Need to hide an island

It's fantasy! MG even. Do what you wish.

Random thoughts:

Clouds, yes it could work.
Submergible.
Cloaking.
Bermuda triangle.
The Asian Bermuda triangle (forgot the name).
Underwater.
Massive control of communication and control to make the world blind. Even if satellites could picture it, the images were cleared of it. Sailors were captured and forced to live on the island. Yada, yada, yada.
It floats in the air! In a cloud! (Personal in my WIP currently).

Hope this helps.


I think this should be put in the Sandbox, though...

They did it with "permanent" clouds in one of those King King movies.

I think It really would be hard to hide an island these day because they not only take visual photo but infrared and other types. Still they probably don't concentrate on certain large parts of the ocean. Heck, it was years before they learned Pluto had a moon (1970-something), five, in fact. They just didn't really look. Maybe something like that could be part of the reason.

Would if work if the island was underwater a foot or so during high tide and above water during low tide?

This is kind of an off-the-wall idea. What if the island were out in the Pacific somewhere where there is little activity (and isn't militarily strategic). And, maybe here's the far-fetched part, what if the island is right at the edge of where most satellites take their images. It's in an uninteresting part of the ocean, on the edge, and no one looks. It just happens to be in that one small zone that is rarely concentrated on.

Why does the island have to be unknown?

There are lots of uninhabited islands around the world, but that does not make them uncharted, or unknown.

An unexplained electromagnetic phenomenon, similar to a permanent geomagnetic storm, distorts light and infrared, and completely hides the island from a distance.

The few ships that came close enough for the crew to see the island couldn't mark its position in the maps, because the electromagnetic interference made their compasses and GPS go haywire, so it's considered only a legend.

The Army use cam nets that are treated so that infra red 'stuff' cannot find what ever is hidden under them. You could have the island treated with the same thing or just chuck a lot of cam nets over it.

Its MG fantasy, your audience will accept so long as it seems logical to them. And of course, what seems logical to MG might not work for an adult novel...

thothguard51 said:

Its MG fantasy, your audience will accept so long as it seems logical to them. And of course, what seems logical to MG might not work for an adult novel...

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Like . . . what if the island was made of unusual blue rocks that were the same color as the ocean.

;-)

The Guardian (in the UK) had a brilliant April Fool edition in the late 90s about a floating island called San Serriffe (all of the names in it were names of fonts and other printing terms) that had gone undiscovered because it drifted around the oceans. From memory there was a map of it, which was in the shape of a semi colon.

Another idea (marginally less silly): the inhabitants have a computer-directed tracking system for satellites which can hack into the satellite's feed and alter it, editing out all evidence of the island. It's only really satellites you'd have to worry about, as the Pacific Ocean is pretty big and ships keep to reasonably predictable paths. If a ship did occasionally happen on the island (to the crew's great surprise, since all nowadays have GPS systems and the island wouldn't appear of course) the inhabitants could capture them and convince them under hypnosis that they had never been there.

This has been done *many* times so I don't see why it can't be done once more. Install devices around the island that bend light, radio, and sound waves. You can have them reconverge if you are worried about discontinuity (or you could use that as a plot point) and you could include chaotic generaters if you are worried about refraction duplication (ditto).

Shakesbear said:

The Army use cam nets that are treated so that infra red 'stuff' cannot find what ever is hidden under them. You could have the island treated with the same thing or just chuck a lot of cam nets over it.

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That should read:

The Army use cam nets that are treated with infra red 'stuff' so you cannot find what ever is hidden under them. You could have the island treated with the same thing or just chuck a lot of cam nets over it.

What if the island was known, but there was a reason why nobody goes there?

During WWII certain islands were used for bombing practice to the point where there is still lots of unexploded ordnance laying about. Maybe your island was "cleaned up" or else it was never actually bombed (inaccurate reports.)

Or - if you're committed to the idea that nobody knows it's there at all... Perhaps it was the site of a "Philadelphia Experiment" and is now slightly out of phase with our reality and can only be seen/reached on very limited occasions when it phases back into sight.

Hack the government databases and label the island as 'super-top secret'.

Or hack the satellites every time they go to take a picture and swap out open ocean for your island.

It's about as realistic as magicking it away, but explained through technology instead.

debirlfan said:

What if the island was known, but there was a reason why nobody goes there?

During WWII certain islands were used for bombing practice to the point where there is still lots of unexploded ordnance laying about. Maybe your island was "cleaned up" or else it was never actually bombed (inaccurate reports.)

Or - if you're committed to the idea that nobody knows it's there at all... Perhaps it was the site of a "Philadelphia Experiment" and is now slightly out of phase with our reality and can only be seen/reached on very limited occasions when it phases back into sight.

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The island of Gruinard off the Scottish coast is still out of bounds because anthrax was tested there by the Ministry of Defence. These inhabitants could of course have found a way to decontaminate such an island...

Have one the founders of the 'island' be an ex-military guy who flagged it as 'top secret' in the database.

Now everytime a satellite photo is taken of the island it is automatically 'censored' by replacing it with a pre-prepared photo.

He doesn't have to invent the system from scratch - he just adds it to the list so it is treated the same as the other 'top secret' bases.

That kind of protection would gets shown as a shoal of dangerous rocks on standard maps - to force shipping to go avoid it. It also solves the problem of ocean currents ... since everyone who bothers to look just believes that there is a collection of rocks that barely break the water level there - but still affects the current.

You can even have a signal generator on the island giving false GPS signals ... so that anyone who did try to navigate to the island would find themselves missing it by a few hundred kilometers ... and they'll never know.

Sure - occasionally a lost traveler would find the island but that just add story possibilities.

It also adds the scary possibility - since it was so easy to add this to the list of 'avoided' places for the satellite photos ... what other islands are out there that also officially don't exist ?

Good luck,

Mac

There are plenty of islands off the beaten path that have been described and not found again. Your island could be known but ignored, inaccessible due to reefs, currents, poor geology, etc. And there's no reason it couldn't have a strange climate to support what you want.

Jeff

alleycat said:

Heck, it was years before they learned Pluto had a moon (1970-something), five, in fact. They just didn't really look.

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Not true. We just didn't have a good enough observational instrument until then.

caw