Comment by poulpy123 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by poulpy123 | Hacker News Reader

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11 disappearances over 4 years and 4 states :

- 1 rocket scientist lost while hiking - 1 astrophysicist killed at home by someone arrested a few months before at his home with a gun - 1 physicist in another field killed without cause of death made public - 1 engineer in instrumentation killed also without the cause made public - 1 schizophrenic crank woman died by suicide - 1 plasma and nuclear scientist killed at home by a jealous former classmate who went just after on a mass killings spree - 1 pharmatical scientist found in a lake after missing - 1 military executive who left with only his gun and disappeared - 1 administrative employee walked from home and disappeared after leaving her car and personal phone behind - 1 decade year old retiree from the same laboratory who did the same - 1 property custodian from a totally different place also left with a gun and disappeared

Totally aliens https://img.astroawani.com/2014-03/51395638721_freesize.jpg

The three companies mentioned have together maybe up to 50k employees (quick internet search, don't quote me on that). 11 of them (various roles, some out of the game for years) dying or going missing over many years in a country with a pretty high criminality and suicide rates rates doesn't sound very surprising.

annual suicide rate in the US is ~13 per 100k, murder is ~5 per 100k. so from a cohort of 50k people, we'd expect about 9 to die from one or the other per year. and these 11 deaths under investigation were over 4 years. so, yeah: my suspicion is that nothing special is happening here.

the big grain of salt: this doesn't take into account the differences in social and economic demographics of researchers and suicide + homicide victims. I'd suspect scientists skew wealthy and are less likely than average to be victims of suicide or homicide, but I don't know.

Out of 50k people? These specific of backgrounds and scenarios of their death/disappearence?

No. That is surprising. Any statistics you'd find about the rates of any one or more of these kinds of disappearances are going to be population level, averaged out over groups that are much higher risk and therefore skew the average rates to seem higher than their priors actually dictate for many sub populations, eg, working professionals at large corporations of this specific type.

Surprising != something actually being connected, but it sure as hell is surprising and isn't something to dismiss as "well, law of large numbers so ::shrug::"

> No. That is surprising.

I'm genuinely curious if you found any data to support it especially when you add JPL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, MIT, Caltech, and the Kansas City National Security Campus to the list, over four years.

And what puts an even bigger question mark on the whole thing is that the FBI embarked on this whole thing after being asked by members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform when they read about it in the newspaper. How critical are these people and how surprising their final fate if the US needs a tabloid to ring the alarm?

They’re also some of the most strategically valuable companies if you are say an evil country that wants to build long range nuclear missiles or advance your space programme.

I also don't think there's anything to it, but do not forget that any serious state-level actor with the means and interest to remove such people also has the means and interest to cover it up. IIRC there are manuals how to drive somebody into a desperate situation so they don't see a way out (Stasi in GDR), or manipulate any of their acquaintances in a similar manner, and you have a huge amount of the weirdest drugs available to help with that.

Yeah, Devil's Triangle level of coincidence.

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