The Virus Traditional Cache
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(regular)
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Gratz to taponick as FTF
Hidden within a medium rectangle camouflaged container which is locked shut, is a "sample" of a famous fictional virus, the T-Virus. The "virus" container is a see-through cylinder with silver ends set into the center of the container. The cache is hidden about 100 feet off the Merrimack river trail where you will find several other caches, it is towards the river so some mild bushwhacking will be necessary.
Please leave the "sample" in the container it is ment to be a prop and not a tradeable item. The first to find prize is a LED flashlight, a tool I have always found handy in my caching travels.
Spanish Flu, sometimes called the 1918 Flu Pandemic, was a worldwide pandemic and one of the most catastrophic natural disasters in humanity’s history. Experts estimate that somewhere between 50 and 100 million people died worldwide, and that some 500 million were infected. Stateside, one in every four people suffered some form of the Spanish flu, and the death toll was so staggering that it shortened the average US life expectancy by 12 years during the first year of the outbreak.
To slow the spread of the disease, public buildings, schools included, in Lawrence and many other New England cities and towns were closed. Haverhill, Massachusetts went a step further and prohibited its schoolchildren from attending motion picture houses or other public meetings during the epidemic. In Marblehead, Massachusetts, the high school building was converted into a hospital by the Board of Health in October 1918. Boston’s Committee of Public Safety asked school teachers to attend to flu victims; most did as schools were closed indefinitely.
During the epidemic, fresh air was thought paramount in protecting against infection. Open-air emergency camps were set up in many Massachusetts cities and towns to treat the infected. Lawrence open its own emergency camp for flu victims from the city, as well as cases from the neighboring communities of Methuen, Andover, and North Andover. Controversy surrounded the opening of the Lawrence camp, named Emery Hill, which had been a large dairy farm that supplied milk to nearby residents. Though the residents objected loudly to Lawrence’s Mayor Hurley; in the end, Lawrence city officials protested that they had little say in the matter. They maintained that the state had chosen the site and was running the hospital. By October 12, 1918, the camp had 150 patients.
(excerpts from
The Lowell Sun
December 17, 2011
1918: Spanish Influenza invades Massachusetts
By Forgotten New England)
From the site of the cache and the nearby abandoned docks, if your looked across the river in 1919 you could see the Lawrence Camp for the infected. Today the farm and Infection camp have been covered by streets but in memory of the hill, Emery Street was created. Thought largely forgotten in today's history even New England suffered from the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Fghpx, be "ybpxrq" va cynpr? Jungf gur ynfg guerr qvtvgf bs gur lrne gur Fcnavfu syh uvg Ynjerapr naq Abegu Naqbire ZN?