Case file · Cryptid
'Organism 46-B' and the secret under Antarctica
A story first printed in the Weekly World News in September 2012 told of a 'massive organism', 'Organism 46-B', found by Russian scientists in Antarctica; in 2022 it went viral as 'According to Russia, Antarctica is not what you have been taught'.
2012 CE · -77.30, 105.50 · status: hoax
The account
The tale was spread on Twitter and Facebook from July 2022 via an alien-sightings website. Lead Stories found no Russian government statement or named scientist, and traced the text to satirical fiction by C. Michael Forsyth, who labelled it as fiction. Position notional.
The sceptical view
Admitted fiction recirculated as news; no such expedition or creature is recorded.
Connections in the atlas
- Ningen, the Antarctic 'human'
- The 'unknown bacterium' from Lake Vostok
- Lake Vostok, the lake under four kilometres of ice