 Ahoy, ahoy. I'm Dr. Sumerian, not a real doctor. And today we are going to talk about MTFs, or Mobile Task Forces. So, let's get started. On the SCP Wiki, a Mobile Task Force fulfills quite a lot of different roles. There was a meme, the reason why I'm doing this actually is there was a meme in one of the meme review videos, where we were talking, it was talking about how the D-Class and MTFs tend to have the same purpose in a lot of narratives, and this is very true of series one, where they're just there to show how dangerous an SCP is in different ways. Whereas D-Class are sort of there to show like the threat, natural threat that something presents, regardless of what you do, like just being around something in some way, fashion or form, can be dangerous. An MTF is meant to show that no matter how much you prepare for a thing, it's incredibly dangerous as well. And it does this generally, especially in series one, by being a collection of generic tactical gunmen who deal with threats in a sort of semi quasi military way. The thing is, an MTF is not that. I don't know that it was ever just that anyway, but in more recent years, MTFs have definitely come into their own as something completely different. Now, first of all, we should talk about the mobile part of Mobile Task Forces. If you create a task force that has to remain in a single location and can't move ever, it's not a mobile task force. I've seen writers do that because MTF is the standard for what these things are. They're just a task force, stationary task force, if you'd like, but just a task task force. So what we end up dealing with are they're not all tactical quasi military, you know, mercenary style things. What they actually are are a way for the SCP Foundation to investigate, research, and contain things in the field. So while in a controlled laboratory environment, you use your researchers, your, you know, the doctors and everything else like that in the field, you may have a doctor along, but that's not the primary purpose is just to assist with research and etc. What you're actually going to do is you're going to send a mobile task force to deal with the problem. And so in some cases, mobile task forces can be made up of people with many doctorates. They can be made up of people who are specialized in a particular type of thing. So I just off the top of my head, two mobile task forces that one that I had a hand in helping with because there was an MTF contest a while back, which we won. In the MTF contest, we created a AI, MTF, an MTF that was that used AI as the deal with threats that AIs would be particularly useful for on the internet and so on and so forth. The first one I can think of that comes to mind after that is MTF Omega 17 or tears in rain. And this actually we can examine how names of MTFs are structured. So it's MTF, then generally Greek alphabet letter, then dash, then a number, almost invariably, though not necessarily that number is below 20. And often an almost invariably the ones that I can remember. And we can look at a comprehensive list of mobile task forces right now. Yeah, almost all of these are under 20. I think most of them are under 10. There's a few over 10. And on the like main list. And these are like the important MTFs, the ones that show up in multiple works. Only one is over 20. I'm unless I'm missing it in this list. And that's yeah, Sigma 66, which is odd because Sigma 60 Sigma 66 is named 16 tons. You would think it would be like 16. But I guess that probably wouldn't work. Regardless. So yeah, you've got a Greek alphabet number, a Greek alphabet letter and a number below 20, generally. Now, there are plenty of MTFs that do not follow this. You don't need a Greek alphabet letter, you can go with something else. There's Bravo, you know, Bravo this or a number that goes above 20, like the there's already one I listed was Omega 66 and you can combine those two together. In fact, you can do whatever you want to with it. And then the name is usually usually an end joke by the author in some way or fashion or form, which means when they get reused in other SCPs, they're not always it's not an end joke anymore. So like MTF Omega 17 tears in rain is a Blade Runner reference, because the SCP is Edward Edward James almost. The actual title of it is Edward James almost. You can read it yourself if you want to it's for SCP 4613. It's kind of silly, but I really enjoy it. But yeah, so I you know, you create various MTF titles based on just in jokes, fun stuff that you'd like to include. It's sort of an accepted practice. But what do I'm just going to use MTF Omega 17 as an example, because it goes against the grain of what you might expect for an MTF. Now, of course, I was talking about the AIs earlier. But MTF Omega 17 is a social media awareness sort of MTF. They go on to social media, and they try to find any instances of meetups or events where Edward James almost is rumored to attend because the because the core SCP is that there's a delusion that Edward James almost is about to show up and he never does. It's not a serious problem, but they would like to keep those numbers down because there are additional additional anomalies associated with it. So it's not they don't have guns, they don't you know, they sit in probably at a particular site, they probably are stationary, though they can be mobile, they could move around, they could be stationed elsewhere, which is the important part. There's no necessity that they be located in one spot. So this is just an example of how an MTF can work outside of the tactical quasi military thing. When creating an MTF for your SCP, or I should say if creating an MTF for your SCP, because most SCPs don't include an MTF and don't need to include an MTF. But if you are creating one, think about what their purpose is. And don't be beholden to any type of particular, like preconceived notion of what you think an MTF has to be. So what I'm going to do now is read from the mobile task force guide for lack of a better way to put it. It's a listing of the various mobile task forces, but it also operates as sort of a guide for the creation of new task forces. And it covers a lot of the information that we're already talking about here, how sometimes they can be tactical quasi military and sometimes they can be something else entirely like an investigative unit or a technical unit. I'm going to go ahead and read this whole section real quick and we'll see. We'll not see. Well, I'll show you how this kind of reflects on what I've been telling you so far in a more simplified way. Has it been simplified? Maybe. Mobile task forces or MTFs are elite units comprised of personnel drawn from across the foundation and are mobilized to deal with specific threats or situations that sometimes exceed the operational capacity or expertise of regular field personnel. And as their name suggests, maybe relocated between facilities or locations as they are needed. Mobile task force personnel represent the best of the best of the foundation. Mobile task force is very greatly in size, composition and purpose of Italian strength combat oriented task force trained to deal with highly aggressive anomalous entities may consist of hundreds of troops plus support personnel, vehicles and equipment and can be deployed in whole or in part to deal with threats across the globe. However, a mobile task force can also be a small specialized intelligence gathering or investigative task force that may have fewer than a dozen personnel if that is deemed sufficient to accomplish their goals. While in the field, task force members often pose as emergency responders, local or federal law enforcement or military personnel appropriate to the region in which they are operating. Mobile task force commanders can also request the assistance of local field units or personnel stationed at nearby foundation facilities in order to accomplish their missions. Organization. Each unit is fundamentally structured in a way that best suits their intended purpose. While combat oriented task forces may closely follow military hierarchy and organization, smaller units may have an informal or otherwise esoteric chain of command. As such, the responsibilities of a mobile task force commander or an MTFC for each particular task force can vary greatly. The commander for a large task force might focus on maintaining multiple teams and deploying them as necessary to each assigned operation, where as the commander of a small team might deploy their team and direct the operation from on location. Similarly, the cohesion of each unit will vary as well. Some mobile task forces consist of personnel who have trained in work for many years or even decades together, whereas the personnel of a mobile task force formed on a moment's notice to deal with a specific incident may know little more than each other's names and fields of expertise. Creation. Mobile task forces are typically commissioned as deemed necessary by the foundation's director of task forces, often with the direct approval of one or more O5 council members. A significant number of mobile task forces are created to deal with specific anomalies exhibiting traits that standard containment or response teams are unable to effectively counteract, though many were also created to preempt an emerging or theoretical threat. Deactivation. Mobile task forces created for the purpose of containing a particular anomaly are typically deactivated at the end of the recovery operation or when ongoing containment is deemed no longer necessary. Occasionally, such task forces remain operational if the expertise and experiences learned are considered useful for future incidents, but otherwise the task force will likely be disbanded and its personnel return to their prior posts. Very rarely, a mobile task force will also be disbanded if it suffers sufficient casualties to render it incapable of operation. In these cases, if the prior capability of that particular task force is deemed necessary, a new task force may be commissioned to replace it. So yeah, what I said, except more formally, I think one thing you have to understand about a mobile task force, and I said this earlier and I want to drive this point home, is that they could be anything. Like I said, it could be anything. Quasi military, tactical, sure. A bunch of doctors, cool. A bunch of hackers, cool. A collection of artificial intelligences. Absolutely, that exists already. And so on and so forth. Whatever you need an MTF to do, and remember, it needs to be something that cannot be accomplished by just random people. There are security personnel on site. The people who run an SCP site are just security. They don't, you know what I mean? There's just security on site. It's not MTFs only. This is a common thing I've noticed with SCP video games, in that they treat it as though MTFs are the only security that sites have. Whereas there should just be trained people to deal with, and by the way, some of these security would be individually trained for the anomalies they're guarding. But yeah, there should be specifically SCP security personnel, not to mention other types of, I imagine because of the, for example, when we think about the law enforcement or military applications of an MTF, and there are many, and it even says in the guide itself specifically, that oftentimes they are mixed in with military and law enforcement. But we have to think about the SCP foundation, and this is only slightly off topic. But it is, I believe, quite likely, and maybe this is something I should write at some point, an MTF devoted to investigating crimes within SCP foundation sites. Because murders happen, thefts probably happen, and so on and so forth, and they have to be investigated, right? But you can't bring law enforcement into a foundation site. So how do you deal with those sorts of investigations? And if you don't have a devoted, say, MTF to deal with something like that, then things are going to get covered up, things that shouldn't get covered up. So that's a thought. I can imagine the ethics committee running an investigative force, something to think about. Anyway, I love when I do these videos and like a story idea hits me, and then it basically goes in one ear, I consider it for a while, and then it goes out, and I never do it. But that's fun. Actually, the idea of an investigative force based around the ethics committee, I have to investigate crimes, an ethics committee MTF, that would be interesting. Anyway, thank you very much for watching. If you enjoyed the video, scroll down and hit the subscribe button, and then hit the notification bell next to that so you're notified when I upload new videos. And then head on over to patreon.com forward slash D Sumerian and pledge at any level, like everybody here on the screen already has, including Dr. Jay Redacted and Sinjeriki, who have both pledged at $100. And since I read directly from the article, let us take a look and see who wrote this guide. Hold on. Kind of thing I couldn't, oh, I didn't realize there was going to be so many iterations of it. Wrong John Silver is the originator of this guide specifically wrote it on the 19th of January 2017. We are looking at http colon forward slash forward slash scp dash wiki dot wiki dot com forward slash task dash forces. The link will be in the description along with a full credit. And this work is a Creative Commons 3.0 attribution share alike. So yeah, nice to know that I'm not alone out here and I will see you all again on Thursday.