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Transtar
Joined: 25 Sep 2007
Posts: 260
Location: Marietta, Ga
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 Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 9:26 pm Post subject: |
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Another question for HP, sorry if this brings up painful memories, and if it is what I suspect, I apologize for the rush of emotions you will inevitably feel.
When you got injured before the spelunking trip, was Exu the one that injured you? (maybe he didn't actually injure you but pushed the person into you?)
Thank you again for sharing your story and clearing up these things for the always inquisitive people here. |
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JimmyMcForum
Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Posts: 121
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| Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:34 pm Post subject: |
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I feel like such a heel for missing this thread, Howard. Thank you for sharing your story.
I'm not exactly president of the Exu Appreciation Society, Transtar (and believe me, I'm not in the business of shooting down ideas), but Exu doesn't strike me as the sort that would do a thing like that.
It's what he WON'T do that I take issue with. |
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WolfHawk
Moderator
Joined: 20 Apr 2007
Posts: 467
Location: Midwest USA
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| Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 10:55 pm Post subject: |
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I don't know if this goes anywhere, but with Catherwood's help I did some cross-comparison:
Expedition in Taylor Run Cave
http://www.sentryoutpost.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=756
| Quote: |
That was going to be a 2 day descent, a day of experiments, followed up a 2 day ascent. Five days underground with no real contact to the outside world except when that satelite link was live.
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When no data came streaming out of the hole on November 1 as expected, everyone assumed there must have been damaged equipment or something similar. There was still no contact from the expedition on November 3rd, when they should have completed their ascent.
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There were still lots of problems with radio communications and with the fact that these caves weren't known too well, even the spelunkers who had been there hadn't mapped much of it yet. |
National Radio Quiet Zone
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/quiet.html
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I'm 1 mile east of command central in the Quiet Zone, sitting in a Dodge pickup with Wesley Sizemore, Keeper of the Quiet. In a world saturated with radio waves, the Quiet Zone is a haven and an anomaly. A unique combination of geography and legislation has rendered its 13,000 square miles nearly free of electromagnetic pollution. Sizemore's job is to keep it that way.
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Even a musical greeting card playing at the base of the telescope could produce anomalous spikes in the data of an unlucky astronomer trying to study stellar gases. If the interference is strong enough, the telescope's ultrasensitive first amplifier - cooled by liquid helium to minimize internal noise - shuts down.
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All major transmitters in the Zone are required to coordinate their operations with the national observatory. Radio stations point their antennas away and operate at reduced power. Cell phone base stations are few and far between, and entirely absent deep in the Zone. Even incidental electromagnetic emitters are regulated: Power lines must be buried 4 feet belowground. The wireless LAN card in your laptop? Forget about it.
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"Your cell phone and pager won't work here," Sizemore warned me before I came out for a visit. He was right. As I negotiate the snowy switchbacks on Route 250 West, my cell phone passes out of service while the FM dial gradually becomes depopulated. By the time I reach the tiny burg of Green Bank, all I can get is a static-shrouded episode of A Prairie Home Companion from a radio station outside the Zone.
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The cafeteria's microwave oven is kept in a shielded cage. Large chambers designed to absorb radio waves - including a 5,000-square-foot conference room - have been built to make sure that, as Sizemore tells it, "radiation generated in the building stays in the building." Outside, spark plugs are notorious radio-frequency emitters, so Green Bank maintains a fleet of diesel-powered, electronics-free '69 Checker cabs and '70s Dodge trucks. |
Taylor Run Cave is inside the National Radio Quiet Zone. None of the communications devices would have worked. The electrical devices would have worked, but would have been tracked down immediately and shut off.
The government got them?
There is another purpose for the Quiet Zone besides radio astronomy and the team triggered it?
_________________
Having abandoned my search for the truth I am now looking for a good fantasy.
I think I am therefore I am I think. |
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Dav Flamerock
Joined: 27 Apr 2007
Posts: 450
Location: East Bay, CA
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| Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 11:22 pm Post subject: |
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O_O
Eldritch creatures imprisoned there, perhaps? You know, Lovecraft has been rather overbearing so far... |
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Transtar
Joined: 25 Sep 2007
Posts: 260
Location: Marietta, Ga
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| Posted: Tue Sep 25, 2007 11:46 pm Post subject: |
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| JimmyMcForum wrote: |
I feel like such a heel for missing this thread, Howard. Thank you for sharing your story.
I'm not exactly president of the Exu Appreciation Society, Transtar (and believe me, I'm not in the business of shooting down ideas), but Exu doesn't strike me as the sort that would do a thing like that.
It's what he WON'T do that I take issue with. |
My thought is that Exu did it to protect him, which would be better a brused rib, or dead?
I think between the scenario that played out here and the letter that Exu sent and the fact that HP barely missed being erased. Exu is a common thread, and I'm trying to figure out his role. But its a far fetched idea anyway |
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Sinyx
Joined: 20 Apr 2007
Posts: 241
Location: Brooklyn, NY
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| Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 12:18 am Post subject: |
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| WolfHawk wrote: |
| Taylor Run Cave is inside the National Radio Quiet Zone. None of the communications devices would have worked. The electrical devices would have worked, but would have been tracked down immediately and shut off. |
Ooh, good catch. Would this have effected the feed to disk arrays and satellite Howard mentioned? What I don't get is, wouldn't whoever was in charge of the expedition KNOW THIS? Or the spelunkers? Why bother setting this whole system up if they knew it wouldn't work? I find it hard to believe this wasn't researched while planning the trip. |
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Dante
Joined: 20 Apr 2007
Posts: 578
Location: Chicago, IL
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| Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 12:37 am Post subject: |
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| Sinyx wrote: |
| WolfHawk wrote: |
| Taylor Run Cave is inside the National Radio Quiet Zone. None of the communications devices would have worked. The electrical devices would have worked, but would have been tracked down immediately and shut off. |
Ooh, good catch. Would this have effected the feed to disk arrays and satellite Howard mentioned? What I don't get is, wouldn't whoever was in charge of the expedition KNOW THIS? Or the spelunkers? Why bother setting this whole system up if they knew it wouldn't work? I find it hard to believe this wasn't researched while planning the trip. |
Exactly! That brings me back to my question, which Howard has chosen to ignore: Is there any way that the Physics faculty members (which planned the expedition and chose the cave) could have been involved somehow and even had foreknowledge of the 'accident'?? |
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WolfHawk
Moderator
Joined: 20 Apr 2007
Posts: 467
Location: Midwest USA
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| Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 12:49 am Post subject: |
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| Dante wrote: |
| Sinyx wrote: |
| WolfHawk wrote: |
| Taylor Run Cave is inside the National Radio Quiet Zone. None of the communications devices would have worked. The electrical devices would have worked, but would have been tracked down immediately and shut off. |
Ooh, good catch. Would this have effected the feed to disk arrays and satellite Howard mentioned? What I don't get is, wouldn't whoever was in charge of the expedition KNOW THIS? Or the spelunkers? Why bother setting this whole system up if they knew it wouldn't work? I find it hard to believe this wasn't researched while planning the trip. |
Exactly! That brings me back to my question, which Howard has chosen to ignore: Is there any way that the Physics faculty members (which planned the expedition and chose the cave) could have been involved somehow and even had foreknowledge of the 'accident'?? |
According to the article I quoted, you can't take ANY kind of equipment that generates an electric field inside the zone without government permission.
_________________
Having abandoned my search for the truth I am now looking for a good fantasy.
I think I am therefore I am I think. |
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Mapmaker
Joined: 20 Apr 2007
Posts: 236
Location: Honolulu, HI
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| Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 2:09 am Post subject: |
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| WolfHawk wrote: |
| Dante wrote: |
| Sinyx wrote: |
| WolfHawk wrote: |
| Taylor Run Cave is inside the National Radio Quiet Zone. None of the communications devices would have worked. The electrical devices would have worked, but would have been tracked down immediately and shut off. |
Ooh, good catch. Would this have effected the feed to disk arrays and satellite Howard mentioned? What I don't get is, wouldn't whoever was in charge of the expedition KNOW THIS? Or the spelunkers? Why bother setting this whole system up if they knew it wouldn't work? I find it hard to believe this wasn't researched while planning the trip. |
Exactly! That brings me back to my question, which Howard has chosen to ignore: Is there any way that the Physics faculty members (which planned the expedition and chose the cave) could have been involved somehow and even had foreknowledge of the 'accident'?? |
According to the article I quoted, you can't take ANY kind of equipment that generates an electric field inside the zone without government permission. |
But on the other hand, the Wikipedia article states that "preference given to public safety concerns". Also, I'd assume that the MiskU people had permission to conduct their experiment there - and if not, the Feds wouldn't kill them, they'd just tell them to get out, you know?
I might think that the cave was selected with the quiet properties in mind - if I were a researcher looking for radiation or radio waves with equipment that was sensitive to interference, I'd seek out this area in coordination with officials in order to get the best possible results. |
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Lestat5891
Joined: 14 Sep 2007
Posts: 226
Location: Wilmington, NC
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| Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 8:05 am Post subject: |
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I protect nuclear assets and we're not even allowed to kill people just for being in the wrong place. Mostly just arresting them and waiting for local authorities.
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"...none of us really changes over time, we only become more fully what we are."
~Lestat |
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HPhack
Joined: 10 Jan 2007
Posts: 258
Location: Cambridge, MA
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| Posted: Wed Sep 26, 2007 8:41 am Post subject: |
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| Dante wrote: |
| Exactly! That brings me back to my question, which Howard has chosen to ignore: Is there any way that the Physics faculty members (which planned the expedition and chose the cave) could have been involved somehow and even had foreknowledge of the 'accident'?? |
I guess my reaction is that it seems like yet another version of "someone on the team betrayed the rest". My brain really gets tired thinking about those what ifs because there's just no real evidence to suggest any of that. Could it be the case? Sure. "Could have" just covers so much territory, it's like asking if it was possible, not if it actually happened.
I didn't mean to be ignoring this thread, I'm just never sure how to answer the "could have" questions.
_________________
"Perhaps a longer stick is in order." - Unknown Quantity |
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Unfictionrose
Joined: 22 Apr 2007
Posts: 357
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 11:04 pm Post subject: |
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I was discussing with someone what sort of experiments might have been conducted...his suggestion:
| Quote: |
Radio transmissions would be more difficult to detect underground, that's most of the reason that the neutrino detectors are down there (less background noise to filter out).
As for what kind of experiment could it have been, well geology is the obvious choice, but not something that geeks would go to when they could examine samples from instead (them being physicists and all), so it'd have to be location dependent, and something that couldn't be moved. Seismology would then be the obvious choice, but then again, why go down into a cave system when you could bore a hole, or hire some mining engineers to drop some sensors down there? Considering it was physicists, and technicians doesn't really give much of any kind of excuse to be there. Archaeologists maybe, if there were prehistoric remains in the cave. Which is about it as far as conventional explanations go.
The only thing that would prompt physicists (and geeks) to venture into a cave system, would be if something had already been found down there, that they wanted to study, but couldn't easily get to the surface. |
Emphasis added.
I really like this idea.
_________________
Servers aren't part of the collective unconscious. ~HPHack
DC had us give B.A. the finger. I don't think you can get much more explicit than that! ~Y2K |
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Dante
Joined: 20 Apr 2007
Posts: 578
Location: Chicago, IL
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| Posted: Thu Sep 27, 2007 11:36 pm Post subject: |
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| HPhack wrote: |
I guess my reaction is that it seems like yet another version of "someone on the team betrayed the rest". My brain really gets tired thinking about those what ifs because there's just no real evidence to suggest any of that. Could it be the case? Sure. "Could have" just covers so much territory, it's like asking if it was possible, not if it actually happened.
I didn't mean to be ignoring this thread, I'm just never sure how to answer the "could have" questions. |
Well Howard unfortunately we are in the position of relying upon your recollection of past events and impressions, because that's all we got. You knew these people -- Adrianna most of all -- so what I am asking for is your assessment of whether or not she or anybody else (e.g., the other spelunking guides) could have been involved in what happened. Yes, that's a 'could have' question, but I want to know from you is whether, in hindsight, thinking back over those events, you feel that anybody, including Adrianna, had another agenda other than a carefree physics expedition?? |
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HPhack
Joined: 10 Jan 2007
Posts: 258
Location: Cambridge, MA
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| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 8:14 am Post subject: |
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| Dante wrote: |
| Well Howard unfortunately we are in the position of relying upon your recollection of past events and impressions, because that's all we got. You knew these people -- Adrianna most of all -- so what I am asking for is your assessment of whether or not she or anybody else (e.g., the other spelunking guides) could have been involved in what happened. |
God, Dante. I have to admit that this message is part of why I didn't poke my nose back in here last afternoon. I hate to have you feel like I'm dodging you and I hate to be responsible for some stone left unturned that we should be turning. This is just such a hard thing for me.
Part of it is probably because I'm nursing a pitiful fantasy somewhere deep inside that Adrianna isn't dead, that one day I'll bump into her on the street, or see a picture of her on some blog, or I'll answer a knock at my apartment door and it will be her. That's the pitiful part, that I have such variety to way the fantasy starts.
It is a destructive fantasy, though, because even I can't imagine it to completion. It breaks down about the time I start asking my imaginary Adrianna what happened to her, how she survived, where she has been all these years. My subconscious knows that I wouldn't like any of the answers to any of those questions. That turns into this horribly depressing idea that if I want her to be girl I was in love with she has to be dead, and if I want her to be alive than she was never the girl I fell in love with.
Which doesn't answer your question, Dante. It only explains why those questions make me squirm so much, just like they made me squirm when the tabloids and the investigators were asking them. There's a nasty little piece down inside me that thinks if everyone wants Adrianna to have bloody hands, so be it -- now just give me my damn girlfriend back.
If you want the evidence that her hands are bloody, it is nothing but circumstantial. She asked me to put in the good word for her to get on the team. I think she even recommended some other spelunkers she knew, but I'm not sure if any of the ones that ended up going were those people (Adrianna didn't introduce them as friends to me.) If you have to imagine some perpetrator doing something icky in the cave and then getting out before the rescuers arrived, then you end up focusing on the people that were actually pretty good at spelunking. That makes Adrianna float to the top of the suspect pile.
Don't for a second, though, think I wasn't questioned about a huge variety of other "could" scenarios, ranging from the faculty were behind it, to tabloid monsters eating them, to the fact that some investigators found my injury far too convienently timed as an alibi, especially when my girlfriend was still on the expedition.
In the end, though, I think they declared it an accident just so that they wouldn't have to poke too deeply into all that messiness.
I need some breakfast.
_________________
"Perhaps a longer stick is in order." - Unknown Quantity |
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Dante
Joined: 20 Apr 2007
Posts: 578
Location: Chicago, IL
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| Posted: Sat Sep 29, 2007 5:50 pm Post subject: |
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Well, Howard if it's *any* consolation at all, apparently Dr. Riley is taking the blame for the cave accident. Perhaps you should track her down and talk to her? It might help you both.
Also, since you haven't mentioned otherwise, I guess we can assume that Adrianna, as far as we know, was just a nice suburban girl from Baltimore who liked cupcakes and puppies and uh, caves. That is, she didn't partake in secret underground rituals of any kind, I guess?
Sorry if I seem flip Howard, but dude, it's been almost 8 years. Maybe it's time to find another special girl?? |
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