‘Human sacrifice’ staged at CERN's Shiva Statue

[MacCruiskeen]

Imagine a film identical in all respects to the one we're discussing here, except for a single difference:

Imagine it had been filmed late at night, not on the hallowed (and highly-secure) premises of CERN. but in a schoolyard or playground in a run-down working-class area anywhere in Europe.

Do you think the police would agree to let the headmaster treat it as "an internal matter"? Do you think the police would just not bother to investigate, even perfunctorily, whether or not someone had been murdered or seriously hurt there? Do you think the police would presume it had been nothing more than a harmless "prank", a "hoax"?

I don't.

[Harvey]

Imagine a film identical in all respects to the one we're discussing here, except for a single difference:

Imagine it had been filmed late at night, not on the hallowed (and highly-secure) premises of CERN. but in a schoolyard or playground in a run-down working-class area anywhere in Europe.

Do you think the police would agree to let the headmaster treat it as "an internal matter"? Do you think the police would just not bother to investigate, even perfunctorily, whether or not someone had been murdered or seriously hurt there? Do you think the police would presume it had been nothing more than a harmless "prank", a "hoax"?

I don't.

Yeah, but it was. And I doubt that it hasn't been investigated by police, we just don't know. Anything. At all. In the absence of a body, a missing person fitting the description or any other evidence, what would you like RI readers to do?

Previous commentary on the symbolism is quite interesting tho.

[PufPuf93]

Imagine a film identical in all respects to the one we're discussing here, except for a single difference:

Imagine it had been filmed late at night, not on the hallowed (and highly-secure) premises of CERN. but in a schoolyard or playground in a run-down working-class area anywhere in Europe.

Do you think the police would agree to let the headmaster treat it as "an internal matter"? Do you think the police would just not bother to investigate, even perfunctorily, whether or not someone had been murdered or seriously hurt there? Do you think the police would presume it had been nothing more than a harmless "prank", a "hoax"?

I don't.

One difference that breaks down this analogy is that the police most certainly would be directed to interact with professional security at CERN and all that entails rather than direct to the headmaster of a school.

[MacCruiskeen]

Imagine a film identical in all respects to the one we're discussing here, except for a single difference:

Imagine it had been filmed late at night, not on the hallowed (and highly-secure) premises of CERN. but in a schoolyard or playground in a run-down working-class area anywhere in Europe.

Do you think the police would agree to let the headmaster treat it as "an internal matter"? Do you think the police would just not bother to investigate, even perfunctorily, whether or not someone had been murdered or seriously hurt there? Do you think the police would presume it had been nothing more than a harmless "prank", a "hoax"?

I don't.

Yeah, but it was.

I had noticed that, Harvey. That's why I used the word "imagine" and the conditional tense. The class aspect of this incident is particularly striking, but you just completely ignore the point I was making with that hypothetical scenario.

And I doubt that it hasn't been investigated by police, we just don't know. Anything. At all.

*Sigh* The self-serving pretence that we know nothing and that we cannot possibly know anything is a particularly wearisome cliché and an obvious untruth. I know it's become a favourite at The New RI, but it's disappointing to see you coming out with it.

From today's Torygraph:

Geneva police have been informed of the prank but CERN said its investigation would remain internal and police would not be involved.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08 ... -campus-t/

^^Colour added for additional emphasis. (This gets tiring.) (And yesyes, I do understand that CERN might be lying. This is not equivalent to saying that We do not know. Anything. At all.)

In the absence of a body, a missing person fitting the description or any other evidence, what would you like RI readers to do?

What a bizarre question. As if starting a thread on the RI Discussion Board (on any topic) is equivalent to demanding that readers do anything at all about it, except participate in the discussion in good faith if they're going to participate in it at all.

[Harvey]

Imagine a film identical in all respects to the one we're discussing here, except for a single difference:

Imagine it had been filmed late at night, not on the hallowed (and highly-secure) premises of CERN. but in a schoolyard or playground in a run-down working-class area anywhere in Europe.

Do you think the police would agree to let the headmaster treat it as "an internal matter"? Do you think the police would just not bother to investigate, even perfunctorily, whether or not someone had been murdered or seriously hurt there? Do you think the police would presume it had been nothing more than a harmless "prank", a "hoax"?

I don't.

Yeah, but it was.

I had noticed that, Harvey. That's why I used the word "imagine" and the conditional tense. The class aspect of this incident is particularly striking, but you just completely ignore the point I was making with that hypothetical scenario.

And I doubt that it hasn't been investigated by police, we just don't know. Anything. At all.

*Sigh* The self-serving pretence that we know nothing and that we cannot possibly know anything is a particularly wearisome cliché and an obvious untruth. I know it's become a favourite at The New RI, but it's disappointing to see you coming out with it.

From today's Torygraph:

Geneva police have been informed of the prank but CERN said its investigation would remain internal and police would not be involved.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/08 ... -campus-t/

^^Colour added for additional emphasis. (This gets tiring.)

In the absence of a body, a missing person fitting the description or any other evidence, what would you like RI readers to do?

What a bizarre question. As if starting a thread on the RI Discussion Board (on any topic) is equivalent to demanding that readers do anything at all about it, except participate in the discussion in good faith if they're going to participate in it at all.

Aye, right then, I'll be off.

[MacCruiskeen]

One difference that breaks down this analogy is that the police most certainly would be directed to interact with professional security at CERN and all that entails rather than direct to the headmaster of a school.

Fair enough. No analogy is perfect, because no two things are exactly the same. (This is what makes them two things rather than one.)

Anyway, "headmaster" was shorthand for "those in charge of the place". In any case, many schools too have security nowadays, at least the bigger ones in the rougher areas.

But replace "school playground" with "hotel atrium" or "factory forecourt" or "public square" or whatever strikes you as more closely analogous. The point still stands that it's not standard police practice to just refrain from investigating what appears to be a definite case of trespass and a possible case of murder -- to just hand over all responsibility to the internal security personnel of any publicly- or privately-funded institution.

Why should the police presume that CERN is any more capable of investigating itself impartially than (say) the Catholic Church or Enron?

[brainpanhandler]

I guess it would be good to remember that police are not monolithic.

CERN security and Geneva Police in action:

[MacCruiskeen]

^^ Note that the Geneva cops and the CERN security guards take their responsibilities seriously there, even though she's guilty of nothing more than being a bit irritating in broad daylight on the edge of the CERN complex. They eventually take her to the police station in a cop car and release her only after giving her a warning.

It's an interesting contrast to their treatment of the ten or a dozen people who either pretended to stab a woman in the throat or actually did stab a woman in the throat in the dead of night at the very heart of the CERN complex.

[brainpanhandler]

Have these been posted?

A professional culture at CERN

James Purvis
Posted by Harriet Kim Jarlett on 19 Aug 2016. Last updated 19 Aug 2016, 12.01.

The richness of our Organization comes from our people; with diverse cultures, backgrounds and interests, we are able to achieve the incredible – pushing the frontiers of knowledge. Regrettably, the behaviour of some members of our community occasionally undermines our collective ambitions and the opportunity we have to work at CERN. Currently, the senior management, HR, computer security, legal service and communications teams are managing the consequences of the actions of a small group of individuals. What perhaps started as a naïve prank is having significant and widespread repercussions for our Organization – from queries about our conduct, culture & security through to potentially more politically delicate questions.

Despite our relaxed and informal campus atmosphere we are professional people, working in a professional environment. Maintaining CERN’s unique character requires respect for each other and for the communities that support CERN and its work. This is why we have a code of conduct, applicable to anyone on the CERN site. Any breach of this code of conduct can have a detrimental impact on how our Organization is perceived by our neighbours, our Member States and the wider international community. And hence could impact eventually on CERN’s reputation and fate.

When each of us start work on the CERN site, we sign a contract agreeing to abide by the organisation’s rules and regulations. Though prefaced by the word “staff”, these rules and regulations apply to all members of personnel: staff, fellows, users, students, etc. This contractual document states: “Members of the personnel shall conduct themselves with due regard to the interests and proper functioning of the Organization” [S I 3.01 Conduct]. Misconduct, including misuse of CERN premises and bringing disrepute to CERN’s name and the integrity of the Organization’s professional activities, can therefore result in disciplinary action. In addition, all users of CERN computing network sign the CERN computing rules stating that “the use of CERN computing facilities must cause no material or moral damage to the Organization, nor disrupt their operation.” In reference to this particular case, we are continuing investigations that could lead to disciplinary measures for the people involved.

We are all ambassadors for CERN, even when outside of our day-to-day work, e.g. on social media. Let’s focus our passion for working at such a unique place into collaborating together, to uphold CERN’s values of respect, integrity, commitment, professionalism, diversity and scientific creativity.

Read more: CERN code of conduct

http://home.cern/cern-people/opinion/20 ... lture-cern

Links in the original, including to this statement:

I have seen a video of a strange ritual at CERN, is it real?

No, this video is a work of fiction showing a contrived scene. CERN and its on-site accommodation fills up with scientists from across the world coming to CERN as part of their work. Work at CERN can take place 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with shift work and data analysis. Persons that are authorised to access the CERN site sometimes let their sense of humour go too far, and that is what has happened on this occasion. The video was filmed from an office building; strict safety systems are in place to prevent any unauthorised access to technical and experimental facilities. CERN does not condone this kind of spoof, which breaches CERN’s professional guidelines, and is currently carrying out an internal investigation.

http://press.cern/backgrounders/cern-an ... edia#video

[SonicG]

Thanks for correcting about the mural inside the building, as I have to admit I saw one youtube "debunking" and just though "ha!" but there is a bit foul in all of it especially the above "sense of humour" and "kind of spoof"...

[MacCruiskeen]

Thanks for that, bph.

Currently, the senior management, HR, computer security, legal service and communications teams are managing the consequences of the actions of a small group of individuals. What perhaps started as a naïve prank is having significant and widespread repercussions for our Organization – from queries about our conduct, culture & security through to potentially more politically delicate questions.

http://home.cern/cern-people/opinion/20 ... lture-cern

Interesting. And he appears to be a man who would know what he was talking about:

James Purvis was appointed as CERN's Human Resources department head in 2016

http://home.cern/authors/james-purvis

"What perhaps started as a naïve prank" - Mr Purvis doesn't sound nearly as sure as the hacks at VICE and the Guardian and HuffPo, who of course know everything, and who of course know that none of it matters in the slightest.

"potentially more politically delicate questions" - I wonder what he means, exactly.

"A small group of individuals" - Not so small. At least ten or a dozen.

Note that a fair amount of preparation and rehearsal must have gone into this "ritual". Having the idea, recruiting the participants, getting the costumes (and the knife), arranging the choreography: Where & when do we meet and when do we get into costume? How do we avoid being seen by security guards or by colleagues working late? Where do we start? How quickly do we walk? Where does each participant stand, exactly? Who takes care of the knife? When does the stabber come over and demand the knife? When does the stabee remove her cloak? When and where, exactly, does she kneel and then lie down? Etc. - Then whatever happened afterwards, which we don't see, including their departure from the scene. All this has to be not just discussed but also prepared and rehearsed, at least a couple of times.

In short: It wasn't just some daft spur-of-the-moment idea immediately put into action by a bunch of drunken teenagers in the pub. It took considerable time and effort, and personal risk.

What on earth were they thinking of? They are not schoolkids. They are, at the very least, undergraduate visitors (or postgraduate employees?) at one of the most elite scientific institutions in the world.

[guruilla]

Lots to catch up on here, starting with this:

Meanwhile, for those of us not inclined to signal back "no-threat to power" with mimetic smirks & chuckles, the correlations between the scientific goal of the Hadron collider & the spiritual one of ritual sacrifice is probably worth unpacking a bit..?

Curious to hear more on this.

Purpose
Physicists hope that the LHC will help answer some of the fundamental open questions in physics, concerning the basic laws governing the interactions and forces among the elementary objects, the deep structure of space and time, and in particular the interrelation between quantum mechanics and general relativity, where current theories and knowledge are unclear or break down altogether. Data is also needed from high-energy particle experiments to suggest which versions of current scientific models are more likely to be correct – in particular to choose between the Standard Model and Higgsless models and to validate their predictions and allow further theoretical development. Many theorists expect new physics beyond the Standard Model to emerge at the TeV energy level, as the Standard Model appears to be unsatisfactory. Issues possibly to be explored by LHC collisions include:[16][17]
• Are the masses of elementary particles actually generated by the Higgs mechanism via electroweak symmetry breaking?[18] It was expected that the collider experiments will either demonstrate or rule out the existence of the elusive Higgs boson, thereby allowing physicists to consider whether the Standard Model or its Higgsless alternatives are more likely to be correct.[19][20][21] The experiments found a particle that appears to be the Higgs boson, strong evidence that the Standard Model has the correct mechanism of giving mass to the elementary particles.
• Is supersymmetry, an extension of the Standard Model and Poincaré symmetry, realized in nature, implying that all known particles have supersymmetric partners?[22][23][24]
• Are there extra dimensions,[25] as predicted by various models based on string theory, and can we detect them?[26]
• What is the nature of the dark matter that appears to account for 27% of the mass-energy of the universe?
Other open questions that may be explored using high-energy particle collisions:
• It is already known that electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force are different manifestations of a single force called the electroweak force. The LHC may clarify whether the electroweak force and the strong nuclear force are similarly just different manifestations of one universal unified force, as predicted by various Grand Unification Theories.
• Why is the fourth fundamental force (gravity) so many orders of magnitude weaker than the other three fundamental forces? See also Hierarchy problem.
• Are there additional sources of quark flavour mixing, beyond those already present within the Standard Model?
• Why are there apparent violations of the symmetry between matter and antimatter? See also CP violation.
• What are the nature and properties of quark–gluon plasma, thought to have existed in the early universe and in certain compact and strange astronomical objects today? This will be investigated by heavy ion collisions, mainly in ALICE, but also in CMS, ATLAS and LHCb. First observed in 2010, findings published in 2012 confirmed the phenomenon of jet quenching in heavy-ion collisions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Had ... er#Purpose

And what is the spiritual purpose of sacrifice? The Indian Sub-continent section is intriguing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice

As always, Wikipedia is a starting point, not an arbiter of all that is right and true. I just needed somewhere to start thinking about your intriguing question.

I'm just hitting some broad marks with this copy-pasta right now as i don’t have time to write another essay-post, but the main correlations between CERN and human sacrifice seem to relate to the notion of storming heaven/accessing "occult" dimensions/cracking matter/finding the God particle/harnessing the energy of the psyche or unconscious, and, the very unexplored concept (AFAIK) of individuation through violence.

Of the Wiki article, this part stood out:

Human sacrifice may be a ritual practiced in a stable society, and may even be conductive to enhance societal bonds (see: Sociology of religion), both by creating a bond unifying the sacrificing community, and in combining human sacrifice and capital punishment, by removing individuals that have a negative effect on societal stability (criminals, religious heretics, foreign slaves or prisoners of war). But outside of civil religion, human sacrifice may also result in outbursts of "blood frenzy" and mass killings that destabilize society. The bursts of human sacrifice during European witch-hunts,[12] or during the French Revolutionary Reign of Terror, show similar sociological patterns (see also Moral panic).

Crowley on human sacrifice:

“It would be unwise to condemn as irrational the practice of those savages who tear the heart and liver from an adversary, and devour them while yet warm. In any case it was the theory of the ancient Magicians, that any living being is a storehouse of energy varying in quantity according to the size and health of the animal, and in quality according to its mental and moral character. At the death of the animal this energy is liberated suddenly. [F]or nearly all purposes human sacrifice is the best.”

Jeffrey Kripal's "The traumatic secret":

Nothing in our everyday experience gives us any reason to suppose that matter is not material, that it is made up of bizarre forms of energy that violate, very much like spirit, all of our normal notions of space, time, and causality. Yet when we subject matter to certain drastic treatments, like CERN’s Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland, then we can see quite clearly that matter is not material at all. But—and this is the key—we can only get there through a great deal of physical violence, a violence so extreme and so precise that it cost us billions of dollars and decades of preparation to inflict it.

Me, from Prisoner of Infinity:

If I read his article correctly, Kripal is comparing the process of shattering matter to the means by which an individual can access higher or deeper (mystic) realms of perception as a result of physical and psychological trauma. While I can allow this to be true, my question to Kripal, regarding his piece, is: at what cost? Writing about Strieber, Kripal states that he “does not reduce the later mystical events to the earlier trauma. Rather, he suggests that physical and sexual trauma can ‘crack open the cosmic egg’ and so reveal a ‘hidden reality’ of unimaginable scope. In short, he offers us another version of the “traumatic secret.”

At the risk of well-intended inundation, I just recorded a couple of hours audio exploring Sara Scott’s The Politics & Experience of Ritual Abuse: Beyond Disbelief (which I heard about via Project Willow's rec here), trying to work out the deeper rationale and intent behind ritual sacrifice and abuse. Some of the points I cover are:

(Part 1) who defines the narrative, superordinate and subordinate testimonies, political power and narrative creation, the incoherency of ritual abuse narratives in the context of the dominant narrative, how we put our unthinking trust in figures of high status, the question of verisimilitude, gauging trustability, sabotaging the capacity to determine what’s real, binary thinking, “Satanic Panic” vs. “Satanic Ritual Abuse,” unquestioned assumptions, Christianity as a no-longer dominant narrative, how the ruling class adapts the narrative to maintain power and control, the New World Order and Scientific Rationalism Advocacy, gay marriage and the neoliberals’ religious zeal, the discourse of disbelief, on Peter Levenda and the fear of a witch hunt, Satanism & neoliberalism, serving the matrix unconsciously, the primary ideology, unconscious complicity, distinguishing between types of ritual abuse, pedophilia and occultism, Levenda again, Crowley as pedophile vs. Crowley as occult ritual abuser, Anton LaVey, Adam Parfrey & secular Satanism, giving one’s body up to Satan, the satanic drive to rebel, violence and binding rituals, the structure of torture, the body and the sacred, satanic ritual abuse as a community binding ritual, making the bodies in a group congruent through carnality, the prevalence of torture in modern narratives, abuse as a means of supplanting identity, creating maximum intensity to transcend identity, transcending flesh & blood, the equivalency of occultism with ritual abuse, God intoxication & satanic possession.

(part 2) … automatic disbelief and death awareness, death denial, religion, & science, death-as-entertainment, ritual sacrifice as a throwback, the bereavement industry, the progression of sacrifice towards the symbolic, binding secrets, consciousness & socialization, Eros & Thanatos, control over the body, the shadow community, individuation through violence, a temporary autonomous zone, the paradox of group individuating, individuation through surrender vs. individuation through violence, the support network for psychopaths, ancient cliques within late modernity, the primordial & predatory, the way of the savage, Marquis de Sade & everything is permitted, the body’s morality, the kernel of justification for ritual abuse, ancestral trauma, the context for understanding ritual abuse, listening to the constructed identity, disbelieving the past, the limits of the metaphor of DID (dissociative identity disorder), incoherent attachment, identity formation and the mother bond, self & society, depersonalization and derealization, the discontinuity of time, the compartmentalization of social selves, a jealous reality, understanding multiplicity, the psyche as community, the forward march of history, the double movement of modernity, surveillance & secrecy, the extended family that slays together.

The Girardian notion of the violent sacred is that ritual sacrifice (the scapegoat) is necessary to bind the community together in a shared "religious" experience in which the guilt of the victim must be unquestionable, or at least unquestioned. What’s notable about so-called Satanic ritual sacrifice is that it reverses this principle by seeking a victim whose innocence is as beyond dispute as possible, a virgin, a child, or best of all, a newborn baby.

This seems to have to do with how satanic cliques are aiming to individuate collectively from the larger collective of society, by binding into a sodality that transgresses together all the accepted social mores, that makes a totem out of taboo, so to speak.

Or create a portal to higher dimensions?

But anyhoo…

One of the things I look at is how, from a secular late modern perspective, it is impossible, not only to believe in the supernatural but in supposedly “atavistic” beliefs and behaviors that are associated with the supernatural, such as ritual sacrifice. The only way it/we can think about these things is in terms of fictional narratives. So when we encounter them, our brains automatically file them in the fiction category. Something of the sort, I think, is in evidence around this current stunt ~ even if it actually is purely fictional ~ and is partly what Mac is railing against.

More in a bit, if I get a break.

[Novem5er]

If a person was stabbed in the neck and then dropped to the ground, would there be a growing pool of blood?

Would that blood still be there the next morning? Or do you think the cultists would have brought mops and buckets to clean up afterward?

If a person just witnessed a crime (and honestly believed that there WAS a crime) wouldn't they call the police immediately instead of uploading a video to youtube?

Are there probably video surveillance on the CERN campus that could clear up any questions about who arrived and who left the scene (or carried a body off)?

I think if someone were to believe that there was an actual murder in that video, they'd have to believe that CERN officials would then be covering up the crime. That's a possibility, I suppose.

[MacCruiskeen]

If a person was stabbed in the neck and then dropped to the ground, would there be a growing pool of blood?

...

Are there probably video surveillance on the CERN campus that could clear up any questions about who arrived and who left the scene (or carried a body off)?

1. She was already lying flat on the ground when stabbed (or "stabbed"). You saw this in the video, if you watched it at all.

2. Yes, there are 300 surveillance cameras in the CERN complex, administered by a surveillance centre.

Both these points were answered already. How can any discussion take place when people feel compelled to post but don't even bother to read the thread? (It's only five pages long.) Or even watch the video.

Would that blood still be there the next morning? Or do you think the cultists would have brought mops and buckets to clean up afterward?

Fnar, fnar. No, a single stab at the windpipe wouldn't necessarily mean buckets of blood. Her own cloak would very likely be enough to soak up any blood spilled.

If a person just witnessed a crime (and honestly believed that there WAS a crime) wouldn't they call the police immediately instead of uploading a video to youtube?

How do you know he didn't?

[guruilla]

The class aspect of this incident is particularly striking

Worth some more extrapolation?

What if we put this "prank" in an imaginary context equivalent to your counter-example ~ that of a murder occurring in a ghetto with perps we are trained by media to associate with crimes stabbing a woman? What if we imagine a context of elite scientists, and even low-level graduates, at CERN who routinely practice ritual sacrifice in secret? How does this "prank" start to look then?

The self-serving pretence that we know nothing and that we cannot possibly know anything is a particularly wearisome cliché and an obvious untruth.

I'd say it's a relative truth and that it can be applied productively, to open a discussion up and let some air in, and non-productively, to shut it down. The latter seems to be the way Harvey was using it, for reasons unknown, and perhaps now unknowable if Harvey really has left the building (hard to say when it comes to invisible rabbits). I don't know why Harvey would feel the need to check out so soon, tho, since he generally has interesting things to say. And even if all we can really know for sure about anything are our own perceptual impressions, thoughts, feelings, etc, there's still plenty to explore here, as I tried to point out before.

It would be a shame, IMO, if the thread gets stuck on whether the enactment was real or not or even what the evidence of it suggests. We are all going to have different criteria about what seems real to us, and in this case, short of some new evidence, I doubt that going over the video's every minutiae is going to get us much closer to agreement. But there is plenty to discuss around this, plenty to work out, that isn't at all contingent on knowing, ever, whether the murder was real or not. It seems as though much of the argumentation around the video comes down to whether or not it's worth discussing, at all, which rests on the presumption that it is only worth discussing if the enactment is real, or at least might be real. But clearly it might be real, even if, equally clearly, it raises a ton of perhaps unanswerable questions and seeming anomalies, even absurdities, if we say it is real. I'm not sure myself, but it seems what Mac is trying to get to is the context for the enactment and the context for people's responses to it, here & elsewhere. I don't think (correct me if I'm wrong, Mac) he's trying to argue that it is a real murder, only that it is rash to dismiss it as a prank without examining, not just the evidence of the video and the news stories around it, but the social, psychological context in which all this media is emerging. A miniature sample of that psycho-social context is right here & now, at this thread, with the combined experience and knowledge (& beliefs, assumptions, & prejudices) of the people participating.

No, this video is a work of fiction showing a contrived scene. CERN and its on-site accommodation fills up with scientists from across the world coming to CERN as part of their work. Work at CERN can take place 24 hours a day, 365 days a year with shift work and data analysis. Persons that are authorised to access the CERN site sometimes let their sense of humour go too far, and that is what has happened on this occasion. The video was filmed from an office building; strict safety systems are in place to prevent any unauthorised access to technical and experimental facilities. CERN does not condone this kind of spoof, which breaches CERN’s professional guidelines, and is currently carrying out an internal investigation.

Would it really have been so destabilizing for CERN to have replaced that opening "No" with "As far as we know"? Or at least have given the specific reasons for categorically stating that the video is a work of fiction? The statement is a response to a generic question "Is it real?," so CERN allows that some people might watch the video and think it is real. So then it's fair to ask what is it that CERN officials have access to that allows them to determine the fictionality of the video with 100% certainty, and why are they not sharing it with the public? The part about "strict safety systems are in place to prevent any unauthorized access" implies that the individuals who made & participated in the video had authorized access, and hence could not have committed a real murder. Et voila.

I noticed a couple of other Frequent Responses:

Is CERN's aim to prove that God does not exist?
No.

Will CERN open a door to another dimension?
CERN will not open a door to another dimension. If the experiments conducted at the LHC demonstrate the existence of certain particles it could help physicists to test various theories about nature and our Universe, such as the presence of extra dimensions. There is more information here.

Will CERN generate a black hole?
The LHC will not generate black holes in the cosmological sense. However, some theories suggest that the formation of tiny 'quantum' black holes may be possible. The observation of such an event would be thrilling in terms of our understanding of the Universe; and would be perfectly safe.
http://press.cern/backgrounders/cern-an ... edia#video

Note that a fair amount of preparation and rehearsal must have gone into this "ritual". Having the idea, recruiting the participants, getting the costumes (and the knife), arranging the choreography: Where & when do we meet and when do we get into costume? How do we avoid being seen by security guards or by colleagues working late? Where do we start? How quickly do we walk? Where does each participant stand, exactly? Who takes care of the knife? When does the stabber come over and demand the knife? When does the stabee remove her cloak? When and where, exactly, does she kneel and then lie down? Etc. - Then whatever happened afterwards, which we don't see, including their departure from the scene. All this has to be not just discussed but also prepared and rehearsed, at least a couple of times.

In short: It wasn't just some daft spur-of-the-moment idea immediately put into action by a bunch of drunken teenagers in the pub. It took considerable time and effort, and personal risk.

What on earth were they thinking of? They are not schoolkids. They are, at the very least, undergraduate visitors (or postgraduate employees?) at one of the most elite scientific institutions in the world.

Yeah. For the amount of time, effort, and risk that went into the "stunt," can't we reasonably deduce a corresponding payoff? It's a psyop worthy of Anonymous, at least, and Anon have generally been pretty serious about their play. So where's the payoff for the CERN-authorized pranksters here? Are the so-called "conspiratards" even taking this that seriously? I don't know, I haven't checked; but, even if they are, how exactly is that a commensurate payoff?

Here's a thought: what if the "pranksters" were staging a kind of whistleblowers' theater?