First things first: in conventional biological terms, the Kaiju are flatly impossible.
The largest normal animal ever to have existed is the blue whale at two hundred tons. The largest normal land animal was undoubtedly one of the Mesozoic sauropods tipping the scales at around a hundred tons. The most massive living thing is a redwood tree estimated at 2100 tons.
But many of the Kaiju measure in at thousands of tons. According to J.D. Lees' GODZILLA COMPENDIUM, Anguiras is 33,000 tons, Gabara 23,000 tons, Godzilla in various incarnations ranges from 20,000 to 60,000 tons.
This massively oustrips any capacity for biological energy or biological structures.
If Godzilla was a biological animal, his weight would shatter the bones of his legs instantly. He wouldn't even have to take a step, the bones couldn't bear the standing weight. Even if Godzilla's legs were solid columns of bone, they couldn't bear the weight. Godzilla's immense mass is so great, and so beyond the structural limits of bone, ligament, cartilage and tendon, that if Godzilla was to fall down, the sheering force would tear his head off.
There's only a limited amount of energy available in conventional biological chemical reactions. Something like Godzilla would need to process thousands of tons of food daily, simply to keep from starving to death, and even then the energy resulting from ingestion and digestion wouldn't provide the energy for movement. A real Godzilla would simply lie there, or sit there, while endless express trains of cattle and produce were shipped into its gullet. Once in a while, we'd get rewarded with a blink or a twitch. To have any kind of functionality, Godzilla would have to consume something like pure rocket fuel in massive quantities.
Of course, the problems only begin there. There's no possible way that biological processes could explain Godzilla's radioactive breath, the ability of these monsters to live both on land and under water, to swim through lava, to walk in vaccuum, to survive decades or centuries or millenia of dormancy, or even in the case of creatures such as Mothra, Rodan, or King Ghidorah, to fly.
So, if the Kaiju are not biological creatures, what are they? Supernatural demons? Alien constructs? Robots?
They're fossils.
Okay, let's back up. What are the attributes of the Kaiju? Let's count them off:
1) They are Unique creatures. The Kaiju are almost all singular creatures, and not species. Only a very few are known to be directly related - the Gargantuas are derived from each other. There may have been a couple of different Godzillas. Rodan was a paired species. Mothra exhibits a life cycle. There may be at least a few Gezoras. But for the rest, Anguirus, Ghidorah, Megalon, Varan, etc., exist as only single creatures. They don't seem to exist in sexes, don't appear to have sex, and don't seem to manifest reproduction or life cycles as we know of them (Mothra being a partial exception).
2) They are taxonomically diverse - King Seesar and King Kong are definitely mammals. Godzilla, Anguirus, Varan, Rodan, etc. are reptiles. Gezora is a mollusk. Kamacuras and Spiega are arthropods. Hedorah is unclassifiable but seems to have been a composite slime mold. Several of the Kaiju seem related to dinosaurs or other Mesozoic animals, but others clearly seem to have roots prior to or after that era.
3) They are structurally identical to animals of various sorts. They have articulated limbs, claws, toes, eyes, mouths, scales, etc. They may be biologically impossible, but in most gross particulars they seem to imitate conventional biological animals closely. They also imitate biological animals in many particulars of behaviour.
4) As noted, their size outstrips any and every biological threshhold.
5) Despite their great size, there's no evidence of normal biology. They don't eat, or when they do it, it isn't nearly in the quanities necessary to sustain their bodies. They don't leave excrement behind. Godzilla and others seem as viable in vaccuum as on land as at the bottom of the ocean, or buried underground - they don't seem to need to breath the way we do.
6) Many exhibit anomalous physical abilities. Godzilla's radioactive breath is only the tip of the icebeg. There's Ghidorah's gravity beams, Rodan's ability to negate gravity, etc. These seem to involve the applications of physics on a nuclear or trans-nuclear scale.
The Kaiju appear to be based on or derived from biological animals from all epochs of history, but they aren't biological animals, and are instead a series of unique creatures whose abilities and function suggest trans-biological ability. How does this work? How do we get from a T-Rex which represents an apex of biological evolution, to a Godzilla?
The answer lies in the Earth's geological history. Decades ago, scientists discovered a natural nuclear reactor.
There's nothing particularly remarkable about that. The physics are pretty simple. Atoms are composed of protons, electrons and neutrons, in balanced numbers. The number of protons, electrons and neutrons determines what an element is. The lightest element is hydrogen - one of each. Oxygen, Carbon, Iron, Gold and Lead are all increasingly heavier elements.
Some atoms are short an electron, and are unstable in that way. That makes them prone to hooking up with other atoms, with which they can share an electron. Oxygen atoms bind with Hydrogen atoms, and the result is water. Oxygen atoms bind with Carbon atoms, and the result is carbon dioxide. This gets us basic compounds and chemistry.
Now, the thing is that most chemistry is basically binding with electrons. But you can also have atoms whose cores are unstable. These are usually the heavier elements like uranium. What this means is that they're prone to gain or lose a neutron. Adding or subtracting a neutron means you aren't mixing compounds, which are simply different combinations of elements. You are actually changing one element into another, through fusion (adding up) or fission(splitting apart).
Of course, bouncing neutrons around is a lot like juggling with chain saws. On the atomic scale, neutrons are big heavy things, it's sort of like shooting a bowling ball around at high velocity in a china shop.
Anyway, electron exchange yields energy, chemical energy. But electrons are tiny things. Bouncing neutrons around yields a lot more energy. Atomic energy. Think of the difference between dynamite and a hydrogen bomb.
But at heart, there's nothing particularly remarkable or unnatural about this. And in fact, radioactive elements do occur in nature. All elements occur in nature. The key with radioactive elements is that they decay over time. They're naturally unstable, so they lose their extra neutrons and degenerate into lighter, baser elements. Eventually they degenerate to a more common inert element like lead.
On Earth, we still have a lot of radioactive elements, and we can refine them to different degrees of purity. In the past, obviously, we had more, and the further into the past, there was a greater volume of radioactive materials on the earth's surface.
Interesting things happen when you concentrate radioactive elements. Basically, all those unstable neutrons tend to break free and strike other unstable radioactive atoms, setting more unstable neutrons to strike more atoms... You get a radioactive chain reaction, a lot of energy being produced, radiation, etc. You can fission atoms apart, reducing plutonium to uranium and eventually uranium to lead. Or you can fuse atoms together, pushing atoms up to bigger and heavier elements.
Normally, of course, we don't find this in nature. Geology tends to spread things around, other more inert materials get mixed in. That's why we have to refine just about all of our metals from ores, removing the inert materials. Radioactive elements, as they decay, tend to create their own inert materials. So, in the usual course of things, you don't have a lot of heavy nuclear chain reactions happening, and when they do, they would usually burn themselves out early.
Of course, Earth's surface is not quite inert. The trouble is that our landscape is constantly being shaped and reshaped by water and wind. Water and erosion cuts rivers, eats away at shorelines, creates deltas and fills in lakes with mud and sediment.
So, in certain circumstances, in certain places, radioactive elements were swept into certain lakes or ponds, where they built up into concentrations to create a critical mass and chain reaction. Nature produced its first nuclear reactor hundreds of millions of years before man. In fact, it probably produced a number of them over billions of years. Of course, these nuclear reactors were probably intermittent things, flaring up and then burning low, replenished as long as hydrological processes kept delivering new radioactive elements to the pond.
What were these natural reactors like? Mostly, they would have seemed like ordinary lakes or ponds, the water hotter than normal, perhaps boiling at times. The shores and waters, due to radiation, would have been normally devoid of life, again due to radiation.
Of course, wandering animals would have come by to drink. Some of them would have been fatally poisoned by radiation over time and wandered off to die. Some would have died along the shores. And a few would have slipped or been carried into the waters.
And what was in those waters? Remarkable concentrations of heavy metals of all sorts, iron, gold, lead, plutonium, uranium. The water would have been heated, but not uniformly, there would be all sorts of currents. Regular compounds and elements would be torn apart. New compounds and elements constantly created. Electron exchanges would release electricity, leaving the waters full of electrical charges waiting to ground.
Even after it had died, the animal would continue to twitch from random electrical charges, temperature imbalances moving its limbs, pushing water in and out of its lungs. Erratic charges would make its heart spasm, circulating sluggish blood. A permeable digestive system, no longer active, would no longer keep water out, but rather, provide an avenue for mineral rich radioactive water to infiltrate the body. The lungs, now filled with contaminated water, would provide a direct route to permeation of the veins and arteries. Slowly, through natural processes, the dead animal's body would become concentrated with radiation, with ores and isotopes, strange elements and stranger compounds.
No big deal, of course, since there are always freakish processes by which material becomes concentrated. The natural atomic reactor itself is just such a freakish process.
But there's a difference. The dead animal was a biological machine built for self sustaining processes. It had lungs, a heart, blood vessels, a digestive tract, kidneys, liver, brain, muscles, organs, all supporting and operating together. It's dead now, the factory is defunct. But the gross machinery is still there in place. Available for new management and new purposes.
There is no decay in this strange environment. The bacteria normally responsible for decomposition cannot survive here in this radioactive soup. The environment is sterile. The dead animal remains intact.
On a cellular level, at least.
On a molecular level, on an atomic level, strange things are happening. A strange kind of fossilization is taking place.
In conventional fossilization, as bone decays away, it is replaced bit by bit by mineral. Organic material is infiltrated by inorganic compounds, replaced molecule by molecule, until bone and even bits of flesh turn to stone. Usually it's just bone or wood (in the case of petrified forests). Normally, flesh decomposes too quickly for the slow process of replacement by minerals.
But here, in the bottom of our natural nuclear reactor, the minerals that replace the molecules of dead cells have a strange life of their own. Some of them are radioactive elements, decaying slowly, releasing radiation and energy as they decay.
A biological cell is only a factory after all. A chemical factory, but within its walls, it has systems and processes, organs and functions. Like an abandoned factory, all the structures and machinery for functioning is still there, dormant, unused, but available for a new owner.
Slowly, dead cells reactivate, the structures, channels and mechanisms of a chemical factory used for nuclear reactions. The cell resumes a form of functioning.
It is imperfect, of course. Nuclear reactions are not the same as chemical reactions. But the animal's body contains trillions of cells. Inevitably, some of them begin to function successfully. Something similar to a biological process begins again. The heart begins to pump. Functioning cells reproduce themselves, or perhaps merely infect other cells with their function. Liver and kidneys activate, lungs pump, processes which lead nowhere exhaust themselves, but other processes are self perpetuating. That which does not adapt, is swept away, devoured by this strange new anti-life. Through a trillion decisions of trial and error, the body adapts to new functions. Muscles, now laced with plutonium and uranium, cadmium and carbonized steel, begin to twitch. Elaborate chains of carbon carbon forming proteins and lipids are now contaminated, with hanging atoms of lead, gold and iron. Carbon molecules, under pressure, twist and crystalize into diamond hard bones.
What rises out of the water resembles what has died. But it is not alive in any way that we might recognize. It moves, it breathes, it roars and challenges. Neural synapses twitch with instinct, hard wired function and hazy memory. It's flesh is now a mixture of lead, graphite, metals, crystal carbon and radioactive elements. It looks like an animal, but the elements of its tissue is more like a volcano. It resembles a modern high tech nuclear reactor more than a living entity. It's body regulates itself awkwardly, but endlessly refines its processes.
Not everything works, of course. Although its body is a billion cellular laboratories, some processes result in dead ends, in dissolution, decay, uncontrolled growth, and a dozen other ways to terminate. Most reanimated animals fail, their bodies running down into entropic chaos. But even as each cell in its body is not the only laboratory, it is not the only animal. Through five hundred million years of life on Earth, there are dozens, perhaps hundreds of natural atomic reactors forming spontaneously, functioning for a few years, a decade, a century. There are thousands, perhaps millions of animals that die. Hundreds that experience some form of reanimation.
And inevitably, there are a few which, by sheer statistical chance, and perhaps certain advantages in form and function, find islands of stability, which survive.
These grow. Their power source is nuclear, their bones crystal, their flesh unnatural. Biological limits are no longer meaningful to them. Rather, growth, runaway growth, is the order of the day. There are a lot of dead cells, failed cells, that must be swept away, consumed and replaced by the nuclear cells. But there's more to it. The energies and reactions of this new nuclear biology are far more profound than simple chemistry. As with nuclear reactors, it takes massive structures to contain and regulate them. The new creatures, the successful ones, grow rapidly, moving towards sizes which will allow them reach homeostasis, to regulate and control their atomic metabolisms.
The ancient ponds and lakes which constitute the natural atomic reactors are ideal grounds for radical growth and transformation. Inevitably, they absorb the radioactive soup, expanding, processing, incorporating all sorts of minerals and metals, elements and compounds, creating their new biologies.
The growth is radical, departures from the now deformed DNA blueprints evolve. The creatures still resemble their forbears, their ancestral species, their original animal. But they adopt new features, spines, armour, structures. New faculties, new organs, new abilities grow. For some, it may be as simple as a set of dorsal spines or plates for discharging and regulating heat. For others, it can be random mutations like secondary heads.
One by one, over millions of years, the Kaiju are born into the world. Unliving. Undying. Ageless and transcendent.
Having finally understood where they come from, we can now examine what the Kaiju are and how they behave.
First of all, the Kaiju's nuclear biology means that normal considerations are irrelevant. We need to breath in order to exchange oxygen for carbon dioxide. Oxygen is required for chemical reactions. Carbon dioxide is a waste product. We need to eat in order to fuel chemical reactions. We excrete to rid ourselves of waste products. We poke along at low efficiencies.
The Kaiju do not need to breath like we do. Their metabolisms are not based on chemical reactions. No oxygen necessary. They can exist underground, in vaccuum, on land or at the bottom of the ocean.
They do not need to feed as we do, and they certainly do not require the same biological matter as food that we do. There are instances of Kaiju displaying feeding behaviours. But we would argue that these are leftover instinctual wiring. Some Kaiju eat because early on, when they were living creatures, they were programmed to eat. They don't need to. It's merely habit.
One of the complexities of Kaiju is that they may have two separate behavioural systems governing them. One is the old leftovers from a biological existence. This might include eating behaviour. Aggression. Territoriality. Dominance. Combat and hunting. In at least some ways and in some cases, they'll continue to behave as their ancestors did, even though these behaviours are no longer necessary. Feeding, roaring and fighting may be relic behaviours.
Of course, this begs the question of whether the Kaiju need to 'eat' on their own terms? How do they get new nuclear materials, new energy? There are some possibilities. It's possible that the Kaiju consume what we would call ambient radiation. If a proportion of radioactive elements in the soil, the atmosphere, the water is great enough, the Kaiju may be able to ingest and metabolize it?
How? Perhaps simply by breathing. Their lungs are huge. They have an immense digestive tract. Assuming a conventional respiration rate, or continuous gulping underwater, they may be able to filter vast amounts of irradiated air or water. In this sense, the Kaiju's closest biological analogues might be filter feeders like the barnacle, or perhaps the blue whale or whale shark.
There's some indication that the Kaiju may have evolved more subtle filter feeding techniques. There are at least some alleged observations of Godzilla feeding on nuclear power plants by apparently 'drawing' the radiation into himself. This indicates that the Kaiju, or some of them, may be generating massive electromagnetic fields, or perhaps some other sort of subtle force field which channels and directs radioactive energy. It might be that the physical Kaiju are actually at the center of invisible three dimensional energy funnel structures, resembling cosmic butterfly wings.
Only Godzilla has been observed to feed directly on nuclear power. But several of the Kaiju appear to have overt energy attacks - Megalon's electro-beams and fire-balls, Ghidorah's gravity beams, lasers, etc. which suggest that these entities' pseudo-biology involves exotic energies. And several of them seem to be drawn towards energy sources, or they are found around volcanoes, fires or power stations, situations which might be expected to stir the environment and result in increased environmental radiation.
Actually, volcanoes, because of discharge of long buried magma, are likely to have a discharge of radioactive elements far beyond normal backgrounds, a major fire is also likely to cause wind and air currents which may also increase access to radioactive particles - A power plant, however, may generate energies which the Kaiju can sense and which draw them, but upon arriving, they do not find the expected nuclear 'feast', it's a dry hole. This may explain why the Kaiju seem so prone to destroying such infrastructure.
It is not clear that the Kaiju, all, most or some of them, possess a radiation cleansing force field. Such fields would act on radiation or radioactive particles in ways so subtle that humans might never perceive it. Possibly, one sign might be a reduced radioactive signature in an area they've passed through. The level of background radiation might reduce considerably.
One practical application of this is that it may be possible to use Kaiju, or even to manufacture Kaiju or at least imitate their energy/metabolism to cleanse radiation impacted areas like Chernobyl or Bikini Atoll of radioactivity.
On the other hand, if there is such a 'radiation cleansing' or 'gathering' force field, then it would seem logical that radiation would concentrate at higher and higher levels, and be at its highest levels in immediate proximity to a Kaiju. There seems to be some support for this. Godzilla and several other Kaiju are known to leave radioactive 'trails.' This has in the past been interpreted as them leaking radiation, which may be true. But it may also be simply or partially, that they are messy feeders.
Of course, the proportion of radioactive elements that might be consumed by Kaiju through respiration of force field filter collection is probably tiny compared to their bulk. But then again, their atomic metabolism is not like our biology. It's likely that their systems are incredibly more energy-productive than ours, by a factor of thousands, or perhaps millions. What they need to sustain themselves may be slight.
The larger significance of the finding that the Kaiju feed on heightened 'trace' radioactivity is an explanation for why the Kaiju are so active in the modern era. Through the historical record, the Kaiju are, at best, only occasionally documented. In ten thousand years of human history, there have only been a handful of Kaiju appearances. Within the last half century, there appear to be more Kaiju manifestations and more Kaiju activity than we can verify for the last hundred thousand years.
Why? Our best guess is that modern nuclear weapons tests and nuclear power plants are waking them up, perhaps in a variety of ways. They may be particularly sensitive to certain seismic events, normally associated with nearby volcanoes or asteroid strikes, which are mimicked by nuclear blasts. They may be responding to increases of radiation in their local environment from nuclear waste or nuclear testing. They may be sensitive to the electromagnetic pulses generated by nuclear detonations. Or perhaps concentrations of nuclear material or nuclear chain reactions simply alert senses that we can't imagine.
It is certain that the Kaiju metabolisms are incredibly self contained and self sustaining, almost perfect closed systems. Otherwise they wouldn't survive periods of dormancy which may last thousands or even millions of years. The atomic biology of these new entities appears to make them functionally immortal, or at least, incredibly long lived. It's likely that the Kaiju only 'feed' minimally and on rare occasions.
One interesting aspect of the Kaiju is a thermal sensitivity. The Kaiju are not generally bothered by heat. Many of them are observed walking comfortably in fire, and some have even been found swimming in volcanic magma.
However, they are vulnerable to cold, at least under some circumstances. Godzilla has been forced into temporary dormancy by being buried in a glacier. Freezing weather appeared to shock many of the residents of Monster Island into at least a short period of dormancy. Why should this happen with entities that are essentially walking nuclear reactors? We may have an answer.
Another interesting behavioural aspect of Kaiju is the association of many with water. A number of Kaiju appear to be water based, notably Manda, Ebirah, Hedorah, Varan and Titanosaurus. Godzilla appears to spend as much time in the water as on land. King Kong is a dedicated swimmer. Even the Kaiju that are land based tend to be found close to water, on coasts or islands. Again, why is this?
The answer is that the Kaiju are using water much like nuclear reactors do, to moderate and control their atomic processes, to keep their reactors running at a steady state. As massive as they are, its likely that during normal function, their own internal water circulates between core and extremities, regulating their systems. Some of the more poorly regulated Kaiju, or some of the more active and aggressive Kaiju, may need to immerse themselves in large bodies of water to maintain or regain stability.
Cold may actually affect Kaiju by interfering with the water flow from their extremities. If the extremities are cold, they lose heat too fast, water circulation to the core declines, and the core temperature rises. When that happens, the only way the creature can stabilize its atomic reactions is to slow down its activity, appearing to go dormant.
Their short periods of underground dormancy may also be an effort to stabilize their metabolic processes, from losing too much heat, in that case by surrounding themselves with a temperature neutral environment in which their heat can build up.
The implication here is that Kaiju's internal temperature and nuclear processes are imperfectly regulated. At times, these creatures are forced into, or seek out, dormancy, in order to rebalance their systems. It's likely that each Kaiju's processes and regulation is slightly different. With an understanding of their systems, however, we can begin to predict and model the behaviour of different Kaiju, which ones are likely to become active and when, which ones will seek out burial dormancy to warm up or seek out the sea dormancy to cool down, or can be shocked into temporary dormancy with cold, which ones can be drawn or repelled by heat.
How does Godzilla swim?
Seriously.
As we have come to understand Godzilla, he is not a creature of flesh and bone, but rather, of graphite, crystallized carbon, lead, uranium, iron, and a compendium of elements and compounds. Godzilla's body volume, necessarily, must have an overall density far greater than that of water, probably greater than that of solid rock.
Humans and other animals float because our bodies' density is about the same as water, even slightly less than water That ain't Godzilla.
So, by all rights, Godzilla should sink straight to the bottom of the ocean. No swimming for Godzilla. Nothing but walking along the bottom.
And indeed, we've seen several instances where Godzilla seems to be doing just that. Walking the seafloor.
But at other times, Godzilla appears to swim. And even more amazingly, Godzilla floats, often with less than two thirds of his body underwater, and his head and torso above water. It's possible for a creature as heavy as Godzilla to swim, all it has to do is put enough energy into kicking. But there's no sign of Godzilla exhibiting the kind of intensity or swimming output that would justify not sinking to the bottom. As for floating...how is that possible at all?
But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Godzilla's swimming and floating is clearly impossible. It's just as impossible as Rodan's, Mothra's, Hedorah's and Ghidorah's flying. The surface area of their wings, the beating of their wings, compared to their weight, simply doesn't compute. They simply should not be able to fly any more than Godzilla should be able to swim or float.
But, as Sherlock Holmes tells us, whenever you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
When we look carefully at the evidence, there are a number of other indications that the Kaiju seem able to manipulate their apparent weight, or more accurately, they seem able to counteract gravity. Many Kaiju, for example, seem to be able to move easily around in environments which should not support their weight. An excellent example is Zilla, the American Kaiju mistaken for Godzilla. Not only could this creature swim, but while in New York, it ventured out onto the Brooklyn Bridge and climbed or stepped atop buildings which could not possibly support its weight. The only way it could do this is by partially negating gravity.
This is a provocative thought. Does this mean that the only reason Godzilla does not regularly fly is because...Godzilla believes it does not fly? That it is still operating on leftover instinctual behaviour that compels it to walk or swim? That Rodan and Mothra fly because their progenitures were neurologically and instinctually wired for flight?
Is there any evidence, apart from the fact that they're apparently doing it, that the Kaiju are able to mess with gravity? King Ghidorah comes to mind. Ghidorah's energy bolts are shown to have been concentrated gravity beams. For Ghidorah to develop such a refined form of offense, it would seem that some form of gross gravity manipulation is probably a common faculty among Kaiju.
But this opens up a whole new series of questions. Gravity, along with strong nuclear, weak nuclear and electromagnetism is one of the principal fundamental forces of the universe. It seems that the Kaiju's strange metabolic processes may affect all fundamental forces.
The Kaiju may be walking examples of Albert Einstein's Universal Field Theory.
Modern nuclear reactors, of course, demonstrate no such gravity altering properties. But Kaijus' nuclear processes take place at cellular and systemic levels which have developed over thousands of years. The interior processes of a Kaiju are undoubtedly thousands of times more sophisticated than the most advanced nuclear power plant. It seems that one of the by-products of this sophistication is some form of general control or influence over fundamental forces.
Assume gravity control, we still don't know how Rodan and Mothra manage to fly. At best, they should be floating around like giant, floundering, flapping dirigibles. Yet these creatures manage to outpace supersonic jets, and, impossibly, can create massive winds with mere flapping. Even worse is Ghidorah, who somehow manages to travel through interplanetary space by .... flapping his wings...in a vaccuum? Totally impossible.
However these creatures fly, it's not by flapping wings. Instead, wing flapping must, at best, be leftover instinctual behaviour. The real 'flying power' appears to be invisible, they must be projecting invisible force fields or invisible drives of some sort.
Remember that we speculated that the Kaiju were generating a 'feeding field' of energy which drew in and funneled radioactive energy and particles to them? Perhaps the flight power may be an elaboration of these feeding fields. Assuming gravity negation, they may be able to adapt large invisible energy fields to propel them, or to create massive wind effects.
Of course, gravity control and flight are only two anomalies of the Kaiju. Their various energy attacks, from Godzilla's atomic breath, Ghidorah's gravity bolts, Megalon's lightning horn and fireball attacks, heat beams, energy rays, lasers, etc., all suggest some underlying access to exotic physics. Beyond the physical creatures, there are force fields, energy complexes, basic fundamental forces of the universe manipulated in ways we can only guess at.
Certain Kaiju appear to have some degree of strange sensitivity. An almost telepathic awareness, particularly of children. And in the case of Mothra, an awareness of 'life fields' and a need to respond to planetary stress or danger, even precognitively. At times, as with Mothra or other entities identified as 'guardians', it has been proposed that certain Kaiju are creations of supernatural, or bio-etheric forces. There may be some support for this in that these Kaiju appear to be sensitive to Earth's magnetic field, or perhaps to stress in collective bio-electrical patterns of life on Earth. But even in these cases, I think that we may be going back to nuclear Kaiju whose properties, including extraordinary sensitivity to things that are normally beyond our perceptions, and whose deeper physics extend to Universal Field Theory.
The bottom line is that all true Kaiju are operating on, and evolving complex internal physics that we are only barely beginning to understand. The possibilities seem open ended and endless, and we might consider ourselves lucky that the Kaiju seem so regularly confined to the behavioural structures of their long dead ancestors.
Indeed, it's possible that terrestrial Kaiju may be merely the slow learners of the Kaiju race. The more sophisticated Kaiju may have evolved such an elaborate mastery of exotic physics that they long ago left earth, with only rare and backwards specimens like Ghidorah and Gigan occasionally being drawn back to the homeworld.
One thing that comes out of this examination is that man has a poor record of destroying Kaiju. Indeed, the Kaiju have a poor record of destroying each other. They are occasionally defeated, but Kaiju thought destroyed or killed have often reappeared. Given that they are walking stable nuclear reactors, given that their bodies are laboratories of exotic physics....what would be the consequences of actually killing one? What sort of unregulated reactions or processes might take place within a dead Kaiju? Even if nothing happened, and we aren't prepared to make such an assumption, the notion of trying to dispose of 20,000 or 30,000 tons of Kaiju flesh, heavy as lead, and far more radioactive than radioactive waste, seems insurmountable.
Two of the most fascinating Kaiju are the Gargantuas and the Mothra's, largely because these creatures exhibit transformation and growth cycles unknown to the other Kaiju.
The Gargantuas may be the most recent Kaiju, and perhaps the only Kaiju to have manifested in modern times. The origins of the Gargantuas are unclear, but it appears to begin with a boy named Furankenstine, or Frank, who was caught in the Hiroshima blast. Another version is that the Germans had sent over the living heart of the Frankenstein Monster, which was caught in the blast and irradiated, and the boy had eaten the heart.
Whether the original Kaiju cells came from the heart or the boy is immaterial. It seems quite clear that the boy's metabolism underwent a radical transformation, and he grew quickly from child size, to man size, to small giant. Escaping, the Frankenstein, or first Gargantua, fled into the wild, growing into a Kaiju about a hundred feet tall.
Obviously, the Frankenstein had left normal physics and biology far, far behind. The incredibly rapid growth and transformation, and the impossible size compel us to accept that the Frankenstein was a Kaiju entity, with an atomic metabolism. How did this happen?
It seems that Hiroshima must be the key. The conditions in the aftermath of Hiroshima, in at least one location, at one point, must have been sufficient to duplicate the primal conditions which normally created the other Kaiju.
It may have been as simple as the boy dying in a radiation saturated pond, and then reanimating. But this seems unlikely, there was no evidence of runaway radiation signatures for the boy at any point.
Then what of the story of the boy eating Frankenstein's heart? Perhaps there really was a Frankenstein's heart? Perhaps the Germans had succeeded in creating, finding or animating a specimen of Kaiju tissue, a heart. Or perhaps the nuclear explosion affected the laboratory in Hiroshima, to temporarily produce the conditions of a Kaiju nuclear cell. This was the flesh that the boy consumed, and in turn, this was the flesh that then consumed him, nuclear powered cells devouring and replacing human chemical biology cells.
Whatever the case, it seems that the Kaiju reaction proceeded with astonishing speed. In just a few years the Frankenstein grew from a few tens of pounds to at least hundreds of tons. This shows an amazing capacity for cellular growth and colonization.
The Kaiju growth was so extreme that from injuries, two more smaller Kaiju, the Gargantuas, emerged and grew. Literally, body parts or blood traces regenerated into full fledged individuals.
A similar phenomenon was observed with the Danish Kaiju, Reptilicus, which also exhibited astonishing regenerative abilities, and various physical anomalies like impossible flight. This also suggests that the well known second Godzilla (the first being definitively killed), may not have actually been a second individual, but perhaps merely a regrown fragment of the original. It may also explain Godzilla's occasionally variant appearance, not new animals, but episodes of metababolic activity that literally change its appearance. It may also explain Hedorah, who in some ways represents merely a runaway undifferentiated growth, like cancer.
How is it that Kaiju cells have such remarkable regenerative qualities? Obviously, they're operating on atomic energy rather than chemical energy, and thus have thousands of times more potential energy available. This seems to be behind the remarkable growth and regenerative capacity.
We can derive a couple of more insights from the Gargantuas. First, giantism seems inevitable. It appears that while engaged in runaway growth, the tendency is to eventually grow to a point of metabolic stabilisation, at hundreds or thousands of tons. The second is radical mutation. The first Frankenstein was severely deformed or mutated, but recognisably human. The succeeding Gargantuas were visibly further from human.
It is not clear that either the Gargantuas or the Frankenstein had stabilised in their growth or evolution. It may be that once that stability is reached, the propensity for radical growth or mutation, for regeneration, may curtail somewhat....explaining why the world is not overrun with Gargantuas or Godzillas.
Another interesting feature of the Gargantuas was their tendency to seek each other out. Frankenstein, a relatively novel Kaiju, battled both Barugon and a giant octopus. The Gargantuas found each other. Many of the Kaiju seem to actively seek each other out for confrontation or battle. This may imply that they are able to sense each other on some level. Thus, Kaiju regenerating from fragments may not have the opportunity to reach full stability before their larger, fully formed cousins destroy them. Or it may be that early stage Kaiju are inherently unstable - there were hundreds of thousands of people affected by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but only one Frankenstein was produced. Frankenstein must have experienced dozens of wounds, but only two Gargantuas emerged.
Mothra is interesting, because almost alone of the Kaiju, it appears to have a stable self-perpetuating cycle, with Mothras being born from cocoon-eggs, existing as larva, developing into adult Mothras and eventually laying eggs and perishing.
A quirk of the Mothra life cycle is that there are occasional cases of twinning. Two mothra larva are produced. Or perhaps a Mothra and Battra larva. It appears that the Battra is merely a mutated variant of Mothra. Battra may emerge under certain environmental conditions, and seems to grow from larva to adult Battra. There is only one Mothra so it seems that when two larva are born, and one is not a Battra, the second larva dies.
Mothra appears to have a peculiar relationship with humans, and a peculiar relationship with the Earth. It, like all the Kaiju, exhibit supernormal (for animals) intelligence, and sometimes near human forms of comprehension.
The initial views of the Kaiju was that for the most part, they were unintelligent, no more and no less sophisticated than animals, with essentially the same behavioural drives.
For the most part, this seems to be the case. There is very little evidence of cognitive reasoning among any of the Kaiju. There is, for instance, very little evidence of tool use apart from hurling of boulders. Nor is there significant evidence of planning.
In many cases, Kaiju interactions have been confined to dominance contests and fighting, as they struggle to establish territories and drive rivals off. There is a long record of Kaiju battles. Indeed, the Kaiju's aggression and territoriality appear to drive them to attack pseudo-kaiju robots, as well as military forces and even buildings and installations.
Nevertheless, there are exceptions to the rule. Some Kaiju seem more tolerant of certain creatures than other creatures. Within the frameworks of their endless battles, Kaiju appear to form alliances or temporary partnerships. Forced into association, as on Monster Island, the Kaiju do not socialize significantly, but neither do they wage unceasing combat.
There is even some indication that the Kaiju form more complex relationships, that they exhibit emotional responses including anger and pleasure, and that they at times, may even communicate on some level. Kaiju certainly have an affinity for seeking each other out for battles, but in some cases, they avoid battling or end their battles inconclusively. Sometimes they combine to battle other Kaiju.
Some observers credit the Kaiju with some degree of awareness and reasoning ability, perhaps similar to that of a human child. Such a capacity is likely part of the overall mutation of their great size and more complex and energetic metabolisms.
However, apart from apocryphal and personal accounts, it is difficult to assess the emotional and intellectual parameters of individual Kaiju. How do you design a test for Godzilla? For better or worse, each Kaiju must be taken on its own terms, with the limits and nature of its intelligence potentially undefinable and unmeasurable.
Not all giant creatures which have emerged to startle or menace humanity in the last century have been genuine Kaiju. Nevertheless, the appearances and activities of these creatures are so iconic, or have created such a lasting impression, that they are confused with or considered Kaiju as a whole, or even confused with actual Kaiju.
Consider the depression era King Kong. Or even the Brontosaurus that tramped through London a generation earlier from the South American Lost World. Prior to that, there was the Tyrannosaurus known as Gwangi which emerged from a hidden western canyon to confront cowboys.
More recently in addition to dinosaurs and giant apes, we have encountered giant crocodiles and alligators in locations ranging from New York's sewers, to Maine's Lake Placid, to Phillipines and South American locations. There have been colossal anacondas found in South America, and giant python's and boas, as well as huge komodo dragons, and even giant spiders and underground graboids.
Surely these creatures are all Kaiju?
Sorry.
There are many key differences between these creatures and the actual Kaiju.
First among these is size. These giants, however immense they may be, tend to run in size between that of an elephant and a medium sized sauropod dinosaur. Say a range between 5 and 30 tons. That's pretty spectacular. But it's also well within the capacity of normal biology to produce.
In contrast, genuine Kaiju are orders of magnitude larger. They run into the hundreds, thousands and even tens of thousands of tons. Their size clearly outstrips normal biology.
The false Kaiju generally behave and function like real animals. They actively breathe, they eat, they excrete. There are a number of cases, for instance, of finding bones or refuse left behind from these creatures feeding, of stool samples or other waste products left behind. They actively hunt, they nest, they mate, they reproduce.
In the case of genuine Kaiju, these functions are generally not consistent. Most Kaiju appear to breathe, but clearly don't need do. Some eat. Very few reproduce. Features of normal biology are erratically mimicked by genuine Kaiju. The false Kaiju conform strictly, as creatures of normal biology.
The false Kaiju never demonstrate any of the remarkable capacities of genuine Kaiju - force fields, gravity reduction, energy attacks, excess radioactivity, etc.
Finally, the false Kaiju are comparatively easy to kill. King Kong was brought low by biplane mounted machine guns. Most of the false Kaiju are killed by small amounts of conventional explosives, or by high powered rifles or similar weapons.
The genuine Kaiju have proven nigh-impossible to kill, and frequently stand up to astonishing levels of military grade artillery, surface to surface missiles, and even exotic weaponry such as a MASER cannon.
The false Kaiju are to be respected and admired as pinnacles of biological evolution. But let's not mistake them. They are simply large creatures.
The true Kaiju are something else completely.
There is a consistent history of association of Kaiju with aliens, time travellers or lost super-civilizations.
This is most apparent with the Toho Showa Kaiju sagas, in which a handful of alien races - the Mysterians, Simeons, Kilaaks, Garogain, Nebulans, Xians, as well as Seatopians and Muans, either control or use their own Kaiju or seek to control Earth's Kaiju.
Of course, it is not confined to Showa Godzilla. The association with lost civilizations (Atlantis) and aliens runs strongly through the Showa Gamera series. Aliens do not appear in the Heisei Gamera series, but Gamera remains associated with Atlantis.
Aliens do not appear directly in the Heisei Godzilla series - barring Space Godzilla. But time travellers appear to fixate on Godzilla. In the Millenium Godzilla films, aliens appear as Kaiju master in Godzilla: Final Wars.
The bottom line, extraterrestrial, lost or time traveling cultures (let's call them hypercultures), when they impact on Earth, seem to fixate on Kaiju.
Why? It doesn't seem terribly logical on its face. Why would an advanced technological civilization decide to hit its rival with King Ghidorah? Why not just use a lot of hydrogen bombs? Why seek to control Godzilla to take over the Earth? Vaporize Paris and hand out your ultimatums.
Maybe it's not a coincidence.
Let me suggest that for cultural and technological reasons, these hypercultures are tied to the Kaiju.
How and why?
Let's go back and take a second look. The Kaiju are walking nuclear reactors. But more than that, they are more powerful than any nuclear reactor ever created. Their nuclear reactions take place on a cellular level. They produce almost no waste. They harness vast energies. They reach deep into unified field theory, producing force fields, anti-gravity, exotic beam weapons, super-propulsion.
What are the defining traits of the hypercultures we keep encountering? Very simple: They have supertechnology which produces anti-gravity, force fields, exotic beam weapons and super propulsion.
Isn't that interesting?
How do we figure they manage this?
At first thought, the argument would be that the hypercultures have managed to duplicate the feats of the Kaiju, and presumably have managed to duplicate the nuclear metabolic processes of the Kaiju.
This would be a pretty good trick. Any hyperculture that can successfully build its own artificial 'Godzilla cells' could pretty much write its own ticket. It would be unstoppable. It's also a pretty difficult trick.
Look at it this way: terrestrial civilization was, for much of its history, built on biological horsepower. We rode them, they carried our goods on their backs, they dragged our wagons and carriages. The horse was the power source for civilization. That doesn't mean that our civilization was actually 'building' our own horses.
Even now, our civilization is still based on horsepower. But we're still not building horses. We build machines. And we run these machines with natural bounty, the product of biology - oil and coal.
So, by the same token, it's possible that these hypercultures are 'building their own horses' and creating or duplicating their own Kaiju cells. But the more likely, and the simpler explanation is that instead of creating them, they're simply harvesting.
Consider that a Kaiju nuclear cell is an incredibly sophisticated and complicated power generator which can produce effects of exotic physics. It's a lot simpler for a hyperculture to simply harvest Kaiju cells and hook them up to its machines, than to actually build those cells from scratch. Occam's razor demands we start simple. We have to assume that the hypercultures were once much less sophisticated, perhaps no more sophisticated than we are now, and that they grew to their stature and level of prowess.
Which means that their technology would have been able to harvest and hooking up Kaiju cells to machines (the lower level), before they could actually duplicate or manufacture those cells (the higher level).
And here's the thing. We don't actually have hard evidence that they have managed to duplicate or manufacture Kaiju nuclear cells. All their effects and accomplishments are equally consistent with harvesting and hooking up, as they are with duplicating and manufacturing. There's nothing to show that they reached the higher level.
Indeed, there are hints to suggest that they haven't reached the higher level. The hypercultures often seem limited in their abilities - limited populations, limited resources, despite their superiority they've proven terribly ineffective at conquering Earth. A hyperculture which is based on harvesting and employing Kaiju cells is much more limited in its power and flexibility than one which can manufacture them.
And of course, most obviously, a culture which could manufacture Kaiju nuclear cells independently would have no obvious use for or continuing interest in Kaiju.
On the other hand, a hyperculture which is dependent upon Kaiju cells would certainly want to invest a lot of time and energy into controlling its own Kaiju. It would be very concerned to develop effective control devices.
And it would be into obtaining control of other Kaiju, and in taking control of or keeping its enemies/rivals or victims from gaining access to Kaiju cells. It might build giant robotic Kaiju in order to deal with these creatures and their social and behavioural programming.
The Kaiju are creatures of tens of thousands of tons with immense regenerative capacities, so its likely that these societies can achieve their needs with perhaps only occasional taps, no more than mosquito bites to us.
Or then again, perhaps there's limits - Gigan seems pretty chewed up, with organic components replaced with cyborg parts. It may be that the limitations on the supply of Kaiju cells in space is the reason that hypercultures are focusing increasingly on Earth in the twentieth century.
The Xians have King Ghidorah, and work to obtain control of Rodan and Godzilla. The Kilaaks control Ghidorah, the Nebulans control Gigan and Seatopians control Megalon, respectively, yet they also undertake quests to gain control of Godzilla and other earthly Kaiju. The Simeons have a Robot Godzilla Kaiju, yet enlist a genuine Kaiju, Titanosaurus.
We've been assuming that these aliens have sought to use Kaiju as weapons against humanity, and it does seem that this is the case. But perhaps there is more to it. Perhaps these Kaiju, or their cell cultures, are the power sources for the hyperculture's technology - for their space ships, force fields, ray guns, etc. Perhaps part of their use of Kaiju, and interest in Kaiju is the same as Western interests in middle east oilfields...i.e., a need to identify, map and control vital resources.
Indeed, if the Kaiju are the vital resource for hypercultures, the way that oil is for our culture, perhaps it's Earth's own developing technology that motivates them to get involved in the twentieth century. Prior to that time, Earthlings were mere savages, barely mastering fire. But particularly in the late 20th century, Earth technology may be approaching the breakthroughs needed to use Kaiju cells for power sources. This would be equivalent to middle easterners reaching the point where they might start keeping all that oil for themselves. Or perhaps reaching the point where not only are they rivals for the resource, but about to become genuine threats and rivals.
Each of the Kaiju have their own metabolic processes and produce somewhat different exotic physics effects. Gravity beams, powered flight, force fields, etc. So it may be that samples from more and different Kaiju are necessary for different technologies. To have a viable flying saucer, you might need a Rodan-like Kaiju's propulsion cells, and a Ghidorah-like Kaiju's gravity cells, and even a Mothra-like Kaiju's force field cells. Ray guns may be powered by a slightly different variety of cells from a different Kaiju than the ones powering giant robots. So hypercultures may have a lot of interest in trying to gain control over as many different specimens of Kaiju as possible.
Thus, for a number of reasons, hypercultures who are dependent upon Kaiju cells, and perhaps dependent upon occasionally tapping Earth Kaiju, might be highly motivated to get involved with Earth.
Apart from the Showa era films, whose evidence is only indirect, is there any evidence for this? Chris N points out that, "there is some validation for that in the video game Godzilla: Save the Earth. In that game, the Vortaak come to Earth (from elsewhere in the solar system, as you have surmised) to capture the various G-cells. The G-cells are Godzilla's genetic structure encapsulated into large cylindrical structures....in the next game in the series, Godzilla Unleashed (which I have yet to play) they bring more monsters with them. It should be noted how the Vortaak use rapidly growing crystals to store energy. In the game, we see that they mine these crystals in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and since Space Godzilla has a crystalline structure to his body, it's very likely that the Vortaak (which appear to be a close offshoot of the Xians/Xilians) combined Godzilla's DNA with the pseudo-organic crystals so as to create a new space-faring kaiju..."
And there are a few other clues.
In the Heisei era Godzilla vs Biollante, it is very clear that there's a major research effort going on into unlocking the secrets of Godzilla's G-Cells. More interestingly, it's clear that at least part of the research is devoted to cultivating and hybridizing G-Cells. In short, what we may be seeing is the beginning of terrestrial technological efforts which will lead to Hyperculture technology. It is indirect evidence - rather than proof of what the hypercultures have done, we see what must be the beginning of the process in our own culture.
Another similar development comes in the Millenium series. The Kiryu Mechagodzilla is actually a cyborg, built over the skeleton framework of the original 1956 Godzilla 'killed' by the Oxygen Destroyer in Tokyo Bay, and powered or controlled by cloned G-cells from the bone tissue. Again, this seems to be a proto-hyperculture development.
Meanwhile in the Millenium series, Godzilla's nuclear cells are of interest to an ancient alien craft in Godzilla 2000, and in Godzilla: Final Wars, the Xillians' special DNA are used to create and control Kaiju and (human) mutants.
The traditional theory as to the relationship between Kaiju and Hypercultures is that the Hypercultures have created their Kaiju. Thus, Manda is the creation of Mu, Megalon a product of the Seatopians. Ghidorah has been manufactured by the Xians. The Nebulans have produced Gigan, etc.
But given the proliferation of Earth Kaiju, this poses a problem. Should we assume that all terrestrial Kaiju are the products of a lost or lost civilizations? For instance, Gamera is believed to be the creation of Atlaneans or Lemurians. Or do we acknowledge that many or most of them seem to be 'natural' - i.e., not specifically created by a lost culture?
It seems that there are three choices. 1) Either all Kaiju are artificial creations. 2) All Kaiju are natural. 3) Or some Kaiju are natural and some are artificial. Of these choices, it seems that we are invited to accept the third, but it is also the least likely.
So, let us turn the traditional theory on its head. It is not the hypercultures which have created the Kaiju, for mysterious and unfathomable reasons. Rather, it is the Kaiju who have created the hypercultures, who cannot let them go.
When the Kaiju initially began to emerge, often the confrontation between Kaiju and humanity was seen as a great struggle between man and beast, in which the beast was inevitably beaten. During the 1950's and 1960's, various encounters with creatures such as Godzilla, Yongary, Rodan, Reptilicus, the Rhedosaurus, the Deadly Mantis, Anguiras, the Behemoth, etc., were believed to end with the deaths of the various monsters.
Unfortunately, this simply was not true. Varan, Baragon, Rodan, Godzilla, Manda were believed to be destroyed but would invariably re-emerge or recover from apparent death or disappearance. Given the remarkable properties of the Kaiju nuclear cells, which appear to include vast energies and exotic physics, and extraordinary operating span and phenomenal regenerative abilities, it is not clear that we can dismiss any Kaiju as killed. Even those rare specimens who do not seem to have reactivated, such as Yongary, may simply be experiencing a relatively longer period of dormancy. Perhaps the real question is can we truly kill something that is not actually alive as we have traditionally understood the term?
Or perhaps the better question is...should we? Consider: The Kaiju are all walking nuclear reactors of phenomenal and exotic output. Despite this, they seem to be extremely 'clean' reactors, their processes are highly self contained, they produce no apparent waste, they leave little or no residual radiation. Indeed, the lack of radiation by-product has fooled many early scientists into believing that some Kaiju were not nuclear based but merely large exotic animals. Do we really want to take a chance on killing a walking nuclear reactor? At disrupting the processes that regulate their nuclear fission or fusion, and perhaps leave runaway processes? What sort of 'decay' would such a corpse undergo? And even assuming we were to kill one safely, what to do with a 30,000 ton radioactive carcass?
For this reason, through the '70's and '80's, anti-Kaiju efforts have gradually shifted focus from combat and destruction, to containment, avoidance and deterrence. Increasingly, means have been found to keep Kaiju contained on 'Monster Islands.' At the same time, certain industrial activities that seem to draw the attention of Kaiju are now much more heavily regulated, and design processes incorporate 'masking' efforts ranging from architecture to white noise radio generators intended to evade Kaiju notice. Finally, direct confrontation with Kaiju are oriented less at destroying or defeating the creatures than driving or luring them away from populated areas.
It is likely that as these techniques are refined into the 21st century, the threat of Kaiju will diminish until they are seen as no more dangerous than hurricanes or tornadoes. Extremely dangerous, but a natural phenomena which can be dealt with.
But there may be a greater role for Kaiju in human civilization. Very simply, the Kaiju are the most efficient and exotic nuclear reactors known to man. Their nuclear energy cells are perhaps a million times more efficient and energy productive than regular chemical energy biological cells. This transcends terrestrial technology. In comparison, our own nuclear reactors are like crude effigies made of children's blocks.
Within the Kaiju's cells are the secrets of anti-gravity, force fields, anti-radiation and radiation cleansing, space travel, exotic propulsion and perhaps more. If the processes of Kaiju cells could be replicated, it would be a major advance of human technology. Though terrestrial humanity has only the merest grasp of alien or hyperculture technology, we have recovered enough to produce exotic weapons, space ships, giant robots and other marvels decades ahead of their natural occurrence. If our earlier speculations about the hypercultures power source and technological base are correct, then perhaps the Kaiju are humanity's next great stepping stone into the future.