Tozoon
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Classification | |
|---|---|
| Structure | Field |
| Origin | Derived (Branch parasite) |
| Class | Primitive; Adapted |
| Characteristics | |
| Length | 3–5 m |
| Mass | 0.8–1.5 t |
| Domain | Subterranean |
| First recorded | 2023 |
The Tozoon is a burrowing branch parasite, a field organism of Derived origin. It tunnels underground toward buried biomass, including people in trenches, bunkers and cellars, and breaks out beneath them. It is the parasites' main weapon against fortified and dug-in positions.
Description
A Tozoon is 3 to 5 metres long and weighs 0.8 to 1.5 tonnes. Its body is a thick, segmented cylinder with a blunt, plated head and rows of short digging limbs along the front third. It has no eyes. It digs through soil and soft rock at up to about 20 metres an hour, pushing spoil back along its body and packing it into the tunnel walls. A thick membrane coats the body.
It senses prey through the ground, by the vibration of footsteps, engines and generators, and by the chemical traces of organic matter in the soil.
Behaviour
Tozoons approach a position from below, often from several hundred metres away, and break out under or inside it: through the floor of a trench, a bunker or a basement. They attack whatever is there and either withdraw into the tunnel or stay in the position to fight. Their tunnels are used afterwards by smaller organisms to reach the same place.
They are also drawn to buried biomass with no people near it: food stores, landfills and graves.
Tozoons cannot hold a tunnel open in waterlogged sand or peat, and are rarely recorded in low-lying coastal and river land with a high water table, including most of the Netherlands. Their tunnels in dry ground stay open for months, and are found and filled during the clearance of an area.
The smaller Burrower uses the same method against single targets.
Forms
The Primitive Tozoon digs continuously, at a steady rate, close to the surface. The Adapted form, recorded from 2024, digs deeper, at 5 to 10 metres, stops for long periods during its approach, and works in pairs that break out at two points of a position at once. Its pauses made it harder to track with the listening methods developed against the Primitive form.
Genome variants
Boreic Tozoons, in Siberia, dig through frozen ground, slowly, and remain active through the winter. Pontic Tozoons, in Ukraine and around the Black Sea, follow the region's shared root systems, and tunnel along them toward positions far from any Beckon.
Countermeasures
Defences against the Tozoon draw on the counter-mining methods of the First World War. Positions in infested areas are monitored with geophones, buried listening devices that pick up the sound of digging, and a tunnel heading for a position can be detected hours before it arrives. It is attacked with explosive charges placed in boreholes across its path, which collapse the tunnel onto it. Permanent positions are built on reinforced concrete slabs, and generators are mounted on vibration-isolating supports. Since 2025 listening posts have been linked by wire to a central station in each sector, which compares the signals and plots the course of a tunnel.
Tozoons are one of the reasons for the ban on burial in and near infested ground. In towns near infested ground, cellars and underground car parks are inspected for tunnelling, and several member states require the food stores of shops and warehouses in those towns to be kept above ground.
History
The Tozoon was first recorded in 2023, with the other branch parasites, when it broke into front-line positions in Ukraine that had held against attacks on the surface. Geophones were in general issue to European Defence Force engineers by the end of that year.