DARPA has prompted panic and mockery for its bizarre Twitter shout out urgently seeking complex urban tunnel systems for unspecified “research and experimentation” at very short notice.
“Attention, city dwellers! We’re interested in identifying university-owned or commercially managed underground urban tunnels & facilities able to host research & experimentation,” the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) tweeted on Wednesday, sparking a wave of alarming theories ranging from zombie and alien invasions, to psyops and the end of the world.
DARPA’s ideal space, apparently, is a “human-made underground environment spanning several city blocks” with complex layouts, multiple stories, tunnels and stairwells, and it’s hoping to find just such a subterranean site by Friday.
Social media users were quick to wonder what the Department of Defense could possibly want with sprawling urban tunnels at such short notice, with many saying it sounded “totally not suspicious” and definitely “ominous.”
DARPA dismissed one person’s theory they wanted to store monsters down there by responding with a reference to the sci-fi Netflix show ‘Stranger Things’: “Please. Demogorgons are such a Department of Energy thing.”
Many were amused that DARPA would even make such a request on social media. Others offered up their own basements, and some speculated that the tweets themselves were some sort of experiment, pointing out the US government is likely already well aware of the country’s underground structures.
DARPA is the US Department of Defense arm responsible for the development of emerging military technologies, and has a long history of coming up with crazy (and terrifying) ideas.