Although all monsters do the important cultural work of confronting us with our fears and anxieties and the crucial commercial work of scaring the heck out of us, some monsters are more popular than others. I would argue that one particular species has gone unsung. I believe Triffids need more love, for they are the ancestors of many monsters that followed.
Triffids are, admittedly, difficult to love. They are mobile carnivorous plants with stalky bodies that emit unnerving thumping noises that they may use to communicate. Having no eyes, Triffids hunt by sound. Their primary offensive weapon is a stinger launched from a frond. Their poison is potent, and even casual blows or near misses from their deadly appendage can result in painful, debilitating injuries. Once their prey is incapacitated, Triffids crawl onto their prey’s bodies to digest the meal with their roots.
Triffids first appeared in John Wyndham’s classic sci-fi novel, The Day of the Triffids (1951). The book is a masterpiece, brilliantly building what we would now call a post-apocalyptic setting. One night, much of the world goes out to view a mysterious green meteor shower, only to discover the next day that something about the strange lights has permanently blinded them. Society immediately collapses into chaos as populations struggle to cope with this new problem. Some people retained their eyesight, such as the protagonist, Bill Masen, whose eyes were bandaged after a hospital procedure. Any hope those few might have of restoring order is gone once the Triffids get loose.
It is hard to think of plants as dangerous. Oh sure, they can be threatening. Some are poisonous, and some have thorns or prickles. Since we typically think of plants as docile, moving predatory plants violates the natural order. When they animate, they become uncanny. This forces us to react with shock and horror.
A lone Triffid should not be fought directly. The plant could be avoided by a healthy individual with their wits about them. Triffids, however, come in gigantic groups. In this way, they are essentially the zombies before zombies (who did not congregate in hordes until the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead changed everything). Triffids can quickly overwhelm groups and easily surround locations, turning what humans thought were shelters into inescapable traps.
Triffids were also pioneers in the methodologies of hunting humans by sound. Menaces like the Crawlers from The Descent (2005), the aliens in Attack the Block (2011), and the Death Angels of A Quiet Place (2018) owe a debt of gratitude to their floral forebears. Humans are a noisy lot, and it takes us great effort to remain completely silent.
Now it is tempting to suggest that the Triffids are really only a menace because of the disaster that befell the world. In a world without mass blindness, Triffids are probably an easily solved problem. In this setting, though, they become a decisive second blow to civilization. And it turns out this was a blow that humanity inflicted upon itself.
While the 1963 motion picture adaptation implies that the meteor shower had something to do with awakening the Triffids, most other adaptations (audio plays and television miniseries) stick to the book. Triffids are a cultivated crop. While their exact origins are mysterious, Triffids are terrestrial, not extraterrestrial. When refined in a specific way, their bodies produce an oil that is highly useful in a variety of industrial applications. We may not have made these creatures, but we brought their danger into our lives through a commercially calculated risk. In this way, Triffids preview the many callous corporate decisions that unleash monsters upon us.
