Taking Inventory: Broken Arrow Pt. 1 | Podcast Der Toten

[RadZakpak]

Come check out the latest Podcast Der Toten, the official CoDz podcast, featuring myself, @Mattzs, and @Tac. In this week's episode, we discuss Broken Arrow's major facilities.

 

 

What was going on at Hanford before Broken Arrow came into the picture? What sparked the creation of the A.D.A.M.s? What else is being stored at Groom Lake? Post a comment below!

[anonymous]

Enjoyed it! Something I wanted to add about Hanford is that most of the things that happened here are merely clues with holes, left for us to theorize about. The cages, did they contain the Denizens? What are the skulls in the Hunter's Cabin? How big is this underground facility? To where do these tunnels lead? What does it have to do with Green Run and Manhattan Down? 

 

A very obscure thing are the zombie models, which can be divided in two categories: workers and patients. These are the bodies of the workers:

These Zombies all feature a patch on their sleeve titled ‘Hanford Sanitarium’, so it appears that there was a Sanatorium at this site in Hanford, presumably used for experiments similar to Verrückt. They also have these weird things that looks like “Electric Neck Collars”. Now as for the patients:

These Zombies all feature in hospital gowns & have a coloured bracelet on their left wrist. There are also in straight jackets. These are all clearly patients of what seems to be the Hanford Sanatorium, and I'm pretty sure they were experimented upon. Now James C. Burns, the voice actor of Frank Woods,  told us to look at the identical wounds in the backs of every zombie, as well as their collars. Some weird cerebral research going on here, possibly tied with MKUltra? Also Rad says he thinks the Avogadro might have been used as a power source, but I think it goes deeper than that. I think they were experimenting whether an ethereal entity could influence other people through electricity. Maybe that's why there are those wounds at the back of the zombies: Sanatorium patients connected on an electricity grid to the hub where the Avogadro is kept? I made a thread about it here: https://www.callofdutyzombies.com/topic/191511-tranzit-mkalpha-torture-and-world-domination/

 

Also, all I can found about the James C. Burns interviews are these, about the development of the game & story ( @RadZakpak he even talks about the Hanoi Hilton). See them here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVcYwlcScyw (part 1)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9V6VrrJwxU (part 2)

 

But aparently, he had his own YT channel as well, talking about zombies (most notably Tranzit), which I cannot seem to find. He talked about the neck wounds, about how the 'mechanic character' (I presume Marlton) is really important, and about a horse in tranzit. If anyone can find those vids, I'd love to see them. Although maybe they are deleted because Treyrach didn't agree with everything he said.

 

[clueless]

11 hours ago, anonymous said:

Enjoyed it! Something I wanted to add about Hanford is that most of the things that happened here are merely clues with holes, left for us to theorize about. The cages, did they contain the Denizens? What are the skulls in the Hunter's Cabin? How big is this underground facility? To where do these tunnels lead? What does it have to do with Green Run and Manhattan Down? 

 

A very obscure thing are the zombie models, which can be divided in two categories: workers and patients. These are the bodies of the workers:

These Zombies all feature a patch on their sleeve titled ‘Hanford Sanitarium’, so it appears that there was a Sanatorium at this site in Hanford, presumably used for experiments similar to Verrückt. They also have these weird things that looks like “Electric Neck Collars”. Now as for the patients:

These Zombies all feature in hospital gowns & have a coloured bracelet on their left wrist. There are also in straight jackets. These are all clearly patients of what seems to be the Hanford Sanatorium, and I'm pretty sure they were experimented upon. Now James C. Burns, the voice actor of Frank Woods,  told us to look at the identical wounds in the backs of every zombie, as well as their collars. Some weird cerebral research going on here, possibly tied with MKUltra? Also Rad says he thinks the Avogadro might have been used as a power source, but I think it goes deeper than that. I think they were experimenting whether an ethereal entity could influence other people through electricity. Maybe that's why there are those wounds at the back of the zombies: Sanatorium patients connected on an electricity grid to the hub where the Avogadro is kept? I made a thread about it here: https://www.callofdutyzombies.com/topic/191511-tranzit-mkalpha-torture-and-world-domination/

 

There it is! The thread that convinced me to hop into this site for real. As you mentioned already, the seemingly endless questions Tranzit opens will probably never truly be answered, as so much had to be changed for the map (and the game in general) to function in time for release alone. 

 

I'll get the simpler stuff out of the way first, because it doesn't dig too deep into itself and is more reassurance than anything else.

 

The electric collars could be a failsafe to prevent people from leaking any information, seeing as they did not like having their name plastered on anything involving outbreaks to the point that they burned down their main HQ to destroy any evidence connecting them to the outbreaks in Die Rise, potentially others worldwide. Seeing as it is only on the employees and not the patients, we can assume the patients are admitted to the Sanatorium when they become so mentally unstable that people would no longer believe them even if they told the truth.

 

The cages are definitely inferred to be for the Bios, as even Stuhlinger mentions it in-map "how THEY planted them everywhere" (although probably an incident that led to their escape, as shown in the comics that they do not go well with imprisonment). Also do you have a picture of the skulls in the Hunter's Cabin? I never have stayed in there long enough to look at everything, and my disc is broken so I can't check it myself.

 

(Now, a fair warning for @RichKiller, Alpha Omega is covered pretty extensively even if just small bits of lore from documents/radios):

 

First of all, it's important to keep track of time to not get confused and maybe shed light on things in a way we didn't look at before. Broken Arrow was officially formed on November 19, 1963. Green Run (the real-life event, not the map which will  be referred to as Tranzit or Hanford Site to avoid confusion) spanned from December 1949 to some time in 1962, at which point 'more experiments commenced'. So the entirety of Green Run takes place when the US Government is first in charge, Pernell doesn't create Broken Arrow yet. It is very likely Pernell was on-hand with the project, given his experiences with 115 in the past (leading Dempsey, Smokey, Banana, and Gunner through Verruckt, which takes place in 1945) and how close it was to his revelations of making Broken Arrow in the first place.

 

So after Broken Arrow's conception in 1963, every government project involving 115 sits under one roof, including the Green Run operations that are now in 'more experiments commenced' mode. With Classified taking place just days before conception, Broken Arrow is pretty much back at square one with mind control (or at least zombie control) after the Nova-6 / 115 gas mixture turned out to be a red herring caused by Samantha strategically using zombies as pawns, something only Dr. Schuster was able to see beforehand because he had lived through it before on Griffin Station ("the eyes...they're yellow"). However they seem to crack it within a month (I'll make a counterpoint for this in a second), as they get an approval for Project MKAlpha on December 24, 1963. MKAlpha begins Phase I during early 1964, as a document from January 25, 1965 praises that the "last year has been exemplary for Project MKAlpha and Broken Arrow." While it was an exemplary year, it is very possible lives were still lost in the process of figuring out just what dosage was needed to properly tap into someone's mind during the Phase I testing as opposed to figuring it out beforehand as I had just previously said. What's important is that it is deemed safe enough afterwards that Phase II begins with Yuri Zavoyski, the only man to break into the Pentagon (and be captured). The procedure is deemed safe within a YEAR, to the point the US Government is handing over one of their most dangerous prisoners to Broken Arrow because they have proven it works perfectly. Unfortunately the procedure only works within the American Pyramid Device, which becomes unreachable after Pernell becomes a selfish psychotic prick  turns into the Avogadro a few years later and kills everyone at Groom Lake before getting trapped inside the American Pyramid Device. So where does Broken Arrow turn from there? Back to Hanford Sanatorium, the lab the world doesn't know exists and is the perfect cover for experimentation.

 

While a Hanford Sanatorium is very unlikely to exist in real life, the idea definitely could stem from the aftermath of the actual Green Run. In the Zombies Universe, people would go to this Sanatorium once illnesses and ailments got bad enough that afflicted people began to break down. It's likely Broken Arrow made the Sanatorium as a way to record and study the effects of their version of Green Run, and once a subject fully changed they began experimenting on ways to control the zombies following in their original footsteps from Classifed (the Nova-6 / 115 gas mixture that allows control of the zombie). The colored bracelets could indicate not only what type of ailment a zombie had formerly but what type of experiment(s) would be done to the subject (these are the same people theorized to use a Chinese sweatshop building as a front for experiments, so not entirely out of reason with their track record of dehumanization).

 

The identical neck wounds topic is definitely one that can stretch quite a bit. Personally I think Broken Arrow was trying to find more ways to control the mind, like how your original linked thread discusses. The aforementioned Nova-6 / 115 gas mixture can even be argued it was not effective because of Schuster's comment of the eyes being yellow. At that point Samantha is just playing games and setting up pawns, making them believe they have control until they let their guard down which happens soon after. So Broken Arrow begins going back to more primitive methods of controlling the mind by tampering with bodies hoping they can get it right, maybe infusing 115 into serums and playing with the dosages (which would eventually lead to an outbreak to due the lack of controlled proportions).

 

[anonymous]

@clueless What an awesome comment, I genuine enjoyed reading it. Could be a thread on it's own  I think there can be said a lot of things about this and I am of the opinion that you are spot on with what the developers tried to tell us via the hints in Tranzit. I think Broken Arrow had stations all over the globe, most notably in the US (see the busdriver's quotes about Tehachapi Ranch, HAARP,  Deep Springs, Dulce Base, etc). What is your idea for the reason of using Die Rise as a base? Unconscious testsubjects in the sleeping cages that could be experimented upon (aka cheap human guineapigs)? Or is the location the key: Looking at the Alpha Omega worldmap, Die Rise lays in Jilin (province 22), more specifically Changchun (if I compare the map with a real map of China). In the Second World War, Changchun was the hotspot of Japanese biological warfare testing upon humans (for the locations, check this wikipedia page). Is this coincidence? Maybe Group 935 wasn't the only axis organization Broken Arrow got intelligence and scientists from?

 

Also, since you're into the Zombies-real life connections so much, I thought you might appreciate this map: https://maphub.net/Anonymous/codz-prototype

 

 

[clueless]

@anonymous I read somewhere on here a theory on how Die Rise was actually a Broken Arrow facility if not THE headquarters, based on info in Alpha Omega and rolled with it! The Great Leap Forward was a perfect opportunity for Broken Arrow to slip into the area, disguised under the persona of an average sweatshop (disclaimer I do not condone sweatshops I apologize for the terrible wording but can't think of a better way to say it) while performing a vast variety of tests. Maybe once I get my next paycheck I'll get Die Rise for PC and explore the map again, see if there's evidence we overlooked (I'd say 50% overlooked info and 50% information given later filled more gaps than expected and happened to work out honestly).

 

Whatever they were doing, they had things under wraps very tightly for a long time as the Great Leap Forward also coincidentally started before Broken Arrow was even formed and went until 1962. So it started as a full government project that got swept under the roof of Broken Arrow a year later. But Die Rise takes place in 2035, so what went wrong if they were doing fine and undercover until then?

 

The fact there are cages gives enough evidence to infer Bios testing (although we couldn't have known at the time, we didn't learn about Bios officially until years later in the comics); maybe even recreating creatures from the older days of 935 using Richtofen's Diary and research from former workers after Project Stapler. We know this isnt the only time Nova Crawler genes are tinkered with; there's at least three other variations at the Groom Lake site. And maybe when they tweaked with the formula a bit at the Providence 22 location they unintentionally made them more agile and vicious, becoming the catalysts that caused the outbreak at the site....

 

As Nero Blackstone once famously said, "life, uh, finds a way."

[anonymous]

@clueless interesting indeed is that the Alpha Omega map features 'bios' testing at Die Rise. As you mention in your previous comment, the resemblance between the Bios and Denizens is striking, and something not so fleshed out by the community but I think it is unavoidable due to their physical resemblance. The Bios were created in 1986, the Denizens in 2025. Note that the Bios are not one specific race; they appear like a variety of mutated or genetically engineered animal species (some look like rats, some like swines, some like monkeys, etc).

 

Anyway, I think the cage section of the map didn't contain them, nor the Jumping Jacks. These cages resemble the Sleeping Cages from Hong Kong. Some of these cages are empty, some with a basket or plate in it, and others with some filthy clothes in or on top of it. Often there are no doors in them, so I assume they really were inhabited by humans (also notice the beer bottles and kitchens in that map section). I guess the workers of the sweatshop lived here. Poor, undetectable humans were the perfect test subjects for broken arrow.

What striked me recently was the Russian writing on bio-hazard tanks in Die RIse:

See the discussion about it here: https://www.callofdutyzombies.com/topic/201505-new-discovery-in-die-rise-russian-writing/

 

If I had to guess, Broken Arrow put something in their drinking water, as the tanks seem to be connected with their water resources. Similar to how the citizens of Hanford were indirectly poisoned by radioactive isotopes and possibly 115, that same thing could have happened here via poisoning the drinking water?

 

There are also some weird holes in the ground in various locations in the Sleeping Cages section, might look into that later