Lovecraft's Hidden Rules: Bullets and Bombs

 In any cycle of stories, there's an unspoken set of rules that the writer usually keeps in their head. These rules are never written on paper or if they are they are used as exposition material in the stories. The same can be said for Lovecraft's works such as his monsters causing insanity or death to any that seek them out. One such rule is that his characters are usually naive about the existence of the gods. Many are seeking scientific pursuits, not religion. Instead, the pantheon of gods seem to slap the protagonist's face with their existence. That which should and could not be is real and the world they thought they knew was a mirage. 

A rule I stumbled across while reading online posts about Eldritch horrors was the mortality of the Great Old Gods. A prevailing theory about Cthulhu is that modern technology could defeat him, such as a nuclear bomb. Such weapons didn't weren't even imagined in Lovecraft's time, and going back further, the fear of affecting primorial forces was a theme in Arthur Machen's works. 

But would a bullet stop a creature as large as a mountain? The theory has been tested before in other media. In Lovecraft's own story "The Dunwhich Horror," the monster is defeated through a ritual even though it is the son of Yog Sothoth, an Outer God. I see similar themes in movies. In "Tremors" one of the monsters is defeated with an elephant gun after being shot at with smaller bullets. The idea of defeating a larger than life monster has been tested but Lovecraft's work posts an idea of the gods being beyond death.

Maybe you can't defeat Cthulhu with a nuke or even fight him in a conventional sense. 

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