After Ivan the IV defeated the Tar Tars at Kazan, he rode on horseback to survey his conquest and wept at the sight of the heaps of slaughtered women and children. He said, "they may not be Christian, but they are people like us." Today distant and detached commander in chiefs view the results of the mechanized slaughter they unleashed through the sterile medium of field reports and they dehumanize their victims with the clinical term "collateral damage."
Nature carves out caves haphazardly. The walls are bumpy, the floors are uneven and prone to sudden opening up into deep chasms, and spikes hang from the ceilings like icicles. This cavern though had been cut into the side of the mountain in a very deliberate and careful fashion. It was a space of equal dimensions. The walls and ceiling with smoothed over with concrete. The opening only went a few meters into the rock and on the back wall was an elevator with a sliding cage door.
The Nelson party stumbled upon this secluded anomaly on their way to a burgeoning Mormon settlement on the west bank of the Mississippi. It was too alluring not to explore.
It was evident from the location it was the builder's priorities to make sure this place was never found. That could only mean whatever was housed there was valuable.
Joe and Mike Nelson had never ridden in an elevator before, and it was every bit as mystifying to them as the man made cavern. The even succession of clicks produced by…
The Nelson party stumbled upon this secluded anomaly on their way to a burgeoning Mormon settlement on the west bank of the Mississippi. It was too alluring not to explore.
It was evident from the location it was the builder's priorities to make sure this place was never found. That could only mean whatever was housed there was valuable.
Joe and Mike Nelson had never ridden in an elevator before, and it was every bit as mystifying to them as the man made cavern. The even succession of clicks produced by…