SCP-186 follows a doctor trying to make war impossible, and the things he's willing to do to get there. Jean Durand has seen what happens to people in the trenches. He starts wo…

SCP-186 follows a doctor trying to make war impossible, and the things he's willing to do to get there. Jean Durand has seen what happens to people in the trenches. He starts working with a military adviser named Mátyás Nemeş on weapons so terrible that people supposedly won't dare keep fighting. Their demonstration happens during a fictional battle near Königsberg in 1917. Both sides use anomalous weapons. There is wire that moves after people, gas that keeps damaged bodies alive, and incendiaries that leave the nervous system behind while burning away other living tissue. The soldiers get to experience the experiment long before anyone decides what it proves. A letter from one of those soldiers gives it a much more personal side. Misha is writing to Anya while his body is changing. He remembers the doctor who handed out the weapons and describes him examining the wounded with interest. Misha is trying to leave something of himself in the letter before whatever is happening takes that away too. The demonstration does stop the fighting in that particular area. But a German commander sees the results and asks for more weapons. He sees a way to win. The people who were supposed to be frightened into giving up war have found something useful. Durand takes that as a reason to go further. He decides the people ordering wars need to experience what happens to everyone caught in them. His eventual creation is a machine packed inside a huge wooden coffin. According to his journals, it forces people to experience the final moments of those killed in war, continuously, without being able to put any distance between themselves and the suffering. The Foundation can't confirm that experience through interviews because the affected people can't communicate afterward. What it can observe is immediate catatonic shock, sometimes death, and an affected area that keeps expanding while the machine remains active. When it's discovered in a Hungarian warehouse, an accidental activation has already devastated much of the town. Durand eventually admits that he's afraid to fully expose himself to his own machine. He leaves the decision about using or destroying it to someone else. He keeps describing the goal as preventing suffering, even as he creates more of it and takes away people's ability to refuse. By the time he's finished, the person who knows most about the supposed solution can't bring himself to face it either. https://t.co/rIxdHaO0WM