"Audiences know what they expect and that is all they are prepared to believe in." - The Player,
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead
The Sodder Children: Because West Virginia is just that weird, that's why.http://www.register-herald.com/local/local_story_358182913.htmlhttp://www.sodderchildren.com/http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=139901334 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5067563
In the pre-dawn hours of Christmas, 1945, five children went missing from a small town in rural West Virginia. Their disappearance is unsolved to this day. The details of the case are bizarre and more than a little creepy. They are in fact a lot creepy. So settle in for a Christmas story you will not soon forget.
By all accounts George and Jennie Sodder were salt of the Earth people. Prodigious breeders (10 children in total), hard workers, church going, and generally well liked by their neighbors in Fayetteville. Aside from an argument with a man about insurance some weeks prior to Christmas George had, nobody recalls them having difficulties with anyone in town.
That is why it was so shocking that someone set their house on fire shortly after midnight Christmas morning. A house that contained a kindly old couple, all their worldly goods, and nine of their ten children (the oldest son was in the Army).
For ease of evidence collection and to spare you, my dear readers, from paragraph after paragraph of my snide speculating here is a time line of events and evidence. Note that the precise times are remarkably hard to establish in the case so its more a sequence of events than a precise time line.
-Late night, some hours before midnight, Christmas Eve: The five youngest Sodder children (Betty, Jennie, Louis, Martha Lee, and Maurice) plead with their mother to stay up late playing with their new toys. Their mother says OK as long as they do their chores bright and early. They agree and mother heads off to bed.
-Jennie (the mother) is awakened by the phone ringing in the den. The person on the other end is a woman with a strange voice and laugh, unfamiliar to Jennie. The woman asks for someone by name that does not live there (Jennie could not recall the name), laughs when she is told they do not live there, and hangs up. Jennie heads back to bed, but notices the children left the lights on and the front door unlocked.
-Around midnight Jennie & George were disturbed by a sound they likened to "A rubber ball bouncing on the roof". After a few moments they dismissed it and went back to sleep.
-Shortly after they both awake to the smell of smoke. They race downstairs to find the office/den area ablaze, with the fire quickly spreading over the downstairs. They head upstairs for the children. The two oldest join them but not the other five.
-The fire cutting them off from the kids room they head outside for the ladder they keep beside the house for a fire escape. Its not there (the ladder is found the next day, hidden down a hill behind the house). They call out for the children but their cries go unanswered.
-George and the oldest boys run to the neighbors house to call the fire dept. but discover the neighbors phone is dead. Their phone line was cut at the pole, as was the Sodders, 40ft. up. In case you are wondering, yes, the fire escape ladder was tall enough.
-They attempt to drive to town, but both of the families vehicles fail to start. The primary vehicle had been used the day before and ran perfectly. They attempt to use the next door neighbors truck, but it also fails to start. The next day it is discovered that essential parts of all three vehicles engines were removed.
-A bus driver on the highway reported seeing "balls of fire" being thrown at the roof of the house, around midnight.
-The fire Chief is eventually alerted by motorists passing on the highway who see the blaze in the distance, but is unable to rouse the crew or truck until the next day (he did not know how to drive the fire truck).
-After about 45 minutes the house in totally consumed by fire.
-State police and the fire dept. arrive sometime after dawn and begin their investigation.
-The Sodders are told no remains are recovered initially, however that was not entirely true. The investigators found some bones and what appeared to be an organ in the ashes. The fire chief informs the family of the finding after he has buried the organ (he thought it was a heart) on the site of the fire in a box.
-Analysis of the bones shows them to be adult male vertebra, long dead, exhumed from a local cemetery. They had however not been through the fire and were found in a location corresponding to the children's bedroom. The organ turned out to be a beef liver after the Sodders demanded it be exhumed for testing.
-Despite no remains being found the children were declared dead. Their cause of death determined to be immolation/asphyxiation due to fire.
-Further investigation by the Sodders uncovers a half burned rubberized container with a twist off cap near the house. The object is identified by an Army soldier as an incendiary device used by the armed forces at that time.
-A few days later the owner of a motel halfway between the Sodder's house and Charleston, WV swears a statement that Christmas morning he witnessed children that matched the Sodder children's description sharing a room at his hotel with four Italian speaking adults.
-A week after Christmas four of the children and the same four Italian speaking men were identified by a Charleston motel owner as guests of his.
-Sometime later George Sodder saw a girl in a class photo from New York (in a magazine collage) that looked like one of his daughters. He drove to Manhattan only to be turned away from the school without ever seeing the girl. Not surprisingly they had a policy about turning over young girls to hysterical hillbillies.
-In 1968, 20 years after the fire an envelope arrived addressed to Mrs. Sodder. In it was a photograph of a young man bearing a striking resemblance to her son Louis. On the back of the photo were the words "Louis Sodder" "I love brother Frankie." "ilil Boys" "A90132 or 35". After appealing to the WV Attorney general to no avail they hired a PI to search for Louis in the town the letter was postmarked from. They paid him in advance and he went searching. He disappeared. At that point the Sodder Family admitted defeat.
So there you have it. A missing persons case that crosses into high weirdness. From the looks of it the children were not abducted, but were willing accomplices. Personally I think a religious cult of some variety (maybe the Catholics) was involved, to say nothing of the potential connections to La Cosa Nostra (with New York of the day being a haven for Italian immigrants and the Mafia).
The man Mr. Sodder argued with also sat on the medical examiners board that ruled the children dead despite all evidence to the contrary. He yelled publicly that he would ruin George Sodders life. All of this, brainwashing five children, arson, attempted murder, kidnapping, etc, seems a bit much. A little far to go because of some insurance.
Maybe.
Minot Nuke's is Good Nuke's I always say!http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/09/05/loose.nukes/index.htmlhttp://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=125&topic_id=175306&mesg_id=175306http://www.legitgov.org/minot_afb_nukes_oddities.htmlhttp://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/sep2007/nuke-s14.shtmlhttp://www.kxmc.com/News/161562.asphttp://www.kxmc.com/getArticle.asp?ArticleId=140988http://www.bismarcktribune.com/articles/2007/07/20/news/state/136489.txthttp://www.komonews.com/news/local/9679367.htmlhttp://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/523887.html?nav=5010http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/91st_Missile_Winghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minuteman_III#Minuteman-III_.28LGM-30G.29http://www.missilethreat.com/missilesoftheworld/id.77/missile_detail.asphttp://cryptogon.com/?p=1299During the waning days of the Bush Administration in '07 a pants-shittingly serious error was made by the U.S. Air Force. Six armed nuclear weapons were flown from Minot AFB in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB, Louisiana. This is the sort of error that people get nervous about, hell, they even woke the President for it.
People were reprimanded for it, there was lots of shuffling of papers and yelling, but the concern blew over quickly as the event already happened. Everyone wanted to know how it happened (security and procedures dealing with nukes are as tight as a virgin nun after all). Nobody seemed to know it had even happened until the bomber was safely secured in Barksdale.
There was just a single lingering problem with the whole affair. One of the nukes appears to be missing.
While this might be a simple clerical error, despite the virgin nun-like security I just mentioned, that possibility seems to be discounted by a few details. Those details being a string of suspicious deaths.
Whose deaths you ask? Why, pilots and loaders from Minot Air Force Base, that's who! How many you say? At least seven at last count.
Seven. Mostly from car accidents and a few "undisclosed" causes of death thrown in for spice. The best part? All within a week of one another.
The story as seen on CNN was first leaked to the Military Times by some Anonymous Air Force personnel. Now Air Force personnel are having a string of tragic car crashes on isolated roads in different parts of the country. Or in the case of a certain Brigadier General Thomas L. Tinsley whose death I have covered before, shooting yourself in the head at an awkward angle after going to sleep.
Now, here is the tricky part. There may or may not be a missing nuke. It seems that the Air Force, the Pentagon, the flight crew, and bases ground crews/loaders, and weapons inspectors cannot agree on how many nuclear-tipped cruise missiles the B52-Stratofortress was carrying. The number keeps fluctuating between five and six depending on who is telling the story at what time. The Air Force does admit that some of those Airmen who are now dead from tragic accidents had stolen some equipment related to these vary weapons. Launch control/trigger modules. Yes, that is right, at least three (set to be replaced) control modules were stolen rather than destroyed.
So to recap we have a transportation gaffe that possibly leads to a lose nuclear weapon, three missing (stolen, admittedly) control mechanisms, a pile of dead Air Force personnel (not a natural or un-suspicious death among them). Am I missing anything?
As an aside, those missiles were set to be re-purposed by their manufacturer (Raytheon) as bunker buster nukes.
This could very well be a preview of a 'Jericho'-esqe fascist takeover/false flag situation. It could be that scenario is planned for the future, or its a plan that got scrapped and the nuke is sitting under a storage building somewhere quietly rotting. Its nefarious purpose to never be fulfilled. It might have been intended for sale on the black market. Maybe it was stolen by a foreign power, bent on using U.S. atomic weapons to start a war (the old frame-up). Maybe it is a clerical error, and the string of thefts, cover-ups, and apparent murders is just a horrid black comedy. A macabre coincidence.
It could be almost anything, but I don't believe in coincidence.
The Doomsday Device, or, How I learned to stop worrying and love creepy numbers stations.http://www.slate.com/id/2173108/pagenum/all/ http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/09/soviet-doomsday.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Station_UVB-76 http://www.brogers.dsl.pipex.com/page5.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_station
One of the pivotal plot points of Stanley Kubrick's Cold War comedy "Dr. Strangelove" was a Doomsday Device. A Russian fail-safe system that automated their nuclear arsenal in the event of a launch by the U.S. This way even if their chain of command was broken beyond repair, the Soviet Union could still live up to their part of "Mutually Assured Destruction".
Rumors have for decades said that the Russians did indeed build, or attempt to build, such a system. Or maybe even a single device, capable of wiping out all life on Earth. If Mother Russia cannot have it, nobody can, 'eh comrade?
Let me introduce you to Radio Station UVB-76. More commonly known as "The Buzzer". It is similar to a numbers station (automated radio transmissions used to communicate with spies to this day) in that its transmission is continues and bizarre.
Located in a remote area of Russia, about forty miles north of Moscow (Povarovo) The Buzzer broadcasts its message 23 hours and 10 minutes a day (with 50 minutes of downtime at the same time each day presumably for station maintenance). Its message is, not surprisingly, a buzzer. A continuous buzzer. Just before the hour there is another tone for one minute, then the buzzer resumes. This repeats all day, except for maintenance time, every day.
Since it was first noticed by the public there have been three instances of speech being broadcast. Each time it was just a series of letters, names, or numbers for a little while, then right back to the buzzer.
The buzzer is being manually operated, 24 hours a day. The buzz itself is a device sitting in front of an open microphone. You can tell because sometimes you can faintly hear people talking or moving around the room. So whatever purpose it serves it requires a living person to be there to turn it on and off.
My guess is that its a dead mans switch for that very same doomsday device mentioned above. If UVB-76 goes offline for a certain amount of time, someone (or an ancient 1970's computer) somewhere presses "The Button". Possibly a sort of master on switch for the Russian nuclear arsenal, and bang. Maybe its not for their missiles, maybe its for a network of Czar-Bombs (the worlds largest hydrogen bombs, Russia never does anything small) designed to wipe out its cities in the event of invasion.
So it continues to broadcast. Some thirty years later Russian technicians man a lonely post in the wilderness. Repeating an endless buzzer and maintaining an entire radio station for it. They know that should they fail, should the buzzer not buzz, should the voice confirmations not go out at there set times years apart, that they might very well end the world. These lonely drunk Russians stand vigilantly at the gates of hell, maning an infernal machine set in motion for winning a Cold War long over by the most final of means.
When next you drink vodka, raise a shot to these men. Because when you call in sick or hung over your paymasters lose a bit off the bottom line, or your co-workers do a double. If these men falter at their job, we might just see a nuclear hell, a hell where the lucky ones are dead.
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Real life continues to kick my ass like I owe it money, but things are a little better. As such, you get more of my ramblings. I hope that my tens of dozens of readers enjoy it.
If you do enjoy it, please feel free to comment. I get more responses from 'bots asking me to buy WOW gold from Chinese gold farmers. I don't even play WOW.
The next few posts might deal with the topic of Marilyn Monroe's not-suicide, Project: Stargate (no really, the CIA called something that), how the Monsanto Corp is extorting the Iraqi government to outlaw all crops but theirs, and some of NASA's worst photoshop jobs.
Coming Soon!
/End Transmission.
