Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class:
Special Containment Procedures: Due to it's nature, SCP-XXXX will most likely never be contained.
Description: SCP-XXXX is the name given to a number of entities that minefest throughout areas of Europe.
Hello gentlemen.
It is an honor and a privilege to present my research for you today. For those of you not in the know, allow me to introduce myself.
My name is Dr. ██████████, and I’m a junior researcher here at Site ██. I am originally from ,████,not too far from here actually, and Went to the University of ███████, where I obtained a dual degree in geology and biochemistry. From there, I went on to get my PhD in Ordovician invertebrate paleontology, and was picked up by the foundation after publishing a paper on some anomalous fossils. I was given the choice to have my memory wiped and have to start my life over, or to come here and work on the most cutting edge science available. I think we can all hazard a guess as to which I chose.
A couple of opening notes; firstly, my focus is on paleontology, and as such that is where I will focus the majority of the speech. However, I am certain that research from other areas will back up the research that I will be presenting today. Secondly, I want to thank Dr. [Frankie Barns] for providing the refreshments, which will be available in room 205 after the speech.
So let me start on a slightly esoteric note, and pose a question; what is an SCP? This is a fairly simple question on the face of it. After all, we’ve all been through the basic training courses, and we’ve all worked on these anomalous objects, but let’s really think about this. From a scientific perspective, what separates and SCP from any other strange, hard to explain object? After all, for most of human history, lightning would have been considered a Euclid object. It has all the characteristics of it, but we now know that it’s simply caused by charge differences between the ground and molecules in the air. But I’m sure that we can all imagine the scip article for it; SCP so and so has no known cause, and seemingly attacks humans, trees, and other high points at random. There is no known way to contain SCP so and so. D class personnel that have suffered attacks from it have injuries consistent with burn marks. Researcher redacted has proposed utilizing high placed metal rods to attract its attacks.
Now obviously the reason that we can all laugh at that is because we can all think of a few scips that read almost exactly like that, and researchers in one hundred years will all act the same way about those scips as we do about lightning. However, I can see some of you senior researchers in the back giving me the evil eye, and I know exactly why. It’s because there are a hell of a lot of scips that are not like that. For example, consider all the scips that are just vaguely dangerous, such as SCP-811, or SCP-689. We can explain pretty much everything about either of them, but we definitely don’t want them running around. And then of course there are you SCP-682s and such, the world/galaxy/universe/reality destroying phenomena, and that seem to exist for no other reason than to be destructive and evil.
It’s at this point, that I want to step back for a second and state what the main point of this presentation is. We researchers spend a lot of time investigating minutiae, looking for reasons why this happens but not this with this specific SCP. We rarely take time to look at things a bit more macroscopically. But if we look at things macroscopically, then some patterns begin to emerge. I would like to propose what the patterns that I have observed are.
Firstly, if we look at SCPs across the board, we find that they are generally almost completely unrelated to each other. I propose that the reason for this is because the classification of “SCP is polyphyletic. We’ve assumed for so long that all of these things must be related, because it’s a little too convenient that they all just “happened”, but that really does seem to be the case. Let’s take that look at the fossil record now, shall we?
[At this point, the presenter changes the power point to a specially made tree of life, which includes taxa that are known only to foundation researchers.]
Here is the tree of life as the foundation knows it. As you can see, there are a whole of different animals on it. Now here…
[The presentation switches to a copy of the tree of life with only publicly available fossil taxa on it. The number of branches and general size has been reduced greatly. Some low whistles can be heard form the audience.]
Is the tree of life as most people know it. Yeah, pretty substantial isn’t it? Amazing how much we keep to ourselves in this place… but I digress. The point that I’m making is, look at how many fossil animals have just sort of been removed, wiped from the fossil record because the foundation thinks that they would upset the public, or reveal knowledge about living scips, or whatever other reason O5 decides that they can’t be known about. The clear point here is that over time, there have been a lot of scips. They aren’t new phenomena. However, we never talk about scips from the past, or extinct scips, or anything like that, it’s all short sighted focus on scips now. I don’t think this is because O5 has any sort of secret agenda (even though we all know they do), but because it’s hard enough keeping track of all the living ones without having to worry about ones long dead.
[The powerpoint goes back to the previous slide]
But this really is food for thought isn’t it? Let’s see if we can’t impose some order on this, shall we? What I’ve done is taken all of the anomalous fossils and such, and organized them into categories of my own creation.
[Presentation brings up a bar graph, showing bars labeled Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3]
Type 1 is an SCP that is some sort of natural phenomena. SCPs like it exist today, and they probably always will. They’re the equivalent of lightning. We just need to do some more research in order to understand them. They exist across all three safety levels.
Type 2 is an SCP that is bizarre and out of the norm. These are things that are dangerous, such as the aforementioned 811 or 689, but really aren’t anomalous. They are incredibly common during the late cretaceous period, and you could make a strong argument that were they alive today, many of the more well known dinosaurs would fit into this category. Something like 84% of all of these type of scips are Euclid.
Type 3 is an SCP that truly is anomalous, in the sense that they have agendas and purposes all of their own, and work towards them. These are almost always Keter class objects.
I tried to be as scientific as possible, but I’ll admit that there may be some disagreement about the exact classification of each object. Then, I broke each of the geological periods back to the Cambrian into segments of three, and organized the number of scips that originated in each time period based off of that. With this, we can see some clear trends.
Firstly, we see that the number of Type 1 scips stays relatively constant. Yes, there are an unusually large number of them in the last trimester of the Mississippian for some reason, followed by a huge drop in the first trimester of the Pennsylvanian, and then a return to normalcy in the second trimester, but other than that we see that they stay relatively constant throughout geologic time.
What’s more interesting is the Type 2 and 3 objects. Allow me to go to another graph.
[Presentation switches to a line graph, which goes up and down in intervals.]
As you can see, the number of Type2 and Type 3 SCPs are closely associated with one another. However, Type 2 objects are always more common, and their numbers seem to explode after an increase in Type 3. In fact, if you look at biodiversity of non-anomalous creatures, you can see that Type 3 SCPs only become common in fairly regular intervals, and the commonality of Type 2 objects follows Type 3 objects soon afterwards. In fact, the only variation in this cycle is the speed at which the number of Type 2 reaches a certain point of commonness. After Type 2 hits this point, and it is always the same, we see a precipitous drop in biodiversity in non-anomalous life.
We see this time and time again. Non-foundation scientists refer to these occurrences as mass extinctions, and a large amount of time and effort goes towards explaining these, but as can be seen here, the explanantion is fairly simple. Mass extinctions aren’t random occurrences, they occur in fairly fixed cycles, and are more likely than not caused by SCPs doing what they do.
So, we have to face a couple of facts here, and with these fact I make a couple of proposals. The first fact is that SCPs have always been around. They are still around, and probably always will be around, because, and this is the second fact, there is no single source of SCPs, and the term SCP is a polyphyletic tradition as incorrect as calling something a pachyderm, and even the classification used in this project is not entirely accurate.
Finally, I want to leave you with a thought experiment, something that only occurred to me once I was well into the midst of this research. Imagine, if you will, the world 10 million years ago. No humans, just animals and the occasional scip. Scips are coming into being and dying out all over the place, but imagine if you will, if a species were to arise with anomalous properties, such that it could not only create other scips, but take control of and use other scips for its own purposes. It could live in any environment, and once settled in that environment, would strip that area bare of resources, kill all of the animals in the area, and then move on to the next verdant place so as to destroy that as well. I’m sure many of you already see where I’m going with this, but think about what you would call that. Because personally, I would call that a Keter class SCP.
If you think that perhaps I’m being a little silly, consider some basic facts; that we’re well overdue, based on previous trends, for a resurgence of Type 2 and 3 scips; that biodiversity is at an all time low; and that huge numbers of scips that have been created in recent years accidentally, or by groups such as Church of the Broken God, Are We Cool Yet?, and even the Foundation itself.
Ladies and gentlemen, I urge you to consider the implications of this research, and once again wish to remind you that refreshments will be in room 205.
Thank you.