DAN

Image of a tornado edited to show the perspective of an individual resistant to SCP-XXXX infection.

Item #: SCP-XXXX

Object Class: Euclid

Special Containment Procedures: No new Foundation facilities are to be constructed within areas noted for high tornadic activity, and no personnel found to possess a Cognitive Resistance Value greater than 10 are to be assigned to any currently-active facilities in the same areas. In the event of a tornado touching down near any Foundation sites or operations, any personnel with a CRV above 10 are to be notified of SCP-XXXX's existence and escorted by security personnel during evacuation proceedings to ensure their safety.

Any tornadic activity is to be investigated by Foundation agents for potential anomalous origins, and data on the formation and activity of tornadoes is to be gathered and studied in order to observe any patterns that might indicate deliberate creation or planning of such meteorological activity.

Standard Foundation webcrawlers are to be deployed in order to locate and erase online accounts detailing an inability to recognize tornadoes, and a disinformation campaign is to be mounted to ensure that any such claims are to be presented as a hoax in the event they receive any significant amount of media coverage. As SCP-XXXX resistance indicates a high CRV, any individuals found to have expressed an inability to perceive tornadoes either online or to media outlets are to be considered for potential recruitment.

Description:

SCP-XXXX is the capability of humans to perceive the extreme meteorological phenomenon commonly known as a "tornado", "twister" or "whirlwind". Whilst approximately 99% of Earth's population are able to observe tornadoes, individuals who possess a Cognitive Resistance Value of 10 or higher are entirely unable to recognize the visual or audible stimulus produced by a tornado. Given this fact, it is currently hypothesized that SCP-XXXX is somehow memetic or otherwise cognitohazardous in nature, although no single vector for infection has been identified at this time. SCP-XXXX resistance only prevents the direct viewing of tornadoes, as the stimuli produced all appear in images and recordings.

SCP-XXXX is highly resistant to standard Foundation anti-memetic treatment, and has only ever been successfully treated with the usage of Class-F amnestics to induce complete memory expungement, suggesting infection occurs extremely early in life. Furthermore, even in the single case in which SCP-XXXX was successfully treated, the subject was found to have been re-infected within minutes of experiencing human interaction. While the Foundation has so far largely been unable to treat SCP-XXXX infection, intelligence reports suggest that several Groups of Interest are aware of SCP-XXXX's existence and have had more success in treating it using methods unavailable or unknown to the Foundation.

The source of SCP-XXXX remains unknown as of the time of writing, but its creator is currently believed to be benevolent in nature, due to the exclusively positive effects of infection when compared to the elevated risk presented by tornadoes that humans cannot see or hear. However, the near-universal nature of SCP-XXXX's infection rate raises concerns that a Person or Group Of Interest with global reach and the capability to spread extremely powerful memetic effects on such a large scale is operating or has operated without the knowledge of the Foundation for an unknown amount of time. In addition, the fact that humans were only made aware of tornadoes after anomalous intervention may potentially suggest that tornadoes themselves are anomalous in origin.

Addendum-XXXX-A:

SCP-XXXX's existence was first brought to the attention of the Foundation on 07/08/98, When Dr. Martin Alfas contacted the Foundation from his residence near ████████, Texas to report the aggressive activities of what he believed to be a giant, invisible anomalous entity within sight of his home. Mobile Task Force Eta-5 ("Jäeger Bombers") was immediately deployed to subdue and contain the reported anomaly, but visually confirmed en route that the source of the destruction reported by Dr. Alfas was a tornado that local weather monitoring had failed to predict. However, Agent D. Maxson, a member of MTF Eta-5, was similarly unable to perceive the tornado. Records from tests taken by both Dr. Alfas and Agent Maxson during induction confirmed that both men possessed a CRV of over 10.

Following this event, Foundation personnel based at the nearby Site-73 undertook a number of field operations in which it was conclusively proven that humans with a CRV of 10 or higher were unable to perceive tornadoes. Whilst it was initially hypothesized that the inability to perceive tornadoes was in fact a minor anomalous property of high CRV individuals, further testing showed that tornadoes do not reflect light or produce sound waves, and that light waves entering the retinas do not carry images of tornadoes. This was taken as confirmation that the opposite was true, and that tornadoes were in fact naturally unperceivable. Due to the inherent danger involved in tests involving an active tornado, all testing of SCP-XXXX since has been performed using D-class personnel.

+ Please enter 05 Credentials.

05 MEMO ON SCP-XXXX: BACKGROUND AND STANDING PROCEDURE

If you're reading this, you're likely a new member of the council— given how often we argue about alternative containment procedures for this one, I can't imagine any of the current council really needs to read this brief. If so, I hope we got off on the right foot, and if you've replaced me, I hope you don't make whatever mistake I made. Now that's out the way, I'll get right down to it. Despite what the article claims, SCP-XXXX's creator has long since been identified; it was us. Originally, what we know today as a "tornado" was the anomaly we recorded in our database— an invisible, unobservable force that caused widespread destruction wherever it appeared. All attempts to contain the phenomenon failed, and no anomalous source could be determined.

Eventually, a containment procedure of sorts was devised, but it was one that would require the worldwide dissemination of memetic agents to assign an "image" to the phenomenon in the minds of the populace, with the secondary effect of convincing them they'd been seeing it all along. Ordinarily, the council would not be involved in the containment procedures of any single object, but given the scale of the action required, the matter was brought to us for a vote.

It took a little finagling to get -9 and -6 to agree, but when it came down to it the vote passed unanimously. Two years worth of production and preparation followed, enough time to ensure we had the ideal tool for our purposes. The agent used was specifically developed to circumvent our methods of identifying memetic contamination, in order to avoid it causing false positives, and is spread through the omnipresent sound of human breathing, in order to ensure universal saturation. It's weak by itself, hence the relatively low CRV required to resist it, but a lifetime of exposure ensures that it's rooted deep within the consciousness. At least, so I've been told. All members of the council were immunized as a precaution, so I've yet to actually see the image we decided a tornado should take. I've heard they're surprisingly beautiful for something so destructive.

Anyway, standing procedure for SCP-XXXX is as follows:

Research into potential origins for SCP-XXXX is to be allowed for the purposes of potentially identifying the origin for the anomaly now known as tornadoes, as well as any other groups of interest that may possess the capability to achieve worldwide memetic saturation. In order to maintain secrecy over the Foundation's own capability for achieving such, all research is to be terminated should any signs of it's involvement emerge. However, given how well we covered our tracks, any researched who is able to pull up a clue leading back to us should at least be considered for a promotion.

You know, it's funny. All this, and we still don't know what makes these things. We don't know if something directly causes them to form within the clouds, these formless forces of destruction, of if nature just spits them out by itself with no prodding required. I don't know which I would prefer, in truth.

This is getting far too long for what was meant to be a short brief, so I'll end it here. The council has considered more permanent methods of embedding the image of a tornado in mankind's mind, but no single option has managed to secure a majority yet, so this is the only solution for now.

— O5-5

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/15645075@N04/2573311130
License: CC BY 2.0