Invasion of the Brood

The 17-year cicadas are about to emerge in force

May 6th 2004|bloomington, indiana

LIKE the climax of a bad sci-fi movie, a plague of biblical proportions will soon hit the eastern part of the United States. Not overgrown rabbits, nor killer tomatoes, but numberless insects. For sometime after May 10th (the exact date depends on the weather over the next few days), Brood X of the 17-year cicada will surface. The outbreak will be densest in the mid-west, around Indiana, where 3.5m insects per hectare are expected to emerge. But lesser plagues will hit places as far apart as Maryland and Missouri.

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline “Invasion of the Brood”