Hidden Images
First Clue: NIN Tour Shirt
On the back of a new NIN Tour Shirt, some of the letters are highlighted. These letters form the phrase "I AM TRYING TO BELIEVE."Using this information, fans discovered that www.iamtryingtobelieve.com is an actual site.
- Full ninwiki page for www.iamtryingtobelieve.com here
Text Collage 1, Excerpt from "The Hobbit"
The following images were taken from the Year Zero related websites (I Am Trying To Believe, Another Version of the Truth, Be the Hammer, 105th Airborne Crusaders, and Consolidated Mail Systems). They appeared to be snippets of random words, however, once coalated, they revealed more.
Once the hidden images were compiled and analyzed, it was discovered that they are from a passage in the novel The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. The following passage is from the second chapter entitled "Roast Mutton".
"For your hospitality our sincerest thanks, and for your offer of professional assistance our grateful acceptance. Terms: cash on delivery, up to and not exceeding one fourteenth of total profits (if any); all traveling expenses guaranteed in any event; funeral expenses to be defrayed by us or our representatives, if occasion arises and the matter is not otherwise arranged for."
What this passage implies is not yet known, but several theories have been suggested. [1]
Text Collage 2, Excerpt from "Slaughterhouse-Five"
It looks like there is another hidden passage. Unlike the first this was all compiled from one site and one image: police_05.jpg of uswiretap.com (as it turns out, the images from the "artist" forum on anotherversionofthetruth.com[2]that was linked to from the artisresistance.com[3] page also contains pieces from this same passage, though they have not been incorporated into the image below). The quote is directly from the first chapter of "Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut.
Chapter 1... "All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true. One guy I knew really was shot in Dresden for taking a teapot that wasn't his. Another guy I knew really did threaten to have his personal enemies killed by hired gunmen after the war. And so on. I've changed all the names. I really did go back to Dresden with Guggenheim money (God love it) in 1967. It looked a lot like Dayton, Ohio, more open spaces than Dayton has. There must be tons of human bone meal in the ground. I went back there with an old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, and we made friends with a cab driver, who took us to the slaughterhouse where we had been locked up at night as prisoners of war. His name was Gerhard Müller. He told us that he was a prisoner of the Americans for a while. We asked him how it was to live under Communism, and he said that it was terrible at first, because everybody had to work so hard, and because there wasn't much shelter or food or clothing. But things were much better now. He had a pleasant little apartment, and his daughter was getting an excellent education. His mother was incinerated in the Dresden fire-storm. So it goes."
There is also a possibility that Dresden is refering to Dresden, Staffordshire, England. If this is the case, Wolverhampton, the last show in the UK, is located in Staffordshire, which might indicate where the next clue will be.
Regarding the destruction of Dresden, Germany on February 13, 1945. See this day in history from the History Channel for 2/13[4]. It's interesting to note that the only corresponding date to 2/13 on the Year Zero timeline is the sermon from the Church of Plano on "Whoever resists the authority resists God", and "He Shall wash his Feet in the blood of the wicked"
Text Collage 3, Excerpt from "Caution"
Caution, by Walt Whitman
To: The States, or any one of them, or any city of The States, Resist much, Obey little; Once unquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved; once fully enslaved,no nation, state, city, ever afterward resumes its liberty.
(thanks to user Skean on ETS for this post)
Text Collage 4, Excerpt from "The Perils of Obedience"
"The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.
Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority."
Text Collage 5, Excerpt from "The Catcher in the Rye"
A quote from catcher in the rye is in the broken text on the site Operation Swamp 0000:
"I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff— I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy." ~ J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Text Collage 6, Excerpt from "The Catcher in the Rye
A quote from the beggining of 1984 by George Orwell composes the broken text of the Mailstrom site.
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of Victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him."
Year Zero in 2022
According to both a statement from Trent Reznor and an image clue from The Year Zero Website entitled "I Am Trying To Believe"[5], Year Zero occurs in 2022.
Clue One
http://www.ninwiki.com/images/b/b0/Yz2022.jpg
The faded image to the left of the main article shows the date "2022", yet the article itself is reduplicated and clearer, showing the date "0000".
Clue Two
In an MTV News Article from February 15th, 2007[6] Trent Reznor reveals:
"Concept record. Sixteen tracks. What's it about? Well, it takes place about 15 years in the future. Things are not good. If you imagine a world where greed and power continue to run their likely course, you'll have an idea of the backdrop."
Clue Three
On the "Church of Plano" Website [7] under the heading "This Week's Sermons:", the date reads Sunday, February 13. Coincidentaly, February the 13th falls on a Sunday in the year 2022.
Audio Clues
My Violent Heart
- Members of the community have noted that the burst of static at the end of the My Violent Heart strongly resembles what has become to be known as The Presence when run through a spectrograph.
nohurry.mp3
"nohurry.mp3" (here) is one of the three (so far) mp3s linked to on the Another Version of the Truth forums. It is about a son of an Imam who is killed by a SWAT team looking for a Muslim extremist.
- The end of the recording has another Morse Code message
http://www.ninwiki.com/images/4/4b/Nohurry_morse.jpg
It has been decoded to be: 24.10.1
opalo.mp3
"opalo.mp3" [8] is one of the three (so far) mp3s linked to on the Another Version of the Truth forums. It is a woman talking about a DEA battle with a Columbian drug cartel.
- The end of the recording has another Morse Code message
http://www.ninwiki.com/images/d/dd/Opalo_morse.jpg
It has been decoded to be: 24.10.3
BallgameOver.mp3
ballgameOver.mp3 (here) is one of the three (so far) mp3s linked to on the Another Version of the Truth forums. It is about a man (presumed to be "Angry Sniper") who sets off bombs of Silver Nitrate in Wrigley Field, and then shoots and kills someone.
- The end of the recording has another Morse Code message
http://www.ninwiki.com/images/5/5e/Ballgameover_morse.jpg
It has been decoded to be: 24.10.5