When I was an intelligence analyst in the military I witnessed the President of the United States ignore the entire intelligence community when they indicated to him that there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks and there was no evidence of any weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq.
Then I saw that same administration fabricate intelligence indicating the contrary
Then I saw that same administration blame faulty intelligence when no WMDs were found, blaming the entire intelligence community in the process
They somehow managed to ruin the entire IC's credibility when they were right to begin with
no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks
I was a kid during all that, but my recollection is they didn't directly try to claim that he did? It just seemed like the country was swept up in the patriotic "glass the middle east" fever and went with it because murica fuck yeah, and it was part of the GWOT, but the messaging was all "evil dictator wmds etc." and not "saddam did 9/11." Though I was probably in high school before I could even articulate the difference between Iraq and Afghanistan, so I could be mistaken.
Twenty years after the al-Qaida attack on September 11, 2001, the United States is still involved in a war in Iraq that it started. President George W. Bush was obsessed with the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and deliberately misled the American people about who was responsible for the 9/11 attack.
SCP-4974 is currently adrift in the Pacific Ocean, approximately 1,300 km southwest of Hawaii. Due to its unpredictable movements and the absence of propulsion, satellite surveillance via Orbital Tracking Array Delta-12 is to remain active at all times. No direct approach is to be made without O5 clearance. Naval units encountering SCP-4974 are to maintain a distance of no less than 5 km and report visual contact immediately.
Any civilian reports regarding a “floating house” are to be intercepted and discredited via standard disinformation protocols (“maritime hallucination” narrative).
Description:
SCP-4974 is a single-story manufactured home of unknown origin, structurally consistent with prefabricated housing models from the early 2000s. SCP-4974 is capable of sustained buoyancy and locomotion without any observable propulsion system. It does not appear to be affected by ocean currents or prevailing winds and exhibits irregular movement patterns across the Pacific Ocean.
Interior scans reveal standard furniture placement, though all appliances appear to be non-functional and lack any power source. Despite this, observers at a distance of over 1 km report seeing lights flickering on and off within SCP-4974 and silhouettes of humanoid figures in the windows. Upon closer inspection (within 100 meters), the interior appears completely vacant, and the anomalous lights cease.
Notable Incident:
On ██/██/20██, a U.S. Navy vessel encountered SCP-4974 during a routine patrol. Initial reports classified it as debris. Upon visual inspection, crew reported observing movement within the structure. Due to the lack of any threat response and confusion about jurisdiction, the structure was left uninvestigated. Foundation agents embedded within the Navy intercepted the incident logs and began tracking SCP-4974.
Addendum 4974-A:
Excerpt from crew debrief:
“Looked like a house, just… floating there. No engine, no sails. Lights would flicker, but there wasn’t a sound. Like the ocean didn’t touch it. One of the guys swore he saw someone watching us from the window. But when we circled back, it was dark. Empty. Like it had always been.”
Hypothesis:
Some researchers theorize SCP-4974 may be a spatial or dimensional anchor, phasing intermittently between multiple states of occupancy. Its purpose, if any, remains unknown.
Beautiful! I love SCPs that are just some weird, vaguely threatening, but otherwise unaggressive bit of mystery. Too many authors try to make every scp a barely contained keter-class global threat.
It is such a horrifying entity that even digitally compressed rasterized photographs cause any intelligent being to perceive SCP-4974 as a house. Efforts to split up raw photographs through automated computer scripts in order to analyze piecemeal portions of the image still yield portions of images of a house, indicating even incomplete digital copies themselves may be intelligent. So far, the only proof that SCP-4974 is not in fact a house is its persistence through storms and water damage that should have destroyed it long ago.
You fooled me into thinking this post was just a hidden 4974 reference. Really cool write up, I didn’t question it being an actually existing article until reading the replies.
Just have to add that from a distance they had noticed lights coming off and on and what seemed to be figures in the windows, but when they got a closer look it was totally empty.
While the ship is near the house, the crew reports finding an endless number of letters, tickets and citations from a homeowner's association, all stashed in drawers, lockers and folders around the ship. The captain's report on the incident contained three separate documents alleging violations of HOA rules regarding lawn maintenance and garbage can placement, which he claims had not been in the report when he logged it.
It's fun, but it being in Spanish kind of debunks it, unfortunately.
I used to spend some time on ocean vessels and listening to the captains of all the ships yap at each other in broken sea-english (since it's the international lamgauage) was one of my favorite bits!