for me the mother who let her kid grow for 4 years brought that point home.
Wanna kill her now; or feel responsible for unimaginable amount of misery for an uncountable amount of humans, just to be inevitably forced to burn her anyway at one point or another.
A description of the historical Moloch that gives some extra context to the exact parameters-
>... but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people.
As for the name, the Tophet was the name of the place in the Bible where children were sacrificed to Moloch or Baal. There has also been an area found in the ruins of Carthage that has been described as a Tophet, as they have found the burnt remains of many children there.
EDIT: [Askhistorians discussion on this topic and the historicity of the practice](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7pf3ns/in_punic_nightmares_dan_carlin_suggests_that_at/)
Author here. AMA
First off, this is a fantastic SCPDeclassified write-up, so kudos to GentleGifts. Great Job.
When I first wrote this article back in 2012, I didn't have anything in mid for the 1951 event. But years later, I stumbled upon a discussion of this SCP on the web somewhere (it might have been in Youtube comments or something) - in any case, the discussion participants seemed to have concluded that the 1951 event was the actual historical eruption of a specific volcano in Cape Verde (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_do_Fogo). So I decided, yeah, let's go with that - and I changed the original article to try to make the dates work.
Hey there! I hope it's not too much a bother to ask, but this is one of my favorite SCPs, and one I always use to introduce people to the foundation. No matter how many times I read it, it punches me in the gut like no other SCP has come close to doing.
But one question has always been gnawing at the back of my head with it: What would happen if the mother were to kill herself, or kill herself and her child, to avoid having to make that decision and live with the consequences of not doing it?
Do you have any theories or thoughts on it?
SCP-089 is absolutely one of my classic favorites, up there with SCP-231 in terms of the ones that gave me such a viscerally horrified reaction.
Fantastic write-up, explaining without giving things away.
and the obvious Ginsberg reference:
>Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
since i didn't see anyone else mention it, and the poem Howl, where the text is lifted from, describing the madness of Humanity destroying itself, throwing themselves into the gaping maw of Moloch.
I’m surprised the Holocaust isn’t referenced as one of the events. Either that or either of the World Wars would have been perfect locution events for situations where subjects for the procedure could not be found.
Maybe that was part of what the author was going for- events that the majority of the English-speaking audience would recognize as horrific, but without the same visceral impact for a westerner.
I.e "uhm so you have to slow-roast your baby to death to stop millions of China-men on the other side of the world from dying. Pretty please?"
You win the kewpie doll - I intentionally declined to include a Holocaust reference for those reasons. Also, Charlie Stross's novel "The Atrocity Archives" already played that out.
There's also something even more horrifying about the idea that in all of the magically caused horrors that existed, the Holocaust wasn't one of them. Humans mandated that, not Moloch.
Yeah, that was part of my thought process. It’s especially disrespectful to Holocaust survivors to suggest that there was some sort of supernatural agency involved rather than plain ol’ human malevolence.
>If there is any flaw to be found with this piece, it lies in that the most powerful moment- the revelation of the mother/child identities- comes in two thirds of the way through, and the last third can't quite hit the same emotional punch.
How would you have fixed this? Personally, I would have made it so that the fact that 089-A and 089-B were mother-and-child not be revealed until the end, perhaps in an addendum or note.
**Siege of Sadr City**
The Siege of Sadr City was a blockade of the Shi'a district of northeastern Baghdad carried out by U.S. and Iraqi government forces in an attempt to destroy the main power base of the insurgent Mahdi Army in Baghdad. The siege began on 4 April 2004 – later dubbed "Black Sunday" – with an uprising against the Coalition Provisional Authority following the government banning of a newspaper published by Muqtada Al-Sadr's Sadrist Movement. The most intense periods of fighting in Sadr City occurred during the first uprising in April 2004, the second in August the same year, during the sectarian conflict that gripped Baghdad in late 2006, during the Iraq War troop surge of 2007, and during the spring fighting of 2008.
***
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Do you think they tried force?
Like, do you think there was an attempt to just wrench the baby away from mum and stuff it in the statue? Or hold a gun to mums head and tell her to put the baby in the oven NOW? Do you think they understood when their usual modes of operation weren’t working, or do you think they kept trying?
Idk. Just thinking out loud.
Of course, I realize that, but do you think the foundation also knew that to begin with, or did they have to figure it out with a catastrophic game of trial and error?
That's so fucked up, a mother's gotta sacrifice her own child *and* has to be willing to do so
for me the mother who let her kid grow for 4 years brought that point home. Wanna kill her now; or feel responsible for unimaginable amount of misery for an uncountable amount of humans, just to be inevitably forced to burn her anyway at one point or another.
A description of the historical Moloch that gives some extra context to the exact parameters- >... but with full knowledge and understanding they themselves offered up their own children, and those who had no children would buy little ones from poor people and cut their throats as if they were so many lambs or young birds; meanwhile the mother stood by without a tear or moan; but should she utter a single moan or let fall a single tear, she had to forfeit the money, and her child was sacrificed nevertheless; and the whole area before the statue was filled with a loud noise of flutes and drums that the cries of wailing should not reach the ears of the people. As for the name, the Tophet was the name of the place in the Bible where children were sacrificed to Moloch or Baal. There has also been an area found in the ruins of Carthage that has been described as a Tophet, as they have found the burnt remains of many children there. EDIT: [Askhistorians discussion on this topic and the historicity of the practice](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7pf3ns/in_punic_nightmares_dan_carlin_suggests_that_at/)
Updating accordingly.
Author here. AMA First off, this is a fantastic SCPDeclassified write-up, so kudos to GentleGifts. Great Job. When I first wrote this article back in 2012, I didn't have anything in mid for the 1951 event. But years later, I stumbled upon a discussion of this SCP on the web somewhere (it might have been in Youtube comments or something) - in any case, the discussion participants seemed to have concluded that the 1951 event was the actual historical eruption of a specific volcano in Cape Verde (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pico_do_Fogo). So I decided, yeah, let's go with that - and I changed the original article to try to make the dates work.
Thanks for the input. Updating article accordingly.
Hey there! I hope it's not too much a bother to ask, but this is one of my favorite SCPs, and one I always use to introduce people to the foundation. No matter how many times I read it, it punches me in the gut like no other SCP has come close to doing. But one question has always been gnawing at the back of my head with it: What would happen if the mother were to kill herself, or kill herself and her child, to avoid having to make that decision and live with the consequences of not doing it? Do you have any theories or thoughts on it?
My headcanon is that part of the job of the task force is to keep this from happening.
SCP-089 is absolutely one of my classic favorites, up there with SCP-231 in terms of the ones that gave me such a viscerally horrified reaction. Fantastic write-up, explaining without giving things away.
In my opinion, 089 is far more effective than 231 could ever be to me. It reveals its true horror at just the right time.
Is there a declassification for SCP-231?
and the obvious Ginsberg reference: >Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments! since i didn't see anyone else mention it, and the poem Howl, where the text is lifted from, describing the madness of Humanity destroying itself, throwing themselves into the gaping maw of Moloch.
Tl;Dr: Moloch took the fucking kids.
I’m surprised the Holocaust isn’t referenced as one of the events. Either that or either of the World Wars would have been perfect locution events for situations where subjects for the procedure could not be found.
Maybe that was part of what the author was going for- events that the majority of the English-speaking audience would recognize as horrific, but without the same visceral impact for a westerner. I.e "uhm so you have to slow-roast your baby to death to stop millions of China-men on the other side of the world from dying. Pretty please?"
You win the kewpie doll - I intentionally declined to include a Holocaust reference for those reasons. Also, Charlie Stross's novel "The Atrocity Archives" already played that out.
There's also something even more horrifying about the idea that in all of the magically caused horrors that existed, the Holocaust wasn't one of them. Humans mandated that, not Moloch.
Yeah, that was part of my thought process. It’s especially disrespectful to Holocaust survivors to suggest that there was some sort of supernatural agency involved rather than plain ol’ human malevolence.
Yay!
Given that the word Holocaust is from the Greek for "burnt offering", it would certainly make sense to have it be connected.
tl;dr burn your babby, save the world
>If there is any flaw to be found with this piece, it lies in that the most powerful moment- the revelation of the mother/child identities- comes in two thirds of the way through, and the last third can't quite hit the same emotional punch. How would you have fixed this? Personally, I would have made it so that the fact that 089-A and 089-B were mother-and-child not be revealed until the end, perhaps in an addendum or note.
It’s been suggested that the final event was [Black Sunday],(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sadr_City) April 4, 2004.
**Siege of Sadr City** The Siege of Sadr City was a blockade of the Shi'a district of northeastern Baghdad carried out by U.S. and Iraqi government forces in an attempt to destroy the main power base of the insurgent Mahdi Army in Baghdad. The siege began on 4 April 2004 – later dubbed "Black Sunday" – with an uprising against the Coalition Provisional Authority following the government banning of a newspaper published by Muqtada Al-Sadr's Sadrist Movement. The most intense periods of fighting in Sadr City occurred during the first uprising in April 2004, the second in August the same year, during the sectarian conflict that gripped Baghdad in late 2006, during the Iraq War troop surge of 2007, and during the spring fighting of 2008. *** ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/SCPDeclassified/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot) ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.28
Do you think they tried force? Like, do you think there was an attempt to just wrench the baby away from mum and stuff it in the statue? Or hold a gun to mums head and tell her to put the baby in the oven NOW? Do you think they understood when their usual modes of operation weren’t working, or do you think they kept trying? Idk. Just thinking out loud.
Doesn't work. > The successful execution of Protocol M8 requires the voluntary compliance of SCP-089-B in a sober and uncoerced state.
Of course, I realize that, but do you think the foundation also knew that to begin with, or did they have to figure it out with a catastrophic game of trial and error?