Why Conspiracy Theorists Think FEMA Is Building Camps to Imprison Americans
The thinking goes that any number of abandoned industrial spaces could be used to round up civilians at a moment’s notice
Linda Thompson’s 1994 video, “America Under Siege,” still pops up on YouTube here and there — usually a degraded VHS copy distorted with scan lines uploaded by some anonymous account that will linger, garnering thousands of hits, before it’s pulled. Various copies have been viewed thousands of times online and who knows how many times before the age of YouTube.
In an unsettling series of slow, handheld pans, Thompson documents the Amtrak repair depot of Beech Grove, Indiana, drawing attention to nondescript warehouses, stabled trains on sidings, piles of lumber, fenced-in yards. At first glance, it may all seem ordinary — but Thompson’s narration makes it clear this place is anything but benign. The barbed wire lining the fence, she notes, is angled inward rather than outward — “not to keep people out, but to keep people in.” The presence of wind socks throughout the yard indicates “expected helicopter activity.” Signs taped to fences read simply: red zone. A small brick structure, you’re told, is suitable for use as a “processing” building.
