Search for Inexplicable COSOR Disappearances
Initial Inquiry
In practical application, it is most common to prioritize possible person-specific components when investigating the roadside abandoned. Upon encountering a COSOR, it is natural to begin the inquiry into abandonment or disappearance from the person-centric perspective. Often, initial inquiries follow a similar format: Why did the driver abandon the car? Where did the driver come from? Where was the driver going? These are sensible questions when considering the disappearance categories of foul play, mechanical, neurological, new identity, and suicide. However, in cases of inexplicable disappearance, such questions inherently fail to suggest potential causation for removal (irrespective of volition).
When human absence is inexplicable, COSOR may act as an intervention, disrupting conventional investigatory models, instead focusing on the phenomenon, not the person. As a new exploratory port of entry, COSOR may help us understand why people disappear, what it means when people disappear in cars, and what those occurrences can tell us about large-scale social and mass psychological ramifications of a culture entrenched in the mythology of the open road.
Search for Inexplicable COSOR Disappearances (SICD)
Recognizing the material and symbolic significance of the abandoned automobile to the interstate highway system is essential for comprehensively examining disappearance within broader terrestrial or sociological contexts. Instead of focusing on the driver, the Search for Inexplicable COSOR Disappearances—SICD—imagines a perspective that gazes outward from the car, engaging with the environment surrounding the roadside abandoned. This approach allows for the exploration of unseen variables, shedding light on broader cultural implications of COSOR disappearances.
So, what does a COSOR investigation look like? Fundamentally, it operates without a fixed structure. Constantly shape-shifting and recalibrating, each exploration is unique. As a conceptual framework, COSOR embraces the experimental challenges of scope and amorphism. For instance, when researching COSOR disappearances along Interstate 15 in California, examining the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System may be worthwhile. This path of inquiry reveals other disappearance phenomena: documented—as well as denied—avian incineration fatalities (AIFs) at Ivanpah and cases of missing desert tortoises (MDTs) near the plant. Is there any correlation between AIFs, MDTs, and inexplicable COSOR disappearances? This potential link to Ivanpah (and other minipah solar facilities in the southwest) is currently one of SICD's primary research interests.
