’s my theory regarding what the Russians are really up to: The soldiers never actually stole the cows; the cows were given to them by the Russian military for use in strategic bovine bombing operations. The Japanese trawler just happened to get in the way. And why were the Japanese fishermen arrested? Not because the Russians didn’t believe their story, but because the Russians thought the Japanese were onto their plan. Of course, the question remains as to why Russians would want to use cows instead of bombs in the first place.

I think it involves some nasty Japanese/Russian role-playing game incident.