So Supernatural - CONSPIRACY: Operation Highjump
Episode Date: August 22, 2025In 1946, the Navy sent 4700 men to Antarctica for—what they claimed—was a training mission that would prepare them for battle in extreme temperatures. But after three months the operation was shut... down, sparking rumors that the mission was a cover-up for something else entirely—like finding a hidden Nazi base or a civilization at the center of the earth.For a full list of sources, please visit: sosupernaturalpodcast.com/conspiracy-operation-highjumpSo Supernatural is an audiochuck and Crime House production. Find us on social!Instagram: @sosupernatualpodTwitter: @_sosupernaturalFacebook: /sosupernaturalpod
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As someone who's always been the one trying to solve mysteries,
I think a lot about what it would be like to be at the center of one,
to know the answers,
to swear yourself to secrecy,
and to have to take the truth with you to the grave,
which is why I would love being recruited for a top secret mission.
I mean, look, we all know the government keeps endless secrets from the American people.
And truly, the only way to get a peek behind the curtain is to,
well, operate behind the curtain.
If you can't beat them, join them sort of thing.
And I've covered enough cases by now to know
that the best way to perform a top-secret mission
is to make it seem like it's not secret at all,
like it serves another purpose entirely.
Just like Operation High Jump did after World War II,
did you know that in 1946, the U.S. Navy sent 4,700 of its personnel to Antarctica
for what they said was military training in extreme conditions.
Sure, they had a few other things on the agenda,
like establish a base, see if they could build an airfield there,
gather some geological data, all regulation on the books kind of stuff.
Or so they said.
There were a lot of suspicious things about this operation
that didn't really add up to the American people,
which is why people began to question the true nature of this mission.
Some said it might have been to seek out hidden Nazi bases.
Others said it might have been a cover-up for research on UFOs.
But there are some who believe that the operation was looking for a hole,
one that led to secret civilizations in the center of the earth.
I'm Ashley Flowers, and we're back for another episode of So Supernatural.
We've got a lot of
We've covered a lot of conspiracy things.
theories on this show. But there's one thing that sets Operation High Jump apart from the rest.
We know it was a real military mission. So most of the conspiracies around this topic
are less about whether High Jump happened and more about what it really was. And let me tell
you, the theories are truly astonishing. I'm Yvette Gentile. And I'm her sister,
Shepec Guerrero. Now, Yvette, sometimes people ask us if we personally believe in cover-ups.
How do you respond to that? Absolutely, yes, we do. A hundred percent we believe the stories,
and we definitely believe that the government has a reason to cover up all kinds of different
supernatural events, as y'all are going to see in today's story. That's right. Today, we're traveling back
to the 1920s to meet a daredevil pilot named Richard Byrd.
This is the era where pilots are really having a moment.
Charles Lindberg and Amelia Earhart are making huge names for themselves.
But Richard, well, he's also a pretty big deal,
mainly because his family is rich and very well known.
But in 1929, he's not just lying for fun.
40-year-old Richard has emerged as an experience,
experienced naval pilot after many years of service. And with his commander's support,
he announces that he's going to be the first person to fly over the South Pole, which of course
is easier said than done. Unlike the Arctic to the north, which has some indigenous groups like
the Inuit, Antarctica is completely uninhabited. There's no civilization there to potentially
help Richard if his plane goes down.
But Richard is so dedicated to this mission that he actually gets donations and builds his
own base in Antarctica for it.
It even has a nickname, Little America.
A bunch of people come to live there, and I don't know exactly how many, but they have
housing quarters, a library, a hospital, even a radio station and a photo lab.
And of course, he also builds an airstrip.
So on November 28th of 1929, Richard climbs into the flight deck of one of the planes at Little America.
His crew consists of a co-pilot, a radio man, and a photographer.
Together they run through their pre-flight checklists, take off, and for the next 18 hours and 41 minutes, soar over the South Pole,
and they are the first people ever in history to do it.
This cements Richard's reputation as an ace pilot.
it. He, along with everyone else from Little America, returns home triumphant. And I mean
literally everyone, because the place is abandoned now that the record has been set. In the next
few years, Richard gets a couple of naval promotions. He also leads a few more expeditions to
Antarctica. Then, in 1933, he establishes a new base in the exact same spot where Little America
used to be. He calls it Little America 2. And Richard's team spends this time learning about weather
patterns in and around the South Pole. In 1939, he runs another research expedition from a base
called, Guess what? Little America 3, which is about seven miles away from the other base. After that,
come more missions and more promotions. By 1945, around the time World War II ends, Richard is a
high-ranking Navy Admiral.
But now the Cold War is getting started,
and Richard fears that the Soviet Union is planning an attack on the United States.
And if they do send bombs our way, they might send them over the North Pole,
mainly because it's a more direct route than flying all the way across the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean.
And since they wouldn't be flying over other inhabited countries,
there wouldn't be much advanced warning of the attack until the invaders were already in Canada.
All to say, Richard thinks the U.S. military needs to be prepared for a war that might be fought in the Arctic Circle,
and he's worried that our troops won't do well in the frigid conditions up north.
So, he decides we need to train our fighting forces somewhere cold and icy.
And we need to find a way to do all that without getting too close to the Soviet border
and provoking a response from them, which means we can't do military exercises in the Arctic Circle.
But they've already got those bases down in Antarctica, and he thinks the conditions are similar.
So why not train our men down there?
Which is exactly how Operation High Jump is born.
in 1946.
But the mission will do more than just train servicemen to adapt to the frigid temperatures.
It will also test their equipment like helicopters and airplanes to see how they work in the
bitter cold.
And the military will also use this opportunity to learn everything they can about Antarctica's
geography, geology, and climate.
Now, this is an absolutely massive operation.
The U.S. head of naval operations dispatches 4,700 naval servicemen to Antarctica
under the command of Richard Bird and another rear admiral.
For context, that alone makes High Jump the largest Antarctic expedition ever, purely in terms of personnel.
They all descended on Antarctica in December of 1946, and right away they established their first base
of operations. There they construct housing, labs, hangers, and air strips, and sure enough,
they call it Little America Four. Not too far from where, like Rasha said, Little America
One, Two, and Three used to be. It's filled with sailors, soldiers, pilots, and a handful of
high-ranking officers. Some of them are researchers and others are crewing exploratory ships that
are supposed to be mapping the Antarctic shoreline.
There are also 11 journalists on this mission, all of whom are enlisted with the U.S.
military, meaning this operation is not your norm.
It is not confidential.
The Navy is literally paying photographers, reporters, and even a documentary filmmaker
to capture every single step of the program.
Which is so weird. I mean, high jump is supposed to test the Navy's readiness for a polar conflict. And if they're not ready, why in the world would the military want to broadcast that weakness to the entire world?
So these journalists are the first sign that this mission's maybe not exactly what it seems. But, okay, we'll unpack that more later. For now, all you need to know is,
that they film every step of the way.
They capture footage of the enlistees operating a total of 70 different ships and 13 different
aircraft, including helicopters and airplanes, which are going out to explore the rest of Antarctica
to try and map the land.
But the work is hard and dangerous.
The ice is so thick that the ships can't navigate through it.
You've got to imagine just one wrong.
turn and the glaciers could rip their holes apart. So anytime a ship sails somewhere new,
they actually need helicopters to scout ahead and see if the water is even safe. But then they
run into a whole other problem. Ice tends to form on the helicopter rotors while they're in
flight, meaning sometimes the choppers fall from the sky without any advanced warning. And when this
happens, it's usually impossible to recover the downed aircraft. The shifting ice and snow in
Antarctica has a way of literally swallowing these vessels whole. So a lot of the time when a
plane or helicopter crashes, the crew has to get to a safe place and wait for rescue and basically
give up any hope of recovering their craft. Plus, the weather around the South Pole can change
so suddenly without notice, it's not unusual for the skies to be clear and sunny one second
and then for the wind, snow, and sleet to start the next. Meaning Operation High Jump is happening
under excruciating brutal conditions. It's hard to even survive, let alone train these
soldiers while gathering more information on the region. Which is why the more people hear about
operation high jump, the less it makes sense. The operation is looking like a complete waste of
time, money, and resources. Some of the details just don't add up, including why journalists are
documenting these failures, which is when whispers start to happen, that maybe this operation
isn't entirely what it seems. Maybe it's a cover-up for something much, much bigger.
Beginning in December of 1946, a massive military operation was underway in Antarctica.
Richard Byrd was one of the two rear admirals in command of Operation High Jump,
which involved 4,700 or so servicemen who were supposedly studying the geography and climate of Antarctica.
They were also evaluating the military's readiness for a conflict
in a polar region.
But less than a month into the mission,
on December 29th, disaster strikes.
A small airplane flies out
over an unexplored stretch of Antarctica.
The nine men on board are trying to map the region
only to get caught in a sudden ice storm.
Visibility is so bad that the pilot collides with,
well, something.
He can't see well enough to even tell what he's hit.
The good news is that he's still in the air.
But with the storm, he can't see where he's going and he doesn't know how badly his vessel's been damaged.
The pilot tries to level out at a higher altitude.
Basically, he gets up above the ice storm where visibility is better.
And that's when he realizes his entire fuel tank has been ripped open.
Highly flammable gasoline is flying all over the place.
When he hits the throttle, the plane explodes and crashes into the snow.
All but three of the crew members make it out of the wreckage.
But unfortunately, rescue doesn't come quickly for these six men.
I mean, after all, they're stranded in the middle of nowhere,
roughly a thousand miles away from Little America four.
And with an ice storm raging around them,
they must have been so scared.
But, fortunately, they're eventually able to contact a search plane flying over them,
thanks to visual signals they write on the wrecked plane's wing.
But the conditions are just too dangerous for any rescue parties to come to them.
Instead, pilots spend the next few days flying over the survivors,
dropping food and medicine to them, but unable to land.
The rescuers eventually get messages to the survivors telling them to hike,
10 miles to the north where there's open water. The thought is that a seaplane can land and pick
them up. It takes almost two full weeks, but they're finally rescued. The six remaining men
get that much-needed medical treatment. The pilot ends up having both of his legs amputated
because they were burned in the explosion and then badly frostbitten afterwards. But at least
he's still alive.
As horrific as that story is, the missions continue, and sadly, there's another crash
a short while later.
This time around, a helicopter is carrying two men when ice forms on its rotor blades.
This makes the chopper plummet out of the sky, and when it goes down, it plunges into the
ice cold ocean.
The good news is that it's very close to the base when it happens, so that the chopper's the
The rescue team see the crash and they can respond immediately.
They pull the pilot and his mate out of the water before either can freeze to death.
And luckily, thank God, there are no casualties.
But it's still another terrifying close call.
The point is, the operation is having one horrible disaster after the other.
The mission seems to be hurting more than it's helping.
And it appears the government finally recognized.
recognizes this. Because in February of 1947, just three months after the operation begins,
the Navy announces that the program is over. Except they're not shutting it down because of
how dangerous it is. No, they say that they're stopping it because they've completed their mission.
Operation High Jump is a complete success and there's nothing more to do. So,
This is what they say.
They have tested the equipment and proven that the helicopters and planes work in sub-zero temperatures.
They've mapped out huge stretches of Antarctica, and they feel good about how they handle their work in those conditions.
And remember those 11 journalists that we talked about earlier?
The ones the military invited to come film the operation?
Well, they make a documentary on it called The Secret Land, which is released in theater.
theaters. It even goes on to win an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature from the year
1948. Basically, everywhere you look, there are officials praising Operation High Jump and going
on and on about how important and successful the work was. To hear them talk, it sounds like
the military is now totally prepared for a war on either the North or the South Pole.
But anytime someone asked the actual naval servicemen who were there, you know, how they feel about it, the low-ranking enlistees are confused.
They say they're not sure the mission really was a success.
I mean, they haven't learned everything there is to know about Antarctica's geography or climate, not by a long shot.
And it's worth remembering that in the Southern Hemisphere, December, January, and February are summer months.
so the Navy wasn't even there for the worst part of winter,
meaning they didn't even test their equipment in the coldest conditions possible.
In fact, a lot of the servicemen who were part of Operation High Jump
say they never got clear orders.
They didn't even know what they were supposed to be doing in Antarctica.
So before long, gossip and rumors start flying.
People wonder if there's a reason why all of the operations' goals
and claims were so fuzzy.
It may be because High Jump's stated mission
to test our military's readiness for polar missions
and to learn more about Antarctica
is just a cover story.
Perhaps the majority of the Operation High Jump enlistees
and even the film crews were just there for show.
Take this theory that comes from a historian
and an expert on Antarctic history.
Her name is Diane Olson Bellinger.
She believes that Operation High Jump was more than just a recon mission.
She thinks it included an additional secret mission, which was never announced to the public,
and that the stated mission was nothing more than a distraction.
In reality, she says the Navy was in Antarctica to seize new territory for the United States.
States. After all, most of the continent is uninhabited. If the U.S. sets up a base, has people
living there, mapping it, working on it, later on, it'll be a lot easier for them to argue that
this region should belong to them. And theoretically, if the U.S. doesn't get a toehold on the
continent, another country could take it for themselves instead. If World War II has taught us
anything. It's that you don't want your enemies expanding around the world. Except Diane says that
the mission failed. I don't know the full details on why it didn't work out, but I do know that to this
day, the United States doesn't own any land in Antarctica. And it never will because after Operation
High Jump, in 1959, all of the Earth's superpowers all signed treaties,
saying that Antarctica will always remain neutral.
Nobody's allowed to have any military presence there
or claim any territories for themselves.
Well, this was actually more than just a theory,
because since then, the American government
has freely admitted to trying to seize Antarctic land
during Operation High Jump.
They also said that was the real secret behind the program.
The problem with that is,
I still don't think this land grab mission fully explains the scope of the operation.
I mean, in theory, the U.S. could have seized the territory with just a few people.
There's no obvious reason for why they sent thousands of men to the South Pole for that,
which is why some people say there's an even bigger cover-up,
one that still hasn't been made public yet.
Like, supposedly, there's evidence in Antarctica that the U.S.
earth is flat. And okay, okay, I know how absolutely absurd that sounds. I'm right there with you,
but let's just entertain it for a sec. Okay, I mean, if we have to, we do have to. The theory says
that our whole flat world is surrounded by a wall made of ice that keeps everything in. Sort of like how
the crust around a pizza holds the sauce, cheese, and toppings in place. Now, believers of this
flat earth theory say there's actually photographic evidence of this. Explorers in Antarctica
have gotten pictures of these massive structures made of ice. They stretch across tens of thousands
of miles and they look like, well, ice walls. They also say the U.S. government knows
about the true shape of the earth,
and they know about the ice wall, too.
But they're keeping all of this information confidential
for whatever reason.
It's not entirely clear why they would want to cover that up.
Now, you're probably wondering,
what does this all have to do with Operation High Jump?
Well, legend has it in 1946,
Admiral Richard Byrd decided that he needed to know more
about the ice wall, what it looked like, how thick it was, how it worked, and what lay beyond it.
So he sent a few trusted officers down to Antarctica to get a good look at the wall there,
and he dispatched a few thousand others to provide a cover story.
Rumor has it that a few brave souls even climbed the ice wall to see what was on the other side.
Okay, to accept this theory.
you have to ignore every single photo we've taken of the Earth from a satellite
and the testimony that we have from astronauts who have actually gone to space
and the laws of physics entirely.
Agreed.
Which is why the flat earth theory is one that I just, I cannot get on board with.
Though I will say those alleged walls made of ice are very real.
They're actually a naturally occurring phenomenon called ice shell.
And if you've ever gone outside after a blizzard, which I just have to say,
Rasha and I have not ever lived anywhere where there's a blizzard.
No, we're island girls.
So I don't even know this, but if you live somewhere where there is a blizzard,
you've probably seen big mounds of snow and ice piled up by the wind.
Ice shelves are basically the same thing, but on a much larger scale.
And they certainly don't surround the entire planet.
That said, the flat earth theory is just one alleged conspiracy that's been tied to Operation High Jump.
This next one has a solid historical basis, and it claims the real reason Richard sent his men there was to find a hidden Nazi base.
The U.S. Navy's Operation High Jump ran for three months from December 1946 to February
1947. When the mission was concluded, the government declared it a success. But those who
worked the mission said they felt it was the complete opposite. Orders were unclear, planes crashed,
men died, and they had little to show for it. Unless the mission's goal was something else
entirely, something top secret, like finding evidence of a hidden Nazi base.
Turns out, Admiral Richard Bird had a good reason to think Hitler's forces were in Antarctica.
Because way back in the late 1930s, Nazi Germany was interested in building a military base there.
In fact, in January of 1939, a German ship actually claimed a German ship actually claimed a
part of Antarctica for their nation. The problem was that the land they took already belonged
to Norway, but the German ship ignored that and announced that this particular region was now
Nazi territory. Right after the German ship claimed the land, it didn't stay and set up a base.
Instead, it just turned around and sailed home, which is a weird way to behave if you want to
defend the territory you just seized, unless a couple of crew members stayed behind.
Perhaps they built a secret base there to defend their new claim from the Norwegians
or anyone else who might try to take it away from them.
But somehow, this theory gets even wilder.
Let's jump ahead to mid-May of 1945 right after the end of World War II.
At that time, a Hungarian writer named Ladislav Sabo is living in Argentina, and he sends a letter to a local newspaper.
In it, Lottislav says he has hard evidence that Adolf Hitler is still alive, and that he simply faked his death by suicide earlier that year.
As you can imagine, his article makes a huge splash, and two years later, Lottislav publishes a book,
called simply enough, I know that Hitler is alive.
In the book, he explains how Hitler supposedly escaped from justice.
The story goes that after he faked his death,
Hitler and some other high-ranking Nazi officials hopped on a ship and sailed to Antarctica.
There, they all hit out on that top secret base that had been established in 1939.
Supposedly they stayed there for a while,
long enough for American officials to get suspicious.
And according to Ladislav,
Admiral Richard Bird eventually heard the rumors about Hitler's survival.
So he sent the Navy to Antarctica to look for the German chancellor.
But he presumably didn't want the American people to panic
if, in fact, Hitler was still alive.
So Richard added a few thousand soldiers to the mission
with a cover story about researching the condition.
in Antarctica. Though apparently, it wasn't just America who thought that Hitler was connected
to the South Pole. All throughout World War II, German warships were spotted in that area.
Sometimes they even attacked other ships that were passing through. Now, the Germans claim that
these ships were just there to support whaling boats that operated in those waters, but the
British government seemed to believe otherwise. They thought these could have been military.
ships, and rumor has it, they seemed to think they were coming and going from a secret base
in Antarctica. So they spent the whole conflict sending their own agents to Antarctica to look
for Nazi bases. In fairness, they never found one. But Antarctica is a big place, and the Germans
could have just been that good at concealing themselves. As for Operation Higem, well, a
According to Ladislav, it was a failure.
The Americans never found Hitler or a German base.
But some believe that may be because Hitler allegedly fled Antarctica
and assumed a new identity in Argentina in May of 1945.
And this might make a little bit of sense to me
because my wife, Fanna, is from Argentina,
and she said that so many Nazis fled to Argentina during that time.
But I don't know if I believe Hitler was still alive.
The Navy didn't make it to Antarctica until 1946,
and by that point, Hitler was supposedly long gone.
Some say that's why Operation High Jump ended so abruptly in February of 1947.
Richard and his team realized they'd missed their chance to capture Hitler.
So they packed up and headed back home.
The more I think about this theory, though, the more far-fetched it seems,
especially because when it comes to evidence,
Ladislav offers nothing.
His article and his book make a huge splash in Argentina.
But when people ask for documents or photos,
eyewitnesses anything,
he couldn't come up with a single shred of proof
that Hitler was alive and had fled to Argentina.
Plus, there are some geographical issues with Ladislav's claims.
I mean, he says the Navymen of Operation High Jump were looking for a German base that had been established in 1939.
But if you look at the land the Germans claim and the area that the Americans were exploring, they're nowhere near each other.
It would be like if you heard that Hitler was alive in San Francisco, so you went to look for him in Chicago.
Plus, Latislav claims Hitler fled to Argentina in May.
which is in the dead of winter in the southern hemisphere.
And at that time of year, Antarctica is encased in ice.
The sun doesn't rise at all.
And there tends to be a lot of fog and haze that makes navigation insanely difficult.
It would have been almost impossible for a German ship to pick Hitler up and take him anywhere in the South Pole.
frankly, it would have been ridiculous for anyone to even try.
There's also no evidence of a German base anywhere in Antarctica,
and in the past 80 years or so,
Germany has declassified a lot of their records from the World War II era,
and none of them say anything about wartime operations in Antarctica,
or about Hitler faking his death and fleeing there.
Well, I did hear a story about a different group hiding out near the South Pole,
and the evidence for that theory may lie in the diaries of Admiral Richard Byrd himself.
In February of 1947, before the Navy pulled the plug on Operation High Jump,
Richard supposedly decides to relive his glory days.
He attempts another flight over the South Pole,
except while he's in the air,
he starts to have a little bit of a problem.
He says his plane has some kind of equipment failure.
Richard can't steer his plane at all and he's afraid he's going to crash.
The aircraft starts plummeting towards the ground.
But then, instead of crashing into the snow and ice,
Richard manages to dive right into a cave opening.
Through an incredible stroke of luck, Richard is still flying,
but he's not in the sky anymore.
He's speeding right down
toward the center of the earth.
The diary entry says that Richard finds himself
inside of a massive crystal cavern.
That's when he realizes
that our world is hollow.
Except the crystals that cover the ground,
the walls, and the ceiling
clearly didn't form here naturally.
They're in the shape of buildings,
roadways, and even homes. It's a city made of crystal, which means someone actually lives
down here. But Richard is in for an even bigger shock, because out of nowhere, unidentified flying
objects appear, saucer-shaped craft. They pull out in front of him like they're trying to guide
him somewhere. He has no idea where they want him to go, but he's too overwhelmed to resist. So he
follows the saucers down to a runway where he finally lands his plane safely.
A group of beings supposedly meet him on the runway.
But they look like ordinary humans who happen to be blonde.
Luckily, they also speak English and they introduce themselves as the Ariani.
They say they care about peace and helping human beings survive and thrive.
That's when their leader approaches Richard and tells him that the people on
the surface need to stop building and detonating nuclear weapons. The technology is just too deadly.
Of course, Richard Kemp fulfilled the leader's request on his own. I mean, yes, he is a Navy
Admiral, but he's definitely not high-ranking enough to shut down the nuclear program.
Still, he promises to help however he can. Then he gets back in his plane and supposedly returns to
his base where he tells everyone about the Ariani. He also writes about the mission in his diary,
which is how we know about it today. Okay, y'all know I love a good alien story. But the problem
with this one is, there's not a whole lot of hard evidence to back any of this up. So let's just
start with the diary entry itself. Supposedly, after he wrote it, Richard knew it was too
explosive to share publicly. So instead, rumor has it, he gave the diary to his son.
Then decades later, the son allegedly released the whole story about the hollow Earth and
the Ariani online. But if you want to go back and read the original diary for yourself, the thing is,
you won't be able to find it. There's no evidence that it physically exists. And when people ask
his son about the journal, he denies ever having it or releasing it online. In fact, his
answer is always the same. His father never gave him a copy of it. To be clear, Richard did
keep diaries, and some of them were lost and discovered later, but those journals were all publicly
available, and none of them mentioned anything about underground communities, blinds,
saucer or the Ariani. That part of the story appears to be just an internet hoax.
Either that or the government hid the entries because they're too explosive to release to the
public. In fact, there are some reports that say when Richard first returned from his meeting
with Ariani, he was thrilled. He discovered something incredible and he wanted everyone to know.
But then, high-ranking naval officers pulled him into a debriefing.
After he explained what he'd learned, they ordered him to never mention his journey to the
hollow earth ever again.
Apparently, they were going to terminate Operation High Jump right then and there, and a cover-up
would explain why the program ended so suddenly and quickly.
And since he was a good soldier who followed the rules, Richard let the Navy see.
silence him. He never mentioned the trip ever again. But after that conversation, there was
supposedly always tension between Richard and the other naval officers. Yes, and that part is
actually confirmed. Historians know for a fact that Richard had a huge falling out with the rest
of the Navy's leadership around the time that Operation Hijup ended. Some experts say it's because
he felt like the Navy wasn't doing enough to keep his men safe.
Like, he blamed the military for the fact that three men died in that plane crash
during the ice storm that we described earlier in the story.
But maybe you're right.
Maybe that's not the real reason for his frustration.
It's possible he was angry about having to cover up this world-changing discovery,
except there's still one huge problem with this theory.
Most scientists agree that it would be impossible
for any kind of society to survive at the center of the planet.
The Earth's core is filled with incredibly hot magma
that's under immense pressure
and no living beings could actually survive down there.
Okay.
Maybe the Ariani can't live in the center of the earth, but they could be in a big underground cave.
You don't have to believe our planet is hollow to accept that there are huge and deep caverns all over the place.
After all, the world's largest cave is in Vietnam, and it's nearly six miles long.
The ceiling is high enough that you could comfortably fit a 40-story skyscraper in it.
And explorers didn't finish mapping it or realize how big it really was until 2009,
which just goes to show that even in modern times,
there are a lot of corners of the world that have yet to be discovered and explored.
In my mind, it's not that crazy to say that there could be a massive cave under Antarctica,
especially because that continent is uninhabited and still largely unexplored.
even if the conspiracy theories about Operation High Jump are completely false,
it's possible that Richard still believed in one or more of them,
meaning maybe the servicemen of Operation High Jump really were there to explore a nice wall,
or, I don't know, find Hitler on a secret German base,
or try to reach the center of the earth.
Even if they didn't succeed at those missions,
It's possible that they still tried.
I mean, I'm not completely sold on it.
But the point is, we may never know the true purpose of Operation High Jump.
The secrets might be lost in the remote, frigid plains of Antarctica forever.
Given how much secrecy has surrounded the program since the very beginning,
it's really possible that the answer could involve something we didn't even cover in this episode.
something that we don't even have a whiff of yet.
After all, like Ashley said at the start,
the government is always keeping secrets from us.
And even if we can't learn the full truth,
hints and clues will always be out there.
Signs and symbols are always waiting to be discovered.
This is So Supernatural, an audio Chuck original produced by Crimehouse.
You can connect with us on Instagram at So Supernatural Pod and visit our website at soo supernaturalpodcast.com.
Join Yvette and me next Friday for an all new episode.
I think Chuck would approve.