Chinese Fire Drill -or- Why I Hate the Weather Wizard

Sweet Regina's gone to China,
cross-legged on the floor
Of a burning jet that's smoothly flying
Burning Airlines give you so much more
-Brian Eno

I don't think conspiracy theories need to be limited to paranoid delusions of malign collusions- it's pretty hard to look at this wreckage and imagine that anyone survived without some sort of mysterious but well-meaning outside help. You have probably seen the footage by now- the clip with the ant-sized passengers scurrying out of both ends of a winged fireball...even knowing how it ends, it's difficult to watch without halfway expecting the outcome to change for the worse...thankfully, it doesn't. How did they all survive?

This near-catastrophe bears the unmistakable hallmarks of a SuperHero rescue- a passenger jet, a mysterious disaster, a miraculous last-second save with lots of wreckage and minimal casualties...

When I heard that everyone survived , my first thought was that Superman must have saved them- but I have been told that Superman doesn't exist, so I am forced to conclude that this was the work of The Flash (pictured) and the Invisible Girl (no photo available).

I'm guessing that the Flash and the Invisible Girl were on board during the flight when the villainous Weather Wizard(see below) caused lightning to hit the engine, setting it afire; this was noted by the quick-thinking Invisible Girl, who kept a telekinetic force-field around the engine until the plane could land. Once it touched down, the Flash scooped the passengers up and got them to the exits before he and the IG dashed off to capture the Weather Wizard*, only allowing the flames to take over once all the passengers were safe. The duo, being super-humble as well as mindful of their Secret Identities, did not return to take credit for their derring-do.

It's comforting to believe that superheroes are looking out for us, but the truth is that The Flash and The I-Girl are the intellectual properties of rival comic publishers and they would never co-operate in real-life. They live in separate universes.

I have another theory, it's much less plausible than rescue by spandex-wearing heroes, but it's a possibility nonetheless.
Perhaps, sensing that things were seriously wrong on the plane, the passengers just instinctively went into action and did what they needed to do in order to escape. Maybe some ordinary people did some super-heroic deeds- we might never know that, but we can be pretty certain that nobody on board had time to change into their crime-fighting costume and spout a few expository paragraphs regarding their tragic Secret Origin and their subsequent quest for Justice...they had other problems to deal with.

They dealt.

Yeah, I know it ain't much compared to the daily global bloodshed we witness, but at least for one moment, when the chips were down and every flippin' second was literally life or death, a planeload of strangers were able to pull together, get out ; get out alive and unscathed. I doubt they had time to think, they just reacted. Apparently, they did everything right- all it would have taken was one person to seriously fuck-up and dozens of people could have been killed, but they didn't fuck-up and they weren't killed.

Superman can't save us and I often tend to think no one can...but we don't need Superman's help-all we have to do is wait- the Vulcans will eventually save us from ourselves.
I saw it on TV.

-----------------------------------------
* I have been harboring a super- grudge against the Weather Wizard for decades. The man has the Super-Power to change the fuckin' weather and he uses it to rob banks, hold up candy stores and play spin-the -hero with the Flash?
Pathetic.

If I was the Wiz, I'd sell rain to desert nations that could pay me in oil. I'd deflect hurricanes back out to sea- not out of the goodness of my heart, but for profit. Keep me supplied with weed and I'd make damned sure Jamaica never saw another tropical storm... I'd repair the ozone layer and turn global warming into a global protection racket. I would save the world and get rich doing it.

"Hey Flash! Why don'tcha thwart my evil plan to end this drought?"

Superheroes would be powerless in the face of this benign amorality.

I would call myself a Good Guy, even if my benevolence was just a front for my avarice- only in the comics do the Bad Guys give themselves convenient labels like The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, Doctor Crime, #7 or Turdblossom .

Hmmm. Maybe super-villains really are evil.

Next stop: Arkham.