The Louisville Trioxin Incident
—Jason
(an historical account of fictional events)
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The Fourth of July is the most loudly celebrated holiday in the United States; fireworks, barbeques, and long-weekends are the hallmarks that mark America’s birthday. People rush home from work to ensure that their preparations are complete and sometimes corners are cut, either intentionally or not, to make sure we can enjoy our holiday. This carelessness can lead to unintended consequences that can affect not only those directly involved, but the larger community as well.
Recently declassified documents revealed that on 3 July 1984 Louisville, Kentucky was ground zero for an unprecedented disaster. The Uneeda Medical Supply Company, owned by Louisville businessman Burt Wilson, had for decades fulfilled the needs of hospitals, medical schools, and the United States military. Uneeda stored and shipped everything from prosthetics, wheelchairs, and bedpans to more specialized products such as human skeletons and cadavers. The negligence of the owner and staff of Uneeda resulted in a major accident.
Uneeda also occasionally received unusual items that they did not normally carry in stock which led to their accepting a mistaken delivery. According to statements from Wilson, sometime in 1970 several sealed barrels arrived at Uneeda from the US Army. These were supposed to have been delivered to the Darrow Chemical Company, but a misprinted label resulted in the barrels arriving in Louisville and effectively becoming lost. Why Wilson did not contact the military to return the barrels is still a source of controversy.
The Darrow Chemical Company had been contracted in the 1960s by the United States government to develop a new defoliant agent: 2-4-5 Trioxin. Defoliants are an herbicide used to help clear jungles, patches of undesirable weeds, and even food sources of an enemy. If 2-4-5 Trioxin had proven effective, it could have been used by the United States military fighting in Southeast Asia. However, it was discovered that the chemical had an unusual, and deadly, side-effect: even minor exposure was lethal to human beings and, more problematic, it was found to reanimate the recently deceased.
According to the declassified materials and subsequent corroborating statements from witnesses, sometime in the mid-1960s there was a spill of 2-4-5 Trioxin at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania VA Hospital. The chemical leaked into the basement of the hospital where the morgue was located. The corpses stored there were reanimated, requiring the US military to directly intervene in the crisis. The dead bodies, chemicals, and even the soil were removed from the premises and placed in specially designed barrels for shipment and storage to the Darrow Chemical Company. One batch of these barrels was inadvertently shipped to the Uneeda Medical Supply Company.
Over the next fourteen years, Wilson and his staff stored the mistaken delivery in the basement of Uneeda. There they stayed relatively undisturbed until 3 July 1984 when two employees were left alone to complete the final tasks before the holiday weekend. According to statements from Wilson, the employees, Frank Johnson, and Freddy Hanscom, decided to enter the basement and inspect the barrels of 2-4-5 Trioxin. Somehow, a rupture developed, and the chemical sprayed both men resulting in them losing consciousness.
The 2-4-5 Trioxin vapor was circulated throughout the warehouse by the air-conditioning system. This resulted in the reanimation of many of the animal and human corpses in Uneeda. While this was terrifying, it was still a localized event only affecting the two men and the building. Upon regaining consciousness, Johnson and Hanscom contacted Wilson, who rushed back to the warehouse. This led to a series of increasingly escalating events which expanded the scale of the disaster.
The three men found to their horror that they could not destroy the reanimated bodies. In their desperation to hide the accident, Wilson, Johnson, and Hanscom dismembered a cadaver and transported it to the nearby Resurrection Funeral Home in hopes of using the crematorium to dispose of the remains. This action led to an exponential elevation of the crisis.
2-4-5 Trioxin is not destroyed by contact with fire, rather it reverts to a gaseous state that can then spread over a larger area. Upon the incineration of the reanimated cadaver, the 2-4-5 Trioxin was released into atmosphere where it interacted with the water vapor in the cloud cover. The chemical reaction resulted in an intense rainstorm thoroughly soaking the ground in a nearby cemetery. As the rainwater made its way through the ground, it leaked into the caskets and reanimated the dead who then reportedly dug their way out of the ground. The accident had now transformed from a localized incident into a widespread disaster.
A group of teenagers had been loitering in the cemetery while waiting for their friend Hanscom to leave Uneeda. Their subsequent disappearance corroborates later accounts which claimed they were pulled into events with their friend.
Paramedics were overwhelmed while attempting to assist Johnson and Hanscom. Their last radio report stated: both men had odd symptoms: excessive sweating, severe muscular pain, abnormally low temperature, and a greyish cast to their skin. The odd symptoms reported, and the lack of subsequent communication sent more paramedics, accompanied by police, to the area.
The darkness, stormy weather, and terrain surrounding the Resurrection Funeral Home made it almost impossible for the first responders to identify the threat of the reanimated dead. After several failed attempts to establish contact with officers, Louisville despatchers continued to funnel police into an increasingly deadly series of ambushes. Each time a group of police arrived they were quickly overwhelmed. A blockade was established around the affected area, but this resulted in only further casualties. The situation had completely gotten out of control. Most of the population of Louisville was still unaware of the danger that was spreading.
After the eventual collapse of the blockade, Wilson took the action that he should have done fourteen years prior: he called the phone number that was clearly stenciled on the side of the barrel. He surprised to find that he was immediately connected to Colonel Glover of the United States Army. Colonel Glover had been assigned the task of retrieving the lost shipment years prior and had (obviously) failed. Glover reported that he gathered as much information about the situation from Wilson.
Upon learning that the barrel had been breached and that the leaked 2-4-5 Trioxin was reanimating an ever-increasing number of corpses, Colonel Glover contacted his superior officer with the dire news that Louisville was on the cusp of being overrun. Glover received clearance to initiate an unthinkable contingency plan: to end a 2-4-5- Trioxin incident on the early morning of 4 July 1984 a nuclear artillery shell was detonated over the site of the cemetery. However, the strike only ended the immediate crisis. Documents and witness testimony of subsequent events has indicated that the 2-4-5 Trioxin was not destroyed, merely diluted, and continued to be a danger for years to come.