Stealth Force Beta ... a new generation

So I was walking our new dog during the evening along one of the Albuquerque arroyos. Most of these are concrete lined behemoths that are filled with skaters during the non-rainy season.. and they can be filled with 10 foot of rapidly moving water (and any slow skaters) during the rainy season. Along the path there are multiple holes where various drainage tubes join in from various roads and such. One along the way has been very tempting because it looks like it is about 8 foot in diameter and goes under one of the roads.

As we were walking along the path, two lanky youth came out with mining caps, flashlights and what looked like a piece of paper they were sketching on. They saw me and got the usual "Ah shoot we are busted." look that one gets when you are being looked down by an old guy and a 45 kg German Shephard. I figured the best way to break the ice was to ask them if they found anything interesting, and they ran up and showed me the map. It was basically an outline they had done by timing their walking under the road.. it seems the tube goes quite a distance as they had timed themselves at 15 -20 minutes on the far hand. I told them to be careful because one can get caught in a tunnel with no-one knowing where you are... and alluded to being caught under an Elevator back at New Mexico Tech. They both looked at me and said "You were in Stealth Force Beta?" To which I had to sadly answer "Nah, I was never that cool."

Stealth Force Beta was an underground organization that pulled some cool pranks at New Mexico Tech when I went to school there. It had become a SlashDot article a couple of years ago when the Statue of Limitations ran out on any possible 'crimes' that their stunts might have been construed as. Most of the items were on the orders of "Hey you know the size of the rooms in this building would say that there is a large hidden room behind this wall. Hey cool there is a large hidden room behind here and a set of tunnels.. lets map them." And then some of their stunts did have some administrators pulling their hair about how their office got completely turned 90 degrees overnight (though that may have been the work of another group). Myself, I was more like Stealth Force Gamma Delta Epsilon.. I would hear about things and then go find out myself during some time when I had insomnia and nothing to do at 3am in the morning during the summer. That was how I got stuck under an elevator.

Anyway the two college students I ran into had both heard of Stealth Force Beta and were just doing the same thing.. there was a tube and they needed to map it. Thankfully they got out before the rain hit (and they didnt find any bodies that sometimes show up in rain tubes when someone needs to hide their hit.) Anyway, it was good to see that the spirit of hacking was known outside of NMT.