I can't say why, but I'm just really fond of this one. It's nice work, and the picture is pretty sweet.
I think it's got a good premise, but it's a bit too extreme. It's SUPERFATAL and SUPERFAST. meh.
I think I could deal with the SUPERFAST if it wasn't always SUPERFATAL. Even Lion-like teeth would have difficulty being 100% fatal when biting mostly the abdomen, no matter how quick the strike was.
Yeah, my original plan was to make it less fatal and to include a bit about transporting victims to the closest hospital, but I was lazy. If it comes off as a weakness in the article, I'll change it.
Edit: Done
I think it being non-fatal 100% of the time would be a vast improvement. Transporting victims to the closest hospital? Uhm, well, if you want, but that seems a bit odd.
I like just how much this could fit into local lore though … The River that Bites!
I really like this one, especially the last incident report and the historical note. 'Minimal loss of civilian life' indeed, Foundation. Very detached. Well-written.
Also, I have to agree that the picture is awesome.
I like this one, though a couple of nits to pick:
1. There is no language called "Sudanese". Arabic is an official language of Sudan (as well as English), and there are several versions of Arabic spoken in the nation, including something called "Sudanese Arabic", but it's not a separate language.
2. Lions (and most big cats) tend to go for the neck and face when attacking, with most kills being caused by strangulation or asphyxiation, so I don't think that most wounds from 856 would be in the abdomen or torso. 'Course, since it's hardly a typical lion, this may not be an issue anyway. (I was going to also mention that male lions don't hunt at all, but that's only for males in a pride. Nomadic males do have to hunt for themselves.)
Neither are enough to keep me from upvoting, though. Kitty!
I see that the author took many (if not all) of the above comments into account and revised accordingly, which is endearing. Also, from reading these comments, I gather that several issues (the largest of which, in my opinion, was the "100% deadly" bit) were significantly revised to make this thing less cliché and better overall. That's good, and I like most of it. I have one problem, though: SCP-856 only attacks humans. The "monster what hates humans and leaves everything else alone" is very cliché, and as soon as I read that, my opinion of the entire article went down. The angle of "it's a protective spirit that attacks humans who operate without any real consideration for the value of the river but will attack animals left for it as a sacrifice and leave the ones who gave the sacrifice alone" makes it a bit less of a problem, but the time between the fact that SCP-856 is human-specific and the mention of native folklore was very long and irritating.
That said, upvoted on account of the many strong points of this article. :)
I want to upvote this, but there are still a few things wrong. "Virtually" being one. that shouldn't exist in a clinical document unless we're actually talking about virtualization. And there are a couple of redundancies in the description that could help smooth it out.
Ah what the hell. Take the +1 anyway
This is a pretty cool, creative article.
Keep an eye out for river lions, kids~!
I like this, but noticed a problem with the locations. The Description says that it's "in a four kilometer length of the █████████ River in southern Sudan". The Special Containment Procedures mention taking survivors to the hospital in Rumbek, which when this SCP was made was in southern Sudan, but is currently in central South Sudan. I don't know if bleggs would have meant for it to be in Sudan or South Sudan.
The only problem I have with the article is the cover story as to why the area is blocked off. If there was a chemical spill at a river it would probably just keep going down river for a long time and warrant some kind of advisory to locals to not make use of it. I suppose it would rely heavily on locals not being very well educated as to why there is no such warning or how after a great deal of time that the chemical spill is not cleaned up or why there was some sort of chemical transport going through that area in the first place, which sounds like it is almost in the middle of no where. For now I have yet to vote either way.