Infocult: Uncanny Informatics

Come visit the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park!

Wouldn't we all like to visit the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park?

An energetic person on Reddit's Worldbuilding board has created this delightfully horrific alternate park.  So far it's only a series of images, mock-official documents posted to that board and to a Tumblr blog.

I'm developing supplementary material (maps, guide pamphlets, etc.) for a fictional national park/national monument chiefly characterized by the existence of an enormous living organism which extends deep into earth. The origin of the pit is unknown, as well as it's ultimate size and complete characteristics. The company which discovered the pit, Anodyne Deep Earth Mining Inc., has been granted a contract from the [National Park Service] to operate a tourist experience there with close oversight from the U.S. Government. Though most authorities and experts have determined that the pit is reasonably safe, new and unusual phenomena in and around it continue to be recorded.

For example, this official brochure:

Don't miss the Abyssal Copepods and the Restraining Forceps!

Consider the fine equipment used by a park trail engineer:

 

There's also a wildlife safety brochure, a gallery of park signs over the decades, and a look at a park ranger's getup.

Following its accidental discovery, the Mystery Flesh Pit and the unique phenomena surrounding it were targets of a headfirst and furiously paced campaign of commercial exploitation. Once architects, engineers, geobiologists and clerical members of the development team had done their work to make the park safe and viable, marketing teams faced the daunting task of selling the public on the intriguing and miraculous phenomena of the Mystery Flesh Pit while downplaying the visceral cosmic horror of the pit itself.

Families were a particularly difficult sell, as children often displayed an overwhelming fear and aversion to descending into the throat of the pit. One strategy early in the park’s history was the creation of friendly cartoon mascot Caver Coop. A brief animated film starring Caver Coop was shown at the park’s visitor center, where the character would attempt to assuage worries about being “eaten alive” or “swallowed”, reassuring children (and often parents) that the pit was perfectly safe and reinforced.

When the attraction was absorbed into the National Park System in the early 1990s, signage and other graphic materials were updated to the NPS Graphic Identity. The architecture of the park’s surface facilities was also expanded and renovated during this time to better fit with the “Natural Resort” image of the Mystery Flesh Pit brand, drawing inspiration from the local Santa Fe style integrated with unique bone formations discovered within the pit itself.

(via MetaFilter)

The American western drone mystery continues

A Colorado site reports on growing rumors about mysterious drones flying overhead.

a drone nearly hit a medical helicopter Tuesday.

Helicopter pilot Kirk Peebles said he saw a drone pass within 100 feet from his Flight for Life helicopter during a routine medical call near Fort Morgan.

More:

Residents have also started reporting drones sighted farther south and west than in previous weeks. People have reported drone sightings in Castle Rock, Parker, Fort Collins, Boulder, and as far south as the Pueblo area.

"It was very unnerving and I live alone," said Amy Smith, who said she saw a drone out the window of her home in Olney Springs. "It's scary to see something like that and not know what it is."

Several online groups have grown out of curiosity, anxiety and suspicion of residents.

"[I am] not super concerned from a national security perspective, but low flying ones above roads are starting to distract drivers and could cause accidents," said Annamarie Calabrese, a member of the Facebook group DRONES over COLORADO and NEBRASKA.

Previously.

Gothic cross stitch

Infocult approves of this art:

(thanks to Jesse "Favorite Programming Language is PERL" Walker)

 

Dreading drones

We haven't seen enough creepy accounts of drones, so thankfully the New York Times reports that some Nebraskans and Coloradans are worried about mysterious flying bots.

Since before Christmas, sheriff’s departments in the region have been bombarded with reports of large drones with blinking lights and wingspans of up to 6 feet flying over rural towns and open fields. The drones have unnerved residents, prompted a federal investigation and made international news, even though they may be perfectly legal. And still, they remain unexplained.

They usually fly at night.

Meanwhile, stories are starting to take off:

Ms. George said she had heard wild speculation about who might be responsible for the flights — the government? a cartel? a gas company? — and feared they would never know the truth.

“All the sudden, it’s just going to stop and we’re not going to have answers,” Ms. George said. “And that’s very unsettling to a lot of people. It’s the fear of the unknown."

Perhaps there's a black helicopter echo to this.

(thanks to Jesse "Not the Operator" Walker)

Starting the decade with medical horror

As 2020 begins we at Infocult continue our study of real-life Gothic horror.

To start, a horrific story from Romania, where a medical blunder killed a patient.

The patient, who had pancreatic cancer, died on Sunday after suffering burns to 40% of her body when surgeons used an electric scalpel despite her being treated with an alcohol-based disinfectant.

Contact with the flammable disinfectant caused combustion and the patient “ignited like a torch”, Emanuel Ungureanu, a Romanian politician, said on his Facebook page, citing medical staff at Floreasca urgent care hospital in Bucharest.

The more one thinks of this, the worse it gets.

And it was the opposite of procedure:

“The surgeons should have been aware that it is prohibited to use an alcohol-based disinfectant during surgical procedures performed with an electric scalpel,” the deputy minister, Horatiu Moldovan, said.

It's the 2020s: new decade, more terror.

(thanks to Tom Elliot)