 Hey there, Foundation staff! Before we even get started, I'm not going to go into graphic details about sexual assault, but we are going to mention it a couple of times, so if you don't want to follow down that rabbit hole, hop off the train right now, boys and girls. One of the largest looming questions in the SCP universe, what is Procedure 110 Montauk? The short version? It's whatever the worst thing you can imagine is, and then worse than that. Dr. Clef, the writer, told us that the mechanical reason for doing this was a certainty that he couldn't come up with the worst thing everyone could think of, but if they had to imagine it, they'd plug in their worst case scenario themselves. The real point of 231 is, yes, the Foundation will sacrifice their conscience and do monstrous, unthinkable things to stave off the end of the universe, and the depths they'll go to should horrify you. Want to know more? Let's take a deeper look at 231 and its history. Before we dive in, I want to give a shout out to user Modulum83 over at ARD-SCP declassified for his laconic take on this skip, as well as Escobar for his writing guide, Zen and the Art of Data Expunged that's available on the wiki. I also pored over the discussion page for 231, yes, even that stuff I shudder thinking about. For starters, let's get a short plot summary of the skip. SCP-231 is super, super secretive. Personnel are given full deniability of ever having worked at the site, because what happens there is sooo bad. Declass are accepted despite certain personality disorders, because we need people to perform 110 Montauk on the daily, dammit. SCP-231-7 is the last remaining survivor of a group of 7 women aged between single and double digits, taken hostage and inseminated by a quote, Satanic sex cult to be used in a ritual to their god, the Scarlet King. Dash 1 gave birth soon after they were recovered by police, and something bad happened and killed a bunch of people. The foundation took over containing the girls, and over the course of accidents, testing mistakes, and botched rescues, all but little Dash 7 died. Each one gave birth to a bigger and bigger cataclysm, and it's assumed that Dash 7s will be the biggest womb of all, the end of everything. So we have to do this Montauk thing, no matter what. Cool, so with the summary out of the way, let's talk about redactions. A lot of details are redacted in this skip. It's considered by many to be a great example of doing them properly. You've got extraneous detail redactions such as dates and places, and then you've got the redactions that horrify you by leaving the exact details to the audience's imagination. What happens when these things are born, and how do they kill more and more people each time? What the ever loving heck are the exact details of Procedure 110 Montauk? Something so horrible that people get amnesticized so they forget ever working on the project. Fear of the Unknown is a powerful tool in horror. The monster is often scariest in the beginning of the movie, and the more mystery that is taken away, the less scary it becomes. Part of the reason this skip sticks with people is because the mystery has never resolved, so the audience is left with that gnawing, unfinished feeling in the back of their head forever. There are also hints and clues to what's going on that make things worse, but to talk about them, we're going to have to talk about authorial intent, especially as the article has gone through edits over time. In the initial article, there were heavy hints that sexual assault was at least part of the procedure. The cult was the satanic sex cult, and the procedure was extrapolated from their notes. D-Class specifically had to be nonviolent sex offenders. This was made worse when a commenter mentioned that making the age single digit to double digit made this that much more awful, and it was agreed with and added to the article to ratchet up the disgust. Sidebar, I feel the need to point out that I am not judging this as a bad thing. Art can be made to make people feel negative emotions, and disgust is certainly an emotion that can be explored artistically. It's also pertinent that, in a lot of people's minds, rape is one of the worst things you can do to another person. Murder is up there on the list, but we know we can't kill Dash 7, so what else is high up on the list that we've referenced a couple times? However, since then, Dr. Clef has taken out the D-Class requirement. The main reason given by Dr. Clef is because the people in the comments were being gross and writing up their concept for the procedure in details that many didn't feel like sifting through. I feel like I need some class be amnestic after all that dumpster diving. I like to infer another big reason for the change couldn't be distraction. With the rape idea as far into the forefront as it was, so many people were fired up with disgust and arguing over what Montauk could be, that it was distracting from Dr. Clef's original stated intent. To paraphrase, the horror of what the foundation was willing to do to secure, contain, and protect. As a final note, do you really need closure on 231? Specifically something to wash the horror out and let you live your day-to-day life again? There are two tales, Fear Alone and New Job, the take place in separate but complementary canons regarding 231. Long story short, if you need a happy ending to this story to sleep at night, go read them. Phew, we covered a lot. If you'd like this explanation and want to see more, do that like, share, and subscribe Mambo Jumbo, pay our Patreon a visit, and finally, let us know what skips you'd like declassified and continue the discussion in the comments. See you next time!