Why on earth would anybody be interested in this place?
According to Moe Lane’s blog, this is an amazing place settled by the Spanish a couple of centuries ago. But, here’s what makes it truly outstanding:
Fast forward to 1940, and the Selective Training and Service Act (previous attempts at conscription were generally ignored). Five men from Atras were called up for military service: all five starved to death while in boot camp. Autopsies by Army doctors revealed that the five men were mirror-images of regular humans; their hearts were on the wrong side of their chests, and so forth. Further examination determined that their biochemistry was similarly flipped; the Atras draftees died because they could not derive nourishment from the amino acids in their foods. Only foods grown in Atras — which were also flipped — could be digested.
The US military spent the next twenty years trying to find a way to make this useful as something besides a dietary aid, and failed. Eventually they gave up; the factory was placed at Atras in order to give the inhabitants paid work, since the population was otherwise pretty much stuck there. And things have more or less stayed that way, ever since.
[I got suckered into this. I actually thought this was for real until I did a search to find the place. It doesn’t exist. But, it’s a fun read and I hope you enjoy it.]
More @ Moe Lane » Location Seed: Atras, Nevada.
According to Moe Lane’s blog, this is an amazing place settled by the Spanish a couple of centuries ago. But, here’s what makes it truly outstanding:
Fast forward to 1940, and the Selective Training and Service Act (previous attempts at conscription were generally ignored). Five men from Atras were called up for military service: all five starved to death while in boot camp. Autopsies by Army doctors revealed that the five men were mirror-images of regular humans; their hearts were on the wrong side of their chests, and so forth. Further examination determined that their biochemistry was similarly flipped; the Atras draftees died because they could not derive nourishment from the amino acids in their foods. Only foods grown in Atras — which were also flipped — could be digested.
The US military spent the next twenty years trying to find a way to make this useful as something besides a dietary aid, and failed. Eventually they gave up; the factory was placed at Atras in order to give the inhabitants paid work, since the population was otherwise pretty much stuck there. And things have more or less stayed that way, ever since.
[I got suckered into this. I actually thought this was for real until I did a search to find the place. It doesn’t exist. But, it’s a fun read and I hope you enjoy it.]
More @ Moe Lane » Location Seed: Atras, Nevada.
