This audio drama explores the terrifying implications of biological mimicry, where an organism can perfectly replicate human cells at the molecular level, making detection nearly impossible through conventional means. The story demonstrates how such a threat would fundamentally break down social trust, as individuals cannot distinguish between genuine loved ones and their perfect copies. The narrative reveals that the most dangerous threat may not be an obvious monster, but something that appears exactly like your neighbor, family member, or friend while being fundamentally different at the cellular level. This concept connects to real scientific discussions about planetary protection and the challenges of detecting extraterrestrial life that might not resemble Earth organisms.
The Long Winter : The Thing ApocalypseAñadido:
Hello everyone. Before we drop into this week's video, I wanted to step in front of the camera just to put a face to this channel.
With everything floating around the internet these days, it's it's very easy to lose the human element. But I want to let you know that end times ambience isn't a machine turning out content.
It's just me obsessing over every line of dialogue, tweaking the audio until my ears ring, and pouring my love for classic horror, classic cinema into every single frame. In fact, this particular video was a real challenge for me. I ended up recording it and re-recording it and rewriting it four different times. Every time I thought I had a good story um and I listened to it, it it just didn't hit the mark. It it felt like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and and not like the the story I was going for. I didn't want a replacement story like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I wanted a a suffocating Lovecraftian cosmic dread. And more importantly, I wanted the terrifying breakdown of trust that you really got with John Carpenters the thing. And real quick, if you haven't seen John Carpenters's 1982 masterpiece, honestly, what are you doing? Stop this video right now and go watch it and come back. It is the absolute gold standard when it comes to survival horror.
Now, we all know there's never really been a proper sequel to The Thing. Um, so this is my attempt to play around in Mr. Carpenters's Frozen Sandbox.
Quick bit of housekeeping before we get started, you're going to hear some different voices than you're used to today. And to be completely transparent, dealing with YouTube's recent monetization hurdles has forced me to experiment and try out some new approaches for this channel, which you're going to see.
Honestly, I'm a little happy about some of it because it has allowed me to actually include listener voices in this week's broadcast. Um, so if you want the original version of this, um, I do have the director's cut up on my Patreon. It's got the voices you're used to hearing and, uh, but this is the version that's going to be on YouTube.
October 3rd, 2 a.m. I probably shouldn't be making this recording, but I need to document what I'm seeing here for my own sanity, if nothing else. The specimen arrived at 1900 hours tonight. Heavily classified. The transport team wouldn't tell me where it came from, just that it's been in cold storage for a few months and was recovered from Antarctica. The documentation is well, minimal. What I do know is this. The remains belong to a man named Ronald Jones McCriedi, recovered from an Antarctic research station that went dark over 40 years ago. The body's been preserved in ice this entire time. Near perfect condition. My director seems excited isn't the right word. Obsessed, maybe. He's been talking about this for weeks. We're keeping it in the sub-level containment vault. Temperature set to -40°.
Standard biological hazard measures in place. Though nobody's told me what exactly we're supposed to be hazarding against. The director wants to begin testing on Monday. Cellular analysis first, then tissue samples. He says this could be, and I'm quoting here, the most significant xenobiological discovery in human history. I asked him what makes this specimen so special. He just smiled and said I'd understand soon enough.
That's not exactly reassuring.
Good morning. It's Friday, October 5th, and you're listening to KMTN, serving the Greater Montana Valley region. I'm Leon Miller, and we've got a beautiful day ahead of us. Temperatures are expected to reach the mid60s this afternoon with clear skies through the weekend. Perfect weather for the fall festival, which kicks off tonight at 7:00 p.m. at the county fairgrounds.
Now, for those of you who haven't marked your calendars yet, this year's festival is shaping up to be something special.
We've got carnival rides, local vendors, and of course, the livestock exhibition that's been a tradition here for over 40 years. Speaking of livestock, congratulations are in order for the Kesler family ranch. Their prize heer, Bessie, took first place at the state fair last month. Tom Kesler tells me they'll be showing her off at the festival tomorrow afternoon. In other local news, the high school football team is preparing for their homecoming game next Friday. The team's looking strong this year, folks. Coach Reynolds says the boys have been training hard and they're ready to take on Central Valley. We'll have several of our star players at the festival tonight. They'll be signing autographs at the Booster Club booth from 8 to 9:00 p.m. Now, I know some of you are wondering about the road construction on Highway 12. Good news there. The county crews finished up yesterday afternoon, so you'll have clear access to the fairgrounds from all directions. A quick reminder for our listeners, the town is fairly isolated out here. As many of you know, we're about 60 mi from the nearest major city, surrounded by ranch land and farmland in every direction. It's one of the things that makes this community so special. We take care of each other here. We know our neighbors, and this weekend, we're going to celebrate that the way we do best together. That's all for this hour.
Stay tuned for weather and traffic updates at the top of the hour. This is Leon Miller reminding you to support your local businesses and we'll see you at the festival.
Friday night, October 5th. My therapist said I should try audio journaling for the anxiety. Apparently, talking out loud helps more than writing things down. So, here goes nothing. Ellie's coming into town tonight for the fall festival. My sister, I mean, she works at some government research lab about an hour away. She doesn't talk about it much. Says it's classified work, boring stuff mostly. I'm trying not to be nervous about seeing her. It's been what, 6 months? We talk on the phone, but it's not the same. She's always so focused on her work.
Sometimes I wonder if she even remembers what it's like to just relax. Mom's arthritis has been acting up again. She won't admit it, but I can see it in the way she holds her hands. Dad keeps telling her to take it easy, but you know how she is stubborn. I'm hoping this weekend will be good for all of us.
A chance to just be together, you know.
No stress, no work talk, just family time at the festival. Okay, I should probably head out soon. Ellie's supposed to get in around 8. We're all going to the festival together.
Good evening. It is 7:30 on this clear October Friday and we are coming to you live from the Mil Haven County Fairgrounds. I'm Leon Miller for KMTN News and the fall festival is officially underway. The turnout tonight is something else. Families covering every corner of these grounds. Kids running with cotton candy. The whole fairground lit up warm against the evening sky.
This is exactly the kind of night that reminds you what a tight community Mil Haven truly is. Let's get out to the livestock exhibition area now where our field reporter Claire Wright is standing by with Tom Kesler of the Kesler Ranch.
Bomb's prize heer Bessie took first place at the state fair in Helena last month and I understand she has been drawing quite a crowd tonight. Claire, how are things looking out there?
>> It is a perfect night out here Leon. I'm with Tom Kesler just inside the livestock barn and Bessie has honestly been the star of the whole exhibition since the gates opened. Tom, congratulations on Helena. What does a night like this mean for the ranch?
>> Well, it means a great deal, Claire. My father started this ranch and we've been bringing animals to this festival for going on 20ome years now. To have Bessie recognized the way she has been, that's something the whole family can be proud of. The grandkids are over at the fun house right now and the wife and I are planning to catch the band from Billings later. So, the whole evening just feels like >> Tom. Tom, I'm sorry. I have to stop you right there. Leon, there is screaming coming from somewhere on the east side of these grounds. I apologize, Mr. Kesler.
>> Claire, what exactly are you hearing?
Can you describe it?
>> I'm moving right now. I'm crossing the midway and okay, there are a lot of people running directly at me from the carnival side. A lot of people. The screaming is getting louder the closer I get. It is continuous. It is not stopping. Sir. Sir, I need one second.
I'm with KMTN News. I need to know what happened over there. Sir, please. We were We were in line, me and my daughter. And something something came through the wall in there. I don't know what it was. I don't It came through the wall and it went after those kids near the back. Those football kids. It just We ran. I had to pull her out. She's six years old.
>> What do you mean? It came through the What? Attacked them. Sir, what did you see?
>> I don't know. I don't know what I saw.
There were kids on the ground in there.
I couldn't I had my daughter in my arms.
I need to find my wife. Please let go of my arm.
>> He He just pulled away. Leon, I'm about 40 yard from the funhouse entrance now.
Security has coured in the whole perimeter and there is blood on the pavement. I can see it from here clearly coming from the exit. There are people down in front of that entrance. Multiple people not moving.
>> Claire, if security waves you back, you go back. Stay on the line and keep us updated. Folks, we are tracking a serious incident at the Mil Haven Fall Festival. If you are on those grounds right now, please follow all instructions from security and emergency personnel immediately. Move toward the exits. Stay calm. We can confirm a serious incident has occurred at the county fairgrounds tonight. We do not have confirmed numbers. We are not going to speculate. We are going to take a short break and we will be right back with more information as it comes to us.
This is Leon Miller for KMTN News.
Please stay with us.
All right, listen to me. I need you to listen very carefully to what I'm about to tell you because they don't want you to know this. They've been hiding it for over 40 years. 1982, Thu Station, Antarctica, Norwegian Research Facility.
12 scientists stationed there conducting routine geological surveys, or so they said. December 23rd, the entire station goes dark. No communication, nothing.
International rescue teams are dispatched. And when they get there, what do they find? The entire facility burned to the ground. Bodies everywhere.
Some of them, and I'm reading directly from the recovered documents here, some of them weren't recognizable as human anymore. The official story, equipment malfunction, fire broke out, people panicked, tragedy ensued, case closed, move along. Nothing to see here. But here's what they're not telling you. 3 days before the fire, the Norwegian team reported finding something in the ice. A large object, metallic composition. They were in the process of excavating it when communications went dark. Now, why am I bringing this up tonight? Because I've been digging and I found documents, classified documents that were supposed to be destroyed decades ago. These documents detail a recovery operation, code named Project Frost. American forces were dispatched to Thu Station immediately after the fire. They recovered biological samples, tissue samples, frozen remains. And here's where it gets interesting. Those samples were transported to a secure facility in the continental United States. The location, the documents mention something else. They mention a name. RJ McCriedi, American researcher who was stationed at a nearby outpost, outpost 31. That outpost also destroyed by fire.
Same week, same circumstances. Bodies burned beyond recognition. And McCriedi, listed as missing, presumed dead. But here's what doesn't add up. If McGreedy was presumed dead, why are there references to his remains being recovered? Why are there logs detailing the transport of his body to a secure facility? And why, after 40 years of silence, are there suddenly new documents being generated? Recent documents from this year, something's happening, something they're trying to keep quiet. But I'm going to find out what it is. I'm going to dig deeper. I'm going to connect the dots because whatever happened at Duel Station, whatever they found in that ice, it didn't stay buried. They brought it back. They're studying it and we're all in danger because of it. Stay vigilant.
Stay informed. Don't trust the official narrative. I'll be back tomorrow with more.
Heat. Heat.
October 4th, 11 p.m. I just got back to the facility. I couldn't sleep. I had to see if what the director told me was real. This morning, he ordered my greedy's left arm removed from the main specimen. The amputation was clean, surgical. Then he had it placed in a containment cage with a live chimpanzee.
I thought it was insane. I told him that. He just smiled and said, "Watch what happens." The arm vanished overnight, just gone. The chimp is still alive, moving around normally, eating.
But the blood tests, the blood tests are showing something impossible. The strange cells we saw in McCriedes are now inside the chimp, replicating. It's like the chip absorbed the cells somehow. I asked the director how this is possible. He said it's not mccriedi's cells. It's something McCriedi came into contact with. Something that copied him down to the cellular level. The security footage from the cage has been disabled.
The director says it malfunctioned. I don't believe that for a second. I need to get out of here. I need to clear my head. I need to go home. I need to see my family. I'll feel normal again.
Heat.
Heat.
Good morning. It's Saturday, October 6th, and I'm Leon Miller. We're bringing you continuing coverage of last night's tragedy at the county fairgrounds. What was supposed to be a celebration of our community has turned into a night of mourning. Three young men are dead. Two more are in critical condition at the county hospital. And this morning, we're still trying to understand what happened. The victims have been identified as Tim Rigggins, Brian Williams, and Jason Street. All three were members of our high school football team, seniors, young men with their whole lives ahead of them. The two students in critical condition are Tyler Brooks and Josh Martinez. Their families have asked for privacy during this difficult time. We're respecting that request. According to preliminary reports from the sheriff's office, there was a structural collapse at the Funhouse attraction around 8:15 last night. The exact cause of the collapse is still under investigation. We have Sheriff Preston Kennedy standing by.
Sheriff, thank you for joining us this morning. I know it's been a long night for you and your department.
>> Leon, first let me say our hearts go out to the families of these young men. This is a terrible tragedy for our entire community. Can you tell us what your investigation has revealed so far?
>> What we know is that the funhouse was a temporary structure set up specifically for the festival. It appears there were structural deficiencies that led to a partial collapse of the interior framework. The five young men were inside when this occurred. They became trapped. By the time emergency services were able to extract them, three had already succumbed to their injuries.
Sheriff, there were eyewitness accounts last night of, well, unusual circumstances, reports of strange sounds, disturbing visuals. Can you address those reports, >> Leon? What people saw was a chaotic situation in low light conditions. The funhouse had special effects, strobe lights, fog machines, animatronic displays. When the structure failed, those systems malfunctioned. People were frightened. Understandably so. In that kind of environment, it's easy to misinterpret what you're seeing. We've interviewed multiple witnesses and their accounts vary significantly.
>> Sheriff, I need to ask this directly.
Are you confident this was an accident, just a tragic structural failure?
>> Leon, I understand people are looking for answers. They want to make sense of this. But yes, based on everything we've seen, this appears to be a terrible accident caused by inadequate construction standards. We're bringing in state inspectors to examine the carnival equipment. We're reviewing the permits and safety certifications. We're going to find out exactly what happened and who's responsible.
>> What can you tell us about the condition of the two survivors?
>> They're both in critical but stable condition at the county hospital. Both suffered significant trauma. The medical staff is doing everything they can.
>> Will there be any restrictions on movement in or out of town? Any ongoing safety concerns for residents?
>> No, absolutely not. The fairgrounds have been closed and cordoned off for the investigation, but there's no ongoing threat to public safety. People can go about their normal activities.
>> Sheriff Kennedy, thank you for your time. We know you have a lot of work ahead of you.
>> Thank you, Leon. And again, our deepest condolences to the families.
>> We're going to go live now to Claire Wright, who's at the high school where a memorial is being organized. Claire, what are you seeing?
>> Leon, I'm standing in front of the high school where students and faculty have started gathering. Behind me, you can see people placing flowers, candles, photos of the boys. There are a lot of tears here this morning. Parents hugging their children. Teachers trying to comfort students who are just devastated. Tim Rigggins, Brian Williams, Jason Street. These weren't just athletes. They were friends, classmates, sons, brothers. The principal has announced that grief counselors will be available all week.
There's also talk of cancing next Friday's homecoming game out of respect.
>> Claire, have you had a chance to speak with any of the students?
>> A few. Yes. They're struggling to process this. One girl told me she was supposed to go to the festival with Brian last night, but she stayed home because she wasn't feeling well. She can't stop thinking about that decision.
Leon, this is a small town. Everyone knows everyone. These boys, they were part of the fabric of this community.
The loss is being felt by absolutely everyone.
>> Thank you, Claire. Please stay safe out there. We'll check back with you later this morning. Once again, three young men lost their lives last night in what authorities are calling a structural collapse at the county fairgrounds. Two others remain in critical condition.
We'll continue to follow this story throughout the day. If you have information that might be helpful to investigators, please contact the sheriff's office. This is Leon Miller with KMTN News. We'll be right back.
Welcome back to the long game. I'm Malcolm Kennedy. My guest today is Dr. Will Winyers who teaches xenobiology and astrobiology over at Montana State. He's been on the show before talking about the search for extraterrestrial life and I wanted to have him back. Will, welcome.
>> Always good to be here. I appreciate the invitation.
>> I want to do something a little different today. I want to go through alien types from movies and I want your honest scientific take on each one. How plausible is this? What does real science say? You willing to do that?
>> Absolutely. I love this kind of thing.
It's actually a great way to talk about what we know and what we don't know cuz Hollywood gets some things surprisingly right and some things completely wrong.
All right, before we start to anyone listening, we are about to spoil a lot of classic sci-fi movies. If you have a problem with that, I recommend you just fast forward several minutes. This is your only warning. Now, let's start with the obvious one. Star Wars, Star Trek, the whole universe full of humanoids thing. Every alien has two arms, two legs, walks upright, usually has a face that could pass for a distant cousin.
How realistic is that?
>> Almost certainly not realistic. The humanoid form evolved through billions of years of very specific environmental pressures, gravity, atmosphere, predators, none of which would match another planet. For another world to produce something that looks like us, it would need a near identical evolutionary history. Star Trek actually has an in universe explanation. An ancient species seated life across the galaxy, which is a clever way to handwave the problem.
>> But here's the thing about Star Wars specifically. The main characters are basically human- shaped. Yes. But then you walk into the cantina at most Eley and it's a completely different story.
Multiple eyes on stalks, insect bodies, walrus faces, a guy that's basically a giant head on a tiny body. It feels like whoever designed that scene said, "This is what a spaceport would actually look like." The cantina contradicts the rest of the franchise, and that's what makes it interesting. Radically different body plans, non-bilateral symmetry, sensory organs, and unexpected configurations.
That's far closer to what we'd expect if life evolved independently on dozens of different worlds. Bilateral symmetry is common on Earth because it helps with locomotion and predator detection.
That's an Earth's solution to an Earth problem. An organism from a different gravity environment might have four or six axes of symmetry, or none at all.
Okay, so humanoids probably not.
Cantina, more likely. Let's go to the other end of the spectrum. The xenomorphs from Alien. Pure predator.
Biological killing machine. No interest in communication. No civilization. Just hunt and reproduce. More in the ballpark than you'd think. Not the acid blood or the second jaw that's Hollywood. But an organism that evolved as a hyperefficient predator with a reproductive cycle that uses other species as hosts. We have organisms on Earth that do versions of that. The ofiocortisps fungus which hijacks ant behavior. Parasitic wasps that lay eggs inside other insects. The xenomorph is an extreme extrapolation of real biological strategies which is horrifying. Let me add one to that category. Starship troopers. The bugs.
Giant insecttoids. Hive mind defending their territory from human expansion.
What I've always found interesting is the movie kind of makes you wonder halfway through who the real aggressors are. That moral ambiguity is one of the more thoughtful things about that film.
Scientifically, the hive mind concept is one of the most credible alien models we have. You social insects on Earth already operate as distributed intelligences. The colony makes decisions that no individual member could make alone. Scale that up over billions of years and you get something that thinks on time scales. Individual human consciousness simply can't track.
The coordination would look almost like precognition from the outside.
>> Let's talk invasion signs. Mem Knight Shyalan. Aliens come all the way across the galaxy and it turns out they're allergic to water on a planet that is 70% water. I know everyone dunks on that, but is a hostile resource-driven invasion a realistic threat scenario?
The water thing is indefensible, but the invasion premise. Hawking argued until his death that contact with a more advanced civilization would likely be dangerous for us, drawing the analogy to European and indigenous contact. The concern isn't malice, it's indifference.
A civilization that needs resources might strip mine a planet without a second thought about what was living there. The same way we clear forests without losing sleep over the beetles.
Where the beetles that connects to War of the Worlds, the HG Wells version.
Martians invade, annihilate everything, and then get killed by Earth bacteria.
The common cold finishes what the military couldn't. That ending always struck me as either the most anticlimactic thing in science fiction or the most realistic. It's one of the most scientifically credible endings in all of science fiction. Microbial contamination is a genuine concern in real planetary science. NASA has an entire office dedicated to planetary protection. An invading species that evolved in a radically different microbial environment would have zero resistance to organisms our bodies manage without effort. Wells wrote that in 1898. And the biology is held up.
>> They remade it recently. The new one with Ice Cube. I watched it so you don't have to. They kept the bacteria ending, but somewhere in the middle they added a subplot where Ice Cube figures out how to fight the Martians based on street instincts. And somehow that worked where the entire military had failed. The Martians who survived interstellar travel were apparently not prepared for that specific variable.
>> I'll take your word for it. In fairness, the bacteria angle is always more interesting than the military angle.
Anyway, >> the most diplomatic review of a bad movie I have ever heard. All right, let's go to the opposite end of the tone spectrum. Close encounters of the third kind. The aliens in that one aren't aggressive at all. They don't invade.
They're just curious, communicating through music. Returning abductees they took decades earlier. Almost gentle. Is that a plausible type?
>> I think Close Encounters is one of the more scientifically interesting depictions, even if the little gray men design is cliche. The core idea that an intelligence advanced enough to cross interstellar distances might have evolved beyond aggression is not unreasonable. Any civilization that survives long enough to reach that level has presumably learned to manage its own destructive impulses. They might have no interest in us beyond the way we'd be interested in an unusual ant colony. An ant colony. Humbling. What about contact? Jodie Foster. Radio telescope.
Mathematical signal from 26 light years away. That one always feels more grounded to me than Close Encounters somehow. Like it's less about spectacle and more about the actual mechanics of how First Contact might work. Contact is probably the most scientifically accurate depiction of first contact on film. The mathematical approach, prime numbers, and universal constants as the basis for communication is almost exactly how SETI researchers think about this problem. If you want to communicate with something that shares no biology or language, mathematics is the only universal grammar. That patience, that indifference to time feels more real than a ship that just shows up in orbit.
>> Speaking of indifference to time, Interstellar. The beings in that film have evolved entirely beyond our dimensional framework. They perceive time as a physical space they can move through. Cooper behind the bookshelf, sending messages to his daughter across decades. Is that scientifically anything?
>> It's the most speculative category and also the most fascinating. There's legitimate theoretical physics discussion about consciousness existing in configurations beyond three spatial dimensions. If a civilization had billions of years more development than us, it's not physically impossible that they'd interact with reality in ways that look like magic to us. Beings that experience time as a navigable dimension would seem to us to predict the future and communicate across centuries. The physics the film is extrapolating from are real.
>> That's simultaneously the most hopeful and the most humbling version of what could be out there.
Okay, now I want to get into the category I think is most underrated.
Invasion of the body snatchers. Pods that grow copies of people while they sleep. Perfect on the outside, but no emotion, no warmth, no memory of what it actually loved. Body snatchers is interesting because the pods don't replicate the mind. They replicate the body. And the consciousness either follows imperfectly or doesn't follow at all. Copy a brain perfectly. Do you copy the consciousness inside it? We don't know. But what the film captures brilliantly is the social detection mechanism. It's not appearance that betrays the copies, its behavioral signals, the slightly off timing, the absence of warmth at a moment when warmth should be there. We evolved to be sensitive to those deviations because reading the person across from you is a survival advantage, which connects to Edge of Tomorrow, cuz aliens in that film are literally called the mimics.
They're not body snatchers. They're a hive mind that's figured out how to reset a time loop every time they're about to lose a battle. Tom Cruz keeps dying and waking up at the start of the same day, and the mimics just keep adapting. The human military has no idea what it's actually fighting.
>> The strategic incomprehensibility in that film is one of the more realistic elements of any alien war movie. We assume any conflict would be fought on terms we'd recognize, lines, objectives, attrition. But an alien intelligence would have goals and constraints that map onto nothing in our experience. If the mimics can access information from future iterations of a battle, they're not playing the same game at all. You could be fighting something for years and never understand what it actually wants. Which is the perfect segue to the type that really keeps me up at night.
The biological shape shifter. Something that doesn't come in a spaceship.
Something that gets inside. Something that looks exactly like your neighbor, your wife, your dog. Is that scientifically grounded at all?
>> This is actually the type I find most scientifically compelling. and also the most unsettling to think about seriously. We tend to assume that intelligence and technology go hand in hand. But that's an earth ccentric assumption. What if the survival strategy of a particular organism wasn't to build tools, but to become better at copying other life forms? Instead of evolving a brain that builds a weapon, it evolves cellular machinery that replicates the genetic material of whatever it encounters.
>> So instead of a predator that eats you, it's a predator that becomes you.
>> Exactly. And what makes that particularly disturbing is the detection problem. A xenomorph, you know, when you see it, a ship full of invaders, you can at least point to the ship. But something that perfectly replicates the person standing next to you. Your immune system doesn't flag it. Your eyes don't flag it. Your history with that person doesn't flag it. The only thing that gives it away is catching it mid-process or running a test at the cellular level.
>> And what does it want in your scientific model? What is the goal? Is it intelligent? Does it have a plan?
>> It might not have a goal in the way we understand the word. It might simply be doing what it evolved to do. The same way a virus doesn't plan to make you sick. It just replicates. But if it assimilates intelligent organisms, it absorbs that intelligence along with everything else. Every skill, every memory, every social behavior used purely in service of continuing to spread an effective infiltrator without ever intending to be one.
>> Without intending to. That's scarier to me than if it had a plan. A plan you can counter, instinct you can't negotiate with. So, out of everything we've covered, cantina aliens, predators, hive minds, benevolent types, invaders, mimics, which do you think is most likely if we ever make contact? If I had to pick, I think the most likely first contact is something we don't have a movie for yet. something microbial, a bacterium from a Martian subsurface ocean, or an organic molecule on an asteroid that doesn't fit our chemistry, the universe is mostly small and quiet.
But if we're talking about a civilization that has figured out interstellar travel, the mimic model deserves the most serious attention, precisely because it's the hardest to defend against and the easiest to underestimate.
>> And on that cheerful note, Dr. for Will Winters. Everybody, this has been one of my favorite conversations we've had on this show, and I mean that. Will, where can people find your work, any papers, any lectures, anything coming up?
>> I have a lecture series running at Montana State through the fall, open to the public on the first Thursday of every month, and I write occasionally for the Astrobiology Institute's online journal, which is free to read. Thanks for having me.
>> Always a pleasure. All right, folks.
That is going to do it for today. Links to Will's work are down in the description. If you enjoyed this one, hit subscribe, leave a review, all that stuff. I'm Malcolm Kennedy. This is The Long Game. We'll see you next time.
Heat. Heat.
It's 3:00 in the morning. I'm Ethan Dawson and you're listening to Night Talk. The phone lines are open. I want to hear from you. I know most of you are calling about what happened at the festival. Three kids are dead. The official story is structural collapse, but I'm hearing whispers of something else. Something the authorities aren't talking about. Let's go to line one.
You're on the air. State your name and where you're calling from.
>> Yeah. Hi, my name's Chris. I'm calling from Well, I'm local.
>> Welcome to the show, Chris. What's on your mind tonight? I was there at the festival. I was standing maybe 20 ft from the fun house when when it happened. I heard screaming from inside.
Not normal screaming. The kind that makes your blood run cold. And then I saw I saw something come through the wall.
>> What'd you see, Chris? Like >> tentacles. I know how that sounds. I know. But that's what I saw. These things reaching out through the broken wall. wet, glistening, moving like they were alive. And the smell, God, the smell was like nothing I've ever experienced. Rotten meat mixed with something chemical.
>> Chris, I appreciate you calling in, but you have to understand, you were in a traumatic situation. Low light, chaos, fear. The mind can play tricks.
>> I know what I saw. I'm not crazy.
>> I'm not saying you're crazy, Chris. I'm just saying there might be a more rational explanation. Thank you for calling. Let's go to line two. You're on night talk.
>> Hi, my name is Mia. I I knew Tim Rigggins, one of the boys who died.
>> I'm very sorry for your loss, Mia.
>> He was such a good kid. He had a scholarship to play football at the state university. He was supposed to graduate in the spring, get out of this town, make something of himself, and now he's gone because of some cheap carnival ride. Because somebody cut corners on safety. It's not right.
>> You're absolutely right, Mia. It's not right. And I hope the investigation brings some answers for you and the other families.
>> I just I can't stop thinking about it.
Those boys, they were just kids.
>> Thank you for sharing that with us, Mia.
Take care of yourself. Line three, you're up. Go ahead.
>> Yeah, Albert here. And I'm calling to say this whole thing stinks. The town council signed off on these carnival permits without proper inspections.
Everybody knows that they wanted the festival revenue. They didn't care about safety standards. And now three kids are dead because of it.
>> Albert, those are serious accusations.
Do you have evidence of negligence?
>> I've lived in this town my whole life. I know how things work. Permits get rubber stamped. Inspections get skipped. And when something goes bad, everybody points fingers at each other. Somebody needs to be held accountable, not just the Carnival Company, the people who let this happen.
>> I hear your frustration, Albert, and I think a lot of people share it. Thanks for the call. All right, we're going to take a short break. When we come back, more of your calls. This is Night Talk.
Heat. Heat.
Heat.
Heat.
Good afternoon. It's Saturday, 400 p.m.
and we're continuing our coverage of what's becoming an increasingly troubling situation in our community.
I'm Leon Miller. Within the last hour, we've received reports of a violent incident at the County Moore. the same facility where the bodies of Tim Rigggins, Brian Williams, and Jason Street are being held. Details are still emerging, but what we know is deeply concerning. At approximately 2:30 this afternoon, morg staff reported what they're calling a containment breach.
Emergency services were dispatched. The building has been evacuated and sealed.
We're still waiting for an official statement from the sheriff's office, but off the record, sources are telling us that at least one morg attendant was injured, possibly killed. Now, I want to be clear, we don't have confirmation of that. What we do have is a morg that's been locked down, police everywhere, and a lot of people asking questions that aren't being answered. There's something else we need to talk about. Over the past 6 hours, police have conducted an unusual number of wellness checks across town. We're talking about dozens of calls from concerned family members.
People are reporting that their loved ones are acting strangely, not responding to questions, behaving in ways that seem, and I'm quoting here, off. Authorities are attributing this to community trauma. The festival tragedy hit us hard. Tim Rigggins, Brian Williams, Jason Street, three kids dead.
People are grieving. Stress manifest in different ways. But I've lived in this town my entire life. I've covered disasters before. fires, floods, accidents, and I've never seen this kind of coordinated behavioral change. We have Sarah Valentine with us now. She's the director of the county hospital.
Sarah, thank you for joining us on such short notice.
>> Of course, Leon, I wish I had better news to share.
>> Can you tell us anything about the Morg incident? Are the bodies of the three football players secure?
>> I'm not at liberty to discuss the specifics. The investigation is ongoing.
What I can say is that we're implementing new security measures at all hospital facilities.
>> Security measures at a hospital.
>> It's a precautionary step, nothing more.
>> Sarah, there are reports that the two survivors from the Funhouse incident are missing from their hospital rooms. Can you confirm that?
>> I I can't comment on the status of individual patients. Privacy regulations prevent me from discussing their conditions or whereabouts.
>> But you're not denying it, >> Leon. I understand your frustration. I understand the community wants answers.
But right now, we're dealing with a situation that's evolving.
>> Evolving how?
>> I'm recommending that if you see anyone acting strangely. If someone you know seems different, contact the authorities immediately. Don't wait. Don't assume it's just stress or grief.
>> What kind of symptoms are we talking about?
>> Watch for changes in behavior, inconsistencies in their memory. if they don't recognize places they should know, any unexplained physical changes. I know this sounds vague. I wish I could be more specific, but please, if someone close to you doesn't seem right, if they're not themselves, report it.
>> Sarah, you're scaring people.
>> I'm trying to keep them safe. Leon, there's a difference.
>> Is there something you're not telling us? Something the authorities know that we don't?
>> I've told you everything I'm authorized to share. I'm sorry I can't give you more than that.
>> Sarah Valentine, director of the county hospital. Thank you for your time, folks. I'm going to be honest with you.
I don't know what's happening in this town. Less than 24 hours ago, we were celebrating a festival. Now we have deaths, missing patients, a sealed morg, and public health warnings that don't make sense. If you're listening to this broadcast, please stay alert. Check on your neighbors. Trust your instincts. If something feels off, it probably is.
We're going to continue monitoring the situation. We'll bring you updates as we receive them. This is Leon Miller with KMTN News. Stay safe out there.
Saturday afternoon. I don't know what time it is. Maybe 3:00, 4:00. Ellie's here. She got in last night around 9:00.
We went to the festival together, but we left early before before everything happened. She's sitting in the living room right now with mom and dad. The news is on. They're talking about the kids who died, three of them. Tyler and Josh are missing from the hospital. I keep looking at Ellie. She's not reacting. Not to any of it. Mom's crying. Dad shaking his head and Ellie's just sitting there staring at the screen. I asked her if she was okay. She turned to me and smiled. It wasn't It wasn't right. The timing was off. Like she had to think about it first. She works at a lab, high stress job, classified research. Maybe that's it.
Maybe she's just compartmentalizing, shutting down emotionally to deal with the trauma. That makes sense, right?
She's always been the logical one, the scientist. Cold facts over emotions. But there's something else. These little moments. She blinks too slowly. She tilts her head at weird angles when people talk to her, like she's analyzing them. I'm probably just being paranoid.
The therapist warned me about this.
Anxiety makes you see patterns that aren't there. Makes you question everything. She's my sister. She's fine.
Everything's fine.
Good morning, brothers and sisters.
Please be seated. I know many of you are hurting this morning. We've lost three of our young people. Their families are here with us, and we hold them in our hearts. In times like these, it's natural to feel afraid, to feel uncertain, to wonder where God is in all of this suffering. I want to read to you from the Gospel of Mark 5:9.
Jesus encounters a man possessed by demons. And when Jesus asks the demon its name, it replies, "My name is Legion, for we are many, Legion, a multitude, an overwhelming force." This man wasn't possessed by a single demon.
He was consumed by countless voices, countless fears, countless sources of pain. And yet, what does Jesus do? He doesn't run. He doesn't abandon this broken man. He casts out the legion. He restores the man to himself. He brings him back to his community. We are facing our own legion right now. Not demons in the spiritual sense, but demons of fear, of grief, of uncertainty. These voices are loud. They tell us we're alone. They tell us we can't trust each other. But I'm here to tell you that's a lie. We are not alone. We are together. This community, this family of faith, we stand with one another. When the Legion of Fear comes for you, and it will remember this, you have brothers and sisters who will stand beside you. You have a God who will not abandon you. You have hope even in the darkest valley. I know there are strange things happening.
I've heard the reports. I've seen the fear in your eyes. Some of you are wondering if your neighbors are who they say they are. If your loved ones are acting differently, trauma changes people. Grief changes people. That doesn't mean they've become something else. It means they're hurting and they need our love, not our suspicion. So, here's what I'm asking you to do. Cast out the legion of fear. Replace it with love. Check on your neighbors. Feed those who are hungry. Comfort those who are mourning. Be the presence of Christ in a world that's falling apart. Because that's what we're called to do. Not to hide, not to retreat, but to stand together. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you in our brokenness.
We're afraid. We're confused. We don't understand what's happening around us.
But we trust in your goodness. We trust that you're with us even when we can't see you. Strengthen our hearts. Give us courage. Help us to love one another well in Jesus's name. Amen. Go in peace, brothers and sisters. And remember, we are many, but we are one.
Good evening. It's 11:00 p.m. Saturday night. I'm going to share information that's difficult to hear, but you need to know what's happening in this town. 2 hours ago, there were incidents at the county hospital. Multiple incidents. I'm telling you what I know. At approximately 8:45 p.m., Dr. Juliet Burke was conducting rounds on the third floor. She entered a patient room to check vitals. According to Dr. Burke's written statement, the patient was conscious, sitting upright in bed, but his eyes were dilated unevenly. She asked if he needed anything. He didn't answer, just stared at her. When he stood and walked toward her, that's when she noticed. His fingers were already elongated, stretched like they'd been pulled while the bone was soft, and his jaw, it hung open too wide, not dislocated, unhinged. She described the sound he made. A low scream, constant, like someone screaming underwater, but the sound was coming from deep in his chest. and underneath that wet clicking, multiple joints popping all at once. She said he moved like his skeleton wasn't connected properly anymore. He turned toward the window, fourth floor window.
He jumped straight through the glass.
Security found the window shattered.
Blood on the glass, but when they checked the ground below, nothing. No body, no blood trail. A four-story fall onto concrete. And whatever that thing was got up and walked away. At approximately 9:15 p.m., morg attendant Charlie Pace heard sounds coming from one of the storage units, the unit containing the body of Brian Williams, one of the three boys who died at the fun house. Mr. Pace opened the drawer.
The body was moving, not twitching, moving with purpose. The torso split open down the sternum. He described tentacles emerging from the chest cavity, multiple appendages. Reaching, he ran, sealed the morg door from the outside, called security. By the time security arrived with fire suppression equipment, the thing had forced its way out through an air vent. They found torn metal, no trace of where it went. We have Sarah Valentine with us now. Sarah, what can you tell us about the hospital's response?
>> Leon, we've implemented emergency containment measures. We're conducting floor byfloor sweeps. All patients are being visually identified by staff who know them personally. Anyone exhibiting physical anomalies is being quarantined in the burn ward where we have access to the fire suppression system.
>> How many cases are we talking about?
>> As of right now, four confirmed, 12 under observation. But Leon, the rate of change is accelerating.
>> Thank you, Sarah. Sheriff Preston Kennedy is with us now. Sheriff, what's the official response? Leon, I've spent the last 3 hours on the phone with Governor Patterson and the CDC. We're implementing a federal emergency declaration effective midnight tonight.
>> What does that mean for our town?
>> Total quarantine. Military perimeter around the entire town. Nobody in, nobody out. This is a containment situation.
>> Containment of what exactly?
>> The CDC is calling it an unknown biological agent. possibly a rapidly mutating pathogen. What I can tell you is that it's transmissible through direct contact with infected individuals. We've had seven civilians try to leave town in the last hour. All of them showed signs of infection.
Behavioral changes, physical anomalies, state police intercepted them at the county line. Three are in custody. Four had to be neutralized with fire.
>> What kind of resources are we looking at? Governor Patterson has activated the National Guard. We're expecting two companies by dawn. The CDC is sending a hazmat team and mobile lab. Federal authorities are establishing a command center at the high school. All local law enforcement will be reporting to a unified command structure. And Leon, this is important. We're implementing mandatory curfew starting at 6:00 a.m.
tomorrow. Anyone on the streets will be detained for medical evaluation. Medical evaluation meaning what?
>> Blood testing. Physical examination.
Visual identification by multiple witnesses who knew the subject before this started.
>> How many people are currently unaccounted for?
>> 41 as of 10 p.m. All of them were either at the festival, treated at the hospital, or had direct contact with someone who was the two who escaped the hospital tonight are now considered extremely dangerous. If you see them, do not approach. Call 911.
>> Sheriff Preston Kennedy, thank you for the information. If you're watching this, please understand the authorities are doing everything they can, but this situation is evolving rapidly. We'll continue broadcasting as long as we're able. This is Leon Miller. Stay safe.
October 4th, 300 p.m. I need to I need to document this. My hands are shaking so badly I can barely hold the recorder.
I was in the women's restroom on sub level two just washing my hands. That's when I saw them on the floor. Earrings, gold hoops, covered in blood. I recognized them immediately. Dr. Marian Roberts. She always wore those earrings.
Every single day I heard something from the third stall. Wet sounds tearing and then screaming. Marian's voice, but distorted like it was coming from somewhere deep inside her. I should have run. I should have called security, but I didn't. I pushed the stall door open.
Marion was changing. Her body was splitting open. her face, her arms, everything was pulling apart like wet fabric. And underneath there were these tentacles, dozens of them. They reached for me. I ran. I slammed the bathroom door and screamed for help. Security came. Cleanup crews in full hazmat suits. They burned it. Right there in the bathroom. I could smell it from the hallway. Burning flesh and something else. Something chemical. The director pulled me into his office, told me the facility is on total lockdown. Nobody in, nobody out. He said this was expected, that they knew this could happen. I asked him what Marion was.
What turned her into that thing? He just looked at me and said, "She isn't Marion anymore. I need to get out of here. I need to leave, but they won't let anyone go. They're saying it's for our own safety." I don't believe them.
This This is KMTN News. It's Sunday morning, 7 a.m., and I'm Leam Miller, bringing you what can only be described as a developing crisis. Overnight, federal authorities have established a complete quarantine of our town. The CDC, in coordination with military personnel, has closed all access roads.
No one is being allowed in or out or out. I need to be very clear about what this means. If you're planning to leave town for work tomorrow, you can't. If you have family members who are planning to visit, they won't be able to get through. We are completely isolated. The official statement cites a potential biological contamination event. They're calling it a precautionary measure. But folks, I've been doing this job for 30 years and I've never seen anything like this. Claire Wright is at the southern barricade where residents are gathering.
Claire, what's the situation there?
Leon, I'm standing about 50 yards from a military checkpoint. Behind me, there are maybe two dozen vehicles, people trying to leave. They're being turned back. I can see armed soldiers in full hazmat gear. The road is blocked with concrete barriers and military vehicles.
There's absolutely no way through.
People are getting out of their cars demanding answers. The soldiers aren't engaging. They're just pointing back toward town and telling everyone to return home.
>> Have you been able to speak with anyone in authority? They're directing all questions to a Colonel Arthur Rodman.
He's supposed to be giving a statement shortly. Leon, people are scared.
They're angry. They want to know what's happening.
>> We all do, Claire. Stay safe out there.
We'll check back with you in a few minutes. I'm receiving word that Colonel Rodman is available now for a brief statement. Colonel, thank you for joining us. Can you explain what's happening here?
>> Mr. Miller, I understand this is concerning for your community. Let me be direct. We've identified a potential biological hazard within the town limits. The quarantine is in place to protect both the residents here and the wider population.
>> What kind of biological hazard?
>> I'm not authorized to provide specific details at this time. What I can tell you is that CDC teams are conducting assessments. We're working to identify the source and contain any potential spread. Colonel, we've had three deaths at the festival, a violent incident at the Moore, reports of unusual behavior across town. Are these events connected to this biological hazard?
>> We're investigating all incidents. I can't speculate on connections until we have more data.
>> How long will this quarantine last?
>> That depends on our assessment timeline.
Could be days, could be longer. We'll provide updates as the situation develops. What about supplies? Food, medicine, fuel. This town has about 8,000 people. How are we supposed to manage if we're cut off?
>> Supply deliveries will be coordinated through designated checkpoints.
Essential services will continue. We're not abandoning anyone. We're protecting them.
>> Colonel, people are saying this feels like martial law.
>> This is a public health emergency, not a military occupation. Local law enforcement remains in charge of civil matters. We're here to support them, not replace them.
>> Are we in danger? Should people be staying in their homes?
>> We're recommending that residents limit unnecessary travel. Stay with your families. Follow basic hygiene measures.
If you see anything unusual, report it to local authorities immediately.
>> Define unusual.
>> Physical symptoms that seem out of the ordinary. behavioral changes in people you know well, anything that raises concern.
>> Colonel, you're being deliberately vague.
>> I'm being appropriately cautious. We don't want to create panic based on incomplete information. When we know more, you'll know more.
>> Colonel Arthur Rodman with the US Army.
Thank you for your time. Let's go back to Clare at the barricade. Claire, has the situation there changed at all?
>> Leon, more people are arriving. I'd estimate there are 40 or 50 vehicles now. Some people are shouting at the soldiers demanding to speak with someone in charge. I just spoke with a woman who was trying to get to the city for a medical appointment. Cancer treatment.
She needs to see her oncologist tomorrow. They told her she'll have to reschedule. Leon, people are being turned around with no explanation, no timeline, no guidance. They're being told to go home and wait.
>> What about communications? Are people able to call out? Cell service seems to be working for now, but there are rumors that internet access is being throttled.
I can't confirm that.
>> All right, Claire, keep us updated. Be careful out there, folks. I need to say something here. This is my town. I was born here. I raised my kids here. I know every street, every business, every family. And I'm telling you, something is very, very bad here. The authorities know more than they're saying. We need to be smart. We need to take care of each other. If you have extra supplies, share them. If you have vulnerable neighbors, check on them. If something doesn't feel right, trust that instinct.
We're going to get through this, but we have to stay together. We have to stay alert. This is Leon Miller with KMTN News. We'll continue our coverage throughout the day.
It's 2:00 in the morning. We're in the middle of a military quarantine and I'm Ethan Dawson. The lines are lit up tonight. For those just tuning in, our town is completely sealed off. Military checkpoints on every road, hazmat suits everywhere, and nobody's telling us what's really happening. Let's go to line three. You're on night talk.
>> Yeah, Frank here. I I was there at the morg. I saw what happened.
>> Frank, slow down. What did you see?
>> I work deliveries. Medical supply run to the county morg around 2:30 Saturday afternoon. I was wheeling a cart past the storage units when I heard it.
Something wet like like tearing. One of the drawers was open. The one with Tim Rigggins, the football kid. And he wasn't dead anymore. his chest. It just split open like something was trying to get out from the inside. Tentacles. I know how that sounds, but that's what they were. They came out of his rib cage, grabbed the attendant, pulled him right into the the opening. The screaming stopped real fast. I ran. I just ran.
>> Frank, are you are you still there, Frank? Okay, he's gone. I don't I don't know what to say to that. Line one, you're up.
>> This is Albert, and I'm calling to say this is exactly what I warned about last time. The government swoops in, takes over, and suddenly we're prisoners in our own town. Martial law. That's what this is. They're calling it a health emergency. But look at what's happening.
Armed soldiers, restricted movement, no freedom to leave. Albert, if there's a legitimate biological threat, wouldn't a quarantine make sense?
>> Show me the threat. Show me the evidence. They won't tell us what we're supposedly being protected from. That's not transparency. That's control. Three kids died at a carnival. Tragic, yes, but that doesn't justify locking down an entire town. Something else is going on here.
>> I hear you, Albert. The lack of information is definitely feeding suspicion. Thanks for the call. Let's go to line four. You're on the air.
>> Ethan, it's Bill. And Albert's right about one thing. This isn't about protecting us. This is about containment.
>> Containment of what, Bill?
>> Us? They're not keeping something out.
They're keeping us in. I've got a friend who works for FEMA. He told me they've been running drills for this exact scenario. Mass quarantine, population control, relocation camps, it's all in the playbook. And now they're implementing it. Bill, relocation camps.
That's a pretty extreme claim.
>> You think this ends with them just opening the roads back up? No. They're going to start moving people, testing them, separating families. Mark my words. In a week, maybe two, they're going to start evacuations, and once you're on those buses, you're not coming back.
>> All right, Bill. I appreciate the call, but I think we need to be careful about spreading theories that could cause unnecessary fear. It's not fear if it's real. Ethan, >> we'll take a break and be right back.
This is Night Talk.
My fellow Americans, good evening. I'm speaking to you tonight about the situation in Montana. A beautiful town, great people, hardworking people, the best. Now, I want to be very clear. We have a situation, a highly localized situation, novel contagion. That's what the experts are calling it. The scientists, very smart people, they came to me. They said, "Mr. President, we need to act fast." So we acted immediately. Nobody acts faster than this administration. We put in place a quarantine, a beautiful quarantine, very effective, the most effective quarantine ever implemented. Now some people, they're worried. They're saying, "Mr. President, what's happening?" And I understand that. I really do. It's like one of those movies. You know the ones Outbreak, Contagion, very scary movies.
But this isn't a movie. This is real life. And in real life, we have the best military in the world, the best scientists, the best doctors, all working together to protect you. The CDC, tremendous organization.
They've identified a biological agent.
Very unusual. Nothing they've seen before. But they're on it. Believe me, they're on it. The quarantine is temporary. Very temporary. We're going to contain this. We're going to study it and we're going to eliminate it. Total elimination. That's the goal. Now, to the people in that town, you're not alone. We haven't forgotten about you.
We're sending supplies, medical personnel, everything you need. The federal government is behind you 100%.
Some people are asking, "Is this dangerous? Could it spread?" And the answer is, "We're being very, very careful. That's why we acted so quickly.
Speed. That's the key. Think about it like this. In Die Hard, great movie, by the way. Bruce Willis doesn't wait around. He takes action. That's what we're doing. We're taking action.
Decisive action. I want to assure the American people this is contained, fully contained. There's no risk to the wider population. None. Zero. We're monitoring the situation around the clock, 24/7.
I'm getting updates every hour, sometimes more. The smartest people in the country are working on this. Now, I know change is hard. I know uncertainty is scary, but America has faced challenges before. And we've always come out stronger. Always. This is a test. A test of our resilience, our unity, our strength. And we're going to pass this test with flying colors. So to everyone watching tonight, stay calm. Trust the process. We've got this under control.
Total control. God bless you. God bless Montana. And God bless the United States of America. Thank you.
This is KMTN News with breaking coverage. It's Sunday evening, 8:30 p.m., and we're following a hostage situation at the county hospital. I'm Leon Miller. What we know right now is limited. A gunman entered the hospital's administrative wing approximately 1 hour ago. Multiple people are reported inside. The building is surrounded by police and military personnel. The gunman called this station 15 minutes ago. He wanted to make a statement. He said, and I'm quoting directly, "It's in here, and we can't let it escape. We've been asked not to broadcast the full conversation. Law enforcement is concerned it could escalate the situation, but what I can tell you is that this individual believes there's something dangerous inside that building. Colonel Arthur Rodman is coordinating the response. Colonel, can you give us an update?
>> Mr. Miller, we have negotiators on site attempting to establish communication.
Our priority is the safe release of any hostages and the peaceful resolution of this incident.
>> Do we know how many people are inside?
We believe there are three to five individuals in the affected area, hospital staff and possibly CDC personnel.
>> Colonel, the gunman mentioned something being inside the hospital. What did he mean by that?
>> We believe the individual is experiencing a psychological crisis. The stress of the quarantine has affected many people. We're treating this as a mental health emergency.
>> Hold on. I'm being told something's happening. Colonel, are you seeing this?
There's smoke coming from the building.
I can see it from the window. Colonel, what's happening? Oh my god. There's been an explosion. The entire west wing just It just collapsed. Debris everywhere. Fire spreading. Emergency crews are rushing in. I can hear sirens from every direction. This is This is catastrophic. Colonel Rodman, do you have any information on casualties?
>> We're assessing the situation now. I need to coordinate the response. I'll provide an update when I have more information.
>> Folks, we're watching a disaster unfold in real time. The hospital is on fire.
People are running from the building.
This town is we're falling apart. I'm receiving a message. There's a video posted to social media about 10 minutes ago from inside the hospital before the explosion. We're going to show you what we can verify. This was recorded by the individual who initiated the hostage situation. His name was David Long. He was a hospital administrator. This is his video.
>> My name's David Long. I'm the administrative director of this hospital. If you're watching this, I'm probably already dead, but you need to hear what I'm about to tell you. There's something in this building, an organism.
It's not a virus. It's not a bacteria.
It's something that can copy people cell by cell. It becomes them perfectly. I know how that sounds. I know you think I've lost my mind, but I'm going to show you proof. Look at this floor. These metal fragments, three dental fillings, a wedding ring, a surgical pin from a knee replacement. This is Dr. Sarah Martinez. Or it was. She came in for her shift this morning. Normal. But when I checked her dental records, she's supposed to have four fillings. I asked her to open her mouth. Perfect teeth. No fillings at all. The thing can't copy metal. It can't copy anything in organic. When it takes over a person, it has to push out the metal. Expel it.
That's how you know. Check their dental work. Check for jewelry. They always wore medical implants. Piercings. If it's gone, if they can't explain where it went, they're not human anymore. I've identified 11 people in this hospital alone. 11 copies walking around, working, talking, looking exactly like the people we knew. Fire is the only thing that kills it. I've seen it work.
The copies react to fire like animals.
They scream, they run, and when they burn, they don't come back. I've barricaded the administrative wing. I've got fuel. Accelerant.
I'm going to burn this entire section. I can't let them escape. I can't let this spread. If you're seeing this, check everyone around you. Your family, your friends. Don't trust anyone who can't prove they're still themselves. And if you find one, burn it. It's the only way.
>> I don't I don't know what to say. I don't know if this is real. I don't know if David Long was experiencing a breakdown or if he was trying to warn us, but the video is out there. It's spreading and people are going to see it. They're going to start checking their loved ones for missing fillings, for jewelry that should be there but isn't. This is going to create panic. It already is. I'm seeing reports on social media of people attacking their neighbors, accusing them of being imposters. Please, if you're listening to this, don't do anything rash. Don't hurt anyone. We don't know if any of this is true. But we also can't ignore it. The military's here. The CDC is here. They're not telling us what's happening. And now the hospital is burning. Something is very bad here. I don't know what it is, but it's bad.
Stay in your homes. Lock your doors.
Don't trust anyone you don't absolutely know. And if something doesn't seem right, it probably isn't. This is Leon Miller. I'll be here all night bringing you updates. God help us all.
Yes, what happened?
Sunday night late. I can hear the sirens from here. The hospital's on fire. We can see the smoke from the living room window. Mom's crying. Dad's pacing.
They're scared. Everyone in this town is scared. But Ellie, Ellie's just sitting there, same spot on the couch, handsfolded, watching the news with this blank expression. The quarantine was announced this morning. Total lockdown.
Nobody in, nobody out. That means Ellie can't get back to her lab. can't get to work. She's a workaholic.
Always has been. In college, she'd panic if she missed a single class. She'd work through holidays, weekends, everything.
When I told her about the quarantine, I expected, I don't know, frustration, anger, something. She just nodded, said it made sense. That's all. And now the hospital's burning. The news is showing that video, the one about the the thing that copies people, the metal rejection.
Mom asked if anyone wanted tea. Dad said yes. I said yes. Ellie didn't respond.
Mom asked her again. Ellie looked up and smiled. Said yes, please. With the delay, the pause before she answered like she was processing the question instead of just hearing it. I keep watching her. I can't help it. I'm looking for I don't know what. Science.
Something that proves she's still my sister. She had her ears pierced when she was 16. Little diamond studs. She wore them every day. I need to see if they're still there. But I'm afraid to look because if they're gone, if her ears are empty, then that means the thing in my living room isn't my sister.
And I don't know what I'll do if that's true.
Welcome back to the long game. I'm Malcolm Kennedy. I'm going to skip the usual intro because we are not in a usual situation. If you've been following the news out of Montana this week, you know what I'm talking about.
If you haven't, catch up before you listen to this. It'll make a lot more sense. My guest tonight is Jill Lions.
Jill is an investigative journalist who has been covering government research programs in military black sites for the better part of 15 years. She reached out to me 2 days ago saying she had something I needed to hear. Jill, welcome to the show.
>> Thanks for having me, Malcolm. And I want to say upfront, what I'm bringing to this conversation is a combination of a document trail I've been building for several months and two pieces of audio that I received recently that I think are directly connected to what's happening in Montana right now.
>> Two pieces of audio. Let's start there.
Where did they come from?
>> I have a source inside the government.
I'm not going to name them and I'm not going to get more specific than that.
What I can tell you is this source has been reliable for years and has no obvious reason to fabricate something like this. They pass me two fragments of audio physical tape along with some documentation that took me 6 months to start making sense of.
>> And you're confident these tapes are real, not something someone put together in a studio.
>> I've had them looked at by two separate audio forensics people working independently, neither knowing what the other was doing. Both came back saying the tapes date to the early 1980s based on the oxide composition of the magnetic material. The ambient noise signature is consistent with a very small enclosed metal room. The kind of pre-fabricated structure you'd find at a remote research installation. I can't prove they're what I think they are, but nothing about them says they aren't.
>> All right, walk me through the first one.
>> The first tape is a man recording what sounds like a final statement. He says he's going to hide the tape, that if none of them make it, at least there will be some kind of record. He talks about a storm that's been hitting them for 48 hours. Says they have nothing to go on. And then he says the line that stopped me cold. His exact words, "Nobody trusts anybody now, and we're all very tired." He identifies himself at the end as R.J. McCriedi, helicopter pilot, US outpost number 31.
>> And that's the whole fragment.
>> That's all that survived in listenable condition. The rest had significant heat and moisture damage. My forensics contact said the degradation pattern was consistent with a fire nearby, not something that happened in storage.
Whatever was on the rest of it, we're not getting it back.
>> Outpost 31. The conspiracy show that's been running lately mentioned a midi in connection with some kind of Antarctic incident in the 80s. Is that the same person?
>> That's my working assumption. Yes. The documents I was given reference a research station in Antarctica, US operated from that same general time period. A station that according to those documents was destroyed. Total loss. The official explanation was an accident. But there are enough inconsistencies in the incident report that it raises real questions.
>> What kind of inconsistencies?
>> The speed of the government response for one. Antarctic research stations don't typically get classified level attention unless something went very wrong. And the handling of whatever remained afterward. The documentation I have suggests certain materials were transported back to the continental United States rather than destroyed on location. If it was just an accident, you don't air transport wreckage home.
You write a report and move on.
>> And this is where Montana comes in.
>> This is where Montana comes in. The documentation I have, and I want to be careful here because I'm still working to verify parts of this, indicates that materials from the outpost 31 incident were eventually transferred to a classified research facility, a facility in Montana within, as best I can determine, about 60 mi of the area that is currently under military quarantine.
>> Hold on. You're saying whatever happened at that Antarctic station 40 years ago, someone brought a piece of it to Montana? That's what the documentation suggests. I don't know exactly what was transported, biological material, equipment, remains, all of the above. I don't know what they were doing with it once it arrived. What I know is the location, the approximate timeline, and the fact that the quarantine started very shortly after the documents indicate a transfer took place.
>> You mentioned you have two recordings.
We just heard the first. What's on the second? The second is honestly the one that kept me up at night. It's from a different person at the same station.
According to the documentation, his name was Blair. He was the station's senior biologist. The context of the recording is from what I can piece together, he had been isolated from the rest of the crew, locked in and out building. They thought he'd had a breakdown.
>> A breakdown? Why would they lock him up?
from the incident reports. He destroyed their radio equipment, sabotaged the helicopter, attacked at least one other crew member. The official interpretation was psychological break under stress, cabin fever, isolation, psychosis, the usual explanations they use when they don't want to look too closely at something.
>> But you don't think it was a breakdown?
>> I think the tape speaks for itself. He opens by identifying himself. Dr. Blair, senior biologist, outpost 31. He says he's recording because he doesn't know if he'll get another chance to explain what he found. And then he lays out very calmly exactly what he observed under the microscope.
>> What did he find?
>> He describes an organism whose cells behave as independent living things, not tissue, not part of a larger body. Each cell on its own exhibiting what he calls survival behavior. And when he introduced human cells, dog cells, anything biological, the organism didn't attack them. It infiltrated them, replaced them from the inside. A perfect copy at the cellular level, undetectable to any standard analysis he had available. That's not a man having a psychotic break. That's a scientist recording data.
>> He also ran a projection on the base computer. Conservative numbers. If this organism reaches a populated continent, the entire world's population could be assimilated in about 27,000 hours, a little over 3 years. Every dog, every bird, every person gone, replaced by something that looks exactly like them.
>> Jesus, I don't I don't know what to say to that.
>> Neither did I when I first heard it.
I've listened to it probably 30 times now. The thing that strikes me every time is how calm he sounds. Not agitated, not ranting. He sounds like a scientist presenting findings he desperately wishes weren't true.
>> 27,000 hours. He ran a projection on how fast this thing could spread. That's that's not something a man having a psychotic break does. That's math.
That's analysis.
>> And the description of the cellular behavior, infiltrating, replacing, imitating at the cellular level that lines up with everything that's been leaked out of Montana, the hospital video, the reports of people's faces changing. If what he's describing is real and if that's what got transported to the Montana facility, >> then someone took a sample of something that destroyed an entire research station, kept it frozen for 40 years, and started poking at it again.
>> That's exactly what the documentation suggests. The question I keep asking myself is why? Why keep it? Why study it? What were they hoping to gain from something that by Blair's description represents an existential threat to every living thing on the planet?
>> You know what gets me? the part where he talks about Clark, the dog handler. He's not just scared of this thing in the abstract. He's sitting there in a freezing tool shed, pointing at a specific person, saying, "I think he's one of them, and nobody will listen to me."
>> And we'll never know if he was right. We don't know who survived the incident or how it ended. The official record says accident. The station was destroyed. No survivors located. End of story.
>> Except it wasn't the end. Because they recovered material. They brought it home and now Montana is under military quarantine and people are checking each other's teeth for missing fillings.
>> The leaked hospital video mentioned that specifically checking for dental work, metal that a person's body no longer has. Blair describes a perfect imitation at the cellular level, but cells can't replicate in organic material. Metal, plastic, anything non-biological that might be the only thing that gives it away. The first tape, McCre's tape. He says, "Nobody trusts anybody now and we're all very tired. That's the same thing. They couldn't tell who was real.
They were looking at each other across the room, wondering if the person they'd known for months was still in there."
>> That parallel is not lost on me.
Whatever happened at outpost 31, and the record is fragmentaryary at best. The outcome was that everyone is presumed dead, and the station no longer exists.
If what started in Montana came from that same source, then we're watching a repeat on a much larger scale.
>> And if the quarantine doesn't hold, >> then Blair's math might turn out to be prophetic. A small isolated station in Antarctica, 12 people, maybe fewer by the end, contained by distance and weather. A town in Montana is a different situation. People drive in and out. People have families in other states. The quarantine went up, but it went up after the festival, after people had already been there and left.
>> Don't let anyone leave. Burn everything if you have to. That's what he said. A man sitting alone in a freezing shed in Antarctica in 1982. And now someone somewhere is trying to figure out how to apply that advice to a whole town.
That's the thought I can't shake. Blair was the first person, as far as we know, to understand what this thing was capable of. He looked at the data and saw the end of the world. And his response was to make sure nobody could leave, not even himself.
>> What are you doing next with this? Are you trying to verify more of the documentation? Talk to more sources?
>> I'm trying to figure out who authorized the transfer and what the research program was actually doing with it.
That's going to take more time than I have right now. For the moment, getting these tapes out felt more important than sitting on them until the story was airtight. If someone recognizes these voices or knows anything about Outpost 31, I want to hear from them.
>> Jill's contact information is in the show notes if you have something relevant. And I mean relevant. If you knew someone at Outpost 31, if you've worked at or near a classified facility in Montana, if you have documentation that adds to or contradicts any of this, thank you for bringing this here. I know it wasn't an easy call.
>> No, it wasn't. But sitting on it felt worse, especially now. Both tape fragments are going up in the show notes unedited. You can hear them for yourself and form your own opinion. This is the long game. I'm Malcolm Kennedy. We'll be back when we have something worth saying. Take care of yourselves out there and maybe pay attention to who you're trusting.
October 5th. I don't know what time it is. Maybe midnight. The power's out. I'm using emergency lighting. The director lost his mind today. started shooting people. Said he could tell who was infected just by looking at them. He killed Dr. Harris. Shot him three times.
But Harris, I thought he was human. The director dragged his body to the incinerator. Said he had to burn the evidence. I was watching on the security feed from the observation room. The director was standing over the body when when it happened. Harris's head detached, just separated from the neck and rolled across the floor. And then these legs, they sprouted from the body.
Spider legs, six of them. The body fell off the table and started across the floor fast. The director tried to shoot it, but he missed and then it launched itself at him. One of the legs went straight through his chest, punctured his heart. He dropped the gun, fell to his knees. The thing was still attached to him when he hit the ground. The feed went dark after that. I don't know if it cut out or if someone shut it off, but I haven't seen anyone since. I'm alone in here. Or at least I think I am. I can hear sounds in the ventilation system.
Scraping movement. The facility has fallen. I know that now. Whatever we brought here, whatever we thought we could control, it's taken over everything. I need to get out, but the doors are sealed. Lock down measures.
Nobody in, nobody out. I'm trapped in here with it.
Good morning. It's Monday and I'm not sure how to begin this broadcast. I'm Leon Miller and what I'm about to report is it's beyond anything I ever thought I'd have to say. The hospital video went viral overnight. The one showing how to identify the the imitations, how they can't replicate metal, and now people are taking matters into their own hands.
In the past 12 hours, we've had seven fires reported across town. Not accidents, deliberate arson, people burning homes they believe are harboring these these things. There have been assaults, neighbors attacking neighbors.
A woman on Maple Street was beaten by her own daughter because she couldn't produce her wedding ring. She'd had it resized last week and hadn't picked it up yet. The sheriff's office is overwhelmed. They can't respond to every call. People are taking the law into their own hands and it's creating more chaos than than whatever threat we're actually facing. Sheriff Preston Kennedy is here with me now. Sheriff, can you give us an update on the situation?
Leon, what we're seeing is mass hysteria. People are scared. They're acting on fear, not facts, and it needs to stop before someone gets killed.
>> Sheriff, that video from the hospital, David Long's video. Was he telling the truth?
>> David Long was experiencing a mental health crisis. He was under immense stress. He believed what he was saying, but that doesn't make it real. Look, I've known half the people in this town my entire life. I've seen them at church, at the grocery store, at their kids' baseball games. They're not monsters. They're just people. They're just people.
>> But Sheriff, what about the reports of people acting strangely? The behavioral changes. The hospital director herself mentioned those.
>> Trauma changes people, Leon. Grief changes people. We've had multiple deaths in a short period of time. Of course, people are acting differently.
That's normal.
>> What about the military presence, the quarantine? If this is just mass hysteria, why are federal forces involved?
>> That's a question for the military, not for me. What I can tell you is that my job is to keep the peace. And right now, the biggest threat to this town isn't some imaginary creature. It's us. We're turning on each other, destroying our own community. That has to stop.
>> Sheriff Kennedy, thank you for joining us. We also have Dr. Tess Rodman with us. She's a clinical psychologist who specializes in trauma and mass psychology. Dr. Rodman, what's your assessment of what we're seeing?
>> Leon, what we're witnessing is a textbook case of collective paranoia.
When people are subjected to extreme stress and uncertainty, they look for patterns. They look for explanations.
The video from the hospital provided a framework. It gave people a way to make sense of the chaos, but that framework is based on fear, not evidence.
>> So, you're saying people are seeing threats that aren't there.
>> I'm saying people are interpreting normal behavior as threatening. Someone forgets a detail about a conversation.
Must be an impostor. Someone seems distant or preoccupied. Must have been replaced. This is how witch hunts start.
Someone makes an accusation. Others pile on. Before you know it, innocent people are being attacked or killed. What should people do if they're feeling suspicious of someone close to them?
>> Talk to them. Actually, talk. Don't interrogate. Don't accuse. Just have a conversation. You'll find that the person you're suspicious of is probably just scared and stressed like everyone else. And please do not take matters into your own hands. Violence only creates more trauma, more fear. It makes everything worse.
>> Dr. Rodman, thank you for that perspective. I want to read something to you. This is a statement from the military command overseeing the quarantine. Quote, "There is no credible evidence of shape-shifting organisms or extraterrestrial contamination. The quarantine is a precautionary measure related to a potential biological pathogen. Citizens are urged to remain calm and cooperative." End quote. So, there you have it. The official position is that David Long was mistaken, that we're dealing with a conventional biological threat, not not whatever he described. I don't know what to believe anymore. I really don't. But I do know this. We can't keep burning houses. We can't keep attacking each other. That way leads to total collapse. Please, if you're listening, take a breath. Think before you act. Don't let fear turn you into something you're not. This is Leon Miller with KMTN News. Stay safe out there.
Heat.
Heat.
They're doing it. They're actually doing it. And I have the documents to prove it. This isn't a natural outbreak. This isn't some accident. This is a planned operation, a test. And that town in Montana, they're the lab rats. The organism they recovered from Antarctica is the perfect tool for the shadow government. Think about it. An organism that replaces people at the cellular level makes perfect copies. But here's the key. The copies don't have free will. They don't have individuality.
They're programmable, controllable, the perfect worker class. I've got documents from Project Frost. Internal memos. They talk about creating a compliant population. people who don't question authority, who don't resist, who just obey. This creature replaces you cell by cell, and your original body is destroyed. And when it's done, you look the same. You sound the same. But you're not you anymore. You're part of the hive, part of the collective. And the people running this, they control the collective. They give the orders and the copies obey. This is about control.
Total control. They want a world where everyone does exactly what they're told.
where there's no disscent, no rebellion, just obedience. Montana is the beta test. They sealed it off to see how fast the replacement happens, to see if people notice, to see if the copies can maintain the illusion. And once they've worked out the kinks, once they know it works, they'll roll it out everywhere.
City by city, state by state, country by country. Your neighbor will be replaced.
Your coworker, your spouse, your children, and you'll never know because they'll look exactly the same. The only way to stop this is to expose it, to make people aware, to fight back before it's too late. Check your loved ones for missing metal, dental fillings, jewelry, surgical pins. If it's gone, if they can't explain where it went, they're not who you think they are. This is the endgame. Total replacement, total control, and it's happening right now.
Wake up. Fight back. Don't let them turn you into a slave.
It's 1:00 in the morning and I I need to say something before we take any calls.
I was wrong. A few nights ago, someone called this show, Chris. He told me he saw tentacles at the festival, and I dismissed him. I told him it was trauma, that his mind was playing tricks. I was wrong. I'm sorry, Chris. If you're listening, I'm sorry you were trying to warn us. My dog's been whining all night. Won't stop. He's never done that before. Animals know. They can sense when something's not right. Let's Let's go to line two. You're on night talk.
>> Ethan, it's Catherine. I I watched my neighbor's face split open this afternoon right in front of me.
>> Catherine, are you safe right now? I'm locked in my bathroom. I barricaded the door. I can hear it moving around out there. It's using my neighbor's voice, but it's not her. I saw what happened to her. She turned into this this mass of I don't even know how to describe it.
>> Did you call 911?
>> The lines are busy. Nobody's answering.
Nobody's answering.
>> Stay where you are and don't open the door. I don't I don't know what else to tell you, Catherine. Just Just stay safe. Let's go to line four. You're on the air.
>> Ethan, it's Chris. I called you that first night about the tentacles.
>> Chris, I'm so sorry. You're right. You tried to tell us and we didn't listen.
>> I'm not calling to say I told you so, Ethan. I'm calling because I need you to know something. It's spreading faster than anyone realizes. I've been keeping track, talking to people, watching. At least a third of the town has already been replaced, maybe more.
>> How can you know that?
>> The missing jewelry. The dental work that's suddenly gone. People who used to wear glasses but don't anymore. Surgical scars that have vanished. It's everywhere, Ethan. And the military knows. That's why they won't let anyone leave. They're not trying to protect us.
They're trying to contain it.
>> We're going to take a break. I need I need a minute. This is night talk.
This is KMTN News Tuesday afternoon. I'm Leon Miller and the situation has escalated dramatically. Military teams have begun conducting door-to-door operations throughout the town. They're administering what they're calling mandatory health screenings, blood tests. The procedure is simple. A small blood sample is taken. It's exposed to heat. If the blood reacts, if it moves or pulls away from the heat source, that person is immediately detained. We're receiving reports of resistance, people refusing to submit to testing, barricading themselves in their homes, and in at least three confirmed cases, violent confrontations. Claire Wright is on the scene of one such incident.
Claire, what do you see, >> Leon? I'm standing in front of a house on Cedar Street. Behind me, you can see military vehicles, police cars, and what looks like the aftermath of a firefight.
The front of the house is completely destroyed, windows blown out, bullet holes everywhere. There's blood on the lawn. According to witnesses, a military team approached the house around 10:00 a.m. They knocked, announced they were conducting health screenings. The residents refused to open the door. The team waited, tried to negotiate, but after about 30 minutes, they forced entry. That's when the shooting started.
>> Do we know who initiated the gunfire?
>> Witnesses say it came from inside the house, but Leon, what happened next is it's difficult to describe. One neighbor told me they saw something come out of the house. Not a person, something else.
She described it as her words, a nightmare made of flesh. The military opened fire, full automatic. You can see the shell casings everywhere. And then they used flamethrowers. flamethrowers in a residential neighborhood.
>> Leon, I've talked to three different witnesses who all say the same thing.
The bullets weren't stopping it. Fire was the only thing that worked. The family that lived here was the Johnson's. Mother, father, two teenage sons. None of them survived.
>> Were they? Were they infected?
>> The military isn't saying. They've cordoned off the entire block. Cleanup crews are removing the remains.
>> Claire, have you heard reports of other incidents like this? At least two more.
One on Elm Street, another near the old elementary school. Same pattern. Forced entry, violence, fire. How many people have been detained so far?
>> The military won't provide numbers, but I've been keeping count based on witness reports. At least 50 people have been taken away in the past 6 hours, maybe more.
>> Taken where?
>> Nobody knows. They're loaded into armored transports and driven out of town, past the barricades, and they don't come back. Thank you, Claire. Stay safe out there, folks. I need to tell you something. I had my blood tested this morning voluntarily. I wanted to know. They took a small sample, put it in a metal dish, applied a heated wire.
My blood just sat there. No movement, no reaction. I'm human. I'm telling you this because you need to know. You can trust what I'm saying. I'm still me. I'm still Leon Miller. And I'm going to keep reporting until I can't anymore. We're also hearing widespread reports of missing persons, people who were here yesterday but aren't today. Families are calling in looking for loved ones who seem to have vanished. The police say they're investigating, but with everything else happening, resources are stretched beyond capacity. People are on their own. If military teams come to your door, cooperate, take the blood test. If you're human, you have nothing to fear. If you're not, well, the fire will find you. This is KMTN News. We'll continue our coverage. God be with us all.
Tuesday Late afternoon, I found it. I was in the upstairs bathroom, dad's bathroom. I went in there to, I don't know, get away from them for a minute.
And there it was on the shower floor, his pacemaker, the one they implanted 3 years ago after his heart attack, just lying there, still attached to pieces of of tissue. I picked it up. I don't know why. My hands were shaking. I just stood there holding it, trying to understand what it meant. And then I thought about mom. Her arthritis. She's had it for 15 years. Bad enough that she couldn't open jars anymore. Couldn't knit. Her hands were always swollen. But yesterday, I watched her open a pickle jar. No hesitation, no pain. Her hands looked perfect, smooth, like she was 20 years old again. I went back downstairs, sat on the couch. Dad was reading the paper.
Mom was folding laundry. Ellie was staring out the window. They all look so normal, so familiar. But they're not.
None of them are. My family is gone.
They've been replaced. And I'm alone in this house with whatever took their place. I'm in my room now, door locked.
I've been listening to the news. The military is doing blood tests, going door to door. I'm praying they come here. I'm praying they test everyone in this house because when they do, when they put that hot wire to their blood, it's going to react and then I'll know I'm not crazy. But the patrols seem to have stopped. I haven't heard any military vehicles in hours. No gunfire, no sirens, just quiet. Why did they stop? Did they run out of people to test or did they realize there's no point anymore? I can hear them downstairs moving around talking quietly. They sound like my family. They sound exactly like them. But they're not. They're not Brothers and sisters, I'm going to be honest with you this morning. I don't know how to preach this sermon. I've been a pastor for 32 years. I've preached through grief, through loss, through tragedy, but this what we're facing now. I don't have words for it.
The scripture I chose today is from Matthew 7:15.
Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. I picked this passage before I understood what it meant, before I knew how literal it would become. Jesus was warning us about deception, about things that look righteous on the outside but carry darkness within, false teachers, false prophets, wolves in sheep's clothing.
But what do we do when the deception isn't spiritual? What do we do when the wolf looks exactly like our neighbor, our friend, our family? I've been asking myself, how do you love your neighbor when you're not sure they're still your neighbor? How do you show compassion when compassion might get you killed?
Jesus told us to love our enemies, to turn the other cheek, to forgive 70* 7.
But this this isn't an enemy. This is something wearing the face of someone we loved. I've had three families come to me this week crying, terrified. They think their loved ones have been replaced, and I don't know what to tell them. Do I tell them to have faith, to trust in God's plan? Do I tell them that everything happens for a reason when their husband, their wife, their child might be gone forever? I don't have answers. I wish I did, but I'm just as lost as you are. What I do know is this.
God is with us. Even in this darkness, even when we can't see the path forward, he's here. But I'll be honest, I'm struggling to feel him. I'm struggling to understand why this is happening. Why us? Why now the military is doing blood tests, forcing people to prove they're human? And I keep thinking, what does it mean to be human? Is it our bodies, our memories, our souls? If something takes your body but leaves your thoughts intact, are you still you or are you already gone? I don't know.
And that terrifies me. All I can do is pray. Pray for strength. Pray for wisdom. Pray for deliverance. And pray that when this is over, if we survive, we can still recognize each other. Not just with our eyes, but with our hearts.
Let us pray. Lord, we're scared. We're lost. We don't understand what's happening, but we trust that you're still here, that you haven't abandoned us. Give us the strength to face what's coming. Give us the wisdom to know who to trust and give us the courage to do what needs to be done in Jesus' name.
Amen.
October 6th, early morning. I wanted to record one final entry before I leave. I realize now that I was overreacting in my previous recordings. The stress of the work environment affected my judgment. I apologize for any alarm I may have caused. The incident with Dr. Roberts was unfortunate, but the cleanup crews handled it efficiently. The facility is secure. All containment measures are functioning as intended.
The director is on his way to Washington to meet with congressional representatives. They were very pleased with our progress. The research is moving forward. We're making excellent strides. I've been granted leave to visit my family. They're in town for the fall festival. I'm looking forward to seeing them. It's been too long. My brother Joel has been anxious lately. I think spending time together will help him feel better. Family is important. We should all be together. The work here will continue in my absence. My colleagues are very capable. We're all working toward the same goal. Unity, understanding, progress. I feel very peaceful today. Calm, focused. All the stress and fear from before has lifted.
I understand things much more clearly now. We're not in danger. We never were.
We're simply evolving, becoming something better, something unified.
I'll see my family soon. We'll be together, all of us, forever.
This is KMTN News, Wednesday evening.
I'm I'm Leon Miller. I'm alone here at the station. Everyone else is gone. I don't know where they went. I came in this morning and the building was empty.
There's no script for this, no teleprompter. This is just me talking, trying to trying to warn you while I still can. The blood test stopped yesterday afternoon. No explanation. The military just pulled back, went quiet.
I've been watching the streets from the window up here. It looks normal. People walking, cars driving. Everything looks perfectly normal. But it's not. I know it's not because I've been counting, keeping track of faces I recognize. Tom Ford walked past the station this morning. I've known Tom for 20 years.
He's had a prosthetic leg since his accident in 2008. Always walk with a limp. He walked past with two good legs.
No limp, perfect stride. They're gone.
All of them replaced. And the things wearing their faces are walking around like nothing happened. If you're listening to this, if you're still human, you need to understand something.
You can't trust anyone. Not your neighbor, not your coworker, not your friends, not your husband, not your wife, not your children. Check them.
Look for the metal that should be there.
Dental work, jewelry they always wore, surgical scars, anything that proves they're still themselves. And if it's gone, if they can't explain it, run. I don't know how much longer I can stay here. The power keeps flickering. I keep hearing sounds in the building, footsteps in the hallway. This might be my last broadcast. I don't know. But if it is, I want you to know this. We lost.
The town is gone. Most of us are already gone. And if you're outside these walls listening to this broadcast, don't let them lift the quarantine. Don't let anyone leave. Burn it all. Burn the whole town to the ground if you have to because if they get out, if they reach the cities, it's over for all of us.
This is Leon Miller, KMTN News. Stay human.
It's 3:00 in the morning. Night talk.
I'm Ethan Dawson and I I don't know what to say anymore. My dog won't stop growling. He's been doing it for hours just sitting there in the corner staring at the door growling. Let's Let's go to the phones. Line one, you're on the air.
>> Hello, Ethan. This is Chris. I wanted to call and let you know that everything is fine now.
>> Chris, is that is that really you?
>> Of course, it's me. I know I was worried before, but I realize now that I was mistaken. The situation has been resolved. We're all safe.
>> Chris, you said a third of the town was replaced. You were tracking people. What changed?
>> I was stressed. We all were. But the military conducted their tests.
Everything came back normal. There's nothing to worry about.
>> You don't You don't sound like yourself.
>> I'm just relieved. We're all relieved.
You should be, too, Ethan. Everything is fine.
>> I'm I'm going to go to another line.
Line three. Go ahead, >> Ethan. It's Bill. I wanted to apologize for the things I said before. I was spreading fear. That wasn't helpful.
>> Bill, you talked about FEMA camps, about people being taken away. You had inside information.
>> I was confused. The quarantine made sense. It protected us. Now we're safe.
We're all safe together.
>> Together? You keep saying that. We're all safe together. What does that mean?
I need to line four. Please tell me you're still you.
>> Hello, Ethan. It's Catherine. I wanted to thank you for your concern the other night.
>> Catherine, you were locked in your bathroom. There was something outside.
Your neighbor had changed.
>> I was mistaken. My neighbor is fine. We had coffee this morning. Everything is wonderful. We're at peace.
>> No.
No. This isn't You're not None of you are real.
I'm hanging up. I'm hanging up. All of you. This This show is over. Heat. Heat.
Friday morning, 4:00 a.m. I'm leaving right now. I'm leaving right now. The news said the quarantine is lifting. The barricades are coming down. If I can just get to my car, if I can just get out before they wake up, I can make it.
I've got my backpack, water, some food, my wallet. The car keys are in my pocket. I just need to get down the stairs without making noise. They're all downstairs. I can hear them moving around in the kitchen making breakfast like it's a normal Friday morning, like nothing happened.
>> Joel, where are you going?
>> Ellie.
Oh, I I was just getting some fresh air >> at 4:00 in the morning with a packed bag. Joel, you're not thinking clearly.
>> Stay back. Just Just stay away from me.
>> We're worried about you. We're a family.
Family stay together.
>> You're not Eller. You're not my sister.
>> Of course I'm Ellie. Who else would I be? Come downstairs. Mom made pancakes.
Your favorites.
>> No. No. Get away from me. Don't Don't touch.
Good morning. This is KMTN News. I'm Leon Miller and I want to begin with an apology. My broadcast on Wednesday evening was unprofessional. The things I said were inflammatory and inaccurate. I allowed the stress of recent events to cloud my judgment. I told you not to trust your neighbors, your families.
That was irresponsible. It contributed to the fear and division in our community. For that, I'm deeply sorry.
The good news is that the crisis has passed. The quarantine is being lifted as of this morning. All health screenings have been completed and the results are overwhelmingly positive. We have Colonel Arthur Rodman with us to provide an official update. Colonel, thank you for joining us this morning.
>> Thank you, Leon. I'm pleased to report that the biological threat has been eliminated. Our teams conducted extensive testing throughout the community. All contamination has been neutralized.
>> Can you tell us what the threat was, Colonel?
>> A localized bacterial contamination, unusual in its presentation, but ultimately manageable. We identified the source, implemented containment measures, and the situation is now resolved.
>> There were reports of unusual incidents, violent confrontations, people claiming their loved ones had changed. How do you explain those?
>> Mass hysteria is a well doumented phenomenon. When communities are under stress, people see patterns where none exist. The video from the hospital, while tragic, was the product of a confused individual experiencing a mental health crisis. There were no shape shifters, no extraterrestrial organisms, just fear and misunderstanding.
>> So, the blood tests that were conducted, what did they show?
>> The test confirmed what we suspected.
The contamination was bacterial, not cellular. Standard medical intervention was sufficient. Everyone tested came back clear.
That's wonderful news. When can people expect to resume normal activities?
>> The barricades are being removed as we speak. Roads will be open by noon.
Businesses can reopen immediately. Life can return to normal.
>> Colonel, what about the people who were detained during the crisis?
>> They've been treated and released.
Medical observation was necessary given the uncertainty of the situation, but they're all healthy, all accounted for, all returning home.
>> That's a relief. I know many families have been worried.
>> There's no need for worry anymore. The community is safe, united, ready to move forward.
>> Colonel Arthur Rodman, thank you for that update. In other news, the weather forecast for this weekend looks excellent. Sunny skies, mild temperatures, perfect conditions for the rescheduled fall festival. Town officials are planning a community gathering to celebrate the end of the quarantine. Food, music, activities for families, a chance to come together and heal. I encourage everyone to attend.
We've been through a difficult time. We need to reconnect. Remember what makes this community special. The high school football team will be playing their first game since the tragedy. The community is rallying around the team, showing support, coming together.
Everything is returning to normal, better than normal. We're stronger now, more united. The fear and suspicion of the past week can be put behind us. We don't need to check our neighbors for missing jewelry. We don't need to question whether our loved ones are who they say they are. We can trust each other again. We can be a community again. This is Leon Miller with KMTN News. Have a wonderful day and welcome home.
Good evening. It's Friday, October 12th, and we're bringing you a special address from President John Wright. The quarantine that affected our community for the past week has been officially lifted. The president will be addressing the nation regarding the resolution of what officials are now calling a public health false alarm. Let's go live to the White House. My fellow Americans, good evening. I want to talk to you tonight about what happened in Montana. And I want to talk to you about the truth because the truth, the real truth, has been buried under a mountain of lies.
First, let me be very clear. The Montana situation has been completely resolved.
Total success 100%. The quarantine is over. The people are safe. Everything is back to normal. What we dealt with, and I'm going to be honest with you, was a tragic accident at a local festival.
Three young men lost their lives.
Terrible. Just terrible. Our hearts go out to their families. But then, and this is where it gets really bad, certain people, podcasters, conspiracy theorists, people looking to make a quick buck off fear, they started spreading lies, horrible lies, madeup stories about monsters and aliens and all kinds of crazy stuff. You know, this isn't the first time this has happened in America. Back in 1938, there was a radio show, War of the Worlds, Orson Wells, great broadcaster, by the way, but he did a radio play about an alien invasion, and people believed it. They thought Martians were really attacking New Jersey. People panicked. They fled their homes, called the police, mass hysteria, all because of a radio show.
That's what happens when you let fear take over instead of using your head. Or look at Salem. Way back Salem witch trials. People accusing their neighbors of being witches. Can you believe that?
Witches. And they believed it so much they actually killed people over it. 20 people executed all because of mass hysteria. Then in the 1980s we had the satanic panic. People thought there were devil worshippers everywhere in daycarees, in schools. They ruined lives, destroyed families, all based on lies and fear. That's what happened in Montana. A tragedy turned into a circus by people who wanted attention. These podcasters, these so-called journalists, they fabricated stories, audio recordings, videos, all fake, total fabrications. And the people of Montana, good people, hardworking people, they got caught up in it. They started seeing things that weren't there, accusing each other, turning on their neighbors.
classic mass hysteria. The CDC, the military, they had to step in, not because there was a real threat, but because the situation was out of control. People were dangerous to themselves and others because of the panic. Now, I've ordered a full investigation. We're going to find out who started these lies, who spread them, and there will be consequences. Serious consequences. You can't yell fire in a crowded theater and you can't fabricate a national emergency. I want to thank the brave men and women of our armed forces, the CDC, FEMA, everyone who worked around the clock to restore order. They did an incredible job, the best job, and I'm very proud of them. To the people of Montana, you can go back to your lives, go back to work, go back to school. The festival has been rescheduled for next month. Everything is fine. Everything is normal. And to everyone watching, I want you to remember something. Don't believe everything you hear on the internet.
Don't believe conspiracy theories. Don't let fear control you. Trust your government. Trust the facts. Trust the truth. We're the greatest country in the world. We don't fall apart because of rumors. We stand strong. We stand together. We stand united. God bless you. God bless Montana. And God bless the United States of America. President John Wright speaking from the White House. The official statement from the administration confirms that the Montana quarantine was lifted after a week-l long response to what they're calling communitywide panic and misinformation.
Local authorities report that all wellness checks have been completed. The hospital has resumed normal operations.
The fall festival has been rescheduled for November 3rd. Everything, as the president said, is back to normal. I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone who stayed calm during the past week. To the families of Tim Rigggins, Brian Williams, and Jason Street. Our thoughts remain with you. Your boys will not be forgotten. Tomorrow morning, we'll have coverage of the town council meeting where they'll be discussing structural improvements to festival safety measures. We'll also have an update on the reopening of Main Street businesses.
It's good to be back to regular programming. It's good to see our community healing and it's good to know that we can all move forward together.
From all of us here at KMTN News, thank you for watching. Have a wonderful evening and remember, we're all in this together.
If you're hearing this, congratulations.
You're still human. Or at least you think you are. I'm Tommy Wesker, and this is probably my last broadcast. One year. It's been exactly 1 year since the president stood at that podium and told us to embrace biological frontiers. One year since the borders opened. One year since they stopped pretending. I kept this channel alive as long as I could.
Broadcasting from bunkers, from basement, from the back of a moving truck once when they got too close. I told you what was happening when nobody else would. I told you about Montana. I told you about Outpost 31. I told you about the cells, about the imitations, about the thing that wears your neighbor's face. And now I'm going to tell you what happened this year because somebody has to say it out loud before there's nobody left to say it. After the quarantine lifted, after the all clear, after the president's little speech about new frontiers, it spread fast. Not like a disease, like a plan. Leadership first. Always leadership first. Mayors, governors, joint chiefs, CEOs, anyone with access, anyone with authority, anyone who could open a door or sign an order. By March, they had the Pentagon.
By June, they had Congress. By September, they had most of Europe and half of Asia. We fought back. God help us. We tried. There were skirmishes.
Whole military units that figured it out and went dark. Refused orders. Started burning everything that moved. The Texas Guard held San Antonio for 3 weeks. 3 weeks until someone inside the perimeter turned and it all fell apart in a single night. That's how it always went. You could win every battle, hold every line, and then one of your own would open the gate. The mainstream stopped broadcasting around August. or I should say the mainstream stopped being the mainstream. The anchors are still there.
The channels are still running, but it's all calm now. All smiles, all unity and progress and biological harmony. They don't even pretend there was ever a crisis. Just a brief period of adjustment. They call it a transition.
The ascension of a new paradigm. They love that word now, paradigm. Here's the part that keeps me up at night. Last month they announced an expedition, a joint international mission to Antarctica, scientific cooperation. They said, climate research, they said the largest polar operation in history with ships from 12 countries and enough heavy equipment to move a mountain. You want to know where they're going? The exact coordinates, the same ice shelf where the Norwegians found that spacecraft in 1982. They're going back for the ship.
the ship that brought this thing to Earth a 100,000 years ago. The ship it crashed trying to escape or that someone crashed trying to stop it. And now after a year of wearing our faces and sitting in our chairs and signing our papers, they're digging it out. Which means this was never about Earth. We were never the destination. We were a fuel stop, a recruitment drive, a way station on the road to somewhere else. I've been thinking about Dr. Blair, the biologist from Outpost 31, the tapes that came out, the ones Jill Lions put on that podcast. Blair ran the numbers. 27,000 hours to total assimilation. A little over 3 years. He tried to stop it, destroyed the radio, wrecked the helicopter, locked himself in a shed.
They called him crazy. They locked him up. But he was right about all of it. If you're still out there, if you're still listening, I don't know what to tell you anymore. Find fire. Find isolation.
Don't trust anyone you can't test. And if you see that Antarctic expedition on the news, if you see them raising something out of the ice, if you see the sky light up with things that shouldn't be there, then you'll know. The scouting party did its job. And now the rest of them are coming. This is Tommy Wesker.
The truth underground. If there's a god, may he have mercy on whoever's left.
We're out of time.
This is K7 Echo Mike calling any station, any station on this frequency.
Brainer cell, Northern Montana corridor.
Is anyone receiving?
>> I hear you. K7 echo mic. This is W5 Romeo Tango out of what used to be Wyoming. Thornhill Group. We're down to 11. Good to hear another voice.
>> Wyoming. Thought that whole sector went dark 6 months ago.
>> Most of it did. The Casper hold out fell in October. 200 people. We were running supply lines to them. Thought we had a solid perimeter. Turned out one of our drivers had been replaced on a run 3 weeks earlier. just sitting there acting normal, waiting when they opened the gates for the convoy. That was it.
>> Same thing happened to us in Billings.
Held a refinery for 4 months. Had fuel, had weapons, had a blood test checkpoint at every entrance. Didn't matter. One of our doctors, a guy who'd been with us since the beginning. Turned out had been replaced during a supply run. We didn't even think was high risk. He was testing people's blood for weeks, testing people and clearing them. While all along >> While all along he was one of them.
Yeah, that's how it always goes. You can't win a war when the enemy can become your chain of command.
>> Have you had contact with any other groups? I've been scanning for weeks.
Used to hear chatter from the Dakotas, from the Pacific Northwest. Utah had a whole network running out of the salt flats. Now it's just nothing.
>> There's a group up in Alberta that's still broadcasting.
Heard from them two weeks ago. They said something about ships. More of them coming down from I don't know. They said the sky was wrong. That there were lights where light shouldn't be. We've seen them too. Three nights ago. Five of them coming in low over the Rockies. Not planes. Not anything that moves like planes. They landed somewhere east of us. We didn't go looking.
>> More reinforcements.
Like they needed more. They already have 8 billion bodies. What's a few more ships going to change?
>> I don't think they're bringing more of the same. I think Look, you've seen what they look like now, right? When they're not pretending.
>> Yeah, I've seen it.
>> They don't bother with human shapes anymore. Not in the cities, not in the places they already control. We sent a scout into Helena last month. Kid named Danny, 19 years old. He came back white as paper and couldn't talk for 2 days.
When he finally did, he said they're walking in the streets out in the open, 8, 9 ft tall, limbs that didn't bend right, faces that were, he said, melted, like wax that forgot what it was supposed to be, just moving through the city like they owned it, because they do. The scouting party's over. That's what Tommy Wesker said in his last broadcast. They didn't need us for us.
They needed us to build their numbers, repair their ship, call home. Now that it's done, they don't need the masks anymore, >> Danny said. He said some of them were huge, like they'd merged. Multiple bodies fused into one mass. All eyes and limbs and and things he couldn't name, just standing there watching like they were waiting for something.
>> How many do you have left in your group?
>> Seven. We were 32 when we started. Lost five in Billings. Lost more running north. Lost three last week when we tried to raid a supply depot. One of the three. One of them changed in the middle of the fight. Right there. One second he was shooting at them. The next he >> That's the thing that breaks you. Not the monsters. You can fight monsters, but you can't fight something that looks exactly like the person you trust. Right up until the moment it opens up and swallows you. We've been testing every 12 hours now. blood tests, metal checks, the whole routine, and we still can't be sure.
>> I've started sleeping with a flare in my hand. I don't know if I'd have time to use it, but at least I take one of them with me.
>> Listen, I don't know how long we can keep this up. Food's running low, fuel's almost gone, and every time we go out looking for more, we risk bringing one of them back with us. If you hear of anywhere still holding anywhere with actual walls and actual people, >> I don't think there is anywhere. Not anymore. But if I hear anything, I'll broadcast. Same frequency, same time tomorrow. Stay warm. Stay human.
>> Stay human. Yeah, that's the whole game now, isn't it? K7 Echo Mike. This is W5 Romeo Tango signing off. Whatever happens, thanks for the voice. Good to know someone's still out there.
>> Same to you, brother. Same to you.
I'm not broadcasting this. That's the first thing. I stopped broadcasting 18 months ago. The radio still works, but I don't turn it on anymore. Not to listen, not to send. There's nothing out there I want to hear and nothing out there I want to find me. This is just a recording for whoever finds it. whenever that is, if that's ever. My name is Sam Lumis. I've been in this bunker for 3 years. Northern Canada. I'm not going to be more specific than that because it doesn't matter anymore. 3 years, 1,000 days, give or take. In the beginning, I kept track. Marks on the wall like a prisoner. Then I stopped. What's the point of counting days when there's nothing at the end of them? I have maybe three days of food left. canned beans, some crackers that went stale a year ago, a few packets of instant coffee that I've been rationing one spoonful at a time. Water's not the problem. There's a well. Food was always going to be how this ended. I can't hunt. I know how.
There's a rifle. There's game out there.
I've seen deer from the bunker entrance.
Rabbits. Even a moose once, but I can't eat them. I can't eat anything I can't verify. And there's no way to verify a deer. No blood test for a rabbit.
Anything alive could be one of them.
There was a dog last winter. Showed up at the bunker door in a snowstorm. Just sat there tail wagging, looking at me through the port hole. For 3 days, it came back. I wanted so badly to let it in, just to have something alive in here with me, something warm. On the fourth day, it stopped pretending. The last voice I heard on the radio was 9 months ago. Some group in the Yukon. Three of them left. They said they were trying to make it to the coast. Thought maybe they were ships. I don't know why they thought that. Hope, I guess. I told them not to go. The transmission cut out mid-sentence. I've scanned every frequency since then. Nothing but static. I think about going outside sometimes, not to run, just to walk, to see the sky without looking through reinforced glass, to feel wind that isn't filtered through a vent. But I know what's out there now. They don't hide anymore. Even up here in the middle of nowhere, I've seen them moving through the trees. Things that used to be caribou. Things that used to be people. Just walking. Endlessly walking.
Looking for the last of us. I used to tell myself I was surviving for a reason. That someday there'd be a rescue. That the military had a plan.
That there were bunkers deeper than mine where scientists were working on a solution. I stopped believing that a long time ago. There's no rescue.
There's no plan. There's just this waiting in the dark for the food to run out. I have a choice coming 3 days from now, maybe less. I can open that door and walk into whatever is waiting. I can eat whatever I find and take my chances, or I can stay here and let the cold take me when the generator finally dies. None of those are good options, but I've had 3 years to make peace with that. I'm making this recording because I don't know cuz someone should. Because silence feels like giving up. Because in a thousand years or a million, maybe something else will come to this planet.
Something that isn't part of the collective. And maybe they'll find this bunker. And maybe they'll wonder what happened to the species that built it.
We were here. That's what I want this to say. We were here and we fought. And in the end, it wasn't enough. But we were here. This is Sam Lumis, last of the Yukon cell, last voice in the long winter, signing off for good.
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