2060 - Humvee-sized, bulletproof meat-eating spiders attack

Summary

May 7, 2009: The article takes a report by National Geographic that a certain species of wolf spider in Greenland currently seems to grow by 10% in size per year (possibly as a result of global warming and resulting longer hunting seasons) and speculates that if this trend continues the spiders might be as large as humvees by 2060. These giant spiders might attract Big Game Hunters from all over the world, and considering that they would have about 26 cm of armor plating, they would be as hard to take out as a tank.

Source

Bibliography

1. Original article

2. Arcana Wiki Map entry

Game and Story Use

• In a suitably silly campaign, those giant spiders might spread out to surrounding continents and prey on humans in giant swarms (anvilicious messages about the dangers global warming are optional).
• After The End campaigns often feature gigantic animals for some reason. Giant Wolf Spiders swarming out of Greenland would be unusual, but still fit in nicely.
• In reality the spiders are liable to hit a square-cube rule problem fairly soon, either due to the load carrying capability of their legs or the oxygen exchange capacity of their lungs. Of course an aggressive spider a lot smaller than a Humvee could still be a substantial nuisance - almost all of the extant large spiders are pretty timid and only bite when violently disturbed.