I was reminiscing through YouTube the other day when I landed on The Lion King, and the classic track 'Be Prepared'. This was always one of my favourite as a kid but growing older, you realise - aside from the superliminal Nazi propaganda - that things were not all fun and games.

In fact, I now realise just how tragic, horrifying and worst of all, politically motivated this all way. Allow me to elaborate:

The Evil Dictator

So as you all likely know, the lion lead is Scar, the brother of the current King, and a bitter brother he is. He was always the troubled one in the family and has taken to living with hyenas, banished from the grassy utopia surrounding his brother.

Well I don't know about you but this King immediately comes across as a jerk; banishing his brother to a life in the dark with Hyenas which would typically kill him without hesitation, a place where everybody looks to with shame. His brother, for whatever reason, wished his brother to be tortured and eaten alive by a pack of hungry scavengers. It's no wonder Scar grew to resent him. Action needed to be taken!

Not only was Mufasa a jerk to his brother, but he clearly discriminated against the hyenas from day one. How can you have lions living 'harmoniously' with their prey, who are, let's face it, forced to get down on their knees en masse for their Supreme Leader, yet any challenge such as the hyenas are banished into abject poverty and starvation? This sounds like the tune of an evil dictator to me, purging its competition thanks to nothing but bloodline.

The Survivor

Scar, quite astonishingly, not only managed to ally with his mortal enemies, but become the leader of them in spite of all adversity, hunger and strife. He has essentially earned his position of power, likely down to a popular vote, I don't doubt.

But the environment must have taken its toll on him and the hyenas, to the point where the only survivors are cold-blooded killers and the insane. Watch the song for a refresher:

Immediately, we start to see the horrifying lifestyle these poor animals have been forced to survive in:

Scar cannot even get through his presentation introduction before mysterious and dangerous looking gases start blasting out of the floor into his face. Since this is the wilderness of Africa, we can assume this green gas was not set up as a clever smoke machine brought from the local theatre. I had a look into what these gases could be and what I found was mortifying.

Not only were these elegant hunters banished, but they were forced to live in volcanically active land, where a whole cocktail of deadly gases are indeed common; Sulfur Dioxide, Hydrogen Chloride, Carbonyl Sulfide and Hydrogen Bromide are all very present gases whose effects all have similar but varied versions of lung collapse, severe irritation, melting of your cells, brain death and internal bleeding.

Hydrogen Sulfide and Carbon Monoxide both have numbing effects that kill your senses, knock you unconscious and kill you in your sleep. Failing that, brain necrosis will suffice. Hydrogen sulfide even became infamous in 2008 when a wave of suicides by way of H₂S poisoning hit Japan, so it may be the case that this clan's dire and hopeless situation led them to seek out ways to end their pain; gas poisoning. Easy, painless and one of the few things bountiful in their lives.

So when Scar attempts to mock and humiliate one of the hyenas, he's really being quite mean to somebody likely suffering from Hydrogen Sulfide poisoning who, given the circumstances, has little time left in this world.

It's clear from your vacant expression, the lights are not all on upstairs

In all likelihood, this hyena is suffering from something like myasthenia gravis, an incurable condition that causes muscle weakness, eye drooping, blank stares and so on. Hardly surprising, don't you think?

There's one in particular gas, however, that we can be sure is present based on the first screenshot: Chlorine.

Chlorine in its gas state is green. You may associate chlorine with the swimming pool, but it does actually occur naturally from volcanic activity, and it's not friendly stuff. It can, if nothing else, collapse and kill your lungs with a burning sensation not unlike fire from the inside out. This causes you to cough up and possibly choke on your own blood. You'll be lucky to survive past a few minutes in the conditions we see in the musical. In fact, this was the gas used in the 2014 Syria attacks, but was first recognized as a weapon of mass destruction during The Great War, with Germans pouring 150 tons of it on a single colonial division of the French. Imagine living with the stuff on a daily basis.

It's frankly astonishing that hundreds of these poor animals managed to survive in here and even get enough brain power together to organise into something substantial.

But this isn't their only concern. Their brains have been in such close quarters to toxic gases for so long, they no longer feel remorse or empathy, they are violent to one another like they exist in some dystopian, Mad Max future, when plentiful resources and greenery exist just down the road, likely a few minute's drive away for a human car. This behaviour is shown in alarming detail within the cartoon.

Hydrothermal Vents

Shortly after disrespecting the heavily poisoned and dying hyena, Scar goes on to scare and deliberately push two more hyenas atop hydrothermal vents, where they block the gas, cause heavy build up until the volcanic gases release and shoot them into the air, well above terminal heights.

For a cat, it's common to survive a large fall from the 7th floor or even atop a huge tree, as their terminal velocity (top falling speed) borders the line between fatal and non-fatal. They also have some excellent physical strategies and adaptations that allow them to slow their fall and prepare for a sufficient landing.

Dogs on the other hand are far more clunky. A dog is built for endurance and speed, not agility and an affinity for heights. In fact, looking online I saw stories of dogs blood and paralysed from a fall as low as the third story of an apartment, the kind of fall that would be considered a minor embarrassment to cats.

None of this would really matter anyway, since the gases released from these hydrothermal vents are typically about 400°C, which the hyenas spent more than a second sitting on. If nothing else, their bodies would have been irreparably damaged before they even lifted off.

What we see in Be prepared is two hyenas fatally scolded, and blasted to at least 5 stories in height, as can be shown by their very speedy vertical landing - all while Scar is singing and dancing with glee.

Even if they were to stand a chance, they were clearly unable to correct themselves to a safe landing position, and we already know from later in the video that there's no soft landings here. Their fall was in all likelihood, fatal:

Scar ecstatically kicks this hyena into a pile of sharp, brittle bones for no reason other than his own sick pleasure.

Mind Control

Just before we see the Nazi propaganda set in, we see all surviving hyenas gather in one area, where a mysterious yellow gas is released as they shout 'Long Live the King! Long Live the King!'

This to me is evidence of experimentation on Scar's own military service. We know, for example, that incapacitating agents and other non-lethal gases used to control the capabilities of enemies has been used for over 2,000 years, with some examples dating back to 600BC. Of course, more recently, the US was known for its experiments with Project MKUltra, a program to develop mind control drugs for interrogation until sanctioned in 1953.

For all we know, experiments continued in the wilderness of Africa, where Scar managed to get his paws on some useful developments. How else would you explain a lion taking leadership over hyenas? This is however, an unlikely source of the chemicals, as we will find out further down.

But after the highly dangerous Nazi marching scene, things get much worse.

Magma

As Scar emphasises the point that they won't get a sniff without him, an apparently mega-powerful earthquake strikes, perhaps another common occurrence for them as they seem generally unfazed by it.

Scar, naturally takes this opportunity to yell, terrify and murder yet another hyena, making him fall into the newly formed crack in the earth down to the magma below:

If you think the hyena could have survived this fall, think again. Magma typically reaches temperatures of 700 °C to 1300 °C, so hot that your skin can melt away without even touching it. In fact, you can get a bunch of well-done steaks cooked atop laval in just a couple of minutes: