WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.640 --> 00:00:05.120 “Twenty-three… bust” the dealer says before  scooping up the cards from in front of the man   00:00:05.120 --> 00:00:09.760 who appears to be growing increasingly angry as  his stack of chips increasingly dwindles in size. 00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:15.280 Making matters worse for the man, are the cheers  of excitement coming from the nearby craps table,   00:00:15.280 --> 00:00:19.360 where it seems all of the luck that he  has lost has somehow been transported.   00:00:19.360 --> 00:00:22.640 As the blackjack dealer once  again reveals an ace and a king,   00:00:22.640 --> 00:00:27.600 another burst of noise comes from the craps game.  “Seven again” the croupier cries before placing   00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:31.680 a huge stack of chips in front of the young  man playing craps who seemingly can’t lose. 00:00:32.560 --> 00:00:36.480 The young man on the hot streak collects his  winnings and walks happily through the crowded   00:00:36.480 --> 00:00:41.440 casino floor right past the fuming man at the  blackjack table. The young man cashes in his   00:00:41.440 --> 00:00:45.680 chips and counts the large stack of hundred  dollar bills given to him before tipping one   00:00:45.680 --> 00:00:50.720 to the woman working inside the cage. And this  night is far from a rarity for this young man.   00:00:50.720 --> 00:00:56.960 For his entire life, it’s been as if he couldn’t  lose. He’s not strong, fast, or especially smart,   00:00:56.960 --> 00:01:02.560 but he’s always managed to excel thanks to his  one incredible gift - his never ending good luck. 00:01:03.360 --> 00:01:07.760 The young man soon recognized his ability to  consistently beat games of chance and went to   00:01:07.760 --> 00:01:13.120 the one place in the world best suited for his  skills - Las Vegas. And Vegas has been very,   00:01:13.120 --> 00:01:18.160 very good to him. He lives in an expensive hotel  room right on the strip, drives fancy cars,   00:01:18.160 --> 00:01:22.160 and treats himself nightly to lavish  dinners and shows. It’s all possible   00:01:22.160 --> 00:01:26.080 because no matter what the game  is, it’s as if he can never lose. 00:01:26.080 --> 00:01:30.320 The young man is in the middle of another hot  streak, or rather, continuing his never-ending   00:01:30.320 --> 00:01:35.200 hot streak, this time at the roulette table. “How  does he keep doing it?” someone in the crowd asks   00:01:35.200 --> 00:01:40.000 as the man hits another number straight up,  paying out thirty-seven to one on his bet. 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:44.320 The crowd cheers and slaps the man on his back  as a crowd has formed who are following along   00:01:44.320 --> 00:01:49.040 with his every bet, piggybacking on his luck as  much as they can. The man is just about to place   00:01:49.040 --> 00:01:54.240 another large bet when he’s suddenly interrupted  by a strong hand gripping his upper arm. The young   00:01:54.240 --> 00:01:59.120 man turns to find a large, toothy grin staring  back at him. The smiling man continues to hold   00:01:59.120 --> 00:02:04.160 onto the young man’s arm as he explains how  impressed the casino is with his skill. He must   00:02:04.160 --> 00:02:08.480 be the luckiest man they’ve ever had the pleasure  to have visited their casino, and the fact that   00:02:08.480 --> 00:02:13.440 he’s been able to sustain that same run of luck  night after night has been truly awe inspiring. 00:02:14.160 --> 00:02:17.920 The young man thanks him for his kind  words and tries to turn back to the table   00:02:17.920 --> 00:02:22.720 but finds that the man won’t let go of his  arm, gripping it even tighter now than before.   00:02:22.720 --> 00:02:25.760 “We’ve been so impressed,  in fact” the man tells him,   00:02:25.760 --> 00:02:29.040 “that the owners of his casino have  requested the chance to meet with you.” 00:02:29.760 --> 00:02:32.960 The young man looks down at the  huge, powerful hand holding his arm,   00:02:32.960 --> 00:02:36.480 and even though he’s unaware that it  belongs to a former heavyweight contender,   00:02:36.480 --> 00:02:40.480 he’s still able to recognize that  this request isn’t an optional one. 00:02:40.480 --> 00:02:44.000 “Sure,” the young man tells him, “just  let me grab my chips and - “ but the   00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:47.360 man begins to pull him away from the table,  telling him that there’s no need to worry,   00:02:47.360 --> 00:02:52.480 the casino will take care of his winnings. “After  all, we have cameras everywhere, who would steal?” 00:02:53.360 --> 00:02:56.560 The young man is soon pushed through a  doorway into a space that looks like a   00:02:56.560 --> 00:03:00.560 police interrogation room with just a  single table and a couple of chairs,   00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:06.000 one of which a small, older man is sitting in.  The ex-boxer wrenches the young man’s arm down   00:03:06.000 --> 00:03:10.720 onto the table and holds it in place there. The  young man screams as the boxer grabs a hammer   00:03:10.720 --> 00:03:15.120 with his free hand and raises it into the air,  ready to bring it down on the young man’s fingers. 00:03:15.680 --> 00:03:18.720 “Well?” the old man sitting across from him asks. 00:03:18.720 --> 00:03:23.200 The young man has started to cry a little but  between whimpers he manages to ask “well what?” 00:03:23.920 --> 00:03:28.240 The old man wants to know how the young man  is cheating. No one wins the way he does,   00:03:28.240 --> 00:03:32.480 over and over, night after night, no matter  the game. The young man insists that he   00:03:32.480 --> 00:03:37.120 isn’t cheating, he’s just lucky, he always  has been, but the old man isn’t buying it.   00:03:37.840 --> 00:03:42.400 He nods to the boxer who raises the hammer up  again, but still the young man doesn’t admit to   00:03:42.400 --> 00:03:47.360 anything. “I’m just lucky. I’m just lucky,” he  keeps repeating over and over in between sobs. 00:03:48.000 --> 00:03:52.320 The old man stands up and pats him on  the shoulder. “Maybe you are,” he says,   00:03:52.320 --> 00:03:56.320 before slipping something into the man’s  pocket. The police then enter the room and   00:03:56.320 --> 00:04:00.400 immediately take a set of loaded dice from  the same pocket. He’s in real trouble now. 00:04:01.200 --> 00:04:05.200 The young man is shoved into a holding cell  at the jail and looks around at the other men,   00:04:05.200 --> 00:04:07.440 wondering if his luck has finally run out.   00:04:08.240 --> 00:04:12.320 He squeezes in on one of the benches lining  the wall and accidentally bumps the man sitting   00:04:12.320 --> 00:04:16.640 next to him, waking him up from his nap. The man is angry at having been disturbed,   00:04:16.640 --> 00:04:20.320 but grows even angrier when  he realizes who just woke him,   00:04:20.320 --> 00:04:24.960 it’s the man who seemed to take all the luck. The  young man doesn’t seem to have noticed that he’s   00:04:24.960 --> 00:04:29.360 upset him at all though. What he has noticed, is  that there’s a penny on the floor in front of him.   00:04:30.080 --> 00:04:34.960 The young man bends to pick it up just as the man  next to him throws a haymaker. His fist slams into   00:04:34.960 --> 00:04:38.960 the wall right where the young man’s head just  was, shattering many of the bones in his hand. 00:04:39.680 --> 00:04:43.840 The young man jumps up with a fright and runs  across the small cell as the other men being   00:04:43.840 --> 00:04:48.800 held also leap to their feet, some crying out in  confusion, others cheering on the violence. The   00:04:48.800 --> 00:04:53.520 young man cries out to the guards for help but no  one seems to be coming to his aid. He looks around   00:04:53.520 --> 00:04:58.160 the cell but there’s nowhere for him to hide.  The angry man, now madder than ever with a hand   00:04:58.160 --> 00:05:02.880 that is rapidly turning purple and blue approaches  him. He lifts the young man up with his good hand,   00:05:02.880 --> 00:05:07.680 holding him in the air by his throat. “I’m going  to kill you!” the man cries before the door to the   00:05:07.680 --> 00:05:12.560 cell opens. The young man watches as the TASER  prongs fired by the jail guards appear on the   00:05:12.560 --> 00:05:17.440 man’s chest, and he drops the young man to the  floor before falling backwards from the 50,000   00:05:17.440 --> 00:05:21.840 volts coursing through his body. The young man  would learn the next day that the angry man was   00:05:21.840 --> 00:05:26.800 dead before he even hit the floor, the result of  a congenital heart defect, and a lot of bad luck. 00:05:27.600 --> 00:05:31.040 The young man stands before a judge who  is listing off the charges against him,   00:05:31.040 --> 00:05:34.560 which include cheating, a felony in this  state that can result in a sentence of   00:05:34.560 --> 00:05:39.360 up to five years in prison. “But this isn’t  your first offense, is it?” The judge asks.   00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:42.480 The young man tries to explain that  those previous times were all mistakes,   00:05:42.480 --> 00:05:45.760 he’s never cheated in his life, but  the judge doesn’t want to hear it. 00:05:46.320 --> 00:05:48.080 The young man is sitting in the hallway outside   00:05:48.080 --> 00:05:52.080 the courtroom when his lawyer emerges from  his meeting with the judge and prosecutor. 00:05:52.080 --> 00:05:55.280 “Boy are you a lucky guy,” his  lawyer tells him. He goes on to   00:05:55.280 --> 00:05:57.760 explain that even though the  case against him is airtight,   00:05:57.760 --> 00:06:01.520 the charges are going to be dropped, provided  he admits himself to a special program. 00:06:02.240 --> 00:06:05.600 The young man assumes it must be some  kind of gambling addiction program.   00:06:05.600 --> 00:06:09.040 In no way is he addicted to gambling,  but what choice does he have?   00:06:09.040 --> 00:06:12.000 It’s either that, or prison, the choice is easy. 00:06:13.040 --> 00:06:16.240 As the young man exits the courthouse  he is approached by a man in a suit,   00:06:16.240 --> 00:06:20.880 who leads him to a black van parked nearby. The  young man is placed in the back and immediately   00:06:20.880 --> 00:06:26.160 notices that there is a cage separating the back  from the front seat, like a prison transport van.   00:06:26.160 --> 00:06:30.480 The young man is growing nervous, where are they  taking him? This all seems like it’s happening   00:06:30.480 --> 00:06:35.520 so fast, can it even be legal? And what about his  things that were taken at the jail? “Excuse me,”   00:06:35.520 --> 00:06:38.720 he asks the driver, what about my  things? I don’t even have my wallet. 00:06:39.280 --> 00:06:43.600 “Don’t worry about that,” the man driving the van  tells him. “You won’t need any of that anymore.   00:06:44.240 --> 00:06:45.360 You’re a D Class now.” 00:06:46.160 --> 00:06:48.800 The man doesn’t have any idea what that means,   00:06:48.800 --> 00:06:53.040 but he can tell it isn’t good.  His luck may have finally ran out. 00:06:53.760 --> 00:06:57.520 The young man, who once lived the life  of a professional Las Vegas gambler,   00:06:57.520 --> 00:07:04.400 was given a new name - D-87465. But as you’ll  see, that name wouldn’t last very long,   00:07:04.400 --> 00:07:11.280 and soon would be known as SCP-181… or as the SCP  Foundation staff liked to refer to him… Lucky. 00:07:12.080 --> 00:07:14.800 SCP-181, was first noticed by the Foundation   00:07:14.800 --> 00:07:19.040 following his being arrested for repeatedly  defrauding the Nevada Gaming Commission. 00:07:19.040 --> 00:07:22.320 He was originally made a member of  the Foundation’s Class D personnel,   00:07:22.320 --> 00:07:26.560 the guinea pigs of the SCP Foundation who  are used for various tests with anomalies   00:07:26.560 --> 00:07:30.240 in order to better understand their  properties. However it soon became   00:07:30.240 --> 00:07:34.960 clear that the man’s ability to consistently  beat the odds had nothing to do with cheating. 00:07:35.760 --> 00:07:40.960 In his first experiment, which took place at  Armed Reliquary Containment Area-02, where he and   00:07:40.960 --> 00:07:45.840 several other Class Ds were exposed to an SCP that  is known to to incite extreme anger and murderous   00:07:45.840 --> 00:07:50.720 tendencies in those who come into contact with it.  Just as expected, one of the other D Class members   00:07:50.720 --> 00:07:57.040 became enraged and began rampaging, killing all  of the other Class Ds present… all except for one.   00:07:57.760 --> 00:08:03.120 Through what appeared to be a stroke of good luck,  the frenzying D Class seemed to miss D-87465,   00:08:03.120 --> 00:08:07.680 who had laid down on the ground amongst the other  bodies and was playing dead. An armed response   00:08:07.680 --> 00:08:13.760 team soon entered the experimentation cell and  put down the rampaging D Class, sparing D-87465. 00:08:14.320 --> 00:08:19.600 He was next submitted to a test with SCP-075,  a creature that resembles a large snail with   00:08:19.600 --> 00:08:25.280 a muscular foot shaped like a six-fingered,  clawed hand. SCP-075 is much heavier than its   00:08:25.280 --> 00:08:30.000 small size makes it seem like it should,  weighing approximately 860 kilograms.   00:08:30.800 --> 00:08:34.080 Despite this, it is able to  move at an extremely high speed,   00:08:34.080 --> 00:08:38.400 quickly leaping towards anyone who comes near it  and spraying them with a deadly corrosive liquid. 00:08:39.360 --> 00:08:46.240 D-87465 was placed in a cell with SCP-075 as part  of a test to measure its speed and reaction time,   00:08:46.240 --> 00:08:51.920 but despite SCP-075 having immediately  killed all prior D Classes during tests,   00:08:51.920 --> 00:08:56.000 D-87465 somehow managed to keep  avoiding its leaping attacks.   00:08:56.720 --> 00:09:00.880 He was always able to guess which direction  to move in order to dodge the deadly snail,   00:09:00.880 --> 00:09:04.640 like a soccer goalie who always picks the  right way to dive to stop penalty kicks. 00:09:05.440 --> 00:09:10.160 Having now survived not one but two experiments  that exposed him to Keter class anomalies,   00:09:10.160 --> 00:09:14.720 researchers needed to find out  if D-87465 was himself anomalous,   00:09:14.720 --> 00:09:16.480 or simply a statistical anomaly. 00:09:17.040 --> 00:09:21.840 In order to test this, the D Class was  placed in the containment cell of SCP-082,   00:09:22.480 --> 00:09:27.600 better known to most as Fernand the Cannibal,  a grotesquely huge humanoid with ogre-like   00:09:27.600 --> 00:09:32.640 features who often dresses like a Victorian  era aristocrat, and will regale his guests with   00:09:32.640 --> 00:09:38.960 outlandish stories before inevitably eating them.  But there was something different about D-87465.   00:09:38.960 --> 00:09:43.600 After a full month of survival in 082’s cell,  a length of time that had resulted in all the   00:09:43.600 --> 00:09:48.400 previous test subjects being consumed, SCP  researchers suspected that this D Class’s   00:09:48.400 --> 00:09:52.720 incredible ability to survive was much  more than just dumb luck, but they needed   00:09:52.720 --> 00:09:56.800 to test him even more to see if his powers  extended beyond just the ability to survive. 00:09:57.600 --> 00:10:02.880 D-87465 was removed from regular D Class  duties and researchers began performing   00:10:02.880 --> 00:10:06.640 various tests on him, watching as he  flipped a coin fifty times in a row,   00:10:06.640 --> 00:10:11.040 with it coming up heads every single time.  Similar results occurred when they had him   00:10:11.040 --> 00:10:14.640 roll pairs of dice that would always  total up to seven, or when they had him   00:10:14.640 --> 00:10:18.880 pick random cards out of a deck and he was  able to pull all thirteen hearts in a row. 00:10:19.760 --> 00:10:23.760 Foundation researchers were now convinced  that this man was more than just lucky,   00:10:23.760 --> 00:10:27.920 he seemed to possess the ability to  create an unnatural effect on probability,   00:10:27.920 --> 00:10:31.840 though researchers suspected that he was  generating this effect without being aware of it.   00:10:32.400 --> 00:10:38.800 At this point, D-87465 was reclassified  and given a new designation - SCP-181. 00:10:39.760 --> 00:10:44.960 Further testing confirmed that SCP-181 is able  to affect causal probability and that it really   00:10:44.960 --> 00:10:51.040 does occur through no action of his own. However  there’s more to SCP-181 than simply being lucky,   00:10:51.040 --> 00:10:56.320 as researchers soon found out. In an audit of  death and injury rates at Bio-Research Area-12,   00:10:56.320 --> 00:11:01.040 where SCP-181 is contained, it was discovered  that both had increased dramatically in the   00:11:01.040 --> 00:11:06.800 time since he was brought there. It seems that  SCP-181 doesn’t simply create his own good luck,   00:11:06.800 --> 00:11:13.360 he in some way saps it from others simply by being  present. It now appears that every lucky moment he   00:11:13.360 --> 00:11:18.560 experiences results in the opposite happening to  someone else. For every seven he rolls on a pair   00:11:18.560 --> 00:11:24.800 of dice, someone else gets snake eyes. And for  every death defying escape he makes, someone else   00:11:24.800 --> 00:11:30.720 must die. There’s no telling how far his ability  might scale. Could he survive a nuclear blast?   00:11:30.720 --> 00:11:34.800 And if he did, what would be the result in  order to “even out” the odds so to speak. 00:11:35.600 --> 00:11:40.320 In light of these new discoveries, SCP-181 was  removed from his low level containment cell where   00:11:40.320 --> 00:11:44.480 he was allowed to occasionally interact with  D Class personnel for entertainment purposes,   00:11:44.480 --> 00:11:49.600 and was moved to Site-27, where he was placed  in solitary confinement and classified as Safe.   00:11:50.480 --> 00:11:54.880 All interactions with staff are now limited to  the bare minimum in order to ensure his survival   00:11:54.880 --> 00:11:59.520 and security, without risking any events  that might result in him “getting lucky.” 00:12:00.320 --> 00:12:04.960 Now go and watch another entry from  the files of Dr. Bob, like SCP-007   00:12:04.960 --> 00:12:09.360 Abdominal Planet, another humanoid SCP  that is even stranger than this one,   00:12:09.360 --> 00:12:13.600 and make sure you subscribe and turn on  notifications, so you don’t miss a single anomaly,   00:12:13.600 --> 00:12:20.000 as we delve further and further into the  SCP Foundation’s classified archives.