Death. That terrible and inevitable consequence of
life. But as the Foundation discovered in the aftermath
of Project Dammerung, its absence can be even more horrifying than its presence. Let’s bring you up to speed, shall we? Here’s the story so far: After the death
of overseer O5-11, the SCP Foundation’s infamous O5 Council learned the horrifying
truth of what happens to human beings after death. There’s no afterlife, no everlasting paradise
or eternal damnation. Instead, the dead are cursed to remain conscious,
aware of everything happening to them after passing… even their bodies decomposing. To combat this, a member of the council, O5-4,
established Project Dammerung. This was an internal, Foundation-backed endeavor,
created with one singular goal in mind: to capture and contain death itself. As part of this project, researchers created
a machine known as SCP-3448. At first, it seemed like just an ordinary
MRI machine from a hospital, SCP-3448 had a number of anomalous modifications made to
it, giving it a rather unique function. The device was capable of separating someone’s
consciousness from their body, putting them in a sort of half-dead state. While in this state, a subject placed within
the machine, referred to as SCP-3448-A, could maintain a consistent line of two-way communication
between their disembodied consciousness and the Foundation. Instead of deploying a member of D-Class personnel,
one of the SCP Foundation’s own agents was placed into SCP-3448. Agent Anthony Michaels was elected to act
as SCP-3448-A, and serve as the conduit between the living world and the endless nothing that
lies beyond. But, as often happens when people dabble with
forces they cannot possibly understand, something went awry. Project Dammerung’s mission to contain death
took an unexpected turn. When Agent Michaels was placed into the machine,
things ended up getting much, much worse. Buckle up, because we’re about to dive into
the ill-fated outcome of the death-defying Project Dammerung, the catalyst for the End
of Death itself. One of the components connected to SCP-3448
is a monitor. This screen is used to interpret the electrical
activity of SCP-3448-A’s brain once they have entered the half-death state, known as
SCP-3448-1. This component of the anomalous MRI machine
is able to intake these electrical signals and interpret them as images, occasionally
with words accompanying them too. During his time in the machine, Agent Michaels’
brainwaves were able to deliver some rather interesting imagery to the Foundation researchers. A number of these seemed to be a bizarre and
seemingly disconnected series of images, almost like something taken directly out of a dream,
hard to find any real context for. The first was a human figure, surrounded by
a swarm of buzzing insects. After forty-three minutes, the monitor connected
to SCP-3448 showed this figure looking swollen as if it had been stung by the insects, which
flew away as the obscured humanoid collapsed. The next day, the screen showed a man lying
alone in a desert somewhere, with an oasis in the distance; almost like the classic mirage
someone dying of thirst sees just out of reach as they stumble through the endless sand dunes. The same day, the image changed to a man in
a fetal position, in a room made of dirt, with bones and roots protruding from the walls. So far, the dream-like images coming through
from Agent Michaels’ half-dead mind look strange, almost like the contents of the infamous
videotape from the horror movie The Ring. Did any of these images mean anything? And if so, what? Was the man - the human-shaped figure appearing
in them - Agent Michaels himself, or some kind of representation of his disembodied
consciousness, now that it had been separated from him by the SCP-3448 machine? One of the Foundation’s researchers described
the imagery seen on the monitor as being akin to watching someone’s acid trip for over
a week. However, the same researcher also theorized
that, because Agent Michaels was being held in a half-dead state, that the other things
appearing in the images with him could also be similarly half-dead. The researcher believed that what they were
seeing was more of an abstract, conceptual representation of death, not a conventional
afterlife, like the idea of walking up to the pearly gates, or the fire and brimstone
of Hell. So, the researcher decided to try ‘half-killing’
objects, partially disassembling things and placing them into SCP-3448 with Agent Michaels. Sure enough, doing this meant that the man
in the images now had whatever object was put into the machine; for example, when they
broke apart a lighter, it appeared in the man’s possession on-screen. Unfortunately, this was the biggest mistake
that the researcher could have made. The images on the monitor began to show the
man, now believed to be Agent Anthony Michaels, being attacked by a little girl. Thought to be a manifestation of the very
concept of death, this girl was seen stabbing the agent with a femur, torturing him while
the Foundation were sat watching, powerless and unable to help. The researcher requisitioned a handgun, partially
disassembling it like the lighter in order to arm Agent Michaels against his attacker. And it worked. But the consequences were unfathomable. Sure enough, Michaels was able to draw the
firearm and fend off his attacker. The agent fired off a shot that, over the
course of more bizarre, creepy, and disjointed images involving skeletons and teddy bears,
seemed to hit the girl square in the head. The image that followed showed Agent Michaels
standing alone in a garden, flowers blooming as dead insects rained down around him. On the ground beside the agent was a stuffed
animal, a crow with a bullet hole through its head. Shortly after, the following words appeared
on the monitor attached to SCP-3448: “I hope you enjoy your hike, dad.” For a few short moments, nothing seemed to
be all that different to the Foundation in the outside world. The researcher who had provided Agent Michaels
with the handgun was trapped in a state of shock for a brief while, until five minutes
later when the phone calls started flooding in. The first came from Joyce, a woman known to
the researcher, who frantically explained how her father – who had been dying – now
was totally fine all of a sudden. The researcher couldn’t quite tell if she
was happy or terrified by what seemed to be happening. Next came the orders from above. The overseer, O5-4, the only council member
aware of Project Dammerung and who had backed it financially, called to congratulate the
researcher and the rest of the team behind the project. It seemed that Dammerung had been successful
in the goal they had set out with, to contain the cognitohazard known as death. O5-4 demanded that all records and information
regarding the project was to be incinerated, covered up from the rest of the Foundation’s
knowledge. But the truth was far, far worse than any
at the Foundation realized. It soon dawned on the researcher, who had
been documenting Agent Michaels’ time in SCP-3448, that Project Dammerung had not succeeded
at all. They hadn’t contained anything, hadn’t
secured the conceptual form of death. What they had done instead, by foolish mistake,
was neutralize death. They had killed death itself. And now, the world as they knew it was gone,
changed almost indefinitely. Now, not a single person in the world could
die. They had caused the End of Death. On the surface, a world without death sounds
like a utopia, a blissful society where everyone on Earth lives a long and prosperous life. But those with a little more foresight will
know that peaceful immortality for the human race is a fool’s dream. Think about how many people there are living
in the world right now. The overall global population grows exponentially
every year. While death might be a sad and somber part
of life, it’s unfortunately necessary. Even with all the deaths that occur worldwide
every year, the resources of Planet Earth are still being stretched thin. Water, oil, food, electricity, homes, everywhere
you go there are plenty of people who don’t have enough of any. So, what happens when people don’t die,
just keep aging infinitely? What happens when the Earth becomes too overcrowded,
when the number of people overshadows the number of resources even more than it already
does? Society as we know it, across the globe, would
collapse. And that’s exactly what happened. The Foundation had done the unthinkable, they
had vanquished the very concept that takes us from being alive to being deceased. But there’s a reason Kilroy J. Oldster called
death “the great equalizer of human beings.” It is meant to catch up with everyone, every
person born is ultimately destined to die. And by removing that element of human mortality
from the equation, the SCP Foundation had unknowingly pushed the world towards disaster. With the actions of Agent Michaels within
SCP-3448, death as a concept ceased to exist, almost instantaneously as if someone had flipped
an off switch. People didn’t become undead, things that
had long since passed away and been confined to six feet under the dirt didn’t start
clawing their way back up to the surface. We aren’t talking about a zombie outbreak;
this isn’t Dawn of the Dead. Instead, human beings across the world just
refused to die, their brains continuing to function and bodies continuing to age, despite
any damage or injuries they sustained. Fatal wounds were now just as dangerous as
getting a broken ankle or sprained wrist. The concerns around how undying humans were
overpopulating the planet were also extended to animals too, which were also affected by
the End of Death that Project Dammerung had triggered. As a result, the threat of starvation on a
potentially global scale was greater than such a concern ever had been. Of course, the SCP Foundation left the concerns
of a potential humanitarian crisis to those in charge of world governments. The United Nations could worry themselves
over how to feed and care for a population that simply won’t die, the Foundation had
bigger fish to fry. Their mistake had caused this situation, so
only they could undo it. The only solution they could come up with? Figuring out new ways of killing people. The Foundation wanted to bring death back
to the dead. Their experiments began with the use of D-Class
personnel, commanding them to attempt to kill one another through various means. Strangulation, both by hand or with the use
of a belt, didn’t seem to work the way it should have, with the D-Class being strangled,
likely going into a coma due to a lack of oxygen to their brain. Not dying, but living in unconscious agony. In a similar experiment, placing a D-Class
in a vacuum led to burst blood vessels, impaired motor functions, widespread paralysis to name
a few forms of damage. But still, death could not be achieved. Cutting, blood loss, poisoning, starvation,
shooting, even decapitation of multiple D-Class personnel all yielded the same result. In some sense, simply allowing these subjects
to die might have just been kinder; if death was still possible, that is. The Foundation even went as far as removing
the brain of a live monkey, placing it in a blender and testing to see if there was
any electrical activity present. And wouldn’t you know, it was somehow still
alive, at least as far as life can be measured by human beings. This key part of our existence, the underlying
fact of death itself, was no more. Removing that was like taking a crucial element
out of a circuit, the world just didn’t function in the way it was supposed to anymore. What hope did the Foundation have now? What could possibly be done to solve this
colossal mistake? Well, the answer is very little, apart from
waiting for the inevitable collapse of society. What awaited was a world in ruin where everyone
was starving but nobody could die. A planet and a people just hanging on until
the universe eventually blinked out of existence, so that maybe then they could Rest in Peace. The moral of the story? You can’t cheat death, because death isn’t
the other player, it’s the game itself. Now go check out “Secret Group that Runs
the World - SCP O5 Council Explained” and “SCP-006 - Fountain of Youth” for more
videos about attempts to cheat death, and its not-so-pleasant consequences!
