| rdfs:comment | - Plum Island is an 840-acre island off about two miles off of the coast of Suffolk, the easternmost section of Long Island, New York. Known as “Manittuwond” by the original Native American inhabitants, the island was called “Plum Island” by Dutch settlers due to the beach plums that grew in abundance all along its shores. The island, home to an important lighthouse, was transferred from private ownership to the United States government in 1899 because of its strategic location in the Atlantic Ocean, at the entrance of the Long Island Sound. The U.S. government built a fort on the island, and the site became part of the anti-submarine screen that was put in place to defend the east coast during World War I and World War II.
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| abstract | - Plum Island is an 840-acre island off about two miles off of the coast of Suffolk, the easternmost section of Long Island, New York. Known as “Manittuwond” by the original Native American inhabitants, the island was called “Plum Island” by Dutch settlers due to the beach plums that grew in abundance all along its shores. The island, home to an important lighthouse, was transferred from private ownership to the United States government in 1899 because of its strategic location in the Atlantic Ocean, at the entrance of the Long Island Sound. The U.S. government built a fort on the island, and the site became part of the anti-submarine screen that was put in place to defend the east coast during World War I and World War II. After World War II, the fort was no longer needed, so the site was transferred to the United States Department of Agriculture, which established the Plum Island Animal Disease Center of New York, a facility dedicated to the study and prevention of infectious animal diseases such as anthrax and foot-and-mouth disease. That was a cover story, though. In reality, the facility was secretly conducting biological and radiological weapons testing on humans in the hopes of replicating a phenomenon that was observed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the first atomic bombs were dropped: ghoulification. In fact, one of the very first individuals whose transformation was witnessed and documented, a civilian by the name of Hideo Suzuki, was transported to the site and studied. After a while, locals and conspiracy theorists began suspecting that the site was more than what the U.S. government claimed it was. Visitors sometimes went in but never came out. The site often received supply shipments containing state-of-the-art technology. Strange creatures sometimes washed up on nearby shores. All in all, the government cover story was strong enough that most never suspected the strange and sometimes deranged experiments being conducted on the island. In the lead up to the Great War, the facility was turned over to the Vault-Tec Corporation, a military research and defense contractor, and renamed the Plum Island Research Facility. Other than the name, nothing much changed. Like the U.S. government, Vault-Tec continued experimenting on subjects and studying the results of different methods of ghoulification. That all ended when the bombs fell. Though the Plum Island facility was not hit directly, it was caught within the fallout zone from the numerous warheads dropped on nearby New York City and other parts of Long Island. Various fail-safes had been put in place were something untoward ever to go wrong at the facility and when the bombs fell, those procedures went off without a hitch. The majority of those in the facility, workers and subjects alike, were instantly frozen thanks to cryostasis mechanisms installed by Vault-Tec While no one knows how long these fail-safes were supposed to continue, many of the cryostasis chambers began failing some 200 years after first activated. By 2277, some thirty ghoul and non-ghoul subjects and workers at the facility had woken. In adapting and trying to make sense of the new world they found themselves in, the Sons of Suzuki were formed. The group believed Hideo Suzuki, still in stasis, to be a prophet. Ghouls were the next step in evolution, and Suzuki was believed to be the first ghoul. By transforming humanity into ghouls, enlightened society would return to the world and Suzuki would awake once more to lead them into an age of peace and prosperity. The small cult has resumed the research and experiments that the U.S. government and Vault-Tec began there before them. The group numbers at about fifty members, centered primarily in the Plum Island facility. Like their predecessors, the Sons of Suzuki experiment on volunteers, and when those are not available, forcibly experiment on subjects.
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