Something happening IL/IN state line?

Just got home after a long day of travel through an ice storm, so I am headed to bed after I post this and will not be back until morning to follow up.

I belong to a survival mailing list and someone has posted two very interesting things today. I checked Google and CNN for mainstream media coverage, then came onto ATS and checked Breaking Alternative News, General Conspiracies, and Current Events, and have found no mention of it. Here are the emails, unedited as they appeared:

Original email:

There was a situation in southern Indiana this morning, heavy machine gun fire and helios reported in the are. Local commanders lost contact with groups on station for approx. 10 hours, recently received word that brief contact was made. Orders are all units to be on standby at this time under high alert status. Email or call any/all who you need to contact. Contact the Indiana Sons of Liberty Militia for more information. I will keep everyone posted with new information as it comes available.

Follow-up email:

As of right now, the only reports coming in are of heavy machine gun fire, at least one .50 and numerous small arms, including but not limited to M249/240 type along with various other light arms. The aggressors/defender s at this time are unknown. Black helios and blue/white painted helios were reported in and near the area at the same time, perhaps giving some sort of air support.
It took place in/near an abandoned power station in Hutsonville, Illinois, on the Indiana state line. These are reports from various, unrelated people on location.

very interesting what it might be outthere...
Hope there would be more news soon.
For now I am going to check a couple of sources on the world wide web,

Maybe a drill?

Seems like MSM would catch wind of it...

Thanks! I am off to bed now but hey if I wake up to get a glass of water or something I will stop in here.

Honestly, I don't know whether to take this with a grain of salt or seriously. And I do not know if the implication is that it was a confrontation involving military or paramilitary personnel, or police, or "militia" groups, or what.

Need more data please. Also how did you get this information.

Keep us informed on any new developments on this. I live in michigan so this is not too far away. Hope it's just a drill of some kind.

Perhaps a Drug Cartel was being busted? IN/IL are traffic states for Californian and Canadian sourced drugs (namely cannabis) and at one point had a fairly large cannabis growing population.

So you are going to believe every e-mail you receive from some other paranoid survivalist?

If every time a military unit used small arms and machine weapons while they drill somewhere in the U.S. we would think the civil war has began.

And no they are not going to inform the MSM. The authorities that need to know, do.

Not everything is the public's business.

Originally posted by calcoastseeker

And no they are not going to inform the MSM. The authorities that need to know, do.

Not everything is the public's business.

WRONG!

That is exactly the mentality that is destroying America. Fact is there is very little that happens within the borders of our nation that is not the business of every man, woman and child.

Especially if it involves military movements or exercises outside of a known military reservation, or I might add, objects of unknown origin in the skies.

The secrecy has got to STOP!!

The "one .50 caliber/M249/240" info seems kind of specific for an incident where no one really knows what's going on. Sort of like saying "Somebody's shooting at me, it sounds like it's .357, maybe a .44."

The drug angle wouldn't surprise me with all the activity in Indiana. That's way south of us but our area is a hot bed of meth production. It's slowed down some but for a long time you couldn't go a week without a meth lab or 2 or 4 or 5 being busted somewhere within 15 miles of us.

OK, the person sharing this info is posting to the Prepared Survivalists Unite 2 Yahoo Group. I have been a member of that group since its inception and this person has posted before, however he usually just regurgitates links to existing stories, so I do not know how reliable he is. Not much of a conversationalist until this alleged incident came up yesterday.

I am neither saying that this man is trustworthy nor am I saying he is unbelievable. All I can do is share what he has posted and hope that someone can figure out more. I just woke up now but I put a little time into checking the MSM websites, however I do not see any mention of anything in that area. I even searched with the keyword Hutsonville on CNN, CBS, and Fox News, with zero results.

Myself...been "online" you could say for about 26 years, since my parents subscribed to CompuServe with a 120 baud modem when I was a young lad. I was on the early Usenet survival groups in the late 80s, all the way up to a few select modern survival sites. Spent about twelve years in the Army/Guard, and fifteen years in law enforcement, so I have seen more than my fair share of things that make me roll my eyes and chuckle. But for this person on PSU2 to come out with all of these allegations is unusual, and piqued my curiosity immensely.

Does he sound a little off-kilter? Sure, in my opinion the whole presentation of the information is strange, the delivery if you will. Then again he may be doing his best to communicate information that he thinks is important and genuine, while someone else is feeding him BS. Like I said, I would not waste ATS members' time and bandwidth if this whole thing did not strike me as odd and in need of a closer look. And we all know that truth is stranger than fiction!

Anyhow, these are his latest messages from the past ten hours or so, in order from oldest to newest. He is carbon copying these to other groups he is on, so what may appear to be a conversation is sometimes not taking place on PSU2 so I am not seeing what others are asking him. There have been some replies on PSU2 but most are just a couple words and not worth posting here.

#1) I agree, but if we don't share information and updates, then the rest of us won't be prepared. I wish there were people on location that were part of these groups that may or may not be aware of these happenings and now are amde aware and could give us some first hand information. The information I am getting is reports from a commander who was given it to him by a subordinate who received it from the guy in the field. There is a large room for error in that process. My Intel NCO has been on the phone all afternoon with the people trying to get hold of the guys in the field, or the closest person to them. We have finally gotten to the CO of the direct group on location, so that's pretty close to first hand. However, there are alot of questions unanswered:

*Who was the aggressors? Numbers? Uniforms?
*Who were the Defenders?
*Why was there a shoot out?
*Could the Marines from Terre Haute have been involved?
*What weapons were used?
*Casualties on either side?
*Exactly what types of helicopters were there and what were the paint jobs?
*Exactly what was the mission and exact location?


Basically, a standard SITREP would suffice for that information.

#2) The thing that I find oddest, not mentinoning the helicopters, large caliber firearms, numerous small arms, and the silence form local groups for 10 hours today during the heighth of all this, is the fact of nothing can be found on the news from the area and after a search, I can only find one news station to speak of, and it is out of Terre Haute, but nothing directly from Hutsonville. I may be msitaken and may have overlooked something, however, I find it odd that nobody has reported anything. It was reported to me that the local law enforcement came to the local commanders questioning them to see if they were only training, unsure of what was going on. It seems everyone is in the dark on this, and so it is left up to us, as Patriots, to get the word out and make the news.

#3) The Indiana groups are the ones reporting this information. the Indiana Sons of Liberty. I meant like, the law enforcement apparently has no idea whats going on, and none of the news networks are reporting on it. You would think that soemthing like .50 MG and M249/240 and numerous small arms would make atleast a headline in a newspaper. Nothing tho.

#4) I have spoken to the local commanders on scene myself, along with the Michigan Militia commanders who also apparently, if I understand correctly, had forces deployed in the area. I may have mis understood, but it was either they have forces deployed there or have contacts tehre, at any rate, this is confirmed from more than one commander on location. If it were only one person, sure, it could be wrote off as BS, but as multiple, unrelated sources have confirmed the series of events, I have a tendoncy to start to believe it then. At any rate, what does it urt to be on alert and prepared? Better to do so and nothing happen than to not go on Alert and the pervervial manure hit the the fan.

Very intresting. Sounds like one of those black ops.
Also, if this topic sort of dies, i wonder if anyone could keep an eye on the current US casualty rate in Afghanistan. Only that it may be a possible cover for the actuall cause of death if something has happend you know?

Also, this connected? illinois -- A train derailment. www.dailyherald.com...

and with google search for Indy local news-- www.theindychannel.com...

Very sketchy... I cant find much else. But ill keep looking.

[edit on 14/12/09 by Esrom Escutcheon Esquire]

So it looks like it was just a hoax

no surprises there!