City-Swallowing Sinkholes

The Midnight Article "German Capital Collapses into Sinkhole" was written by u/Roblox838 and posted to r/MidnightPaper.

The text of the Article was as follows:

GERMAN CAPITAL COLLAPSES INTO SINKHOLE The capital of Germany, Berlin, mysteriously collapsed today. Most of its inhabitants died, including people at the clubs Union Berlin and Hertha Berlin. We're still not sure how this happened, but scientists say that because Berlin was built on a swamp/marsh, the area couldn't take all the load, and the city disappeared overnight.

A first hand report from an eyewitness, a Spanish immigrant called Fernando Álvarez, is seen here. "I was at my house when I saw the nearby Brandenburg Gate falling into a hole. Soon the buildings near it also collapsed. I knew I had to escape when I saw it. So, we got out of dodge."

Some people ran out of the city, and tried to get their friends out, but they couldn't. An emergency meeting has taken place to decide a new capital. The Bundestag is set up to have an emergency election in the next month or so. A mourning ceremony has taken place in Potsdam, a few kilometres southwest of Berlin.

This collapse is similar to the collapse of the Andorran village of Engordany, which disappeared on the 2nd of October.

Description:

City-Swallowing Sinkholes are Location-Type Oddities. They are massive, mysterious sinkholes that appear underneath places with a heavy population density. The first reported settlement to be hit was the village of Engordany in Andorra. Engordany was swallowed by a sinkhole in October 2019. Almost a year later, in September 2020, Berlin disappeared into a massive sinkhole.

Timeline:

It's possible that whatever is causing these sinkholes is getting progressively stronger. It swallowed Engordany, a village in a combined area with less than 15,000 inhabitants. It's possible that, after Engordany, whatever is causing the sinkholes swallowed bigger settlements until it finally worked its way up to Berlin, a city with close to 4 million inhabitants. The settlements it swallowed after, or before, Engordany are unknown, but it's possible that the first sinkholes were so small they never left the local news. A sinkhole swallowing a house, for example, would be a logical starting point, then one swallowing a couple of houses, then a small town, and so on.

Origin:

It's unknown exactly what is causing these sinkholes. It's possible that there is an unseen, unmentioned Oddity behind them. Perhaps there is a massive Biological-Type Oddity underground that is swallowing human settlements into sinkholes. Whether this is for some primal need such as sustenance, or if there's simply a malicious or for a completely different reason altogether, is a mystery. It's also possible that there's a group of lesser Biological-Type Oddities, like human beings involved in a cult that sacrifices human settlements through sinkholes...the possibilities are endless, and too vast to uncover without any more information.