If an underground organism of unfathomable size were unearthed in the United States,
you might expect widespread panic at the horrifying discovery — or expect the U.S. government
to block off the cosmic terror from civilians.
You might not expect the entity to be turned into a theme park marketed towards all ages.
But that’s what happened with the (thankfully) fictional “Mystery Flesh Pit National Park,”
the name given to a creature of indeterminate size and origin that was nonetheless turned
into a tourist attraction.
"Mystery Flesh Pit” is an ongoing multimedia narrative project by the creator Trevor Roberts,
who you can follow and support in the links below.
The story of the pit is told through fliers, advertisements, and posters that rebrand the
horrifying lifeform as a relaxing family getaway.
It’s this upbeat language around something so blatantly terrifying that makes The Mystery
Flesh Pit so amusing… and so unsettling.
Just the sort of thing to cover at this spooky time of year.
But since venturing into the darkness of an unknown organism is a little frightening to
do on one’s own, E.D.G.E. will be joining me for this entry.
He makes great content about Prehistoric life, unique modern animals, and bizarre cryptids,
so he’s just the person to help investigate this mysterious organism.
Now, let’s begin our descent…
Unearthed accidentally in the early 1970s, The Mystery Flesh Pit, also known as the Permian
Basin Superorganism, is located in West Texas.
Discovered by oil workers, the first tours of the pit were given by James Jackson — a
small-time oilman and showman.
The Mystery Flesh Pit was then further studied and reinforced by Anodyne Inc, a deep mining
corporation who opened the park as a tourist attraction in 1976 with assurances it was
perfectly safe.
We know how corporations are.
In selling the park to the public, Anodyne downplayed the horrifying nature of the pit
itself, creating a friendly cartoon mascot, Caver Coop, who assured families the pit was
nothing to be afraid of.
The attraction was later absorbed into the National Park System in the early 1980s, which
led to the Permian Basin Superorganism becoming further normalized.
Surprising absolutely no one, thousands of tourists regularly exploring the inside of
an unknown organism would eventually prove to be a bad idea, as the infamous 2007 disaster
would prove, but that’s a story we’ll get to later…
For now, let’s try to piece together the material the author has given us to try and
understand the Pit’s Biology.
Like many aspects of the pit, the more visceral reality of the organism was glossed over with
clinical language by the professionals who studied it.
Since an organism of this size defied conventional science, numerous new disciplines were founded
to understand it.
Geobiology is the term used for how the organism interacts with its environment.
Looking at this early map, you can see the lifeform possesses musculoskeletal, nervous,
limbic, and vascular systems similar to traditional life — at least on the top layer.
This section of the pit is only a small fragment of a larger, more complex organism.
How large?
Data collected from a series of boreholes shown in this diagram suggests that in some
places, the organism extends over 30 kilometers below the earth’s surface.
For reference, the Marianas trench is only 11 kilometers deep.
Indeed, the author suggests that the pit may well extend into the earth’s mantle, with
some imaginary scientists suggesting that the organism may be native to the interior
of the planet, having merely “surfaced” to the upper tectonic plates for unknown reasons.
And despite public assurances to the contrary, there’s evidence that people working behind
the scenes long understood the superorganism to be dangerous.
At one point in this fictional alternate history, the U.S. government launched an investigation
into the feasibility of using nuclear weapons to kill the lifeform.
Although only the cover of this report was ever photographed, the conclusion seemed to
be a resounding “no.”
What made the Permian Basin Superorganism so potentially catastrophic?
The answers may lie deeper within...
In the early days of the Pit, a mission called Project Freefall was planned to chart the
organism to a greater depth than ever before.
A joint effort between the U.S. government and Russian scientists, the expedition involved
a six-person team lowered into the pit via specialized vehicle.
Over a period of two weeks, the pod descended down the dark wet skooshy pit, reaching regions
that had never been explored before.
At last, the probe drilled through a dense layer of lower cartilage and entered an unknown
region of ‘blue tissue.’
A single person pod was lowered into this opening.
The Russian pilot described a ‘reflective’ and ‘prismatic’ environment — of which
we only have a single image from this onboard computer.
When the pod was raised back to the surface, it was heavily damaged, and the pilot was
missing.
The researchers concluded an attack from an unknown organism was the likely cause.
Project Freefall makes it clear that the organic section of the Mystery Flesh Pit is merely
a portion of the lifeform, and other regions are unlike anything in the natural world.
It also made it clear people aren’t alone in the pit…
Even above the deeper layers, which weren’t available to the public, hostile wildlife
was frequently encountered.
Large, crustacean-like organisms were spotted as early as the first explorations, as this
sketch shows.
In typical Mystery Flesh Pit fashion, however, the corporate higher ups turned these terrifying
lifeforms into part of the marketing.
Wildlife safety brochures were handed out to visitors, explaining the exciting ‘anatomical
fauna’ that dwelled in the pit, and how to avoid getting eaten.
At the foundation of the pit’s ecosystem, playing a role similar to bacteria in the
bodies of regular-sized animals, were macrobacteria.
Unlike tiny bacteria you can only spot under a microscope, Macrobacteria were multicellular
goliaths that could reach lengths of 12 feet, or 4 meters across.
This educational chart produced by the Park Service showcases the various types of macrobacteria
— and the other bizarre species that dwell in this imaginary Permian Basin Superorganism.
We won’t be able to cover them all, but one notable species is the Mesogleal Tridecapod,
an insect-like species that gets its name from its thirteen legs — as this faded ‘Wild
About Nature’ infographic will tell you.
These pseudo-vertebrates are almost the size of humans, and aren’t technically vampires
as this guide will assure you…
although they do feed off the pit and look like something out of my nightmares.
In other areas of the pit, there were sightings of other, more dangerous species — and even
rumors of human-like lifeforms called ‘marrow folk’… which Anodyne Inc strongly denied.
They maintained the Mystery Flesh Pit was just like any other national park, and anyone
who mysteriously vanished just didn’t read their brochure carefully enough.
With the Permian Basin Superorganism so hostile to human life, excavating it was a challenge
— a challenge that began with finding people to staff it.
As this oddly hilarious park ranger recruitment bulletin suggests, however, with the right
benefits and incentives, Anodyne Inc. was in fact able to find people willing to enlist
in the Mystery Flesh Pit park ranger program.
What kinds of jobs did this entail?
Well, why not become a Park Trail Engineer?
This anxiety producing position involved using compact ‘stent-frames’ and other highly
specialized tools to create new pathways within the Pit.
To be a Park Trail Engineer required extensive knowledge of caving, geology, and macrobiology
— as attacks from local wildlife were apparently common.
For personal protection, the LaserScope “Anatomical Environment Multitool” was the most reliable
defense.
Intended to blast new paths within the Mystery Flesh Pit, this portable tool — an example
of which is on display here — was frequently used to ward off aggressive lifeforms.
To more safely traverse the Pit’s interior, Anodyne Inc. developed the Internal Anatomy
Vehicle, or IAV: a vehicle that could traverse the slickest and steepest of routes, which
you can see here in this highly detailed breakdown.
Its maneuverability came in part from a rotating mechanical joint that connected the front
of the vehicle to the mid-section.
As tourism increased, the larger Venterial Environment Excursion Vehicle was developed:
which we know from schematics used a set of twin counter-oriented screws for propulsion.
These safari vessels could seat up to eight park guests, and take them deep into the Pits
with supposed safety.
‘Supposed’ being the key word here, as a mockup of an incident report tells us that
vehicles were bent, melted, crushed, dented, or dissolved at least on some occasions.
...Maybe traversing the unknown depths of a giant organism isn’t a good idea after
all?
Well, as Caver Dave might say, that’s not the right attitude for exploring the FUNderground.
For adventurous park guests, the opportunity of camping on natural, unreinforced trails
was possible with the Interventerial Tent — shown here in this diagram.
Unlike traditional tents, this collapsible, multi-sided device could endure the crushing
shifts and deadly wildlife of the Pit while campers slept.
At least, most of the time…
When things went wrong, emergency trail phones were one way to reach park staff.
Called ‘lighthouses’ by seasoned hikers, these subterranean telecommunication devices
were highly advanced in the 1970s.
And indeed, the study of the Permian Basin Superorganism led to numerous technological
breakthroughs…
One of many lucrative results from the development of the fictional Pit were tremendous advances
in the field of computer science.
In the early 1980s, Anodyne began to release computers made of nervous tissue taken from
the Permian Basin Superorganism.
With four terabytes of organic tissue storage memory, these machines were extremely popular.
An even more well-known product exported from the Mystery Flesh Pit was Amniotic Ballast
— a miraculous fluid from deep within the pit branded as VitaSalve in advertisements
such as this one.
The product could cure various illnesses, and was almost certainly safe to use.
But the most notable service Anodyne offered was access to the Mystery Flesh Pit itself.
Aside from hiking, tourists paid for access to the Amniotic Thermal Springs.
The springs had strong effects on visitors who bathed in them, including making their
skin healthier and giving them a euphoric sensation.
As long as they could take their mind off the fact they were bathing in an unknown liquid.
The true focus of the Pit for most visitors, however, was the Lower Visitor Center — a
gateway into the deep that took eight years to construct.
With restrooms, a gift shop, and even restaurants, the Lower Visitor Center was the hub of the
national park.
Was it a good idea to suspend a several-ton building on steel cables in the middle of
the pit?
Anodyne Inc soon found out…
At last, we’ve come to the 2007 disaster and all that follows.
On July 4th, 2007, due to Anodyne’s negligence, something as simple as heavy rain and a faulty
water pump caused a section of the Pit to flood to unsafe levels.
The result was a catastrophe most had never imagined: the Permian Basin Superorganism
began to wake up.
Imagine waking up from a long nap to find hundreds of tiny bugs had built a tiny hotel
in your throat.
You’d be pretty mad.
At 9:52 PM, the lifeform began a choking response due to the flooding, causing the entire Lower
Visitor Center to be crushed and swallowed deeper into its gullet.
But this was just the beginning.
According to an incident report, the creature then started to surface: with people living
all around west Texas witnessing the limbs of the superorganism rising from the ground
— the scale of which is captured in this painting from a survivor.
And then, the creature returned to its slumber, likely lulled back to sleep by a mysterious
contingency measure redacted from the incident report.
In the wake of the disaster, Anodyne was dissolved, and the park was officially closed to the
public — with people perhaps finally realizing that hiking inside a giant creature isn’t
such a good idea after all.
The author imagines that the region around the pit has now become a ghost town, but behind
fences, some are still monitoring it.
In the present of this alternate timeline, the Permian Basin Superorganism is now kept
under constant surveillance, but who knows when it might awaken once more...
There’s a lot more lurking in the Pit you can read about online, and you can follow
and support Trevor Roberts by using the links in the description below, or by purchasing
something from the Mystery Flesh Pit gift shop.
I’m Destin from the channel EDGE.
I cover all sorts of topics in natural history.
Whether it’s the extinct beasts of times long since past, the bizarre and sticky world
of the living, or the extraordinary dark places our minds go to in the supernatural or cryptozoological.
If you like Curious Archive, Ben G Thomas, Trey the Explainer, you’ll enjoy me and
my content as well.
Follow the links to my channel in the description and comment section below!
And as always, thanks for watching.
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See you in the next video.