Handicapping All the Rumored UFO Explanations

Frankly, there is only one way this is true, and it’s one that tracks towards the logic the perpetual skeptics are trying to rebut with this nonsense about secret Cuban bases and such. If China or Russia has technology that can violate our most sensitive airspace at will and then evade our detection to such a degree that we publicly classify them as unknowns, then we all better start learning to speak Mandarin and Russian.

Or…America has this “unknown” technology too. And this is where the perpetual skeptics do not want to take this line of thinking, as it has evidence for it, provided by journalist George Knapp’s submission to the Congressional Record about how he, shall we say, escorted secretive government documents out of the collapsing Soviet Union detailing “likely the largest UFO study ever conducted with the use of government funds.”

If China and Russia have tech that can evade America’s advanced defense systems at our most important airbases, where is it? Why isn’t someone making quadrillions of dollars off it? The odds for “it’s China or Russia with earthly tech the US doesn’t have” are infinite, there is a better chance that I am from Jupiter. The folks claiming it is Russia and/or China may want to think through the logic of that assertion based on what the US says about these “drones” it can’t catch or identify, and how it might align with the longstanding allegation that there are crashed UFOs being retrieved around the world, an allegation made by people ranging from alleged whistleblowers under oath with vetted military credentials to the sixth man to ever step on the moon.

They’re Us

Odds: +800

On the one hand, it makes no sense that some of our most sensitive airbases would be publicly acknowledging “unknown drone” incursions done by the United States. It’s embarrassing enough to admit you don’t have control of your own airspace above nuclear weapons and next to the CIA, but to have it be your own military and/or contractors doing things you were unaware of? Man, that’s bleak collapsing empire stuff.

But I also can’t help but wonder if that is the direction my source pointed me in with Plant 42, and that they openly spoke to me because there is something wrong going on there with our closest contractors. I think the best terrestrial explanation for all these unknown drone incursions is that Lockheed Martin and company have tech they haven’t told the government about, and are testing it on their chief client. But again, rising to the level of constant harassment forcing us to publicly disclose unknowns violating our sensitive airspace doesn’t make much sense. While the sixth man on the moon, seemingly Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds, and every whistleblower coming forward thinks we have this kind of exotic tech, they say it’s not because we invented it. It’s eminently possible that many of these UFOs showing up on radar could be our most advanced tech coming out of Skunkworks and other USAF Plant 42 residents, but it’s absurd to suggest that contractors are the genesis of all UFO reports spanning across decades if not centuries.

They’re Drones From Another Planet

Odds: +300

One of the cleanest theories I have heard in my travels through the Great Bullshit Ocean is that UFOs could be autonomous drones sent out by civilizations to probe the cosmos, not unlike we have done. This provides a compelling explanation for the good evidence we do have on radar and such, while the “it’s all liars, lunatics and three-letter agency disinformation” theory explains the rest of the Great Bullshit Ocean. The answer to who is piloting these could be a computer program, as that is one of the few UFO pilots we can think of who would survive the millions of light years it should take to travel across the galaxy. Maybe those famous grey aliens reported across the world are some sort of robot. Maybe there is no active management of these things, and it’s a passive system that flies throughout the universe and probes what it finds. Perhaps that’s what this 3I/Atlas interstellar object is that Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb thinks could be artificial.

What we know is that mankind’s best trained observers in the air and in the ocean are reporting regular interactions with objects that exhibit flight characteristics we cannot replicate with our current understanding of physics and energy, all while demonstrating no obvious form of propulsion, and our instruments are picking them up too. Something is in the skies and in the seas. Maybe it’s something we can eminently relate to and understand.

They’re a Species Like Us From Another Planet Observing Us

Odds: +600

This is where the active management angle comes in and bumps up the odds, as we enter the realm of the complete unknown. But we can surmise a few things. We’re here. We know the science of why we’re here and why other life forms are here and what elements are needed to replicate the biological processes that affect our motivations and interests. Speculating on a species like us simply requires asking what we would do if we were in a spaceship and came upon another civilization, and the Star Trek prime directive to not interfere is reportedly viewed by government officials as a credible theory around UFOs’ skittish behavior.

Former Delta Force Commander Lt. Col. John Blitch pointed out that when the United States was trying to see if the Soviets were testing nuclear weapons, we would abduct polar bears in the Arctic and run tests on them to see if radiation showed up in their systems. Lt. Col. Blitch says he has been abducted multiple times, and he claims to know about the government’s legacy UFO program that former elite operator Jake Barber says he retrieved crashed UFOs for. Blitch openly wonders whether this traumatic phenomenon he says he has endured is responsible for all the secrecy, because there’s no easy way to tell people that they may get abducted in the middle of the night by creatures from somewhere else.

Taking the admittedly difficult to stomach abduction phenomenon at face value: maybe we’re being studied. Maybe all these UFOs zipping around, showing themselves to us and then escaping the moment we conduct a more detailed inquiry are simply doing what we have done to polar bears and other animals we have investigated. Maybe there is some galactic Cold War taking place well beyond our planet, but somehow evidence of it could reverberate out here and there are folks looking for it. It’s a crazy notion, but it sounds pretty grounded when compared to some of the other alternatives you hear from credible people.

They’re a Mysterious…Thing…That Lives…Here…Kind Of

Odds: +300

What if they’re not like us? String theory is weird, man. But I also think it’s a terrific explanation for how UFOs seemingly defy physics: they don’t! Maybe what looks to us like hairpin turns at the speed of sound that should turn its occupants to soup is actually a clouded look through an interdimensional veil to something that doesn’t look like it breaks physics on the other side. How this could happen is where we venture into the realm of guesses, as it’s called string theory, not string fact.

But it also fits Vallée’s thesis that UFOs, the paranormal, metaphysical, spiritual and all other things many call “woo” merge into one phenomenon, rooted in the very real mystery of consciousness. I can safely say that if you seriously dive into UFO research and you don’t eventually wind up at consciousness like the journalist Leslie Kean did, you’re not cut out to handle how strange and scientific some of the best evidence is.

It sounds impossible to believe, and I still am having a hard time believing it, but Jake Barber and many others’ mounting allegations that there are elite operators in the government who have been trained to call down UFOs from the sky “anytime I want” does line up with Vallée’s lifetime of scientific study. He wrote a book called Dimensions and theorizes that UFOs are interdimensional, but he also wrote about his research into cultural lore and how things like old Irish Fairy abduction tales map similarly on to modern UFO abduction stories. The late 1800s mystery airships are quite strange when compared to the sleek look of UFOs in the atomic era, a kind of consistent pattern seemingly reflecting our culture back at us that led Vallée to believe that UFOs have a “psychic” quality to them. His vast database of cultural lore and UFOs has led him to conclude that consciousness is very strange, and tugging on that thread so far has revealed the best scientific explanation for whatever the hell UFOs are. Barber says his new Skywatcher program is an attempt to produce a peer-reviewed scientific paper demonstrating this supposed psychic ability, and a lot of the credibility of this line of thinking currently rests in his team’s hands.

If true, it would also explain the secrecy around it. The implications of Barber and Vallée’s claims are pretty staggering, as they potentially validate the psychic era of CIA study the CIA claimed they got nothing out of. If the human mind is far stranger than we have been led to believe, and we have supposedly known this for decades, that is a worldwide epistemological shock that has vast implications for religion, science and society writ large. How do you even introduce people to the idea that they could potentially call down UFOs from the sky with their mind?

But questions like these are where a lot of the best investigation and scientific study has led, and UFOs might be a lot stranger than we think. It’s natural to look at a UFO and accept it is like looking in the mirror, seeing another society driving what Vallée has termed “an interstellar SUV” doing things we can recognize ourselves doing with that kind of technological power. It’s quite another to ponder a force interacting with humanity through the strangeness of consciousness, and to such a consistent degree throughout history that it convinced Vallée to theorize that UFOs are some sort of “control system” for society. But there is good news for those of us whose brains hurt, as Vallée often jokes that he is the only UFOlogist who does not know what they are, which is why I’m still giving his theory developed over decades plus odds.

They’re Us from the Future

Odds: +5,000

Time is weird, man. Not necessarily as strange as consciousness, but this is a theory gaining some acceptance within more respected UFO circles. It’s too weird to be a three-letter agency disinformation plant, and while this theory has far less scientific data at the base of it than the ‘it’s something tied to the consciousness we’re tied to’ track that Vallée and others have taken, there is one model from Montana Tech anthropology professor Michael Masters that fits in pretty well with a famed figure in cultural lore.

I have always found it curious how people’s descriptions of the classic grey alien looked so human, but just different enough to make it look eerily foreign. Whether our skulls and eyes will eventually expand to the degree that Professor Masters’ model believes is up for future, potentially grey-like humans to assess and only for us in the present to speculate about. Why future humans would be unlocking time travel to come back to seemingly mess with a younger version of us leads us back into the dark room of guesswork, but given **gestures everywhere** I don’t think suggesting that this is a moment to come back and study how we did not avert some sort of future-altering calamity is unreasonable.

They’re a Hostile Species Towards Us

Odds: +4,000

Luis Elizondo wrote in his book Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs, that speaking as a former counterintelligence officer who served in Iraq, what he observed UFOs doing as Director of AATIP, the Pentagon’s UFO study office, was similar to what he would do prior to invading a town during the war. Survey it. Prod its defenses. Scope out every detail you can find so that when it’s go time, your people know the layout of the land like the back of their hand. He says it’s a central part of what drives him as a whistleblower, that his intelligence officer training is telling him we may be on the precipice of disaster, and no one seems to be doing anything about it.

They’re a Friendly Species Towards Us

Odds: +2,000

This circles back towards Vallée’s “control system” explanation for UFOs. They seem to leave us with just enough clues to demonstrate that there is some kind of contradiction there, but dart away before the mystery can be revealed, forcing us to rack our brains to figure out what the hell just happened. People like Vallée have drilled down on many different scientific concepts to try to apply varying theories to these observed and documented phenomena, and to my eye, it all has the oeuvre of a teacher. Expanding to the religious and more socially acceptable explanations for the unknown buttresses this theory, as well as the study of consciousness advancing alongside the study of UFOs the last few decades. There are very strange aspects of the world that we understand that this phenomenon exhibits like the observer effect, and suggesting that all this mystery is done in service of aiding our cognitive development feels more credible to me than the fear that a civilization would undertake the gargantuan task to travel across the cosmos just to wipe out a bunch of apes throwing dildos on women’s basketball courts.

They’re an Indifferent Species Towards Us

Odds: +400

They zip in and out of our most sensitive airspace with impunity, and as AAWSAP documented, have carelessly and very seriously harmed humans who got close to them. The theory that compels me the most is that any species so advanced as to build UFOs would likely look at our 5,500 years of written history the same way we look at an anthill.

I believe that skittish UFO behavior in the air and sea suggests that earth and all its majesty is the real prize here. Our solar system sits out in the relative boonies of the Milky Way, and maybe it’s some sort of weigh station. We have an abundance of resources, and so perhaps all these flashes of otherworldly technology are momentary glimpses of a galactic central station where truckers from other civilizations stock up on their way to their next destination. There are plenty of eminently credible possibilities where the UFO phenomenon winds up that have nothing to do with us.

It’s Almost All of the Above

Odds: +150

It is bullshit. It is fraud. It is disinformation. But it is likely what it looks like too, where unknown things are doing whatever they want in the sky and crashed unknowns from around the world have fallen into the hands of “private persons or entities” as Chuck Schumer’s UAP bill says. If there are things crashing here, then someone or something is piloting them. Vallée believes the “control system” theory is the best explanation, but he doesn’t discount that there could also be interstellar SUVs from other planets visiting us. If you accept that one species could make it here from other planets, then it’s likely that more than one could do it.

Which would mean it’s reasonable to suggest we’d have a constellation of competing interests around these civilizations visiting our solar system. Maybe some do want to study us. Maybe others want to help us. Perhaps most could care less about us, while others see us as a nuisance destroying a planet they find valuable. Maybe there are some psychic “woo” aspects to this, where some kind of scientific mystery rooted in consciousness binds both us and them with something behind a veil that a materialist view of the world can’t quite grasp. Every time mankind points our newest telescope in the sky, we find that the universe is larger and more complex and awe inspiring than we were previously led to believe, and I think a similar dynamic maps on to this UFO subject.

It would also help explain the secrecy, in that the complexity of this diversity of unknowns makes it impossible to coherently disclose. If there are a jumble of civilizations, automated drones, our own UFO-adjacent tech, and extensively weird aspects of consciousness behind the UFO phenomenon, how do you even begin to explain to people what the fuck is going on? Who would even have the authority and trust to tell us?

Famed UFO reporter George Knapp says that in all his decades digging into this, he’s never talked to anyone who thinks they know everything about the UFO issue. It is the ultimate elephant, and humanity is the blind man trying to figure out what it is. We don’t know for certain, we do have a lot of theories, some stemming from clear disinformation efforts, others total bullshit, but many persist because good, yet incomplete, evidence on this mystery exists. As I have theorized before, UFOs are clearly real, they’re likely just not everything we’ve been led to believe.