Conspiracy Theory….
I started to wonder why Birmingham people, above all others were directed where and when to cross the road. Pavements are lined with barriers, with pedestrians herded through elaborate chicane like crossings. It is estimated that the average Birmingham citizen spends a whole three years of their life trying to simply cross the road at the designated crossing points when in comparable cities they spent only 2 months.
ground zero
After some investigation a sinister Nazi plot was found to be the root cause of the city’s obsession with pedestrian protection….
During World War II, Birmingham became a principle target for Nazi bombing raids due to its prolific wartime industrial output. During one such raid a new, secret chemical weapon was dropped on the city. The experimental ‘doomsday’ bomb was released over the city, an odourless gas was inhaled by an estimated 80% of the population. The Nazi’s were confused as to why the gas had no immediate effect, the intention being a protracted, painful death for over 90% of the infected population. It was deemed a failure and the formula was lost at the end of the war, but details of the attack were gained from former Nazi scientists working for western governments.
A generation later the effects of the gas did began to show in the population, all the children born in Birmingham after parental exposure were, to put it bluntly, stupid. During the great road building boom of the 50s and 60s up to 50% of Birmingham’s population were killed in road traffic accidents.
Desperate to mitigate the loss of population a high level, top secret plan was formulated by an innocuous sounding but powerful department of the council, The Highways Commission. Working in conjunction with central government educational standards were drastically reduced to cover up the truth, with many teachers ‘disappeared’ and teenage girls brainwashed into believing that having as many children as possible was the only useful contribution they could make to society. By the mid 1970s with the highest teenage pregnancy, and incidentally syphilis, rates in Europe, the city’s population had recovered and average intelligence levels had started to return to the grandchildren of those exposed to the gas. Unfortunately many were still too stupid to cross the road and large barriers were erected along any road deemed dangerous coupled with a labyrinth network of subways developed to separate pedestrians from cars, by now a whole industry had developed aimed at protecting the city’s ’stupid’ inhabitants. Led by the now intensely secretive and over powerful Highways & Public Safety Directorate.
Even though intelligence levels had returned to pre 1944 levels by about 1982 due to the effects of the gas wearing off after only one or two generations, the city has continued to place protective restrictions on pedestrians, outwardly claiming the measures are there to protect the citizen. Its believed that the all powerful Highways & Public Safety Directorate is a major power broker within the city’s political structure and stolen documents hint at a secret lab in the city attempting to recreate the formula of the gas for commercial and military purposes.
