SCP-XXXX

Version 2.01

Last updated 2002-04-01

Last accessed 2024-12-06

Special Containment Procedure

Containment procedure is: Remove the reason that the truth cannot be told and the reason why people expect other people to lie, in a way that is consistent with the explanations that have built up in the infected and the people around the infected. This combined with drugs to reduce the explanatory power of the subject will dispel the Explanation Fog.

Spreading this procedure to others people you think trapped by the explanation fog can help reduce the Fog's spread and seriousness. This can be done prophylactically to immunise populations before outbreaks take hold. As such it is encouraged to represent Explanation Fog in fiction, in order to maximise the spread of this containment procedure. Making it one of few containment procedures worth spreading in neutralised form. Neutralisation can be done by use of humour and hiding in a list of fictionalised containment procedures.

Solving this problem once it has taken hold is not simple, people have a psychic need to act in a way that is consistent with explanations. So due to the multiplicity of explanations, acting in a way that is consistent with the strongest explanations is required. Taking actions that are not disastrous in those explanations is an important skill to cultivate. This tends towards slow actions in the world.

Cause

SCP-XXXX also known as Explanation Fog is a memetic problem that builds up in high stakes situations where trust is low and plain speaking discouraged.

Pathology

Explanation Fog starts as trying to explain people's behaviour. ‘Is someone acting odd because they are a communist spy, they suspect you of being a communist spy or they are involved in a top secret operation you shouldn't ask about because that might draw attention to it”. This leads to weirdness in action which can itself cause Explanation Fog in others

If not contained the Fog expands in people's brains; when explanations may become more complex (this is especially true of sci-fi enthusiasts). Perhaps there is an alien invasion going on that would explain the weird behaviour, but are they good aliens or bad? Infected cannot talk to people about weird behaviour lest they give something away or are thought mad.

Soon the infected might not be trusting their own body to be natural or your reality to be consistent. Some researchers hypothesize infected can slip into alternate worlds this way too, by becoming disassociated from their own.

Subjects contaminated with Explanation Fog eventually succumb to true madness if not contained. This is also a mind virus, if infected can convince people they are in a high stakes winner take all situation, like the cold war, they can become a vector. Scenario Gamma Bravo Delta is the hypothetical end of intelligent life on a planet due to consumption by the Explanation Fog, either due to complete world insanity or general degradation of the world's capability to act due to persuasive distrust.

History

The last major outbreak was during the cold war when it was unknown who might be a communist or capitalist sympathiser and the nuclear arms race was on. People didn't know who to trust and secret high stakes activities were commonplace and expected as they happened in the second world war.

Tasked with containing Explanation Fog is Team Delta Alpha Rho Epsilon. They monitor different population's Edelman Trust index to see where intervention is needed. Before settling on SCP-XXXX they tried a number of other containment procedures including one code named Rock and role. In Rock and Role people were hypnotised either to ignore the weird things and behaviour going on around them (rock) and/or to role play the part of researchers in the dangerous field (so that the real research happened elsewhere). This hypnotism was done through catchy musical pieces.

This contained the phenomena to secret labs, but could not squash it there, this lead to a decline in scientific output which again led to feelings of weirdness that needed explanation in the general population. So Explanation Fog resurfaced spontaneously in the general public throughout the 80s.

Also worth noting: some people were resistant to hypnotism, but pretended to be affected so that they were not contained in psych wards. This led to more Explanation Fog hosts and possible outbreaks.

One persistent Explanation was that music was alive and sending secret messages and that dispelling the Fog would kill the music, this was due to seeing people change their behaviour due to hypnotism. The music, the rock, was preventing the dispelling the Explanation Fog by making people not question things and thus not come to a shared understanding. This looked like intelligent self interested behaviour, in Explanation Fog parlance an Explanatory Entity. This Explanation could only be dispelled by guaranteeing that music would be kept alive by being shared using peer to peer means, and the hypnotising effects removed by remastering.

Some people’s Fog couldn't be dispelled unless plans for widely simulating the 19th century were made, guaranteeing that there would be a lot of good worlds in the future for parasitic mind control music.

Still other’s Fog could only be dispelled by the commitment to implement karma in these new simulations, so that Explanatory Entities that caused a thermonuclear exchange would be reincarnated as a lower life form (or would suffer some other negative consequence). This was necessary to give an explanation for the lack of nuclear exchange given the potential existence of Explanatory Entities with different moralities.

It was only the fall of the Soviet Union that reduced the threat of Explanation Fog. Although some few people are still stuck in the Explanation Fog as they disbelieve that there was a coherent explanation for the cold war that didn't involve magic, possibly due to time travelling nanotech sent from the future.

There was also a need for an Explanation about why explanatory entities would help humans. Some form of publicly visible mutual aid contract between humans and Explanatory Entities made sense. Binding contacts were made between humanity and Explanatory Entities of all different types to pursue

SCP-XXXX was only discovered by a married couple of people stuck in different Explanatory Fogs slowly coming to trust each other and gradually exposing their Explanations to each other.

Some researchers object to the human consensus explanation as the primary Explanation as presented here, claiming that other explanations are equally valid. Attempts were made to make this SCP entry represent the multiplicity of possible explanations, this led to some breakthroughs in linguistics but were ultimately abandoned due to length and usefulness for field operatives.

Future

It has been posited that AI with it's capability to imagine more scenarios will be more susceptible to Explanation Fog in high stakes situations.

Appendix 1 - Explanatory Entities

The following are known real world phenomena that have known to have been associated with Explanatory Entities

Food messages

Perfume persuasion

Animal interaction

Algorithmic ordering

Calendar connections

Weather prompts

Appendix 2 - Esoteric Explanations

In order to explain the weird things experienced by their degrading mental state the following are often employed. Special attention to arguments should be given to stable casual loops and things that will guarantee the number of plausible worlds with similar Explanatory Entities to now. Also promoting world views that can support life, conscious and moderately sane entities that might also have Explanatory Entities associated.

The expansion into new worlds is often associated with stars as this was the first Esoteric Entity to suggest that there was other possible worlds with other life on. This particular Fog is called Star Fog and is very hard to dispel.

Time travel

Dream Work

Interdimensional Travel

Drug realms

Indistinguishable Virtual reality

Nanotech magic

Ghostly Titanic interference

Generation Ship Entertainment

Hidden Advanced Body modification

Double Agent (also sleeper)

Secret Herovillain complex

Cult indoctrination

Coordination system control

Arms race participant

Cold warrior

Freedom star fighter

Frontier Psychiatrist

Undercover cop on the edge of being infomation thief

Game of life character

Insane asylum

Compromised medical establishment

Hidden Legal reality

Unreliable senses

Memory removal/alteration

Divine inspiration

Pain caus

ation device

Secret Royal

Location entrapment

Civilisational Sexiness

Supernatural Luck

Isolated Monk Powers