Amnesia Day

I know that starting with an aside is bad form, but I simply can't avoid it in this case: "Amnesia Day" is a horribly incorrect name. From my research, the symptoms shown resemble neither retrograde, anterograde, nor any other form of clinical amnesia. However, this was the name used by the media of the time, and is what most readers of this report will know it by, so I will reluctantly conceed to popular nomenclature.

Given the nature of the event, researching it directly posed a great challenge. Indeed, even the media of the time only started reporting on the phenomenon two days after the event.1

So what was 'Amnesia Day'? Well, to put it in it's most simple terms: Everyone forgot an entire day. From the fragmented reports I've managed to piece together, I'm not sure if that accounted for time zones or not – did everyone forget one day from their point of view (from when they awoke to when they slept again), or was it, for example, from 00:00 GMT to 23:59 GMT on that date? Sadly, the sensationalist media didn't seem interested in proper research (focusing instead on hyperbole about government mind control), and the publishing of scientific journals had already become sporadic by that time.

Luckily, journalism hadn't completely disregarded reality, so we know at least some facts: nobody could remember anything from that time2, and additionally all video footage of the period had become 'corrupted'.3 Financial and other electronic records had remained intact, however, and appeared to indicate that everyone had gone about thier business as normal – for example, the Moscow Times relates the tale of a clerk who thought to check his bank statement. His records showed him removing money at the usual time of day, at the machine he usually used near his place of work.

The 'what' seems fairly clear here, but the more interesting question is 'why'. Two main schools of thought attempt to explain the events of that day:


 * That someone, or something, had taken control of everyone on the planet for some purpose, and removed their memories of what they did during that period.
 * That some event occured which had the effect of removing everyone's memory post-hoc.

Again, I must point out that first-hand sources are difficult to piece together, with both the events since (which we are all too familiar with), and the nature of the event itself impeding research. Now, I'm aware that this might be confirmation bias due to my upbringing, but it seems clear to me that the cause must be something that everyone on the planet had in common. What does everyone have in common? Water. Our food is grown with it, we need to drink it to live, and it's so common on the planet that we all bathe in it.

Therefore, the only logical explanation for this event, whichever of the aforementioned schools of thought is correct, is that chemicals in the water were to blame. Whether they were a result of an accident, or placed there deliberately, is unknown to me, but what else could explain the events of 'Amnesia Day'?4

- Dr Johann Coy

[1] Given it's global scale and unusual nature, one can only assume that this delay was due to individuals being embaressed to mention it until someone else did first, and that it must have taken that long to be recognised as fact.

[2] Some individuals and groups were reported to have claimed memories from the period and/or responsibility for the event, but I have seen no evidence (reported or otherwise) that they were anything more than attention seekers.

[3] Again, specifics are lamentably absent. I have pressed some of my elder patients for information, but their accounts can hardly be taken as reliable, given their general disregard for lucidity.

[4] It would also explain uncountable other idiocies of the human race at that time as well.

References:

Chemicals in the water

Government mind control

Referenced by:

Australia