quote:

“I’ve got to go,” said Callie. “I have work at seven-thirty.”

Youssef told her to wait; he didn’t want the soccer fans who were now spilling out onto the streets to give her trouble. Callie, unconcerned, made her way back toward the entrance. She didn’t hear the footsteps in the ash behind her.

“Hey, Callie—” called Youssef, and as she began to turn, she felt the crack of metal across the back of her skull.

pookel posted:

Alternate theory: the stalkers really want to buy the house and are trying to drive the price down by making people think it's haunted.

Captain Clown posted:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

Murphys Law posted:

Or they were outbid by the current family and are trying to scare them into leaving.

Something like this story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6KUlqrrjZk

The Endbringer posted:

That being said, WHY would you leave the house before looking in the walls?

Theres golds in them theres walls!

QuoProQuid posted:

"Look inside the walls" ranks pretty high on my list of things never to do if ever caught in a horror movie. I would place it just above "let's split up" and below "let's investigate that weird noise in the middle of the night."

13Pandora13 posted:

Just burn it to the ground. Burn it, salt the earth, spraypaint a giant middle finger on the ashes.

Mister Mind posted:

This place is not a place of honor.
No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
Nothing valued is here.

Mister Mind posted:

This place is not a place of honor.
No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.
Nothing valued is here.

moller posted:

Why are my cats changing color? I recall hearing a song about this once.

pookel posted:

But #1 should be "have sex in the woods." If you have sex in the woods, you will die in the woods.

The Endbringer posted:

Theres molds in them theres walls!

pookel posted:

But #1 should be "have sex in the woods." If you have sex in the woods, you will die in the woods.

RNG posted:

e: (and another secret room)

Aesop Poprock posted:

I feel like the answer to this is past the huge spikes jutting out of the ground

Yoshimo posted:

Does anyone remember a story about some sort of Soviet-era wargaming exercise that involved the crew of some radar/radio facility switching on all their gear, only they'd disabled the safety mechanisms (or something along those lines) and half the crew were still out on the radar dish/array thingy, and ended up getting cooked alive?

moller posted:

Why are my cats changing color? I recall hearing a song about this once.

Yoshimo posted:

Does anyone remember a story about some sort of Soviet-era wargaming exercise that involved the crew of some radar/radio facility switching on all their gear, only they'd disabled the safety mechanisms (or something along those lines) and half the crew were still out on the radar dish/array thingy, and ended up getting cooked alive?

permabanned posted:

Before I start, I would like to say that the events described in here have really happened, though the names of the unfortunate victims are changed by the author.

The collection of medical cases is written by a non-engineer in the manner so that everyone could understand it. The opinions of the author are purely his own, they do not represent my opinions. I have tried to translate it as close as it was possible. This text contains no classified information, everything in it could be found in open access on the Internet.

A.V. Lomachinski
Faculty of Military Medicine Academy of the Military Medicine, Moscow
"Curious cases in military medicine and military medical investigation"
excerpt:

Radar-originated trauma.

If you think that radar-originated trauma is something akin to a strike with a rotating radar dish - you are deeply mistaken. Radar-originated trauma is an injury inflicted by microwaves. If the microwave radiation is weak, then one wouldn't have an injury, but a chronic radar-originated disease.

Sleeplessness, restlessness , pains and body weight loss are among its symptoms. It's not great, but at least you are alive. What we didn't know is that it is very difficult to stay alive after a real radar-originated trauma. Microwave radiation is considered 'soft' as it is not in common terms 'hard' gamma radiation, but just a "low-intensity" high-frequency electromagnetic field, akin to a microwave oven. Why would you fear that?

Most powerful fields are generated by Strategic Defense Initiative radars. Their emitter is constructed in a fashion as to project a focused invisible beam of MW radiation.

This is understandable, because the you would loose less energy on useless 'highlighting' of the empty space. At first a standby-radar spots something foreign in the airspace, and then detected object is 'highlighted' with a focused beam. The interception missile follows the reflection of that focused beam, right to the object. This system was worked down to details, like the Bolshoi theater. This was the system, described in the agreement on Strategic defense, signed in 1972 by Nixon and Brezhnev, the same old agreement that was repealed 30 years later by Bush. Sr. That's right - the Strategic Defense System of Moscow was founded in 1973, albeit only with nuclear-tipped interceptors, while the USA could never create something efficient until 2000. A typical AA Defense officer of the Moscow and Leningrad district had a hard time during his duties, as both the northern and the official capital were just minutes away from the border. Radars were permanently on-line and the officers were always on call, like in wartime, no slacking allowed. Things got lax during the Gorbachev's term, that's when those events happened.

There was a secret SDI base somewhere in-between Kalinin and Leningrad. Like in every other military garrison bordering Moscow a hard time has fallen upon the crews, the reason behind it - just a month before, a German amateur pilot, named Rust, landed in his small plane directly on the Red Square. This was an inconceivable insult to the "new policy and new thinking" of the Gorbachev's regime, and it has brought the highest disdain towards the SDI and Air force.

The newly appointed Minister of Defense - Yazov, commonly called in the Army - "Everyone will put on his uniform" (* originally a word play on his name), who liked nothing more than war exercises and parades, has signed a new order, forbidding to take off-line SDI radars for routine maintenance, unless the equipment was seriously broken. This meant that Army technies had to resort to all kinds of tricks to successfully maintain radars, without turning them off, while working on them. Of course such arrangements were impossible on the continuous pulse radars, but it worked a marvel on the focused beam ones. One only had to call your SDI counterparts and "Is everything clear? So it's ok if we go up?". That meant - to go into the temporary 'asleep' radar beam zone. But if all of a sudden ... Put it bluntly - anything remotely suspicious can bring on-line a 'sleeping' radar. For the technician, working inside the emitter this situation meant Russian roulette - if one survived this time, he would live at least until the next maintenance round.

Sergeant Ivanuk, captain Lykov and privates Al'muhammedov and Siniagin conducted a "routine small-scale maintenance without shutting down the radar". Captain was checking the electrical works while the privates washed and cleaned something, under the watchful eye of a sergeant, who helped the captain from time to time. The radar control room was far away from the emitter dish itself, in an underground bunker, so there they were issued a truck, Gaz-66. Sergeant Liahovetski, a driver, was the fifth member of the repair and maintenance party.

According to the safety guidelines he was to drive the group directly underneath the dish, then retreat with the car 300m in a safe direction. He was to constantly watch for the other members to appear out of the radar's maintenance entrance, keeping the motor running. And it wasn't just your plain army Gaz truck - its cabin and the rear compartment were screened from the microwave radiation, and over the cabin windows retractable perforated steel sheets were extended. The truck electrical circuits were shielded as well, and on the key fob, instead of the ordinary driver's gri-gri you had a fluorescent bulb, that looked like a pen - a microwave indicator. When the bulb started glowing it meant for the driver that it was time to lower the retractable shields and drive quickly towards the radar's door, while pushing the horn constantly. Personnel would jump in the rear compartment, and the truck would scramble away from the radar, in the direction opposite to the emitter.

A routine small maintenance duty was usually quite peaceful and lasted not more than 15 minutes, the technies would walk out of the door and wave their hands for the truck to come over and pick them up. No shielding was necessary. When the personnel was waving a small red flag - it just meant that you had to drive quickly and put down shields on the return way, because the meaning of the red flag was that someone had called from a central station and the radar would be on-line shortly after that.

During the month after Rust landing and that stupid directive enactment, no such extraordinary situation would happen. All the Airforce waited for the siege to be lifted and the Minister's anger to calm down, bringing the duties back to the normal cycle. Meanwhile all technies climbed in 'sleeping' radars, cursing the amateur German, the directive and the perestroika, that started to steer in a very weird direction.

There was an unwritten rule between the radar personnel - when a foreign object was spotted, first and foremost people called the focused beam radar to check, whether someone was working in the emitter zone, and then the alert was declared. The radar enters automatic mode after the alert is declared and it cannot be turned off or steered out of the way. Those 20 - 30 seconds before the alert sufficed to pull away of the dangerous zone, so that the people were spared and the radar had enough time to connect and spot the target. Such precautions, were of course unconductive to maintain an acceptable alert readiness level, but at least it allowed a way out of the current stupid situation.

That day a major was on the watch, a well-known person in the technies circle, so they couldn't have expected anything bad to happen. He was steady, of sound mind and valued the lives of his subordinates and mates more that the opinion of the army inspection commissions.

And this inspection arrived suddenly. Only if it was a routine check - a single colonel or a major from the division, he could have explained everything or even told them to gently caress away, even risking his career. Unfortunately for him , there was a whole bunch of colonels, generals, and this band was called 'General readiness inspection of the Ministry of Defense'. This is a time when ballroom generals give orders to launch a strategic missile from a SSBN in Northern Ocean, while watching this missile to be shut down, in real life. They can also make this 'real' exercise to closer resemble wartime conditions. That was exactly what happened - they told the major, that he was dead, because the control center was destroyed by a missile ten minutes ago, "Pull the switch, shut down the controls, the communication has already been cut" he was told. We'll see how the global SDI system beam control works, not only your base. The major grabbed the phone, but could hear no tone. He would have liked to call the guys to warn them, but how? His own base emitter was no longer working, and even if he could see the focused beam screen, he couldn't have done anything. Suddenly, a bright spot appeared on a station screen - that could mean only one thing - the beam has highlighted a target for the interceptor missile. Once that have happened, the radar turns fully automatic,preoccupied with the only goal, even if it's quite a primitive robotic goal of destruction. From that moment on nothing can interrupt the work of the beam - 30 megatons of the enemy weapons are flying towards Moscow, to shot those down was important, the rest wasn't.

Captain Lykov was killed instantly - electrocuted by the 27 kV power supply. No radar injury - death like on an electric chair. The radar operator said that 'the only thing left were his shoes'. He was exaggerating, even if the shoes were spared, they still rested on the charred body's feet. Sergeant and privates weren't holding any conductive surfaces, so the current didn't do anything bad to them. They felt an intense heat and an unbearable pain in their heads, they jumped out of the radar door. I have to say that no one was in direct line of sight of the focused beam, if they would, the result would have been different. They were only lightly touched by periphery of the microwave beam.

After some moments all three went blind, the heat was gone, but their bodies felt burning from within. Ivanyuk didn't loose his courage and shouted "Privates, come towards me, hold one another." Almost falling unconscious the soldiers crept near the sergeant and grabbed him. Just after, the trio heard the engine sound and the horn. Three technies were a pitiful sight to behold and Liakhovetski realized that he couldn't just stay in the shielded cabin. To hell with the glowing microwave detector, he opened the door and jumped out. His skin started tingling very unpleasantly and his head was feeling heavy, after a moment a burning sensation came. That is - a burning sensation from within. The pain around the bones was especially strong - as if someone was pushing cigarette butts from another dimension.

"Where is the Cap'n?" - shouted the driver.
"He's hosed. I've seen him electrocuted, Load us up, we are feeling really loving lovely and we're blind! Faster, friend, faster! If we don't scramble, we'll loving burn alive here!"- responded sergeant.

The driver, with great difficulty, pushed the weakening trio in the rear compartment. He was starting to feel really lovely himself, weakened and swaying, like a drunk. Finally, up in the truck cabin, he could see that the shields have heated up, but humans could still walk - he was amazed. He first thought that he was going to drive his truck in a ditch, but after only 200 meters he felt much better, the burning had diminished, he was dizzy and wanted to throw up. Finally the fence - 300 m away from the radar, safe zone already, so he could lift the shields from the windscreen. But he wouldn't stop here, he thought, it was at least 3 km till the checkpoint, there he could call someone. How the others in the back, are feeling? He wanted to piss and vomit. He stopped after a kilometer, wanting to jump out of the truck, but instead he had fallen out helplessly. After a little while he could get up, walk a few meters to the nearest tree and throw up here, only a small amount of puke would come out. He remembered the landscape around the radar dish - a concrete field, then some short grass and further some bushes, trees, far in the distance. "Does it burn up itself or someone cuts it?" he thought - "It burns up, probably."

The piss was hot, at least it seemed hotter that normally, then he realized that it was painful to relieve himself - "Oh, great, I caught gonorhhea from a radar" he thought, but it was only funny for an instant. He pissed all over himself, because he couldn't stand upright, and even than he was holding himself on a tree. Liakhovski cursed and dragged himself towards the rear compartment of the truck. It was disturbingly quiet inside - two were disparately lying on the floor, the sergeant's head rested in a puddle of vomit. Only Sinyagin was half-seated in the far corner of the compartment, visibly he puked over himself, but at least he was awake. His eyes were open, but he didn't react to the light.

"Tovashishh sergeant, Mikhail, Sanych, Altik, Sinya, What's up mates!!!", he only heard a heave, coming from Sinyagin, he pulled himself in the compartment and started shaking the prostrated people. Everyone was alive, but unconscious, he wrapped them in work vests and an old blanket, and tried to make a makeshift headboard for all three to lie on. Finally, he felt much better himself, the pan was completely gone, but the dizziness remained. He thought, that he couldn't help them, only deliver them quickly to a medic. He was afraid to jump out of the truck once more, so he lied down on the compartment floor and slided off. Then, leaning against the truck body, he walked towards the cabin and drove towards the checkpoint.

Four people were normally manning the checkpoint, while two were out patrolling the perimeter and looking for lost mushroom pickers, the two others stayed "on the line". The young recruits usually do the rounds, as they have to walk far - to the next checkpoint and sign their presence in the journal there. The 'stick' time, as was called the barrier watch duty, was very uneventful. If one were to hear the sound of the engine, he would go outside with his weapon ready and open the barrier, while the other one would make a note in the journal. This time the watch man immediately understood that something exceptional have happened, the approaching truck was swerving and when it stopped near the barrier, Sgt. Liakhovski had almost fallen out of the cabin. The two soldiers keeping the watch were shocked.

"Get me a phone fast mates! Captain Lykov is dead, everybody else have passed out, and I'm hosed too, I'm struggling to stay upright" - ejaculated Liakhovetski.
"What the hell happened?"
"who knows - the radar burned everyone!".
After those words, soldiers led Liakhovetski to the pillbox
"Where do we call - to the man on duty?"
"First him , then up, to the headquarters"

The duty officer's inquiry were quickly interrupted by the variable mood of the Liakhovetski "Tovarishh officer, we are completely hosed, If we can't get a medic, three people will die here. I cannot move them myself - I can't drive anymore, my head is turning like crazy. I've also been shot up by the radar."

The officer on duty called the field hospital, then the headquarters. After doing so, he jumped in his jeep and hurried towards the checkpoint. After 10 minutes or so he was there with another technies group, a minute later the doctor and the field medic arrived, he injected the lightly wounded with corglucone (? I have no idea what it is), and installed intravenous catheters on the two difficult cases - Ivanyuk and Al'muhameddov. A call from the HQ came, it was the major who ordered to bring the four technies directly to the airfield, where an Il-76 was waiting. 40 minutes later all of them were already in the air, inside an empty Il-76 bound for Rzhevka airfield near Leningrad.

At the same time an emergency unit was dispatched from the Hospital of Military Medicine to the Rzhevka airfield. Surprisingly, the emergency van took the same amount of time to cross half of the Leningrad that it took the airplane to fly from a neighboring region.

A difficult questions have arisen as soon as the victims arrived at the Academy of the Military Medicine - how should they be medicated? It was more or less clear with Liakhovetsky - he had a mental breakdown, with additional neurological symptoms and fulminant cystitis of unknown origin. But the origin of that cystitis wasn't so mysterious - the brain and the bladder are the 'wettest' organs in the human body. This is why they were injured by the MW radiation first.

A psychiatrist, a neurologist and an urologist were called, and after this extraordinary council have determined the best medication and therapy course, our driver's condition started to improve quite quickly. Cystitis was cured with little effort in no more than a week. For some time the driver would present those strange symptoms, reminiscent of
a brain trauma, meningitis, arachnoiditis, alcohol intoxication and an extreme mood variability, but it was over in two month. The guy was dragged between various medical institutions, for the sake of research, demonstrated like a circus monkey, that took at least 6 month more, and he was released just before his demobilization. He had it easy.

It was much worse with the three others. The condition of the Sergeant Ivanyuk was very precarious, and despite all reanimation measures taken there was no notable improvement. His heart stopped after two days, and the efforts to restart it through electro-stimulation were unsuccessful. The sergeant died without regaining consciousness, but his death allowed the two others to survive. During the sergeant's autopsy a remarkable finding appeared - the radar injury consisted of the internal organs' burns, those organs that had a larger percentage of water content were burned more severely. It was also remarkable, because those burns were only on the surface - on the liver and kidney's fibrous capsules, on the arachnoids, on the bladder epithelium, on the endothelial surface of the major blood vessels. But the most important were found on the pericardium - the heart envelope. The victim have developed a fibrinous exudative pericarditis, a condition when there is too much liquid containing fibrin, the thrombotic agent, pours out in the pericardium. Despite the fact that the pericardium was drained, without the knowledge of the underlying condition, the normal blood counts could not be restored. So major thrombi formed in the vessels, leading to the infarctus and embolisms - the direct cause of death.

It was difficult to prevent this from happening, but the therapy course for the two remaining victims was now clear. They would be treated not for an unknown radar injury, but for a very concrete burns, inflicted by MW. That would also explain the immediately inflicted blindness - the cornea was simply burned away, due to the surface burns.

From then on, the combustologists have taken over the care for the two privates. Controlled dialysis was administered, along with intravenous diuretics and plasma to maintain the blood count balance - not to leak through the vessel's walls, but neither to form trombi. After a while the crisis was over.

In the beginning Al'muhameddinov had it worse than Sinyavin, because he developed pericarditis faster, but after the drainage, he didn't have as much fibrin scars, as Syniavin had. Syniavin was transferred to the surgery, where those scars were dissected and his heart normal function restored. Those guys staid in hospital for a long time, but even after their internal organs returned to normal, they couldn't have their sight back - it was irreparably lost, burned away by the radar.

The translation has taken more time than I would have expected.
Forgive me if the quality isn't quite good - I don't translate literature, even documentary - mostly scientific articles, contracts, legal stuff and some medical stuff from time to time.

pookel posted:

But #1 should be "have sex in the woods." If you have sex in the woods, you will die in the woods.

atomicthumbs posted:

atomicthumbs posted:

RNG posted:

Good god. Similar story: Anatoli Bugorski, struck by a particle accelerator in 1978 and still alive today.





And a Wired article about Soviet "science towns."

atomicthumbs posted:

I wrote that Wikipedia article when I read about Bugorski in an old Wired back in 2006. I like to think that I'm the reason anyone on the Internet knows about him.

wyntyr posted:

In 2011, a similar blackout took place in Arizona, California, and parts of Mexico. While I don't suggest everyone go full prepper and freak out - it is unnerving to think how close we are to being involuntarily thrown back through time into the 1600s.

quote:

The solar storm of 1859, also known as the Carrington event,[1] was a powerful geomagnetic solar storm in 1859 during solar cycle 10. A solar coronal mass ejection hit Earth's magnetosphere and induced one of the largest geomagnetic storms on record. The associated "white light flare" in the solar photosphere was observed and recorded by English astronomers Richard C. Carrington and Richard Hodgson.

Studies have shown that a solar storm of this magnitude occurring today would likely cause widespread problems for modern civilization. The solar storm of 2012 was of similar magnitude, but it passed Earth's orbit without striking the Earth.

quote:

Aurorae were seen around the world, those in the northern hemisphere even as far south as the Caribbean; those over the Rocky Mountains were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.[4] People who happened to be awake in the northeastern US could read a newspaper by the aurora's light.[5] The aurora was visible as far from the poles as Sub-Saharan Africa (Senegal, Mauritania, perhaps Monrovia, Liberia), Monterey and Tampico in Mexico, Queensland, Cuba and Hawaii.[6] Aurorae were visible at sea level at the latitudes of Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea and Dakar, Senegal; in theory at least, observers in the equatorial regions, particularly at higher elevations, may have been able to see the aurora borealis and aurora australis simultaneously

quote:

Telegraph systems all over Europe and North America failed, in some cases giving telegraph operators electric shocks.[8] Telegraph pylons threw sparks.[9] Some telegraph operators could continue to send and receive messages despite having disconnected their power supplies.[10]

quote:

But the big fear is what might happen to the electrical grid, since power surges caused by solar particles could blow out giant transformers. Such transformers can take a long time to replace, especially if hundreds are destroyed at once, said Baker, who is a co-author of a National Research Council report on solar-storm risks.

The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Cliver agrees: "They don't have a lot of these on the shelf," he said.

The eastern half of the U.S. is particularly vulnerable, because the power infrastructure is highly interconnected, so failures could easily cascade like chains of dominoes.

"Imagine large cities without power for a week, a month, or a year," Baker said. "The losses could be $1 to $2 trillion, and the effects could be felt for years."

quote:

.... those over the Rocky Mountains were so bright that their glow awoke gold miners, who began preparing breakfast because they thought it was morning.

Bloody Hedgehog posted:

STDH.txt

A Pinball Wizard posted:

Why do you say that?

A Pinball Wizard posted:

Why do you say that?

Bloody Hedgehog posted:

Because people aren't so loving dumb that seeing a bright light in the sky means it's morning and time to start cooking breakfast.

I doubt a neanderthal would be dumb enough to confuse this event for "morning" and then go out to cook his bronto-burgers, let alone a miner from the mid-1800's.

A Pinball Wizard posted:

Nah. We're talking about people who set their lives by the sun. If it was bright enough to see by and they didn't have a watch or clock in the camp, I can totally see one or two assuming it was the pre-dawn and either starting their day until they realized the sun still wasn't up, or waking up, going "boy I bet somebody could get tricked by that!" , going back to sleep, and later making a joke to their friends.

atomicthumbs posted:

Bloody Hedgehog posted:

Because people aren't so loving dumb that seeing a bright light in the sky means it's morning and time to start cooking breakfast.

I doubt a neanderthal would be dumb enough to confuse this event for "morning" and then go out to cook his bronto-burgers, let alone a miner from the mid-1800's.