While exploring Syria on Google Earth, I was wondering what traces the civil war might have left on satellite images. As expected, footprints of war were all over the place: annihilated towns and villages, landscapes scarred by heavy artillery, oil fields on fire, shell craters, abandoned military vehicles, etc. What captured my attention though was something else. Unexpectedly, I came across a range of strange satellite images that appeared to speak of state violence in a different, i.e. metaphorical or poetic, manner. From there, my project consisted in extracting precisely those nightmarish allegories of war. For me, they became rare crypted resources hidden in plain sight on Google Earth.