Nobody was hurt.

April 2, 2020 6:46 AM

A train engineer intentionally drove a speeding locomotive off a track at the Port of Los Angeles because he was suspicious about the presence of a Navy hospital ship docked there to help during the coronovirus crisis, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
posted by PMdixon (96 comments total)

Oh, boy. I was wondering when the conspiracy nutjobs were going to start acting up. Here we go.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:51 AM on April 2, 2020 [18 favorites]

TIL that “train wrecking” is a crime, which, I guess it would be but I hadn’t previously considered it.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:53 AM on April 2, 2020 [43 favorites]

Offhand suspicion is that 'train wrecking' is right up there with 'cattle rustling' or 'exposed feminine ankle in public on Sunday" or at least has roots in the same time period.

*twiddles quarantine thumbs until someone makes a post about law/blue-law/wild west law*
posted by RolandOfEld at 6:59 AM on April 2, 2020 [13 favorites]

Obviously this is very strange, and there has been speculation about what the train operator may have been thinking (or who he may have been influenced by), but I haven't seen any concrete explanation of what drove him to this. Has anyone been propagating a theory that the USNS Mercy is up to something nefarious? And if so, what?
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 7:02 AM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Personal Highlights:

1. The charge of 'train wrecking'
2. Train ultimately stopped by a chain link fence,
3. That the guy was arrested by CHP, which in my mind means Ponch and Jon.
posted by Capt. Renault at 7:05 AM on April 2, 2020 [75 favorites]

Re train wrecking, the indispensable Kevin Underhill suggests that this is probably 18 USC 1992.
posted by Not A Thing at 7:08 AM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Obviously this is very strange, and there has been speculation about what the train operator may have been thinking (or who he may have been influenced by), but I haven't seen any concrete explanation of what drove him to this. Has anyone been propagating a theory that the USNS Mercy is up to something nefarious? And if so, what?

I'm not going there because it's too toxic for me, but the right place to start to look would be Alex Jones and that particular branch of crazy. I don't think this is mainstream crazy, more fringe crazy. And make sure you buy some chocolate bone broth while you are there!
posted by ensign_ricky at 7:09 AM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

It doesn't take long before you end up on a QAnon subreddit.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:13 AM on April 2, 2020 [13 favorites]

Has anyone been propagating a theory that the USNS Mercy is up to something nefarious? And if so, what?

I'm not sure about Mercy specifically, but it certainly fits in with the whole "COVID is a cover for the government take-over" line of thought I saw being put out there by these people back when COVID first broke out.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:14 AM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

RobertVoodooPower i'm afraid to click on that link. can you summarize what they're saying?
posted by affectionateborg at 7:16 AM on April 2, 2020

It says "Some QAnon Topminds believe that the hospital ship USNS Mercy is docking in Los Angles to take people to Gitmo"

Worth noting this is from the /r/TopMinds sub-Reddit, which is all about ridiculing conspiracy theories, and points to a single tweet as 'proof' of this thinking.
posted by Frayed Knot at 7:20 AM on April 2, 2020 [6 favorites]

Speaking of "QAnon", friend of mine linked to this thread on Twitter full of creepy, cryptic talk...
posted by Fortyseven at 7:21 AM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

It's safe to click, affectionateborg. It's a subreddit that tracks the nutjob stories. It's not per-se a nutjob subreddit.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:23 AM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

The extra concerning thing was that I thought the guy wanted to save himself from whatever he thought the ship was up to... but on reading his comments, it seems like he was trying to destroy the ship by ramming it. I mean, it's a little scary that this guy who is presumably certified (and maybe periodically recertified?) and entrusted to operate this serious vehicle has fallen for conspiracy theories... but it's even a little more scary that he doesn't know how trains work.
posted by nequalsone at 7:28 AM on April 2, 2020 [36 favorites]

I also remember the Ebola-era Obama FEMA camp coffin conspiracy, pushed by Alex Jones and the like, who yet are strangely not concerned about the widely-reported 100,000 body bags the Pentagon is currently seeking to presumably bag 100,000 actual Americans. It's almost as if they are bad faith actors or something.
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 7:30 AM on April 2, 2020 [48 favorites]

Paranoia is a hell of a drug.
posted by hilberseimer at 7:39 AM on April 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

Is there a good job for tracking the current state of QAnon nuttery? Like what the theory of the week is? The site I know for Q drops has almost nothing about Covid-19, I was surprised. AFAICT the greater conspiracy folks talking about Mercy (as seen in /r/TopMinds) are writing fanfic, they aren't the official Q source.
posted by Nelson at 7:41 AM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Oh, boy. I was wondering when the conspiracy nutjobs were going to start acting up. Here we go.

This isn't even the first one I've seen--that would be the gentleman who was intercepted by the FBI before he could go shoot out a hospital in Missouri for treating COVID-19 patients. That was last week.

Fuck.
posted by sciatrix at 7:47 AM on April 2, 2020 [30 favorites]

2. Train ultimately stopped by a chain link fence,

I suspect a more likely explanation is that the train happened to stop in the vicinity of a chain link fence, despite the wording in the article...
posted by Snowflake at 7:49 AM on April 2, 2020 [15 favorites]

"Some QAnon Topminds"
uhm...yes...well...No.
Populism and Pandemics; Conspiracy Theories in the Age of COVID-19
There are currently 18 conspiracy theorists campaigning for seats in the U.S. Congress, according to Media Matters for America, a media monitoring group that specializes in tracking disinformation. The candidates, most of whom are Republicans, subscribe to the so-called "QAnon" theory. There are also roughly a dozen former candidates also pushing the theory.
posted by adamvasco at 7:49 AM on April 2, 2020 [11 favorites]

I thought QAnon folks *wanted* the government to take (deserving, presumably pedophile) people to Gitmo. So if they believed the ship was going to do this, they wouldn't be motivated to destroy it... I guess I'm just not sure this is Q or just some other kind of crazy.
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:50 AM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

...aren't the QAnon nuts the ones that think Trump is going to send everyone they don't like to Gitmo, and are really happy about it? I'm confused!
posted by tavella at 7:51 AM on April 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

Is there a good job for tracking the current state of QAnon nuttery?

The folks running the Qanonanoymous podcast try to stay on top of the latest Qanon bullshit.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:53 AM on April 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

Yeah the podcast points out the established take on Covid among Qfolk changed like, daily , from hoax to secret cover for locking up the Clintons to ...
posted by The Whelk at 8:02 AM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

TIL that “train wrecking” is a crime, which, I guess it would be but I hadn’t previously considered it.

TIL that Macavity crashed a train.
posted by The Bellman at 8:15 AM on April 2, 2020 [37 favorites]

“train wrecking” is a crime, which, I guess it would be but I hadn’t "

it is, I have a congressional letter outlining the bill before us entry into WW2.
posted by clavdivs at 8:20 AM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

Yeah the podcast points out the established take on Covid among Qfolk changed like, daily , from hoax to secret cover for locking up the Clintons to ...

... emergency medical facilities set up in Central Park are being used to smuggle children out via underground tunnels.

That's apparently one of the latest.

The bigger problem with this stuff is that it just leaches into the groundwater of public discourse and reaches people who are already receptive to "big government wants to kill us all/take our freedoms/capitalism is the only thing that will save us" messages.

The pump for this stuff has been primed by the right for decades, so the intellectual lead in the water is saturating the public nervous system with great ease.

The train guy doesn't need to be a Qanon enthusiast per se. It could very well just be a comorbidity of Fox News, the Koch brothers, and a whole bunch of other stuff, rounded out by casual contact with some Qanon bullshit.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:21 AM on April 2, 2020 [17 favorites]

You can intentionally drive a train off its track? I need to reconsider what I thought I knew about how trains work.
posted by eotvos at 8:28 AM on April 2, 2020 [8 favorites]

You can intentionally drive a train off its track? I need to reconsider what I thought I knew about how trains work.


Sure, you just turn the steering wheel real hard to the right or left. Oh, it's April 2? n/m. I don't know how he did it, but based on accidental derails I know of, I'm guessing he went faster than the rated limit around a bend in the tracks? Or actually given that they said he crashed through a concrete barrier possibly he just went down a dead-end track going the direction he wanted to go.

Also, based on his statement in the article, I don't think he was necessarily trying to damage the ship, really. He was trying to "bring attention" to it's presence and make a stink and raise his conspiracy theory flag. Given that a lot of conspiracists just think people need to "wake up" and look for evidence themselves and then everyone will see that they're right, this seems plausible. The arrest and the news coverage were the goal.
posted by RustyBrooks at 8:32 AM on April 2, 2020 [13 favorites]

it is, I have a congressional letter outlining the bill before us entry into WW2.

I was going to make a "People vs. Casey Jones" joke, but wouldn't you know it (but it's a cannabis and not a cocaine charge, and the vehicle in question was an automobile, not a train).
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:32 AM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

You can certainly drive it off (i.e. crash through, at speed) the terminus of the track, which is by my understanding what happened here.

I presume a malicious engineer could also derail a train on a curve by taking it far too fast (for curves intended only for slow operation, near stations/stops/whatever) but that'd be a messier thing to calculate.
posted by cortex at 8:33 AM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

There are no tracks within a quarter mile of where the mercy is docked, and none that point at it. I have no idea what this idiot thought would happen.

I would take relief that the stupidity needed to believe the pandemic is a hoax worth killing people over also prevented him from pulling it off. But this will probably inspire some other conspiracy theorist with slightly more planning skill :(
posted by Popular Ethics at 8:36 AM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

I haven't seen any concrete explanation of what drove him to this

A train, apparently.
posted by snofoam at 8:45 AM on April 2, 2020 [103 favorites]

The crazy Qanon stuff I read about this: Trump is at the forefront of this Fake Virus Issue, which will overturn the world order. But Qanon also asserts that Don is signaling to his supporters that they will be OK, (his wearing of a yellow tie was one clue that is supposed to support this) and that once the world order is toppled, Don and his collaborators will expose the TRUTH that the virus was a hoax/scheme to destroy the world order, and will then step in to set things right in a New, Approved World Order led by Don himself.

I don't know how "authentic" that concept is as a real belief held by actual QANON nuts. But it doesn't matter what you write about this crap, as it's all just bullshit being spread by people misremembering things, repeating things and making shit up. So my version of it is 100% as "real" as any other version you might read in a weird subreddit or twit thread.
posted by SoberHighland at 8:54 AM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

It devolves ultimately to a fairly optimistic take on human beings. Namely, that the folks behind the various conspiracies have way more competence than is usually in evidence.
posted by jquinby at 8:57 AM on April 2, 2020 [7 favorites]

> You can certainly drive it off (i.e. crash through, at speed) the terminus of the track

As Parisians learnt in 1895.
posted by Westringia F. at 9:27 AM on April 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

It’s pretty fascinating seeing a new popular religion form out of nothing before our eyes. Like being in the Roman Empire 2000 years ago.
posted by rodlymight at 9:28 AM on April 2, 2020 [11 favorites]

It could be fair to say the conductor is a victim of weaponized lunacy. If you poke around googling 'WWG1WGA Qanon mercy ship' you'll eventually learn that they believe a huge military operation is happening literally right now. It is to save tens of thousands of children from underground military bases. Obama and the rest of the liberal cabal used huge 'deep underground military bases', they even use the acronym DUMB, to house them for satanic blood rituals. The tent hospital in Central Park is directly over one of the main access tunnels and is there to treat children who have never seen the light of day. The hospital ships in NY / LA are there to either treat the massive number of children or take away the hundreds of satanic liberals to Guantanamo depending on which twitter thread you look at. It might be both.

I didn't read that far for fear I would be infected with the D.U.M.B.
posted by urlnotfound at 9:39 AM on April 2, 2020 [15 favorites]

I saw "train wrecking" and immediately had visions of crowds of malicious hobos around false signal fires beside the wrong tracks to attract unsuspecting liquor transport trains.
Neal Gaiman can have this idea if he gives me money.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 9:48 AM on April 2, 2020 [8 favorites]

"People don’t know what’s going on here. Now they will.”

I still don’t know what’s going on, or what this guy thought is going on, so I can give him an F on this assignment.
posted by GenjiandProust at 9:48 AM on April 2, 2020 [41 favorites]

Yesterday while bored I followed a QANON thread on Twitter where the conspiracy nuts were piling on to 'prove' that Covid-19 was a hoax. It started with the Central Park tents and lead to the 'proof'. The big proof? The doctor featured in the heartbreaking NYTimes short film has on her CV that she is expert in Simulations.

I would think that someone with a specialty in emergency medicine would be well served by simulations, hopefully it's a common practice in Level One Trauma Centers. If that isn't enough she also speaks Russian.

Hoax.
posted by readery at 9:50 AM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

From Not A Thing's link to
Kevin Underhill:

Officials said security cameras”shows Moreno holding a lighted flare during the incident,” either because this wasn’t dangerous enough already or because he didn’t think anyone would notice otherwise.

posted by straight at 9:57 AM on April 2, 2020 [8 favorites]

To me, "train wrecking" brings to mind a destruction derby game where you crash trains into things. Maybe it starts with a lightweight city sim where you get to lay the tracks down in concert with the AI (or human opponent?) creating the buildings, etc.

You could earn upgrades like rocket boosters, Mad Max style "cattle" pushers, track-jumping hydraulics, explosive cargo, etc. Points assigned based on property damage and casualties.

Is it too soon for "Train Siege" or "Train Wreck"? Maybe if it was absurd enough, like if you could pull train cars full of velociraptors or hostile robots that would flood out after the crash like an AoE DoT effect. And maybe incorporating the crowds of malicious bystanders trying to stop the train with tricks, bombs, and sheer body mass?

These times are too weird, I can no longer distinguish between "meh" and "terrible" ideas.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 9:57 AM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

Yesterday's DOJ press release: The incident did result in the train leaking a substantial amount of fuel oil, which required clean up by fire and other hazardous materials personnel. [...] In his first interview with the Los Angeles Port Police, Moreno acknowledged that he “did it,” saying that he was suspicious of the Mercy and believing it had an alternate purpose related to COVID-19 or a government takeover, the affidavit states. [...]

The Los Angeles Port Police reviewed video recorded from the locomotive’s cab, according to the affidavit. One video shows the train clearly moving at a high rate of speed before crashing through various barriers and coming into close proximity to three occupied vehicles. A second video shows Moreno in the cab holding a lighted flare.
---
Emphasis mine; ultimately, the train stopped 'more than 250 yards from the Mercy.'
---
Per the Navy, the USNS Mercy accepted its first patients on March 29. While in Los Angeles, the ship will serve as a referral hospital for non-COVID-19 patients currently admitted to shore-based hospitals, and will provide a full spectrum of medical care to include general surgeries, critical care and ward care for adults. This will allow local health professionals to focus on treating COVID-19 patients and for shore-based hospitals to use their Intensive Care Units and ventilators for those patients.
posted by Iris Gambol at 9:57 AM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

Namely, that the folks behind the various conspiracies have way more competence than is usually in evidence.

I think it's the opposite myself. Conspiracy theories develop because stuff happens the person doesn't understand. A conspiracy theory is a way of inventing, often from whole cloth, order, in the form of a story, from a chaos that isn't comprehensible: science, statistics, complicated economics and politics.

To make the stories work, it needs enemies that are implacable. If you reason that out this implies uber-competence, but that's not the logic of the story, that's you bringing a real-world reference in. The conspiracy is a narrative not a syllogism (even if it purports to be). "It just makes sense" is all the reason it needs.

These are human, emotional responses to thinks that scare or make us anxious. They give the illusion of understanding and, to some degree, control. But they are unmoored, and more a kind of dream logic than actual logic. That isolation from reality makes them very dangerous.
posted by bonehead at 10:05 AM on April 2, 2020 [14 favorites]

Qanon also asserts that Don is signaling to his supporters that they will be OK, (his wearing of a yellow tie was one clue that is supposed to support this)

They're literally looking for The Yellow Sign?
posted by LionIndex at 10:09 AM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

White hard hats are the new Pallid Mask.
posted by bonehead at 10:13 AM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

In a lot of situations, conspiracy theories occupy the space class consciousness would.
posted by The Whelk at 10:24 AM on April 2, 2020 [29 favorites]

“train wrecking” is a crime, which, I guess it would be but I hadn’t "

Now if only "dumpster firing" were a crime....
posted by chavenet at 10:31 AM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

I think we should kybash conspiracy theory. Even DOJ reports...

HR 8086, 76th Congress. 1940. 'making attempts to wreck a train a federal offense.' it passed.

same congress. S 3125- 'Authorizing U.S. Public health to research in cause of colds, flu, etc.
HR 8240 Federal aid to hospitals.
in 1940, the us had a 23.7 billion dollar deficit.
posted by clavdivs at 10:35 AM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

Thorzdad: Oh, boy. I was wondering when the conspiracy nutjobs were going to start acting up. Here we go.

The path to conspiracies are paved with shitty public statements from government officials, like Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick is saying the elderly, like himself, should be willing to die to save the economy (Yahoo, March 24, 2020)

Patrick spoke to Tucker Carlson about the novel coronavirus outbreak, and he condemned efforts to fight the outbreak that involve temporarily shuttering nonessential business to prevent the spread of the virus. People over the age of 65—coincidentally the median age for Fox News's audience—are at the greatest risk of suffering from more serious health complications from the disease, and the 69-year-old Patrick told Carlson that none of that deters him.

"Tucker," Patrick said, "no one reached out to me and said, 'As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?' And if that is the exchange, I'm all in. And that doesn't make me noble or brave or anything like that. I just think there are lots of grandparents out there like me, I have six grandchildren, that what we all care about and what we love more than anything are those children. And I want to live smart and see through this, but I don't want the whole country to be sacrificed. And that's what I see."

The Social-Distancing Culture War Has Begun -- Across the country, social distancing is morphing from a public-health to political act. The consequences could be disastrous. (The Atlantic, March 30, 2020)

The article notes that at first, everyone was on board with social distancing, but in light of stupid statements from certain conservative politicians and talking heads, some conservatives, including older people, are flaunting those directions.

Others see government directions of this sort as first steps towards some new police state. “A Fake Pandemic”: Anti-Vaxxers Are Spreading Coronavirus Conspiracy Theories -- Facebook is full of COVID-19 misinformation from groups that oppose mandatory vaccines. (Mother Jones, March 24, 2020)

And then there's the self-inflicted injuries: Man dies after taking chloroquine in an attempt to prevent coronavirus -- The man and his wife thought the ingredient, used to treat sick fish, could prevent the disease. (NBC News, March 24, 2020)

The man's wife told NBC News she'd watched televised briefings during which President Trump talked about the potential benefits of chloroquine.

Not only is NBC's phrasing shitty (they shouldn't report on it as "potential benefits"), they then state that there are indications of such benefits, without citing sources or saying how preliminary or limited these findings are. Related/previously: Ableism in the time of...
posted by filthy light thief at 10:40 AM on April 2, 2020 [9 favorites]

the FDA approved it for emergency use like 2 days ago i think? so like 200 years ago in plague time.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:46 AM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

Sure, you just turn the steering wheel real hard to the right or left.

You joke, but I read a long form article in Harper's or somewhere about people training to be train engineers, and on the simulator the author couldn't get through even the slightest curve without practically flinging the train off the tracks. With a realistic amount of cargo train cars attached, I recall the author couldn't even go in a straight line for very long before losing control.

Driving a train successfully is much more complicated then just pushing "gas" and then "brake".
posted by sideshow at 10:53 AM on April 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

That the guy was arrested by CHP, which in my mind means Ponch and Jon.

The CHP is our state police. They do more than just drive up and down the (not yet open at the time) 118 Freeway on their motorcycles.
posted by sideshow at 10:56 AM on April 2, 2020

Texas lieutenant governor Dan Patrick: "Tucker, no one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?"

Who the hell would be the person asking him this question? The president? A doctor? A police officer? Some kind of Plague Economist in-Chief? In what context would this question be asked by anyone? This is so inane on so many levels. It's hard to imagine an adult even coming up with this concept, but here we are.
posted by SoberHighland at 11:01 AM on April 2, 2020 [13 favorites]

"Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?"
posted by valkane at 11:31 AM on April 2, 2020 [6 favorites]

Well, it sure woke me up.

Thanks Eduardo. I needed that.

So, as an aside, anyone can run a train off its tracks. I want to see them put it back on.
posted by mule98J at 11:41 AM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

bonehead: The conspiracy is a narrative not a syllogism (even if it purports to be). "It just makes sense" is all the reason it needs.

OK, I get how current events are a bit surreal, but how in the hell does "a secret underground facility run by a shadow government to drain blood from children"make *more* sense? How fucked up a worldview do you have to have to choose that belief?
posted by Popular Ethics at 11:56 AM on April 2, 2020 [11 favorites]

The CHP is our state police. They do more than just drive up and down the (not yet open at the time) 118 Freeway on their motorcycles.

So you're more of a Jon than a Ponch
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 11:59 AM on April 2, 2020 [13 favorites]

"make *more* sense?"

To talk of the thing itself making sense in this context doesn't get at the truth of the matter. It's not the thing itself but the feeling they get from thinking about the thing that makes more sense to them.
posted by Horkus at 12:14 PM on April 2, 2020 [9 favorites]

there is no thing.
posted by clavdivs at 12:53 PM on April 2, 2020

This has not shown up any trainspotter blogs yet.
posted by srboisvert at 12:58 PM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

...anyone can run a train off its tracks. I want to see them put it back on.
Every day, a new metaphor for the White House.
posted by MtDewd at 12:59 PM on April 2, 2020 [24 favorites]

Train crashes used to be kind of a thing - maybe he's bringing it back This one, the Crash at Crush TX, drew 40,000 people in 1896 and both trains were going 90mph when they impacted and killed a few and injured more when they blew up! Then people stood on the wreckage and took pictures. LOL.

Speaking of conspiracy theories, apparently Bill Gates and some guy that was one of many technical advisors on the movie Contagion are behind Covid19, already have the cure, and are doing it to reduce the world population. Also this is just the first strand, the second will follow later. Considering that the US just passed a $2 trillion AID package to help, the question of why they didn't just sell the cure for like $1.9 trillion and save everyone the hassle is met with blank stares, of course.

Just for kicks, Contagion wasn't the only show that is similar to the Corona virus - This scene from the goofy Fox show The Last Man on Earth predicted it too in 2015, though they did not predict the shortage of masks. I'm actually surprised that Will Forte and Kristin Wiig haven't been pulled into the conspiracies because of this.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:17 PM on April 2, 2020 [6 favorites]

A sad little tangent on this: the US Navy only has two operational hospital ships, and both of those (the Mercy class) were built in the 1980s and were considered obsolete and due for replacement in 2004.

This is in the category of 'crazy liberal dreams', but I wish the USN had more hospital ships than CVNs. Something like the equivalent of Roosevelt's Great White Fleet, but for humanitarian purposes and soft diplomacy instead of force projection. I know, crazy liberal pipe dream....
posted by LeRoienJaune at 1:23 PM on April 2, 2020 [13 favorites]

OK, I get how current events are a bit surreal, but how in the hell does "a secret underground facility run by a shadow government to drain blood from children"make *more* sense? How fucked up a worldview do you have to have to choose that belief?

Fred Clark, a progressive Christian, has done a ton of writing on the idea of satanic baby killers, which has gone from the Satanic Cult panics of the 80s into the antiabortion rhetoric of the 00s and into QAnon today.

Satanic baby-killers, Jan 2019, discussing a case in the UK:

That’s why her lies had to be so outrageous — why she had to accuse those neighbors of being the worst possible thing she could imagine. And that worst possible thing, inevitably, is Satanic baby-killers. It is ever thus when people of limited imagination who have been raised in Christendom try to slander others with the worst possible thing they can imagine. What’s the worst possible thing you can do? Murder. And who would be the worst possible victim of that? Babies — sweet little chubby-toed babies. And, um, they don’t just murder those babies, they also, like rape them. And then they eat them too, of course. And why would anyone do such unimaginably horrible things? For the worst possible reason: for Satan himself.

The persistent appeal of Satanic baby-killerism, July 2019 , on why conspiracy fans aren't joyously relieved when their conspiracies that propose massive evil are shown to be false:

The fantasy isn’t so much that there are real monsters, or a real conspiracy of Satanic baby-killers conducting its rituals underneath the neighborhood pizza shop or Masonic lodge or public school. The fantasy is that if there were, then they — and they alone — would be the ones to rise up against it. They would prove to be braver, more virtuous, and more heroic than all their otherwise indistinguishable-from-them neighbors. The fantasy is that we are better than all those sheeple who just don’t or wouldn’t even care that sweet, innocent little babies were being perversely tormented, then killed, then eaten, by a nefarious cult that secretly walks among us.

See also this Mother Jones history of QAnon's pedophilia fixation, which goes a long way back (all the way past the related antisemitic blood libel) to conservative Romans decrying the new, progressive worldview:

In this dialogue, written by Marcus Minucius Felix in the 2nd century, the Roman pagan Caecilius Natalis speaks of Christians the way Pizzagaters described John Podesta and his fellow liberal elite. Natalis is particularly incensed by the cult’s initiation ritual. The details are as “revolting as they are notorious”: New members are initiated into the cult, he reports, by stabbing and killing an infant who has been coated in dough.

So that's how it makes sense. It's emotional logic, where your feelings are the north star of truth, and everything flows out of that by logic. If you feel oppressed, then it must be true. If there's no corresponding evidence that you're oppressed, but your feelings are true, then there logically must be a massive all-reaching conspiracy hiding the evidence. If you and your fellow travellers lie, harass, and even commit acts of terror against someone, then they must be doing even worse things, otherwise you'd be a bad person. And since you don't feel like you're a bad person, then they must be doing even worse things; that's the only logically consistent result.
posted by Homeboy Trouble at 1:54 PM on April 2, 2020 [25 favorites]

The phrase "government takeover" sparks some serious cognitive dissonance for me. I mean, what's with the "takeover" part? They're the freakin' government, they're already running things!
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 2:49 PM on April 2, 2020 [10 favorites]

The thing about QAnon and the like is that they are not true believers, right? It's just a fun writing exercise / copypasta for them? I guess a lot of conspiracy theorists are self-aware grifters and generally bad actors. I wonder if there is any use in differentiating between the creation of conspiracy theories by those incompetently seeking to understand how things work and those competently trying to obscure how things work.
posted by nequalsone at 2:50 PM on April 2, 2020 [2 favorites]

The thing about QAnon and the like is that they are not true believers, right?

Which they?
posted by PMdixon at 3:32 PM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

what would happen if someone went on the qanon forums and accused THEM of being a phony or fake group? if enough people accused them of being actors just pretending to believe in this stuff, would they eventually flip and start accusing the accusers of spouting crazy conspiracy theories?
posted by wibari at 4:14 PM on April 2, 2020

Eh, I know people in real life who fully believe in whatever QAnon nonsense. Like, people who fully bought into PizzaGate.
posted by LindsayIrene at 4:48 PM on April 2, 2020 [4 favorites]

My 1st though when I heard this was that qanon and 4chan are likely to have fed weird conspiracies. People in all parts of my life are showing the stress, but trying to drive a train into a ship hasn't come up.
posted by theora55 at 5:32 PM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

> Driving a train successfully is much more complicated then just pushing "gas" and then "brake".

It takes as little as going through a switch too fast to derail. A railway engine is pretty top-heavy so it doesn't take much to knock one off balance. And when it derails, even if it doesn't fall over, it tends to fuck up the track real bad. It would be nice if this dude is on the hook for the cost of repairing that.

Without being able to see more of the scene than the photo in the article describes, it's hard to tell exactly what happened. If the engine simply ran off the end of the track, it would have rammed through a stop block that should have slowed it down quite a bit so that the rest of its trackless journey would've been a grinding skid over gravel and random terrain. And judging from Google Maps it looks impossible to take out a boat using a train and any amount of momentum because the tracks are aimed the wrong way, mostly laid parallel to docksides.
posted by ardgedee at 5:56 PM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

what would happen if someone went on the qanon forums and accused THEM of being a phony or fake group?

I’m pretty sure it’s been done. Honestly, they strike me as the sort of crowd where that kind of thing goes on regularly, in a sort of “no true nutjob” way. In any case, I suspect you’d get banned in a heartbeat.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:57 PM on April 2, 2020

A locomotive is (order of magnitude) 200,000 kg. The Mercy is (again order of magnitude) 60,000,000 kg. So about 300 times the locomotive. Imagine a fairly small dog (say a 20 pound adult Boston Terrier) running into into a well equipped Chevy Escalade - that’s roughly the same ratio. I mean yeah the USN Mercy may have gotten a dent depending on where the hypothetical hit would have occurred, but this was never going to be much more than that unless the train tracks literally ran up to the ship and there was a couple of miles of straight track for the locomotive to get up to full speed.

But I’d still love someone with a physics simulator and free time to set it up so I can watch it.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 6:42 PM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Material strengths don't scale with mass. Steel doesn't get stronger the bigger something gets. Big objects are comparatively fragile for their size. A ship is engineered to handle the stresses a ship is expected to handle, but that doesn't include being hit with a lot of force by a high mass object like a train.

I've seen the result of similar accidents, ships being damaged by what might, at the human scale, look like incidental contacts. It opens them like can openers. An inch-thick plate of steel is fairly fragile and easy to damage at the scale of 1000s of tonnes.

There was a significant gap of water to cross; there was no way this particular scenario was ever going to result in damage to the vessel, but something the size of a train colliding with it, say a tug or a barge, could do very significant damage.
posted by bonehead at 6:53 PM on April 2, 2020 [8 favorites]

Yeah, to stop something as powerful as a locomotive, you need some sort of military-grade material. Like a chain-link fence.

Do not attempt.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 7:19 PM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

The phrase "government takeover" sparks some serious cognitive dissonance for me. I mean, what's with the "takeover" part? They're the freakin' government, they're already running things!

Not the good MAGA government; they mean the bad career civil government who are simultaneously horribly incompetent at their jobs and able to engineer secret conspiracies with tens of thousands of members to thwart the good guys and force us all into gay space communism.

Chain link fences are actually a kind of ideal large unpropelled mass stopper if you can't get a big pile of dirt. They are ridiculously strong for their mass. and they stretch a lot when the mass hits them greatly reducing the energy spike that is imparted. All those hollywood movies with cars busting thru fences (not gates which are only as strong as the grade 3 hardware of the hinges and the $10 dollar lock securing it)? Ya, that doesn't happen.

Of course most of the stopping power was from the ground before the chain link fence.
posted by Mitheral at 7:50 PM on April 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

Everyone has that one friend who's a train wreck. Ask my friends.
posted by bendy at 8:00 PM on April 2, 2020 [7 favorites]

Oh for Pete’s sake! Honestly! If I derailed a locomotive every time I was suspicious of the deployment of a Navy hospital ship...my life would be largely indistinguishable from the one I’m living.
posted by Naberius at 8:25 PM on April 2, 2020 [9 favorites]

Noise, derail, other.
posted by benzenedream at 9:24 PM on April 2, 2020 [3 favorites]

Eh, I know people in real life who fully believe in whatever QAnon nonsense. Like, people who fully bought into PizzaGate.

Me too. I haven’t yet been able to fully figure out their thought processes or motivations, but I have noticed that they tend to be the kind of people who cannot take being wrong. I think they find comfort in the conspiracies - an arrogance (and superiority) of never having to admit they don’t understand something.
posted by double bubble at 9:45 PM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

If I’m following the twitter correctly, a government takeover is related to “Marshall Law”, which is like socialism, which is totally what the Nazis did.
posted by double bubble at 9:52 PM on April 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

No, "Marshall Law" Isn't Eminem's New Album, Here's Why It's Trending (Newsweek, March 16, 2020) The term "Marshall law" began trending on Twitter on Monday after Florida representative Marco Rubio took to social media to advise individuals against spreading rumors about the possible enacting of martial law, in which a military government would be used to control the general public while ordinary laws are suspended, in response to the rapidly spreading coronavirus. Except he spelled martial law incorrectly.
posted by Iris Gambol at 10:13 PM on April 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

Talking about hitting bigger ships with smaller hard things: Venezuelan Navy offshore patrol vessel sinks itself after ramming an ice-hardened cruise liner
posted by mbo at 3:48 AM on April 3, 2020 [4 favorites]

This demonstrates the clear need for a Spanish translation of this key nautical guidebook.
posted by Naberius at 8:15 AM on April 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

Sorry, I can't leave *this* thread at 88 comments.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 8:40 AM on April 4, 2020

... The US Navy has only two operational hospital ships, and both of those (the Mercy class) were built in the 1980s and were considered obsolete and due for replacement in 2004.

... I wish the USN had more hospital ships than CVNs.

Flagged for fantastic, LeRoienJaune. As a resident of Bath Iron Works' home state, I agree unreservedly.

This sounds like fodder for a wide- ranging personal internet reading project.

I also am putting it on my list of things to talk about with my father.

Dad' was chief engineer aboard a USN vessel in the early 1960s, and he designed dehydration equipment for USN vessels in his career as a mechanical engineer. The hypothetical scenarios involved in ramping up production of hospital ships will make for an interesting conversation.
posted by virago at 9:52 AM on April 4, 2020 [1 favorite]

Except he spelled martial law incorrectly.

I hate to quote it over and over again, but "The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand."
posted by aspersioncast at 9:57 AM on April 4, 2020 [10 favorites]

I live in Los Angeles. This morning I had a scheduled grocery pickup in San Pedro, near the port of Los Angeles, where the Mercy is docked. Somewhere about mile or so north of the Artesia freeway on the Harbor freeway, that's about 13 miles north of where the Mercy is located, I saw a CalTrans sign with the message "Access to the hospital ship is not allowed". Normally CalTrans signs are used to let drivers know about traffic ahead, maybe an Amber Alert, and recently notices to get off the freeway and stay the fuck home. I have no idea why CalTrans wanted me to know that I can't get access to the hospital ship.
posted by rdr at 1:40 PM on April 4, 2020

Back to the whole how the train stopped, and the engineer's plan to just call attention to it and all... Has anyone ever seen train tracks on water? Do train tracks connect to piers? Just something I've never seen. Boats: water. Trains: land. Or something. Were the underpants gnomes helping with that missing step?
posted by Snowishberlin at 10:09 AM on April 5, 2020

I'm not coming down on one side or the other on conspiracy theories and how they work. That is not my area of expertise. BUT

If there's no corresponding evidence that you're oppressed, but your feelings are true

"Always in your stomach and in your skin there was a sort of protest, a feeling that you had been cheated of something that you had a right to.... if one’s heart sickened at the discomfort and dirt and scarcity, the interminable winters, the stickiness of one’s socks...," George Orwell, 1984.
posted by Snowishberlin at 10:15 AM on April 5, 2020 [1 favorite]

Do train tracks connect to piers?

The Rome to Sicily InterCity train boards the ferry to Messina
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 10:54 AM on April 5, 2020 [2 favorites]

Leslie Nielsen demonstrated the incredible off-“road” ability of train locomotives in the excellent documentary “Wrongfully Accused”.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 11:02 AM on April 5, 2020 [3 favorites]

The Rome to Sicily InterCity train boards the ferry to Messina yt
posted by rhamphorhynchus

Fair enough! Though if I were planning this I would have checked to see if the tracks did that, or just ended like normal.
posted by Snowishberlin at 11:15 AM on April 5, 2020

There are actually lots of places rail gets transported over water. Here is an interesting collection of examples of "float bridges" aimed at model rail roaders. Basically if you see a rail road on an island there is probably some sort of dock where cars can be loaded on a boat some where.
posted by Mitheral at 1:04 PM on April 5, 2020 [1 favorite]