Looked this up today, I got two degrees in bugs.
All around the world there are grasshoppers that, when conditions are right, triggered by crowding, morph during their molts into a quite different, highly mobile migratory form. Apparently this hormonal change is triggered by repeated contact with other grasshoppers. Prolonged dry conditions can lead to a reduction in grasshopper populations and their predators, but unseasonably heavy rains in these same areas can cause rapid vegetation growth followed by a grasshopper population explosion, hence they grow up into long-winged, long distance locusts.
Locusts are so bad in Pakistan right now that they have declared a National Emergency. However, for End Time proponents note that the last time this happened this bad in Pakistan was in the 1970's and in Africa IIRC in the 1950's. Meaning it has happened before. Even friggin' England suffered a locust swarm in the 1750's. IIRC Argentina is suffering a locust swarm right now.
The biggest mystery is the major source of our own pre-settlement locust swarms, the Rocky Mountain Grasshopper, is now extinct. Populations used to explode periodically out of the Rocky Mountains. Musta been some dynamic involving high mountain meadows and prairies that no longer exists, but EXTINCTION? for an insect? That's a puzzle.
But vegetation explosions couldnt cause a bug explosion that same year, right? Dont they lay eggs in the ground which over winter?
