Operation Sleeping Giant

	For the note, see Operation Sleeping Giant (note).

Operation "Sleeping Giant" was a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) social experiment conducted between 2076 and 2077, with the objective of proving the effectiveness of theorized communist conditioning, in order to counteract its deployment against US citizens (and secure additional funding).^[1]

It was introduced in Fallout 76, introduced in the Skyline Valley update, as background lore for Camp Liberty and its denizens. Conceptually, it's similar to the US Navy's Somnus Initiative.

Background[]

The social experiment was approved by the agency and implemented between 2076 and 2077, targeting Pioneer Scouts spending time at a remote summer camp in the greater Washington DC area, Camp Liberty. Overseen by a combination of government actors (i.e. DIA agents) and genuine communist-sympathizing youth from Appalachia, the Pioneer Scouts would be exposed to an "augmented film" that would put the minor into a highly suggestible state, with unspecified additional, "less-proven" methods. Different sample groups were to be conditioned for varying periods of time, from 5 to 50 years, with most set for 20 years.^[1]

Experiments on campers[]

When arriving at the camp, scouts would be shown the augmented film as soon as possible, in order to render them susceptible to DIA's conditioning, and to reduce the chance of discovery; scouts arrived in groups, rather than all at once, and new arrivals would usually be put off by unpatriotic discussion among campers already there.^[2]

Apart from political indoctrination, the DIA also conditioned their guinea pigs to ignore any evidence of them deliberately being brainwashed, including rejecting contradictory information (with a trigger phrase to activate it deliberately, "let sleeping giants lie"). Before returning home, the scouts would be once again conditioned to tell cover stories about their activities at camp, to maintain secrecy. They could be returned to their camp-conditioned state at any point by using the phrase "The sleeping giant awakes to find an unhappy world."^[1]

Results[]

The results of DIA's operation was the creation of an undisclosed number of sleeper agents embedded within unsuspecting American families. Any potential reversal of the brainwashing was considered after the final batch of subjects and contingent on additional funding from the agency.^[1]

This backfired spectacularly when the Great War erupted and Camp Liberty was left to fend for itself, filled with active, conditioned Pioneer Scouts. They became hardline communists, combining political training with their survival skills, and reinforcing the conditioning with the pain of losing their loved ones and the brutal experience of living in a failed state. In effect, the DIA created what it feared all along, a sleeper cell of communists in the heart of America.^[3]

Behind the scenes[]

• Operation Sleeping Giant bears similarity to CIA's long-running, illegal MKUltra human experiments, as well as numerous fictional portrayals of brainwashing, such as the 1959 The Manchurian Candidate. Despite the popularity of the plot device, including within the Fallout series itself, brainwashing remains a theoretical concept; MKUltra and other projects produced no operational subjects, and the only successes of brainwashing remain confined to fiction.
• Even within the context of Sleeping Giant, it's difficult to separate conditioning from independent conclusions. Ben's diary entries include an entry in 2103 that describe his belief in communism not using terms stereotypically associated with the ideology, but by describing real, material problems with the pre-War United States, its foreign policy and ultimately the Great War.

Appearances[]

Operation "Sleeping Giant" is mentioned only in Fallout 76, introduced in the Skyline Valley update.

References[]