"If I had more time I would have written a shorter letter."

There's a pair of videos on my channel

that were in the works for over a year.

The Tekoi Videos.

One exploration and one explanation.

And while the exploration video is fine,

I made a catastrophic error in the explanation video.

I've re-uploaded a corrected version,

and I've also made this video

to show you some of the behind-the-scenes

of how those videos got made,

how the error got in,

and how the decision to re-upload came to be.

But I've written this video in as little time as possible

to correct the error as fast as possible.

So, be warned.

It's a long letter.

The story of Tekoi starts with Past-Grey traveling

to Indian reservations for… an other project.

During that wandering,

I came across the Skull Valley Indian Reservation

out in Utah, and within its borders,

the Tekoi Test Range,

information about which was limited and scattered.

I got the impression it was an

abandoned military weapons facility.

Which, come on!

Three more intriguing adjectives

you could not precede a noun.

At this point on YouTube,

I'd played around with making

a few vlog-style videos,

and while working on the bigger project,

I thought Tekoi could be a little shard to examine

to make into an easy and quick vlog,

exploring the place and explaining what it was.

And the Tribal Government graciously

granted me permission to go on site and film.

Which, as a side note, please do not try to visit Tekoi.

It is private property,

not open to the public,

and super dangerous.

In retrospect, I was shockingly stupid

to explore it in as unprepared fashion as I did.

But, I went, I filmed.

I didn't fall in a hole and die,

or catch histoplasmosis from the

bat droppings everywhere.

And I didn't get attacked by

the "really mean owl" I was warned

defended warehouse number…

Oh, I forgot to write it down!

Seriously.

I could not have been a worse UrbEx newb.

But the celestial dice rolled in my favor that day

and I got back to my hotel with some amazing video.

Now all I needed to do

was explain this beautiful shard.

Of course, joke was on me because

every topic is an entire world

unto itself once you start looking,

and months later, the one video split into two

and I was barely closer to a

coherent explanation of Tekoi then at the start.

Okay, pause here,

and let me tell you a little about

the video production process in general.

Videos get started either through wandering

the real world or

the Forest of All Knowledge,

seeing an interesting area,

exploring it and, if lucky,

some part will look like it could be a video.

I've come to accept that I am a slow writer,

so it's best to hold off the first serious draft

until long into the exploration phase.

Often long enough that by the time I get to the

"Okay, seriously, sit down and write this thing,"

I've forgotten a lot of what I've read.

But that's actually a useful way to filter

for the interesting and important

and frequent ideas in a topic

before the many, many rounds

of revisions and checks to come.

I used to make my videos all alone,

but over the years, I've gathered a small team,

and at some point,

if I can get the script into a readable "ish" version,

it's time to let the team know what the next project might be.

And there is celebration or dread at what will be

at least many weeks of their lives spent on this thing.

Everyone has a specialty.

Animation

Research

Logistics

Music

Sometimes custom artwork or audio.

And everyone provides useful feedback on the topic,

sometimes having personal experience,

or finding further details,

or hunting down related lost artifacts.

For me, there's also a lot of double-checking at this point,

going back to notes I made during exploration time,

or looking into an out-of-place-seeming fact.

The script eventually progresses from merely readable

into what is nearing a final (ish) form,

and this is were it's sent out to experts.

Now this phase seems like it should be the easiest.

A teacher checks your homework.

But often it's quite troublesome.

The first problem is finding an expert.

If the video ends up being largely a book or a paper adaptation,

and the author is alive,

then that's pretty easy,

and those projects are generally more straightforward.

But for a lot of videos,

figuring out who is the expert on this thing

isn't always clear.

And for some topics,

there simply isn't anyone.

For others, experts may exist,

but finding them is basically impossible

because there isn't a good public record of their expertise.

This last is particularly frustrating because,

the instant the final video goes up,

all the un-findable experts will find it and get in touch.

Now, in theory, this problem could be solved

by publicly announcing what the active topics are.

And back when Past-Grey's channel was smaller

and he younger and naiver,

that's totally a thing he did.

But Current-Grey in current year

has seen shockingly blatant cases

of those who work fast scooping topics

from those who work slow.

It's not the early days of the Internet any more,

and surviving while supporting a team

means you must compete with

The Entire Entertainment Industry in all its forms.

So, some secrecy is necessary.

Even though, yes, I'm fully aware I've already divulged

what I'm working on in this very video,

and I will do it again later,

but I'm made an exception.

Even though I know from experience

I've never not regretted talking about work in progress.

Even if the topic is un-scooped or un-scoopable,

I just find projects harder to finish

once they're out in the open

and everyone is watching.

Back to the experts.

If they exist and we find them,

and they're willing to help out,

and they're willing to keep a secret

(for possibly months),

then that's great.

But it can still be tricky.

For example, which experts?

Just about any academic topic will have experts

who have spent their entire lives

thinking about this one area

and who also violently disagree with each other.

Which can leave you, the non-expert, to wander

dangerously close to the "What is True?" dimension,

which, if you're not careful,

will suck you into an unproductive, downward spiral

of "How do we know anything is true?"

This happens to me a least once a month

and is a topic which is way beyond

the scope of this video.

Maybe a story for another time.

[under his breath] Ugh, don't say that!

Okay, skipping the existential crisis,

the script is sent out to experts for checking

and then the final draft can be recorded

and turned into a video for you to watch.

That's how it works in general.

Now let's resume the story of Tekoi,

skipping ahead to…

Upload Day!

A day that is simultaneously

the joyous completion of hundreds

of hours of teamwork and

the solitude of stomach-churning

as you wait to find out if you have been

wrong on the Internet.

And there are many ways to be

wrong on the Internet,

which we will visit later,

but the process is designed

to be able to avoid errors

while still being able to publish something

(eventually).

And in this process,

I have learned that my initial impression

wasn't quite right.

Rather, Tekoi was a tiny part

of an enormous for-profit company

that used Tekoi as a static firing test range for rocket motors.

Motors that just so happened to be used in nuclear missiles,

including the famous Minuteman.

But there's often so much more

left on the cutting room floor,

so a new part of the process is

doing a director's commentary

for crowdfunders with all the extra bits,

after I wait a couple of hours

to ensure there's no Upload Day disaster

that needs immediate attention.

The Internet will tell you real fast if you're wrong.

But on Tekoi Upload Day,

the stomach churning lessened

as nothing came in.

I went and streamed the commentary

in a pretty relieved mood,

as this has become a nice, psychological marker for me

that a project is truly and completely, finally finished.

Doing the commentary kept me up late,

but, satisfied with a long days work, I decided,

right before trying to sleep,

"Let me check the comments one more time."

And that is when I found this:

the maximum possible stomach-churning comment,

asking the audience to imagine what it would be like

to do this whole video with the Minuteman missile,

but in the video itself is the evidence that

it wasn't the Minuteman missile.

It was the Trident missile.

Oh no.

I didn't have to imagine

what it was like to do this video.

I was the guy who did this video.

Not good.

At the time I read this comment,

basically seconds away from total collapse,

I was in no condition to address it.

But let's just say I didn't sleep well that night,

and we'll skip the depressive,

self-destructive, self-doubting part,

and jump back to where,

with a rebooted brain,

I was able to confirm that yes,

hootis8 was right and I was wrong.

Tekoi did not test Minuteman Missile motors.

Tekoi tested Tridents.

I even found a poster of one in the

exploration video itself!

[Past-Grey from Tekoi exploration video] Can't see anything down that corridor.

Alright, strategic pride!

[game show success sound] ding!

[Current-Grey] You may be wondering

how I could have spent so long on this topic

and yet missed the answer

to the most fundamental question.

The literal video title.

"What Was Tekoi?"

Well, me too.

So we conducted an autopsy.

[under his breath] Oh God, this is only half-way through.

It really is a long letter.

Okay, because there was so little available information about Tekoi,

in that pre-script early exploration phase,

I ended up reading a lot about the Cold War in general,