The Government didn't warn us about the alien threat!

August 12, 2009 1:11 PM

In august of 1979, Philip Schneider was working as a government Geologist building secret military bases when he became involved in an underground battle with alien Greys which left 67 secret service and military personnel dead.

As one of only 3 survivors of the event, he became a vocal critic of the US and it’s dealings with the alien races living among us, joining the UFO lecture circuit and preparing to write a book –before he was found dead in his home of an apparent stroke, or maybe suicide. Or was it? His wife certainly doesn’t seem to think so. Regardless, he’s not the only UFO researcher to die of mysterious circumstances.

posted by jadayne (43 comments total)

There's a lecture circuit? Where people get paid actual money? Where do I sign up for this?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:12 PM on August 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

you need to get certified -er, that is, be certifiable.
posted by jadayne at 1:16 PM on August 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

the UFO lecture circuit

I am shocked-- shocked-- to discover that those people are fervent supporters of Dr. Paul.
posted by dersins at 1:19 PM on August 12, 2009 [3 favorites]

The headline on the article behind the "mysterious circumstances" link has the most poorly chosen font, ever.
posted by Slap*Happy at 1:24 PM on August 12, 2009 [16 favorites]

I'm getting increasingly nostalgic for the old days when the quasi-credible threat of the Greys diverted the shrieking nutbars into UFO 'zines, BBS networks and an Ouroboros of conspiracy theories that were fundamentally harmless to the outside world, as opposed to having the shrieking nutbars disrupting town hall meetings with babble about Death Panels and birth certificates.

The more that UFOs get soundly debunked, the more the obsessives have to find new topics to listen to while they get their crazy pants on all nice n' snug, and it seems like Limbaugh and Savage are the new Nut Troubadours.

"There are 11 sub-contractors in this giant project. Supposedly, Gunderson got over 2 billion dollars for the contract. Bethlehem Steel and other steel outfits are involved. He showed me one of the cars in the rail yards in North Portland. He was right. If you multiply 107,200 times 143 times 11, you come up with about 15,000,000. This is probably the number of people who disagree with the federal government."

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Now, one of these people is a UFO nut. The other one came within a hair's breadth of becoming the President of the United States of America.

We need to rebunk the UFO and get the nutbars back on the space train to probeland.
posted by Shepherd at 1:27 PM on August 12, 2009 [34 favorites]

The headline on the article behind the "mysterious circumstances" link has the most poorly chosen font, ever.

Only if you don't expect the mystery to be solved by a team of youths and large dog who travel together in a love van.
posted by exogenous at 1:28 PM on August 12, 2009 [6 favorites]

Arrgh, forgot the quotes around the second block quote. Apologies if that was confusing.
posted by Shepherd at 1:30 PM on August 12, 2009

Right, Shepherd. You "forgot" to include the quotations.

Sure you did.
posted by notyou at 1:39 PM on August 12, 2009

I have a few stories about dealing with people who believe aliens walk among us. These stories used to be humorous to me, now they are just kind of sad stories that don't get told.
posted by mrmojoflying at 1:40 PM on August 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

There's a lecture circuit? Where people get paid actual money? Where do I sign up for this?

Start here, then parlay that into speaking engagements with the nice folks at the UFO Congress.

String them along for a while, then debunk them in a startling expose at one of the Randi Foundation conferences.

You'd probably only clear a couple of thousand dollars, but that's not counting the years of laughter.
posted by Sidhedevil at 1:42 PM on August 12, 2009

Apologies if that was confusing.

No problem. Both paragraphs made complete sense to me. /sarcasm
posted by marxchivist at 1:44 PM on August 12, 2009

Don't miss the Krill file, a classic favorite of mine.
posted by Liver at 1:45 PM on August 12, 2009

they wouldn't say it if it wasn't true
posted by philip-random at 1:53 PM on August 12, 2009

The worst part about the alien-experience believers is how vastly they underplay the threat of They Who Wait Beyond the Threshold. You'd be LUCKY if all you got from the Mi-Go was a brisk probing....
posted by FatherDagon at 2:05 PM on August 12, 2009 [4 favorites]

Now another thing i want to reach to you is that during the unbelievable part...
posted by dhartung at 2:05 PM on August 12, 2009

with a name like Con Routine, you've got to be credible (one of the dead from mysterious circumstances).

sorry, "mysterious circumstances".
posted by nomisxid at 2:06 PM on August 12, 2009

Well at least Xen is still in our control...for the time being.
posted by uaudio at 2:13 PM on August 12, 2009

"AIDS was a population control virus invented by the National Ordinance Laboratory, Chicago, Illionois."

...is it something in the water? Y'know I go through periods where I can't think straight. Maybe I'm tired or absorbed in something else so I can't devote the mental resources to something.
I mean look at the 9/11 conspiracy stuff. There are levels of that which are conceivable, but for which there is no evidence (e.g. the terrorists were given inside info) and then there's this 'the towers were blown up with small nukes' stuff.

Now, not just the cogency of the idea there is off base - but as in the above example with the AIDS thing - WTF National Ordinance Lab?
Even glossing over misspelling Illinois.
Are they talking about Argonne? It's mostly nuclear, but they do biological work (and provide technical counterterrorism expertise). I'd have though the DeKalb Genetics lab would have been a better place to theorize the generation of some disease. Still, neither one is in Chicago proper. Bell labs was in Naperville...so I don't know what they're talking about just on the basic elements.

Schneider also mentioned Ft. Detrick, which would make more sense if you're going to create a virus. But the weird thing is - why not get the basic facts straight EITHER WAY?
I mean, if you're making it up, or you've really uncovered something ... look at Bunny Greenhouse (So, you've got some wacky conspiracy theory that the government is fixing the bidding so they award contracts to Halliburton, eh? Got any proof? *dumps loads of hard data, primary evidence* yes, right here) (BTW)
All this says, to me, is that you're nuts ('you' being Joe UFOlitigst and such) and that perhaps you can't spell, if I'm being charitable.

What's irritating is that there ARE in fact government (and other) conspiracies that should be investigated and be made public and people like this just generate noise. And hell, imagine if this stuff were actually true (I'm stretching but) - some element of shadow government had the method to dupe loads of people and bankroll all this behind the scenes stuff, maybe with the help of alien technology, the method of presentation completely just blows it.

Man, I had a guy, I don't want to call him a conspiracy theorist because there are, y'know, conspiracies - I'll just cut the foreplay and call him/them paranoid. So he's talking to me about x,y,and z that's going on behind the scenes in this particular war zone. And he mentions certain outfits - I have no idea where he picked up the info - and one of them is mine. And I say, "no, that's not what happened there." And of course "Oh, how do YOU know?" "That's me. I was there. I'm home on leave from that right now."
So suddenly, even though I've got my mom and nieces and stuff standing there, suddenly I'm Joe Conspirator. I have to be. Because if I'm just some guy, who was actually at the scene and knows what happened, it blows his whole worldview.
You see this happen a lot of places to a greater or lesser degree. (Actually, I liked Vonnegut in "Slaughterhouse Five" - Billy Pilgrim:"I was in Dresden...." Wild Bill:"Ah, he's delirious")
posted by Smedleyman at 2:14 PM on August 12, 2009 [6 favorites]

Slap*Happy: The headline on the article behind the "mysterious circumstances" link has the most poorly chosen font, ever.

For some reason the nutbars always seem to be attracted to the large, flamboyant "No Need To Take Us Seriously" fonts.
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:23 PM on August 12, 2009

Took me a little while to make out the name of the town in New Mexico he mentions at the beginning, but once I added UFO stuff to my searches it came up all over the place: Dulce, New Mexico and the Archuleta Mesa, supposedly the site of a secret government base that is part of Los Alamos National Laboratories. Evidently if you mention this to any connoisseur of UFOlogy they'd say "Ah yes, the Dulce base."

The Dulce Wars by "Branton"; including such chapters as "Dulce New Mexico and the Nazi Connection" and "Who Controls the Draconian Collective?" Searchable on Google Books, though shockingly it's tagged as "Fiction". Clearly Google is part of the conspiracy.

Disappointingly there's nothing UFO-related on Google Books from before 1990 for Dulce, but some fun facts: there was an earthquake there in 1966 and Dulce is the location of the Jicarilla Apache Tribe. Evidently there was some Leonard-Peltier-type conflicts there in the 70's. (Note though that Leonard Peltier is a real person who is probably unjustly imprisoned, not a conspiracy theory.)
posted by XMLicious at 2:28 PM on August 12, 2009

Well at least Xen is still in our control...for the time being.

Who is this "time being" you speak of? I wish to do his bidding.
posted by The World Famous at 2:29 PM on August 12, 2009 [10 favorites]

The Dulce Wars... not to be confused with the Dulse Wars
posted by geos at 2:36 PM on August 12, 2009

because there are, y'know, conspiracies

That's the part of this that always drives me crazy. There's conspiracies all right, but they're right out in the goddamn open.
posted by lumpenprole at 2:37 PM on August 12, 2009 [3 favorites]

I'd like to go on the UFO lecture circuit and talk about the sexy, sexy encounter I had with several Greys of the approximately female persuasion. They weren't the one doing the probing, if you know what I mean. [/zappbrannigan]
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:42 PM on August 12, 2009

ones, durr.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:43 PM on August 12, 2009

I drove out to Dulce once to check out the underground base. The locals knew about the legends, but no one would ever confirm or deny anything.
I ended up jailed on the Jicarilla Apache reservation. Best. Jail. Food. Ever.
posted by battleshipkropotkin at 2:51 PM on August 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

Metafilter: get the nutbars back on the space train to probeland.
posted by lalochezia at 2:58 PM on August 12, 2009

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│This post was deleted for the following reason: Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and refracted the light from Venus. -- [REDACTED]      │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

posted by Rhaomi at 3:07 PM on August 12, 2009 [13 favorites]

/\
 |-------------- There goes the (wo)man, trying to suppress the truth again.
posted by blahblah at 3:30 PM on August 12, 2009

Foreign Affairs is the real place to go for conspiracy theories, not Fortean Times.
posted by benzenedream at 3:48 PM on August 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

MetaFilter: [REDACTED]
posted by brundlefly at 3:48 PM on August 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

I am shocked-- shocked-- to discover that those people are fervent supporters of Dr. Paul.

Yeah, you think they'd be all over Kucinich.
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:56 PM on August 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

In Scott Spencer's novel MEN IN BLACK (not the basis for the movie), the narrator, Sam, has spent years trying to make it as a serious novelist, and finally agrees to write a quickie book about UFOs under a pseudonym. This book, though, ends up being wildly popular, and Sam is sent on a book tour to promote it:

Inside the store, there was a large crowd, mostly of the sort of people I was coming to expect--not for me the girls in their summer dresses, the sultry women in their black leotards, the grad students with pulsating eyes, the latter-day bohos in berets. No, my readers had casts on their feet, Ace bandages on their ankles, patches on their eyes; they received radio signals through the fillings in their teeth; they needed to lose weight, gargle; they had lost their meager inheritances in pyramid schemes; they wouldn't mind selling you mail-order shoes or Amway kitchen cleansers; they rattled around the country on secondary roads where the gas and food were cheaper; they tested their cellars for radon; they called the Culligan Man; they watched the Christian Broadcasting System; they looked for stores that still sold eight-track tapes; they lived near electric-powerline towers the size of the Washington Monument; they had guns.

posted by Ian A.T. at 4:13 PM on August 12, 2009 [3 favorites]

The worst part about the alien-experience believers is how vastly they underplay the threat of They Who Wait Beyond the Threshold. You'd be LUCKY if all you got from the Mi-Go was a brisk probing....

What do you know about the Michigan Geocaching Organization and when did you know it? Does it involve the second guy from the right in the banner? Because whichever one of them it is, I bet he's the one. You know. The one who....yeah.

I kid, of course. Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn, my brother.
posted by Diablevert at 4:20 PM on August 12, 2009

Whatever the UFO phenomenon is, I'm certain that nobody fully understands it. Especially this guy.
posted by Liquidwolf at 4:36 PM on August 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

I don't know what was more disturbing - Rocky's description of the underground inner core reincarnated souls' sex orgy...or the fact that the whole thing is written in screenplay format.
posted by tkchrist at 4:42 PM on August 12, 2009 [2 favorites]

"No, my readers had casts on their feet, Ace bandages on their ankles..."
Yeah, well of course. If your foot's been crispy-crittered by some kind of lightning-like electrical weapon in a battle with the Grays you'll probably be wearing a cast for a while.
posted by zoinks at 4:51 PM on August 12, 2009

At our 10th anniversary meetup, we just had beer.
posted by lukemeister at 5:08 PM on August 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

> What's irritating is that there ARE in fact government (and other) conspiracies that
> should be investigated and be made public and people like this just generate noise.

THE IRAN INVASION HAS ALREADY BEGUN!! THERE WILL BE NO ELECTION, BUSH WILL DECLARE MARTIAL LAW!!!

Is this the right bus? Am I too late to get on?
posted by jfuller at 7:53 PM on August 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

because there are, y'know, conspiracies

That's the part of this that always drives me crazy. There's conspiracies all right, but they're right out in the goddamn open.

You know, if I wanted to hide conspiracies right out in the goddamn open, I'd probably consider fostering a population of complete nut-bar conspiracy theorists to make sure any time somebody started talking about any conspiracy, everyone's automatic reaction would be to roll their eyes and lump it in with the UFO nuts, the moon-landing hoaxers and the Obama birthers...
posted by nonliteral at 9:40 PM on August 12, 2009 [1 favorite]

because there are, y'know, conspiracies

Methods of propaganda aside, because I think the best place to hide anything is out in the open, what always strikes me is the narrative. I was talking about some vampires for tweens books with my niece the other day and it spun off into a brief recommendation on my part that she read 'Dracula', which is nuts and a great story. What's the difference between this guy and Bram? Well, Bram never claimed to be doing anything but writing a novel. The impulse is the same though; I just wish it were done with more humor. These guys are so serious and so have no leg to stand on.
posted by From Bklyn at 10:45 PM on August 12, 2009

The worst part about the alien-experience believers is how vastly they underplay the threat of They Who Wait Beyond the Threshold. You'd be LUCKY if all you got from the Mi-Go was a brisk probing....

I got ahold of a copy of Delta Green recently and goddamn is it the most 90's thing since Vampire.
posted by Pope Guilty at 12:27 AM on August 13, 2009

I enjoyed this way back when the net was new. But you didn't hear it from me.
Funny, after the Bush years it seems a lot ... tamer.
posted by Twang at 3:06 AM on August 13, 2009