This just in: Giant iceberg threatens the future of McMurdo Station and its inhabitants.

Background needed prior to the story:
As many of you know, we currently live on an island in the Ross Sea in Antarctica. Our little island, roughly 918 sq miles (about the size of Rhode Island), is encased in the Ross Ice Shelf, or at least half of the island is all year round. Fed by several glaciers, the Ross Ice Shelf is a permanent formation that is close to a thousand meters thick with a surface area that is larger than France. The shelf, fed by several glaciers, runs from the mainland all the way out to where it drops off into the Ross Sea.

Now for our Feature Presentation: Attack of the Giant Icecube
In order to tell this tale, I must take us back to the year 2000. Certain glacial events (not going to go into it here) resulted in the Ross Ice Shelf calving off the largest ever-recorded iceberg into the Ross Sea. Thus bringing into this world the dreaded B-15 Iceberg. (cheesy soap opera organ music here)

As it was still a newborn iceberg and not knowing what to do next, it grounded itself against Ross Island for safety during its infancy. In late 2003, as our young iceberg matured, it shed its baby weight and about a 1/4 of the berg broke off nearest to Ross Island. Now we have 2 huge icebergs: B-15a (the original berg) and B-15j (the new, smaller berg that used to be part of B-15). Very romantic names, aren't they? I think they should use strong Nordic names like 'Thor the Iceberg' or 'Sven Massive.'

Here's a fun fact: B-15a has enough ice that when melted could feed the Nile river for 80 years. Or as my brother Rich noted, enough ice to make a helluva lot of margaritas. Yes, the Wilson siblings enjoy our cocktails and often look at a lot of things in this manner. But I digress...

No longer being grounded due to the breaking off of the smaller berg, B-15a began training with B-15j by bouncing back and forth between Ross Island and B-15j until it was ready for the main event.

Every year McMurdo Sound has pack ice about 15 feet thick that eventually blows out to sea leaving relatively open waters so that we can get a couple fuel/supply ships in and out of the station. If the ice does not completely blow out, then we have Coast Guard icebreakers carve a path (the Polar Star icebreaker is slated to arrive next week). Typically there are 2 breakers that come down from the states to carve a path wide enough to get the extremely important supply ships into the station so we can refuel for the coming year. Before the iceberg started to move, the big concern was that B-15a would remain where it was and act as a rather large wall preventing the pack ice from blowing out to sea in time for the icebreaker and the supply ship's arrival.

Just this season, while we have been here, B-15a, currently the largest floating object in the world, started to move. And move fast. We are talking 2 kilometers a day fast. Which may not sound quick, but for something the size of Delaware, that's speedy.

The thought here in Mactown initially was "Cool. The berg will move north and the pack ice will blow out and the tanker will come fill our tanks and the great metropolis of McMurdo will continue to thrive." Great news, right? It would be if it were not for the fact that B-15a is headed at full speed towards its long-time enemy (said in a deep, echoing, truck rally voice): the Drygalski Ice Tongue.

The main event: Berg vs. Tongue 2004.

Having heard this horrible news I immediately said to myself, "Wow, that's horrible! What the hell is an ice tongue?" An ice tongue occurs when a glacier flowing into the sea does not immediately break up into icebergs but flows out to create a long narrow peninsula of ice. The Drygalski ice tongue stretches 50 miles into the Ross Sea.

So why does B-15a resent Drygalski so much? What is this hatred between iceberg and ice tongue? Historians speculate that although they are essentially made of the same material, icebergs and ice tongues do not get along because of different lifecycle beliefs. See, iceberg's are traditionalists. They believe their roll in life is to break off an ice shelf, wander around in the southern ocean until currents sweep them north where they eventually melt gracefully. The ice tongue breaks this traditional, independent approach for more of a unified, organized one made up of many icebergs working together to form a tongue, thus increasing their lifespan. Call it a Samuel Gompers-esque unionization of the bergs. What am I talking about? Not sure, but anyways, lets recap:

Huge ice formation is steaming 2km/day towards another huge stationary ice formation. Now, I do not normally get all geeked up about oversized ice cubes, but I am a guy and being interested in large things colliding and destroying each other is part of the guy nature.

As I type this, B-15a is roughly 12km from Drygalski and at 2km/day would put the collision at, yep, you guessed it: Christmas Day. Very Rocky IV, isn't it?

Touted as "The Thrilla in Antarctica", this epic battle will probably go down like this:
In this corner, weighing in at 2 billion tons, the Floating Flurry, the Irritated Icecube, the Wrath of the Ross, the Terror of the Titanic, the Surly Snowball: B-15 Iceberrrrrrrrrg.

And in this corner, with a reach of 70 kilometers and weighing in at a figure that I could not find on Google, the Glacial Goliath, the Tongue of Trepidation, the Prussian Punisher: Drygalski Ice Tooooooongue

LLLLLLLet's get ready to Crumbllllllllle! (Ok, I'll stop)

There are a lot of predictions as to which will win this age-old Antarctic battle between berg and tongue. By now, I am sure several of you are having horrible high school physics flashbacks as you ponder the kinetic energy of an object that is 2 billion tons and traveling at 2 km/day. Let me help you calculate: It's a lot. In the past, large bergs have been known to break off sections of an ice tongue and you may be quick to say the ice tongue has no chance. However, this is no ordinary ice tongue. This is Drygalski: The biggest, baddest, longest tongue in the Ross Sea.

Last I checked, Vegas was giving the berg 3:1 odds that it destroys the tongue in the first round.

The situation in McMurdo:
In the past, icebreakers normally only needed to carve anywhere from 1 to 10 miles in the pack ice. As it stands right now, the icebreaker is facing an 80-mile path through the ice. To make matters worse, we only have one icebreaker because the 2nd breaker is in the shop.

The big worry among the higher ups is that B-15a could possibly crash into Drygalski and stop, preventing the ice from moving out to sea and making a rather narrow channel for the supply vessels to pass between B-15a and B-15j. Not good. I do not mean to point out the obvious but: No tanker = No fuel = No heat. Not a good thing in Antarctica. If the ships filled with fuel and supplies are not able to make it into McMurdo, which has never happened before, the station will need to start closing down a majority of the buildings and send people home early in order to conserve for the winter months.

I'm no scientist (which I have proven many times), but I have formulated a little theory of my own based on conjecture. The two will collide, causing a significant seismic event coming in around 1.0 to 2.0 on the Richter scale, as well as producing some rather large ripples in the Ross Sea - I'm not talking tsunami or anything, but still significant enough to break up all the pack ice. I'm taking the underdog and predict the berg will not win the battle and will fracture producing about 10 new icebergs that will spend the rest of their limited days melting as they head north to warmer climates. Either that, or the impact will be so strong that it will shake the very foundation of the southern continent causing active and dormant volcanoes to erupt, emitting dust and debris into the atmosphere and wiping out surface civilization, as we know it. Humans will be forced to live a dismal existence underground feeding off whatever they can cultivate without the warmth of the sun. When the dust settles and humans resurface, they will immediately be enslaved by Keith Richards and his cockroach army who were the only creatures to survive the cataclysmic event above ground.

But what do I know...

(Be sure to watch the big event on pay per view for $59.95)