Over the past month, residents in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic regions of the United States have reported thousands of reports and social media posts of suspicious nighttime sightings of drones and unidentified flying objects. And because government agencies aren’t as sensational in their explanations as the photographic and video “evidence” people believe, the public is deluged with outlandish conspiracy theories ranging from foreign espionage to extraterrestrial visitation. It’s starting to get heated.
The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration, and Department of Defense sought to quell the hysteria on Monday with a joint statement that read: In addition to drones, law enforcement drones, manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and starry skies are also incorrectly reported as drones. ” Even the iconic Goodyear blimp was thought to be a UFO by someone who took an image of it with a cell phone. (Once classified as an unidentified flying object (UFO), the official name is now an unidentified anomalous phenomenon (UAP), which, according to the Department of Defense, includes “a presence in the air, sea, or space. (includes any object that defies scientific explanation)
But to the more paranoid amateur investigators, this “there’s nothing to see here” response is the agency’s continued insistence that no one is in danger from the aircraft they may have seen. It is evidence of a cover-up along with a guarantee. Indeed, President-elect Donald Trump himself suggested in a press conference on Monday that the government and military know exactly what is going on, but are not telling the American people. Statements of concern from other politicians about the lack of transparency (including a Pennsylvania lawmaker who was misled by a false information that a Star Wars spaceship model being transported in a truck was named a “crashed drone”) (including statements) fueled further speculation.
One of the most popular unsubstantiated theories at the moment is that the alleged drones are searching for radioactive material. It was an idea floated without evidence by John Furgeson, CEO of Saxon Aerospace, a Kansas-based company that manufactures unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). “If[the object]is a drone, then the only reason it’s flying that low is because it’s flying so low,” Furgeson said in a TikTok video posted over the weekend that has since been viewed more than 1.5 million times. Because a drone is a drone.” I’m trying to smell something on the ground. ”This could include gas leaks and radiation, he said.
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Various and increasingly extreme versions of this hypothesis have been circulating, leading some people to believe that the suspected drones are searching for nuclear warheads. “Has anyone heard rumors about nuclear weapons or dirty bombs being smuggled in suitcases and getting past customs?” The Facebook group “New Jersey Mystery Drones – Let’s Solve It” has more than 75,000 members. I wrote a comment on. (Northern New Jersey has been a hub of alleged drone activity.) Another said, “I talked to friends in the military who also work with drones and they are 100% our drones. , said it would only be used for such excessive purposes.” For serious reasons, he cited examples such as: tracking nuclear fallout from detonated dirty bombs, tracking biological weapons, tracking weapons of mass destruction.
An even more fear-mongering statement came from a source as reputable as Bethenny Frankel from The Real Housewives of New York City, who also claimed on TikTok that she heard the raid theory from a trusted source. did. In this case, the father was a “man.” “We worked with the Department of Defense, NASA, secret projects, etc.” Frankel said the person told her the drone was “very likely sniffing something very dangerous.” . The video has been viewed 1.7 million times since she posted it on Monday. And on Tuesday, Belleville, N.J., Mayor Michael Melham appeared on the local Fox affiliate “Good Day New York” and pointed out that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission had given credibility to the “radioactive material” theory in early December. did. We have confirmed that a shipment of such content has gone missing in the state.
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However, the missing object was an Eckert & Ziegler HEGL-0132, part of a medical scanning device that was being transported for safe disposal, and it contained a Category 3 radiation content according to International Atomic Energy Agency standards. Less than. According to the NRC report, “the likelihood of causing permanent injury to humans is extremely low.” Certain drones are equipped with equipment to conduct radiological surveys, but this equipment has accounted for thousands of reported drone sightings from Virginia to New England and as far west as Ohio. It would be very surprising if it were occupied.
Aliens have long been a common explanation for UAPs, with many claiming that images currently circulating online show extraterrestrial life forms, but the late Canadian conspiracy theorist Serge・Some people bring up the so-called “Blue Beam Project,” a conspiracy theory invented by Monast. In the 1990s, Monast predicted that NASA and the United Nations would use advanced technology to fake alien invasions and encounters, fooling nations into a totalitarian New World Order. “We believe these may be projections, holograms, or illusions of some kind based on several factors,” members of the New Jersey Drone Research Group wrote, echoing this notion. “So they’re not real, they’re essentially images being used to incite mass hysteria in the United States.” Others say the UAPs could be computer-generated phantoms; or Project Blue Beam by name, theorized, and argued that the visual phenomenon was staged.
On the other hand, as attention to aircraft has increased, a large number of explanations have been circulating that flying objects are “dispersing” unknown substances on the ground. This is consistent with persistent conspiracy theories that aircraft release “chemtrails” – chemicals used to poison or manipulate the public – after flight. (These cloudy streaks are actually contrails formed from water vapor that condenses and freezes around particles in airplane exhaust.) ) user shared the video taken on Monday. I asked as I watched contrails take off in the sky in New Jersey. Is it a biological attack from an unknown enemy or something more sinister? ”
Another faction of conspiracy theorists is obsessed with flying objects they call “orbs,” which are hovering or moving pinpoints of light rather than drones. There are claims that the orb turns into an “artifact” or interacts with similar orbs on the video, but some seem convinced that the orb and drone are shooting at each other. (So-called orbs are also sometimes referred to as “plasmoids,” which is a real effect observed in physics, but there’s no evidence to support this identification.) Redditors have a particularly complex theory on this topic. provided. It’s a sphere, not a drone,” they wrote in the comments of a video of aerial lighting over Phoenix. “Drones are for military purposes. Governments may fly drones in the sky to distract the public from orbs (which are far more rare to spot than drones), or use drones to monitor orbs. Or both.”
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Perhaps even worse than this kind of outlandish nonsense is the tendency for people in conspiracy groups on social media to ask AI chatbots to interpret waves of drone sightings. One woman asked Meta’s Llama program for the “most likely” answer to a riddle and shared a screenshot of the bot’s response on Facebook. Rama responded, “I would guess that the most likely origin of the New Jersey drone is China. The probability is about 60-70%.” The chatbot observed that “the drone appears to be coming from the sea, which could suggest a sea-launched platform.” Of course, China has no military or naval presence in the Atlantic Ocean. This is because the United States is making diplomatic efforts to prevent it.
Still, Meta’s software was no more off base than the crowd spinning their own fantasy tales about insidious drone fleets. When plausible, boring answers are completely useless, everyone and everything (including AI) obviously has to pull more exciting possibilities out of thin air.