What happened in the 1952 London “killer fog”?
Dear Straight Dope: What was the story with the 1952 “Killer Fog” in London? I got a question about it during a Trivial Pursuit game, and I had never even heard of it. I mean, excluding the type of fog that encases the bloody-thirsty souls of angry dead pirates that have it in for little Adrienne Barbeau, I had no idea that fog was something capable of killing folks. — Katie, Tampa Katie, it’s obvious you aren’t an aficionado of horror novels; otherwise, you’d be quite familiar with the idea of a “killer” fog. A century ago writers used fog to mask the landscape and hide the horrors within–see Lovecraft, Stoker, and Doyle’s works. By the 1970’s, though, the emphasis had shifted to the fog itself being malevolent. For example, John Carpenter’s The Fog, released in 1980, or Stephen King’s short story The Mist. Why the change? Stephen King writes in Danse Macabre that any good horror story must touch upon a source of realistic horror for the reader by probing his or her own fears. Such a
