If only the horror writer James Herbert were still alive, he could appear on breakfast news and daytime television telling us all how he had prophesied such bone-gnawing terrors in his book The Rats all those many years ago.

For last year, we heard of poison-resistant, mutant rats over-running the south-east of England. And now, we have a ghost ship drifting towards Scotland, with a crew of cannibal rats.

Cannibal Rats?

The Lyubov Orlova, a former cruise liner, has been drifting across the North Atlantic for almost a year. The vessel, built in Yugoslavia in 1976, was abandoned in a Canadian harbor after its owners failed to pay the ship’s crew.

Shipping authorities in Newfoundland tried to sell the vessel for scrap to the Dominican Republic—the ship’s hull alone was valued at nearly one million dollars. However, the Lyuov Orlova was accidentally cast adrift during a storm. The vessel then drifted out of Canadian waters and into the North Atlantic.

Since then this ghost ship has been drifting slowly eastward ever since, with its only passengers—hundreds of rats, who have (according to “experts”) have been eating each other to survive their long arduous voyage.

The Lyubov Orlova’s wayward course has been picked-up by signals sent on the 12th and 23rd of March 2013, when two lifeboats fell into the water. (Rats leaving a sinking ship?) A week later, an unidentified vessel was spotted on the radar heading towards Scotland.

The Sun newspaper quoted Belgian salvage expert, Pim de Rhoodes, who said in his best Quint from Jaws:

“She is floating around out there somewhere.

“There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other. If I get aboard I’ll have to lace everywhere with poison.”

According to The Independent, Head of the Irish Coastguard, Chris Reynolds “said the ship was more likely than not to still pose a threat.”

“There have been huge storms in recent months but it takes a lot to sink a vessel as big as that,” he said. “We must stay vigilant.”

It’s almost like the pay-off to The Thing from Another World, but this time, if you’re in Scotland, or Ireland, remember:

“Wherever they are. Watch the seas everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the seas!”

You get the picture…
 

 
Now, in this video you can take a trip around the Lyubov Orlova, before it was a ghost ship full of cannibal rats!
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Mutant, poison-eating ‘Super rats’...coming soon!
 
Via the Independent