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Before I get into this mess today, there are a couple of things that need to be dealt with first. Let’s start with the Ancient Aliens crowd. They believe that humanity could not have developed much beyond the wheel and fire, and they have doubts about that, without guidance from an advanced culture. To hear them tell it, and they do every freaking day on the History Channel – which should be renamed the Crackpot Theories Channel – all of the Hindu gods were really aliens and that’s why they look so different. Moreover, these people claim that said aliens dropped atomic bombs in India and on Sodom and Gomorrah. Because, well – you know, there’s a reason in there somewhere. Ignoring logic and facts for a moment, what’s their motivation? If the idea of a couple of isolated atomic strikes was to cow us into submission, then why didn’t they come down and force us to submit? If the idea was to show us that they hold a very high moral code, then why not bomb Egypt or Greece? In their day they made the antics of Sodom seem like a pre-school. And, since both were major powers, people would have paid attention to that little message. There are those who argue that the aliens are being subtle. To which I ask; what the heck’s so subtle about an atomic bomb?
Despite specious evidence and wild conjecture, these people continue on with their varied, for lack of a better term, hypotheses as though they were written in stone instead of water.
“Aha,” they cry when they realize you’re not buying any of this, “what about batteries?” What about them? Crude batteries were manufactured in Egypt almost 3,000 years ago. The devices could store, and then retransmit, an electrical charge. Egypt housed some of the finest minds in the world in its heyday and those minds would have been curious about many things, including conductivity (see lightning strikes for reason #1). If it was a gift from aliens, it was a truly worthless one. Without an electrical infrastructure there was no use for the contraption. It quickly faded as a novelty and never saw wide use. Later cultures, including the Greeks at their peak, made the same discovery with the same results. It wasn’t until Ben Franklin rediscovered the concept of the battery that it began to make headway into public use. And, even then, it took more than a century for it to have widespread practical value.
Then there’s the story of Thomas Fowler, who invented a terrnary computer in 1840. Well, then, it was called a calculating machine and not a computer and there were tons of those around. It was also built out of wood and not any alien metals. Even so, it would be a quantum leap above anything we have now. Instead of a circuit being either on or off, it would allow the circuit to also be both on AND off. Instead of a binary system, it would use trinary. Right now, due to existing infrastructure, it’s still just a novelty but does that mean that Tom had alien professors?
Doubtful. Even college students would notice something like that.
For the moment let’s follow the prudent course and quote Bertrand Russell. He offered what he called “a form of Occam’s Razor” which was “Whenever possible, substitute constructions out of known entities for inferences to unknown entities.” Do that and your ancient alien activities turn to mist.
Simply put, I feel safe in dismissing these people and their wild eyed hunches in the aggregate and moving on to the fun stories that have been falling out of the FBI’s secret vault. Well, it’s not really a secret since it’s been open to the public since 1970 and it’s not much of a vault either. But it sounds cooler to say it is so I’ll play along.
For all the voluminous UFO related documents that have come to the fore, they are all based on one simple statement; between 1935 and 1941, 3 UFOs crashed on Earth. Specifically in Germany, the United States and in Russia. Allegedly all 3 were 50 feet in diameter and each contained 3 dead aliens.
Before we go any further, let’s talk about those ships. About 15% of the ship could be usable space, and I’m being generous with that assessment. Anything in the spinning part of the disk would be crushed by gravity. Remember that the disk has to spin fast enough to counter gravity. It would be like living in a centrifuge. So, in the tiny remainder of the ship, a space about 7 1/2 feet in diameter, there’s the engines, living quarters, pilot’s area and some form of on-board computer. Unless those aliens are about 6 inches tall, that’s going to be hopelessly cramped.
Now, let’s take a look at the crashes. The first one supposedly occurred in Germany. When you consider that, the rest become irrelevant.
Adolph Hitler’s rise to power surrounded him with some very driven people. Xenophobes, racists, psychopaths and so on, all wishing for power and control over the world. Hitler’s great claim to power, the famous Beer Hall Putsch, was actually a dismal failure. It was deemed a success when Hitler’s cronies hastily reformed the facts to fit their needs. This was PR spin on an epic scale. In other words, when reality didn’t fit their needs, they lied. That would be an ongoing theme for the Nazi Party.
Fast forward to 1935 when Germany was supposed to have discovered the downed UFO. Germany was bound by the onerous Treaty of Versailles. Their military and their economy were both gutted by it. In retrospect, it was about as short sighted as a treaty could be. Germany was trying frantically to get out from under its many oppressions. Hitler had the military working in secret and was aided by the fact that the terms of the treaty were being enforced by a buffoon. Neville Chamberlain was more interested in being popular than being good at his job. For example, when the Nazis claimed to be honoring the treaty by keeping the total tonnage of their navy less than that of Britain’s even if they had many more ships, he agreed. That allowed Germany to build many more boats which were faster and deadlier than anything in the British navy. The ships in the British fleet were mammoth. The German navy was built on speed and killing power. It was a mistake that could easily have been avoided had he done something wild like, I don’t know, gone and seen for himself.
Hitler also did something else that no one else in the world was doing. He poured all of his available resources into military and scientific research. Scientists were given free reign to look into any possibility, no matter how irrational, if it could be used to increase Germany’s strength. And that’s exactly what they did.
Rocket technology, despite claims contrariwise from UFO enthusiasts, had existed in basic form for almost 3,000 years. It was invented by the Chinese to make fireworks and some crude weapons. Theoretical advances in different propulsion systems had been made around the turn of the 20th century. Hitler’s scientists started with those and, thanks to unlimited funding and manpower, made tremendous leaps forward.
Jet engines, far from being super secret high tech whims of fancy, had been invented prior to 1930 by Dr. Hans von Ohain and Sir Frank Whittle. Neither knew of the other’s work and Sir Whittle applied for a patent in 1930 when his research was complete.
So much for aliens. All Hitler did was steal existing, human, technology and throw a lot of resources at it.
Anyway, back to our crashed UFO in Germany.
Just FYI, these must be the most incompetent space-farers in the universe to have crashed into the same planet three times in such a short span.
Nevertheless, it’s well known that Hitler was fascinated by the unexplained, he even hired psychics to guide him, and he was surrounded by excellent liars and sycophants. Add in the fact that he was being pestered by the WWI allies (excluding Chamberlain who seemed content to watch cricket and sip tea) to explain where all this tech was coming from, as the rest of the world was fighting through a depression, and you have a recipe for what followed.
Hitler and his scientists obviously hashed out a rough idea of what an alien space ship would look like and created forged documents to claim they’d found one. Of course, super secret documents that would scare the pants off of high ranking officials the world over are useless unless they aren’t all that secret. So, SURPRISE! SURPRISE!, these highly classified documents quickly ended up in the hands of western spies.
Within 5 years American and Russian documents made their way back to Germany showing that these countries had, amazingly enough, captured their own downed UFOs. Unfortunately they did so without the advantage of garnering any new technologies. Both the American and Russian armies were built with conventional weapons and tactics.
But, HEY!, somewhere somehow they still held to their claim that they each had a shiny UFO.
Oy vey.
After that, the rest is obvious. Since no side could admit the fallacy, and no side had any true advantage, the ruse continued on. Yes, the Nazi military was the best in the world in its time and, yes, they probably would have won the war had not Hitler been a military moron. But none of those facts require alien technology to be explained. A simple combination of resources and hubris covers all the bases.
Does all of this mean that aliens don’t exist? Of course not. The odds are overwhelmingly in favor of there being life on other planets. But does that mean that our backwoods planet is the crossroad of the universe? Not bloody likely.
So, when you hear people like Professor Bill Wickersham calling for a Congressional study of UFO phenomena, feel free to send him this link.
It’ll save the world a lot of time and money.
Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Friday morning around 9:10!
