Several years ago a plane crashed in the New York Peak area in north Central
Colorado. There seemed to be no reason for the pilot to head in that direction,
and while the plane was found the Pilot and bombs were never recovered (so
far as I am aware).
We get many calls for data and consulting here at NGDC, but one of the
strangest I got came in about 2 weeks before this incident. The caller identified
himself as a science fiction writer of note. He said he was writing a story about
a plane that crashes in the north-central section of Colorado. The pilot was to
have had a military secret of some sort and was trying to escape from the military
police who would take the secret and bury it with him. The writer said he intended
the plane to crash in an area where there were occasional earthquakes so no
one could find the crashed plane since they would not be able to distinguish
the plane crash from an earthquake on the seismogram. He asked for earthquake
data for the area around New York Peak, but did not leave a number, only a fax
to return the data to. He also asked for topographic maps so he would have a
better idea of how the character could escape over trails.
So, when a plane and pilot went missing just over a week later in that area
I informed the proper authorities who seemed harried and uninterested. Was the
"writer" precognizant of something or was he "in" on a bigger plan?
As fate would have it, the information was passed along in a telephone-like
manner and I was eventually contacted by the search control center and asked
to look for geophysical and satellite data which might help locate the missing plane.
On Sunday, they were frantic. After three weeks they had only one more day
they could search. It was getting towards winter and money was running out -
One last effort turned up an infrared image taken by satellite just as the plane
went down - on, you guessed it, New York Peak. The plane was located on the
basis of that image and recovered in the Spring.
An earthquake was also recorded in the area about the time the plane went
down - another coincidence? The USGS buried the earthquake claiming it was
just a quarry blast, but a leak from someone alerted the press and they were
all over the USGS. Waverly Person was irate when he found out that NEIC
had evidence of an earthquake at the time and he had been instructed to tell
the press that there was no such evidence - made him look bad, he said.