As a minor prepper, I follow the news about drought, supply chain issues, and so forth. My RSS feed is finely tuned, and I’m used to the kind of thing I’ll see pop up in the headlines.

Today I found an article I did not expect.

It came from Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post, a newspaper which hilariously has a tagline of “Democracy Dies In Darkness” while their writers do everything they can to make the lights go out.

Anyway.

Most Lake Mead articles I’m reading have to do with the problem the desert southwest faces in having to choose between either water or electricity since we unwisely built huge cities in a desert region, all of whom are suckling at the teat of one river, the heavily damned and controlled Colorado.

A body in a barrel was something new.

Whoever wrote that headline knows how to do it.

The remains of a person who died an estimated 40 years ago were discovered over the weekend in a corroding barrel at Nevada’s Lake Mead as a severe drought has caused the water levels to reach record lows, authorities said.

Lake Mead is conveniently located near Las Vegas, a city not unfamiliar to mafia and other sorts of criminal folks whose activities lead to murder.

Las Vegas Metro police homicide Lt. Ray Spencer said investigators think the person was a murder victim who died of a gunshot wound. He told CBS affiliate KLAS-TV that there will probably be more such discoveries.

“There is a very good chance as the water level drops that we are going to find additional human remains,” he said.

I would post a screenshot of the Twitter post which contains a photo of the barrel, the same Twitter post WaPo embedded in their article, but I cannot because of copyright trolls (that post is coming in the near future).

Apparently this body was of someone who was killed in the late 1970s or early 1980s, based on the clothing that was still in the barrel.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this since I came across the story. It’s horrible. Someone, right shortly after I was born, was shot in the head, stuffed in a barrel, driven out to the lake, taken out on a boat, and dumped in the water like trash.

We live in a world where:

1. This discovery doesn’t surprise law enforcement.

2. More similar grisly discoveries are expected.

3. The outcome of drought isn’t just about water or electricity concerns, but the Las Vegas killing fields being exposed.

“This would make an amazing book,” I told my friend. “Or even a mini-series or movie. Think of it, a plot where a serial killer or mafia hitman is discovered nearly half a century later due to drought, where each week a new body is found and a new story and trail of intrigue is set off.”

My friend nodded in agreement, but then took it further. “Imagine a story where they began finding bodies in barrels, but they were whiskey barrels. This lead investigators to a nearby distillery, where they had to sample all of the wares in order to solve the case.”

“Wow, only you would take this to a distillery,” I said.

I’m not a fiction writer, nor do I have much experience trying to write crime beyond what I wrote about the pandemic these past two years, which truly was criminal. Yet this is so intriguing to me, I can’t help but consider trying my hand at some grade-school-level fiction involving bodies and barrels.

“Imagine if the Hudson River dried up,” I asked my friend. That’s practically an official graveyard.

All of the best-selling authors who are falling into the standard line demanded by the publishers and the public as to how to frame their books to promote climate change and green energy policies are completely missing the boat (pardon the pun).

Skip the stories of climate change unleashing bacteria from a melting glacier or the doorway to hell being discovered next to Greta Thunberg’s playground. Yawn to the stories about rising oceans creating an apocalyptic world in which Kevin Costner has gills.

Receding waters revealing decades-old murder victims. That’s the new hook.

Be sure your sins will find you out, the Bible tells us. Right as always, even if it takes decades and years of low rain to accomplish it.