bmrf.us is a website that is believed to be connected to The Pizza Code Mystery ARG. On Reddit, Stormseeker (the ARG's creator) stated that the site "is an umbrella site for multiple paths of the arg." [1]
Originally, the website had the appearance of being the homepage of the Black Mesa Research Facility. A link on the page titled "DALsys employees login" led to a subsite located at terminal.bmrf.us, which displayed what appeared to be a terminal login screen showing error messages.
In more recent developments, however, the site has changed multiple times.
Recent developments
October 3, 2016: The domain registration was renewed.
October 1, 2016: The domain name bmrf.us expired again on September 19, 2016 at 11:59:59 PM GMT, and was subsequently "parked" by the domain registrar. As of yet, the domain does not appear to have been renewed for another year.
September 22, 2015: The registration has been renewed.
September 19, 2015: The registration for the domain bmrf.us is expired. Given the importance of the site in the history of the ARG, it is unsure why Stormseeker and his fellow gamemasters allowed this expiration to occur.
May 5, 2015: The main page now redirects to a page playing launch trailer of the Steam Release of Black Mesa. Afterwards, the visitor is redirected to the Steam store page of Black Mesa.
May 4, 2015: A new Emergency Alert System (EAS) message is being broadcast while the countdown counter continues to count down to the event date.
May 1, 2015: The site now is a distorted video feed and has three glitching numbers in the middle, apparently, going Days, Hours, Minutes, counting down to 5 May 2015 08:47:00 UTC -6:00 as stated in source code of the page.
Feb 19, 2015: The site now goes to a news website called KXBM.net to an article about the incident.
Jan 1, 2015: The site is now "broadcasting" an Emergency Alert System (EAS) message. See below for more information.
www.bmrf.us
URL: http://www.bmrf.us/ (or http://bmrf.us/)
Discovery and history
- In October, 2012, a forum user who was browsing the personal website of Josh Hubi (a member of the BM team a.k.a. Hubicorn), discovered a portfolio entry with the title "BMRF.us". The portfolio page had a facsimile screenshot of a website that looked identical to the site which is now online on www.bmrf.us. The name of the screenshot image file was
Black-Mesa-Gag-Site1.png. The portfolio entry was deleted shortly after it was mentioned on the forum. [2] - When accessed with a web browser, bmrf.us would return a "403 Forbidden" error page. This remained the case up until the website was activated around November 5, 2013.
- A whois search revealed that the bmrf.us domain was registered to Josh Hubi.
- DNS lookups revealed that bmrf.us, gman.blackmesasource.com and terminal.blackmesasource.com all had the same IP address.
- On December 11, 2012, Stormseeker did an administrative update of the original forum post. In his edits, he made a reference to BMRF.us: "BMRF.us (site down, due to unforseen circumstances)".
- On November 5, 2013, it was discovered that a website had appeared on the bmrf.us domain [3].
- The last-modified time of the initial page was "Thu, 04 Nov 2013 09:09:18 GMT". The page was updated again on November 7 with minor corrections. The last-modified time of the current page is "Thu, 07 Nov 2013 00:50:03 GMT".
- In February, 2014, forum user CPU discovered that an Iranian domain (http://iranenvex.tums.ac.ir/) was displaying the exact same page as http://www.bmrf.us/. A DNS lookup showed that the domain was pointing to the same server IP address as bmrf.us. [4]
- On December 11, 2014, forum user CPU discovered that the bmrf.us site was showing an "Account Suspended" page. A few days later, the site was redirecting to a "Default Web Site Page" used by the web hosting provider for unknown domains/sites, indicating that the site might have been moved to a different server. [5] [6]
- On December 17, 2014, the site was completely unreachable.
- On December 25, 2014, the site was back up again, now running on a server with a different IP address than before.
- On December 31, 2014, 23:51 GMT (as indicated by the last-modified time), the site was displaying a TV test pattern with the words "Emergency Broadcast System" written across it, and was playing an audio message on a loop containing what appeared to be an Emergency Alert System message (discovered by forum user UnhingedMouse0 [7]). Below is a transcription of the message (transcribed by forum user faed [8]):
The following message is transmitted at the request of local authorities. At 9:47 AM, Mountain Time, a disaster of unknown type has occurred at the Black Mesa Research Facility causing significant damage and failure to various power and communication systems in the surrounding areas. An immediate evacuation order has been issued for all residents within a 75 mile radius of the facility, and on-site military has been dispatched to provide assistance. Make sure to bring an emergency supply of food, water, clothing, first aid kit, flashlights with extra batteries, and battery powered radios. Follow local evacuation routes which have been marked by local authorities and only use one vehicle. Do not return to the warning area until the all clear has been given. If you are not in the evacuation zone stay where you are. If you are within the evacuation area and have no transportation locate your nearest police department or military officer. Do not use telephones or cell phones except in the case of emergencies. Stay tuned to local news media outlets for further details and information on this situation.
- On February 19, 2015, the site now redirects to a news article on a news site called KXBM.net.
- On May 1, 2015, the site now is a broken video feed with 3 numbers in the middle. Presumably, the three numbers are days, hours, minutes, counting down to Tue, 5 May 2015, 08:47:00 -0600 as stated in the HTML source code (at first, the timezone was missing from the timestamp, which caused some confusion as to the exact time of the countdown event, but this was later corrected). The video feed was the same as the one on the KXBM.net site.
- On May 4, 2015, the distorted video feed was replaced with a new "Emergency Broadcast System" message similar to the one that was broadcast on December 31, 2014. The countdown counter is now counting down hours, minutes and seconds to the event date. Transcript of the EAS audio message follows:
The following message is transmitted at the request of the New Mexico Department of Emergency Services. At 9:47 a.m., Mountain Standard Time, a disaster of unknown type has occurred at the Black Mesa Research Facility causing significant damage and failure to various power and communication systems in the surrounding areas. This message replaces the previous alert, which expired at 12:01 p.m., Mountain Standard Time, this afternoon. A full quarantine has been issued for the Black Mesa area. In the interest of public safety, all residents within a 150 mile radius of Black Mesa, New Mexico are adviced to evacuate the area immediately. Take only essential supplies and a battery powered radio. Do not use more than one vehicle for traveling. Follow local evacuation routes which have been marked by local authorities. If you are within the evacuation area and have no transportation, locate your nearest police department. If you begin experiencing a fever, coughing, nausea, dizziness, muscle ache, pneumonia, hair loss, or any such similar ailments, please contact your nearest disease control center immediately as these symptoms may be related to recent events. Stay tuned to local news media outlets for further information on this ongoing emergency.
- On May 5, 2015, upon the counter reaching zero, the site redirected to a page showing a low quality video of an infomercial about the Black Mesa Research Facility, highlighting the Tau Cannon, and with the image of the G-Man appearing near the end. Subsequently, the visitor was redirected to the Steam store page for the game Black Mesa. Black Mesa had now appeared on Steam, as an Early Access game. The video turned out to be the launch trailer. For some visitors, the site became inaccessible due to the heavy traffic on the site when the counter reached zero.
ASCII art
In the HTML code of the main site, ASCII art resembling the Half-Life lambda logo (a circled λ) is found embedded in HTML comment tags.
?MMMI
MMMMMMMNNNNNNNN
OMMMMNNN. . ONNNNNNN
MMMMN. .DDDD+
NMMNN DDD8
NMNN DDDDDD D888
MNNN 8888. ,OOO
.NNN 8OOO OZOO
NNNO OOZZ. $ZZ
NNN ZZZ$$$ 777
.NDD Z$$$7777 :II=
DDD $$77 III? ,??~
DD8 $77I. ??++ =++
D888 77II. ===. ~~~
=88O 7II? ~~~~~:: ::::
8OOZ 7I??. ::::,.. ,,,,
OZ$$ . ,,,,
$$7I? ....
:I?++= ......
+==~~::,, ........
::,,............
........
The same ASCII art can also be found in the HTML code of www.blackmesasource.com with a comment below referencing www.bmrf.us (initially the comment below the ASCII art said "When It's Done, It Will Be Great", but was later changed to "www.bmrf.us"). www.blackmesasource.com was updated with a new design around the same time the BMRF page appeared.
The origin of the lambda ASCII art appears to trace back to another ARG, a fan-made Half-Life ARG called "The Black Mesa Incident ARG", where it also appeared in the HTML code of the main ARG site. [9] [10]
terminal.bmrf.us
Discovery
- At the bottom left of the webpage at www.bmrf.us, there is a link titled "DALsys employees login" which leads to terminal.bmrf.us.
- A page at terminal.bmrf.us appeared on November 7, 2013 (last-modified: "Thu, 07 Nov 2013 00:50:03 GMT") [11]. Prior to this, terminal.bmrf.us displayed a "403 Forbidden" error page.
- The terminal.bmrf.us subdomain has been known since September, 2013, when it was discovered by user Gunsrequiem [12].
- On May 1, 2015, the BMRF terminal site became unreachable when the www.bmrf.us site changed to display the countdown counter counting down towards the Steam Release.
Page contents
The page, as it appeared on November 7, 2013, displayed the following text:
____ _ _ _
| _ \ / \ | | ___ _ _ ___| |_ ___ _ __ ___ ___
| | | |/ _ \ | | / __| | | / __| __/ _ \ '_ ` _ \/ __|
| |_| / ___ \| |___\__ \ |_| \__ \ |_ __/ | | | | \__ \
|____/_/ \_\_____|___/\__, |___/\__\___|_| |_| |_|___/
|___/
DALsystems remote terminal module
Copyright 200X, version 1.65
licensed to: Black Mesa Corporation
.......
.......
.......
.......[CRITICAL FAULT]: CANNOT CONNECT TO LOGON SERVER '1.192.12.156:2828'
AUTOMATIC SYSTEM RECOVERY ENGAGED
.......
.......[SYS MESSAGE]: Please try again later.
DALsystems
- Main article: DALsystems
Trivia
- terminal.bmrf.us appeared one year to the day after HALOS.txt appeared, which contained the still unsolved 752 Hex Code.
Theories/Speculation
- The solution to IRC clue 4 mentions BMRF and a login, which may be a reference to the www.bmrf.us site and the "DALsys employees login" located at terminal.bmrf.us.