  We review the scenario in which ``strongly interacting neutrinos'' are
responsible for inducing airshowers with inferred energies $E > 8\times10^{19}$
eV. This possibility arises naturally in string excitation models having a
unification scale effectively decoupled from the Planck scale. We then show
that phenomenological quantum gravity considerations reveal an equivalency of
``mini-black hole'' and strongly interacting neutrino pictures for explaining
trans-GZK events. This equivalence can be exploited to predict single particle
inclusive distributions. The resulting observable consequences in airshower
development are studied using the Adaptive Longitudinal Profile Shower (ALPS)
simulation.
