WARNING! IF YOU HAVE ISSUES WITH DEREALIZATION, PARANOIA AND ANXIETY, BE VERY CAREFUL WITH THESE!
Local 58 : *loads gun* Moon’s haunted
Gemini Home Entertainment : *loads gun again* Solar System’s haunted (Alien invasion type story. Ominous, original and great worldbuilding. Mostly documentary style)
The Mandela Catalogue : Doppelgangers, religious conspiracy, body horror. Remember, nothing is worth the risk.
The Walten Files : FNAF but like subtle. Cute art style too!
The Monument Mythos : Landmarks are sus in an alternate timeline. Also Suez Canal Crab my beloved.
Mystery Flesh Pit National Park : What if spelunking but meaty? (This one’s here on tumblr and also reddit! Not quite analog horror but the vibe is there)
The Mystery Flesh Pit ARG is amazingly well-executed but also incredibly funny because at the heart of it its central conceit relies on the idea that suburban families who enjoy visiting national parks were going hiking inside the bowels of an elder god like it wasn’t a big deal
Taking my terrible children to the hot, wet throat of the Permian Basin Superorganism because those little shits broke the French casement windows in the sunroom and now mommy doesn’t have enough money to take us to Disneyland
I’m Christian and respect the order of creation as God intended it but I’m not gonna lie if I could take a massive vat of agar and grow an alive shopping mall made out of red blood and meat and feed it living human bodies to make it expand larger with more shops and amenities, Without hesitation, Without question I would do exactly that
Tourism poster for Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, 1980
“While the rural areas of west Texas are known for their sparse populations, one tourist attraction seems to continually generate a steady stream of visitors around vacation seasons. The titular “Mystery Flesh Pit” has been a wellspring of fascination for geologists, biologists, sociologists, engineers and the general public alike. Guests are advised to book age-appropriate tours and activities well in advance of their visit, though the pheromonal discharges and the overall agitation level of the MFP can vary with short notice. Visitors should be advised to be prepared for changes in schedule & availability.“
Mystery flesh put is probably my favorite ARG story like oh my god- there is SO MUCH dedication into the story, the mock advertisements, the creature designs, just everything. I feel like it’s barley spoken about but I’m so glad their creations haven’t gone unnoticed by Tumblr
Is the main entry orifice the only one the Mystery Flesh Pit possesses? If not, were the other ones also used by Anodyne for resource exploitation?
While the main Entry Orifice depicted in all of the Marketing and Outreach media for the Mystery Flesh Pit, an additional 14 orifices were eventually discovered, bringing the total number to 15. These 14 additional orifices, along with the main Entry Orifice, are loosely arranged in a circle around the true center of the Permian Basin Superorganism, which contains no orifice of any kind. Unlike the extensively dilated and excavated main orifice, these 14 additional orifices are much smaller and harder to locate. Each of these smaller orifices has been appropriately “capped” to prevent ingress by the Bureau of Land Management, though at least two orifices were utilized by the Anodyne corporation for limited logistics and resource extraction purposes. In the early 2000s, ambitious plans were drawn up to eventually develop one or more of these additional orifices into a “Second Gate” for tourism, but the 2007 tragedy curtailed any such plans. Today, these formerly Anodyne-maintained orifice facilities are operated by the Permian Basin Superorganism Containment corporation in service of their containment and research operations.
@bloatypizzahog asked:
Did the Roadless Rally go into the pit itself?
The Roadless Rally off-road racing series took place entirely within the pit, specifically within the large cavity created by damming of the Lesser Gastric Sea with the construction of the Fred J. Agnich Gastric Dam. This large cavity was initially created to house a temporary worker village during the early development of the park facilities. Once these temporary housing & fabrication facilities were no longer needed, the area was leased to a rally racing league for an experimental new form of off-road rally racing. Despite the enormous costs sunk into the creation and advertisement of the new racing program, viewership was limited enough that the experiment was considered a failure and was not pursued beyond the 1989 season.
@crashlandingcity asked:
The existence of large mining rigs and commercial constructions like the Intrapit Thermal Wellness Resort far from the main National Park entry orifice hint at a commercial operation on a scale that almost overshadows the park complex. What kind of support and logistics infrastructure existed (exists?) for these large-scale heavy industries and construction projects?
Despite the two other entry orifices mentioned in an answer above, almost all of Anodyne’s equipment and infrastructure depended heavily on use of the main Entry Orifice. Large equipment such as the mining rigs were constructed in situ by lowering large pieces of the vehicles down the main articulated elevator gantry. As the scale of these vehicles suggest, it is correct to assume that the commercial extraction operations were of a far larger scale than that of the National Park. Today, the full extent of these extraction activities is unknown with many records presumed lost during the liquidation of the company’s assets following it’s 2008 bankruptcy.
Anonymous asked:
Why was aconitine the chosen paralyzing agent for the superorganism instead of a more standard anesthetic?
Anodyne Chemicals was already a contracted supplier of specialty-use poisons for the Department of the Interior, and had prior capability to produce Aconitine at-scale. In short, it was the least economically-disadvantageous of the chemical candidates which were considered.
@mikuworshiper asked:
I’m sorry if I just missed it on the anatomy charts, but does the superorganism have a brain? do you think it is conscious
The Permian Basin Superorganism contains what Geobiologists term a “Distributed Heuristic Hierarchical Nervous System”. The chart below offers a cursory illustration of how this sort of Neural arrangement functions: Surrounding the center of the Superorganism is a vast ring of neural tissue resembling an organic fiber-optic bundle. This central ring connects five enormous, miles-wide concentrated brain regions which are theorized to comprise a central nervous system used by the Superorganism to simultaneously “think” as well as manage the many hundreds of miles of the Mystery Flesh Pit’s anatomy. This management system is further divided into hundreds of “Superganglia” managed by each pentalobe, broadly categorized into “Alpha”, “Beta”, and “Gamma” variants. “Alpha” ganglia manage thousands of local nerve clusters responsible for executive functions such as motor control, digestive management, lymph production, vascular management, as well as dozens of other functions. “Gamma” ganglia are almost the reverse counterpart to the “Alpha” ganglia. “Gamma” ganglia manage the many thousands of nerve and sensory receptors throughout the Mystery Flesh Pit, translating this enormous amount of information into useable data for the central Pentalobal Nervous System. Unique are the many “Beta” ganglia clusters which seem to fill in a sort of “local memory” function which has no direct analog in mainstream biology. These “Beta” ganglia clusters exhibit phenomenal storage capability for stimuli-response memory, and were often harvested for their biotechnological applications before the 2007 tragedy.
Anonymous asked:
Do we have any idea what the full body of the Permian Basin Superorganism looks like, or have scientists only observed the part of it that lies directly beneath Mystery Flesh Pit National Park?
Broadly speaking, yes, Geobiologists and Venteriobiologists have reached a general understanding that the Permian Basin Superorganism exhibits a basic pentadecagonal symmetry, though this should not be taken to mean that the Mystery Flesh Pit is simply a “Fifteen-legged starfish”. While it is symmetrical in plan, it’s vertical composition is far less well understood and still remains a matter of staunch controversy.
Anonymous asked:
The 2007 disaster report stated that several wounded visitors walked back into the maw of the pit. Was there any follow up as to why they might have done this?
Each individual’s reason for returning to the pit will always be known only to them, but it has been widely understood in the decade plus since that many of these individuals attempted return to the orifice out of a sense of obligation to help loved ones who still remained within the park. Since it’s publication, the official 2007 report has been criticized for it’s over-reliance on technical explanation in contrast to more subjective, common-sense “folk wisdom” regarding certain elements such as the “inexplicable” return of these individuals to the entry orifice following the disaster.
@mintposting asked:
Did the term ‘venteriology’ originate from studies around the pit, or did it exist beforehand?
It evolved entirely in the shadow of the Mystery Flesh Pit’s discovery, loosely meaning “The Study of that which is Under/Below”.
Anonymous asked:
is james jackson still alive? whats he doing nowadays?
James Jackson tragically died during the winter of 2006 at age 58 due to a collision with a drunk driver. Though he never married, and is survived by no living relatives, the Philanthropic and Activist-driven non-profit he began, the Jackson Foundation, still continues it’s mission to this day.
@badsy-edgecat asked:
has anything resembling optic nerves or related organs been discovered in the pit?
Yes. The Project Touchstone expedition, which aimed to plot a horizontal navigable course from the main Entry Orifice to an extremity of the Superorganism, discovered an organ at the furthest extremity of their route that was determined to be analogous to an optical sensory organ or eye. This “eye”, determined to be one of many thousands along a band of the Superorganism’s upper mantle, was measured to be approx. 1.2km in diameter, with multiple optic nerve connections, a retinal region many times larger than a regulation football field, and a highly evolved lens configuration comprising over two dozen discrete lens and filter elements. This large “eye” organ, as well as the other thousands of identical organs, appeared to be generally retracted into an inner carapace lining which separated these organs from the direct rock face of the surrounding geological strata.
dykepixie asked:
What is the longest amount of time someone has ever spent in the Pit and been successfully recovered alive, not counting the, uh, formerly amalgamated people? We know that miners spent (spend?) months at a time in the Pit, but outside of that? Has anyone ever been lost and presumed deceased, but then shown up again later?
The longest known instance that I was able to find of an individual surviving in the pit involved one of the original 38 individuals who returned to the entry orifice immediately following the 2007 disaster. The individual (whose name has not been made public) was a 41-year old male originally assigned within trauma group “A”. While this information has not been verified by either the NPS, the DoI, or the PBRCC, I have strong reason to believe that this “missing” individual was recovered in 2019 by PBRCC teams within the pit. The individual, originally presumed dead, was discovered by a surveying team. The man was naked and had sustained a tremendous amount of physical and genetic abuse, widly screaming at the sight of the surveyor’s worklights. The individual, in a frenzied and panicked state, latched onto the metal frame of a work vehicle with such force that his arms and legs became severely bruised with risk of internal bleeding. After being brought to the surface, still maintaining a death-grip on the vehicle, the man was placed under intensive medical care to repair the injures and deformities he sustained during his 12 years within the pit. I know that he was given a robust regimen of physical and emotional therapy, but I do not know if he was/is rehabilitated to the degree where he would be willing to answer any of my emails regarding his time in the raw pit fleshscape. Only time will tell.
Anonymous asked:
Was the Interpit resort owned by a chain? Was it more rustic (like, national park “outdoorsy”), or more luxury?
It was designed to offer the pinnacle of (1985) contemporary luxury.
@nnaassttyy asked:
What are some of the largest recorded (or rumored) amalgamations?
Venteriologists theorize that, hundreds of years ago, a stampede of over a thousand long-horn cattle were surreptitiously “swallowed” by one of the Superorganism’s orifices during either a migration or cattle-drive. These thousands of cattle underwent simultanous mass amalgamation, but were able to survive to the sheer scale of the resulting organism, being able to consume itself. Over time, this highly-immobile mass of horned, writhing bovinity was enveloped in a cocoon of tissue grown by the Superorganism believed to be related to some digestive purpose. Because of the now-concentrated collection of horns, however, a persistant hole in this tissue sac survives to this day. This tear in the tissue lining, combined with the still rhythmic suffering of this animal collective, was known to park visitors as the “Peeking Druid” geobiological formation.
Anonymous asked:
there’s a typo in you FAQ. Under “Will there be a book?” you wrote “an book” instead of “a book”.
Anonymous asked:
Have any baseball (or sport teams) ever celebrated their victory or even played in a special location at the Flesh Pit?
To my knowledge, no professionally-organized sporting events (besides the aforementioned off-road rally) took place within the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park. However, victory celebrations of all types were common. The resorts and facilities found within the park were of a world-class caliber and while a difficult sell at first blush, were famously exalted by guests who had actually stayed within the Interpit resort.
@fruitsofaphrodite asked:
Has anything been noted of in regards to the children conceived in the pleasure domes??
It is a common misconception that, due to the nature of the Amniotic Thermal Springs and their effects, there must have been a surplus of children conceived within the Mystery Flesh Pit. On the contrary, the spermicidal effects of Ballast were a notorious (if under-marketed) reason for the Thermal Springs lucrative operation.
Anonymous asked:
The interior services guide mentions people being allowed to hunt and fish within the pit if granted a license. We are aware of some of the main types of “terrestrial” fauna within the pit, but what sorts of creatures could be fished?
This scan of a 2006 pamphlet offers information about the Amniotic Thermal Springs, known by many as “Pleasure Domes”, within the now-closed Mystery Flesh Pit National Park. The thermal baths were one of the highlights of the park, drawing in tens of thousands of visitors each year, particularly during the cold winter months. It was only after the park permanently closed in 2007 that the long-term effects of exposure to the “Amniotic Spring Fluid”, or ballast, became apparent. Many of those who routinely soaked in the baths underwent depressive withdrawal periods, as the price of extracted ballast fluid since the tragedy has skyrocketed. Today, only those willing to spend thousands of dollars on purchasing the illicit substance can experience this enchanting elixir.
Photo from around ~2002 inside one of the fully enclosed trails within the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park. These trails were some of the most expensive to both construct and maintain, offering unparalleled access to the interior of the park to people of all physical conditions.
Want to grab one of these? Head over to https://mfpgiftshop.storenvy.com/. They are very limited; only 70 of these iron-on, exclusive embroidered Mystery Flesh Pit National Park patches are in stock, and once they are sold out, they will be gone forever. Sold Out!
P.S.Patreon subscribers at the “Park Benefactor” tier each received one of these for free as a surprise giveaway. If being included in that kind of super-secret content is appealing to you, consider becoming a patron!
Like many aspects of the Mystery Flesh Pit, the more visceral reality of the pit was usually glossed in a more clinical veneer by the professionals who studied and worked within it. This treatment extended to the often cryptic vocabulary used to refer to different elements and fields of activity surrounding the pit. Shown here is a chart which illustrates the differences and similarities between these interconnected scientific, political, and commercial fields.
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 1980s, 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.
-Excerpt from New York Times Bestseller Unearthing the Unholy: Exploring the tragedy of the Mystery Flesh Pit, written by Dr. Rachel Frost,published 2011.
As any Park Ranger could tell you, no volume of safeguards or training will prevent a park guest from interfering with wildlife. The notoriously dangerous environment of the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park necessitated a highly specialized corps of rangers to respond to incidents involving wildlife and guest safety, but this was often not enough to prevent tragedy. With the 2007 closure of the Mystery Flesh Pit removing much of the context surrounding the activities within the former park, it is easy to look at these sorts of ephemeral traces of hazard management with a sense of detached wisdom that mischaracterizes the fundamental draw of the park in the first place: the danger was a heavily-marketed, inherent thrill and a major attractor of visitors. It was the management of those hazards which presented the real and insidious problem of the pit.
Scans of an in-room service brochure from the Resort-Hotel constructed within the Mystery Flesh Pit National Park, most likely from around 1998-2000. The Interpark Wellness Resort was one of the most ambitious achievements of the NPS/Anodyne partnership and saw healthy attendance and continual growth throughout it’s ill-fated service life. This service brochure gives a glimpse into the scale of development that was occurring within the National Park, and should indicate the degree to which Anodyne and its partners were making fortunes from the exploitation of the Permian Basin Superorganism.
These sorts of items are hard to find in this condition, as the Interpark Resort suffered tremendous damage after the 2007 disaster. Structurally, the facility was built into the wall of the Greater Gastric Sea in the location of an existing ulcer and was anchored by hundreds of hydraulic rams and suspension cables. After years of neglect and abandonment, many speculate that the resort is at great risk of collapsing into the churning acid sea surrounding it.
Though the Mystery Flesh Pit National park remained a model of visitor safety until the disaster which led to its closure, the natural hazards of the pit necessitated guests being aware of the nature of the attraction they were descending into. This brochure, combined with a mandatory 3-minute orientation film shown in the lower visitor center, was intended to act as a minimum standard of readiness for inexperienced park guests. Park service staff, rangers, and anodyne mining personnel received much more in-depth training as part of their operations within the pit.
I’m writing you back about your Career Report Project for school. I hope you find my response satisfactory; it’s my experience, and it’s all true.
I was 17 when I signed on with the company to work a full tour. The money they promised for 9 months of work was more than I could have made in a lifetime in any other career; I was a shitkicking dropout from Hobbs.
Most people already know that the real money is made in pumping up Ballast, but they have it automated to the point where you only need someone to babysit the equipment. What a lot of people don’t know is that there are a bundle of other minerals, gels, gases and oozes that are worth more than their weight in gold for their “Myriad Industrial Applications”. The big three are “Blue” (Blue Tissue), “Pearls” (Corpusite), and “Black Bone” (Oscuralite). Our rig was outfitted to hunt for pearls; great crystalline spheres that were two to fifteen feet wide, hard as diamond, smooth and clear as glass, with an otherworldly iridescent shimmer. They are embedded in different ways deep down in the Pit, and to get to them you have to cut, trudge, push and crawl through miles and miles of muscle and guts and cartilage and bone that are fighting you the whole way. That’s where we make our paychecks.
A full mining crew is 18 men (and yes, it’s pretty much always men), which includes 2-3 mining engineers, a medic, 2 mechanics, a venterial tech, 2 company men to oversee everything, and 10 hired hands like me. You sign up for nine months at a time, split up into three-month stints with two-week breaks in between.
Down in the flesh, your home and lifeline during those dark months is a Mining Rig: a huge machine almost as big as a neighborhood street, bristling with tools and racks and sensors and floodlights. The insides are tight and cramped: our crew medic had been a submariner for eight years and had told us that the sub he served on was more spacious. Still, compared to being outside the rig, out in the raw Pit, the cramped bunks felt like luxury.
Ideally, the Rig cuts as it goes, leaving a burnt cauterized path through the meat while also crushing and processing any minerals in runs through. In the real world, the Pit isn’t uniform, and you end up running into all kinds of “Obstacles Requiring Interventional Solutions”, or the brass up top decide that they don’t want you just cutting through certain parts of the anatomy. So you suit up and get out ahead of the rig to poke and prod and pry at a walking pace, 8 hours a day for weeks at a time. Rigs have big hydraulic arms that reach forward and push, lift, and splay open organs or muscle bundles before us roustabouts would go in and suck up or hose out any blood, cut tendons, cauterize tissue, rinse, and repeat.
Because the methods for finding thing like Pearls are based on shaky science at best, a lot of time was spent probing around until you found paydirt. When you’d find a decently sized cluster, we’d set up camp and would go about breaking them down. The Rigs have a huge mining laser they can use to free up any gigantic pearls or black bone clusters, but most of the time you’re out there with big tools to break them free.
My position had been vacated the year before because the hand got crushed under a tissue catchment “bucket” (think giant, steel-walled tray weighing half a ton used to catch slop and other meat before it falls on your working area), and he bled out because it took hours for an ambulance to get out to the location. In the nine months I worked that rig, I had a few very close calls to getting crushed. What keeps you from being crushed by the weight of all of the “body” above you is a mess of cabling and fold-out frames connected to a fifty-thousand pound counterweight. After an eight hour shift of “scope pulling” (meaning removing all the length of an endoscope pipe from probe line), I got a bit careless and was hitching my tongs to the pipe while the it was still in motion. The idea being that it shaved a few seconds per disconnection, and it added up over a long shift. What I forgot is that near the head of the endoscope, the pipe diameter changed by 2 inches. The rig operator was pulling full speed when the larger pipe came back, and my tongs grabbed the pipe and suddenly launched backwards. I held on to the tongs and it jerked me a couple feet back and I let go. The heavy tong cable went taut and the operator stomped on the brakes at the same time, and the whole thing was jerked to a sudden halt. The huge tackle block was clanging around the whole cavity like a giant ringer in a bell and buckled one of the support frames. Everybody jumped clear and we ducked and braced with whatever we could until the rig stopped shaking. It was probably fortunate that we were near the end of the pull so there was only around three tons of backlash when it happened.
Most of the men I worked with had some sort of permanent injury, lost fingers, blown shoulders or knees, etc. The more experience, the more injuries. Even in our suits connected to refrigerated air, it was more than a hundred degrees and full saturation humidity. It’s pitch black everywhere down there, so you rely on your helmet lights, work lights, and the rig lights to be able to see, and they all give everything a sickly shine. Working down there isn’t at all like working in a cave or a mine: everything is wet, slippery, disgusting, and miserable. Nothing is flat or walkable, and you have to fight a feeling of raw animalistic terror every moment you’re out in it. Men weren’t meant to be down there in the innards of a monster, but I figure that’s why the company pays people what they do.
I finished up my contract without injury and for that I consider myself extremely lucky. I took the money and got an education; most people don’t consider it exciting work, but you’ll never find a more satisfied accountant. I never went back there, especially after the big accident they had in ‘07, but there are a lot of stupid kids that still do that kind of work. You sound like a smart kid: stay the hell away from it. That’s my Career Advice for you.
Let me know if you need anything else for your school report.
The Venterial Environment Excursion Vehicle was developed by Anodyne, Inc. in the late 1970s to act as a mutlirole utility vehicle platform for applications within the Mystery Flesh Pit. The vehicle architecture employs a set of twin counter-oriented screws for propulsion, as the wet and uneven interior of the Mystery Flesh Pit anatomy makes wheels, tracks and other conventional locomotive strategies ineffective.
Though cargo, flatbed, liquid transport, and wildlife transport variants of the VEEV could be found throughout the park, the “Safari” variant was the most familiar to park guests. For the price of an “AmbulaTour” ticket, visitors to Mystery Flesh Pit National Park would be driven on a 3-hour tour of some of the most spectacular and inaccessible locations within the park, all while sitting in complete comfort. The tour vehicles comfortably seated eight guests, with room for one stewardess/tour guide, and two drivers located in a low cab beneath the front of the vehicle. Inside the main cabin were eight rotatable plush seats, a small lavatory, and a small galley kitchenette for serving refreshments. Powerful lights on the exterior of the vehicle allowed guests to view the otherwise dark pit interior through large reinforced cabin windows. The vehicle was powered by two diesel engines connected to a proprietary transmission which provided the necessary horsepower and torque to easily traverse the interior of the Mystery Flesh Pit. For navigation, a large ultrasonic instrument in the nose of the VEEV provided drivers with a three-dimensional map of anatomy within a ~40m, 30deg cone directly in front of the vehicle.
Tragically, several dozen guests were trapped and later died within these vehicles during and following the 2007 disaster. At least one vehicle was crushed completely flat, while the door hatch of another was forcefully pried open by opportunistic and hungry park wildlife during the chaos. Perhaps the most well-known incident (As portrayed in the 2012 film Fire in the Deep)involved an armedMining Rig and its crew which were able to escort and protect two full tour vehicles until they could safely escape to the surface, though the crew and tunneling vehicle were gruesomely destroyed by large parasitic organism.
The grim legacy of the VEEV has not diminished the utility of the craft, however, and the vehicles have continued to be used by the Permian Basin Recovery Corporation well into the present day to shuttle researchers and other limited personnel through various sections of the former National Park.
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This is a tourist map of Gumption, TX from around the year 1998, meant to be a caricature of the city’s “historic” downtown area. Gumption TX, pop. 11,500 at its peak, is a small town located approx. 22 miles north of the surface orifice of the Mystery Flesh Pit. Throughout the discovery and development of the park, Gumption served as an important staging area for explorations of the pit before full facilities were set up, all the while eagerly selling any and every vice imaginable to the thousands of roughneck workers who flooded into the region to build the infrastructure within the pit. By the middle of the 1980s, families were the primary draw of the unique national park, so the city pivoted to keep up with the demands of tourism. Today, some 14 years after the closure of the park, the city of Gumption is an almost empty town, a fraction of its former size. The few hotels and restaurants left cater mainly to the routine droves of specialist workers and crews which labor to keep the slumbering superorganism contained, its empty streets haunted by the spectre of a golden era gone by.
In the early 1970s, prior to the involvement of either the Anodyne Corporation or the National Park Service, exploration of the Mystery Flesh Pit was a crude and arduous exercise undertaken by local agriculture & oil field workers. These young men, many of whom possessed no formal training in caving, improvised a variety of methods to aid in these early missions of discovery. An early attempt to mechanize the task of crawling through the viscera of the fleshscape took the form of field modified work trucks. Like the surviving GMC C/K truck shown here (formerly on display within the Upper Visitor Center), these jury-rigged vehicles lacked standardized designs and were highly experimental in nature. Though lacking the safety and articulation features common to later purpose-built machines such as the Grumman-produced Internal Anatomy Vehicle, these simple trucks were relatively instrumental in early exploration efforts to survey the Permian Basin Superorganism, with two or three surviving in service well into the 1980s.
