Do you know any conspiracy theorists?
You probably do even if you don't realize it. They are like a cockroach to the human condition. Undying, often unseen and always so filthy and disgusting.
Which is why I love to mock them. Here I rank some popular conspiracy theories and explain why they are flipping nuts.
Apollo Hoax
What the Conspiracy Theorists believe
Essentially that we didn't really go to the Moon. Sometimes coupled with the idea that maybe the Nazis really did go to the moon and that is why we can't go there now. Another faction think there are aliens up there and that is the reason we can't go there.
The proponents of this idea like to point out discrepancies in photographs and claim it is evidence of fakery. These oddities include the lack of stars in said pictures, a lack of a blast crater under the lander and shadows that are not parallel.
Outside of that all they really have is lots of wild ass speculation.
Why it is crazy
Well almost all of this comes down to the fact that conspiracy theorists tend to know very little about anything.
They claim you should see stars in the pictures. You should not as all the Apollo photographs were taken during the day! You don't see stars when the sun is up whether you are on earth or the moon. They claim you should see a blast crater under the lander when in reality you should not as rocket engines exhaust quite differently when there is no atmosphere. Similarly the non parallel shadows shows their apparently lack of experience with reality. Because in what we know as "reality" shadows are diffuse and conform to the ground they lay on.
Then there is the claim that the Van Allen Belts are some sort of instantaneous death zone. It is not. No one believes this except the conspiracy theorists. And you don't get to invent physical properties to make your pet conspiracy theory more likely. If that were possible you could claim that large stones slamming into the atmosphere at 7.5 km/s will turn into bread pudding and thus the Russian meteor wasn't real because.....well.....no pudding.
Then add in the some odd 1000 kg of moon rocks that NASA somehow has. Rocks verified by microscopic analysis to have formed in an environment devoid of water—something not possible on earth after the late heavy bombardment—and it just kinda really looks like NASA actually went there.
But the kicker is how huge the conspiracy would had to have been. Factor in that every major contractor would be involved (this means Grumman, North American Aviation, Boeing, Rockwell, Douglas, IBM, etc) along with thousands of people at places like the Marshall Space Center, the thousands that worked mission control and the freaking USSR since the Soviets claim they tracked the Apollo missions all the way to the moon listening in on the live audio feed. Add in all the people that would be needed to actually film the hoax on special vacuum sound stages and the number of co-conspirators easily reaches 100,000+ people in multiple countries including some that were essentially at war with each other (can you imagine the UK and Germany getting together to hoax a mountain climbing expedition in 1937?).
Crazy? You betcha.
September 11th
What the Conspiracy Theorists believe
Goodness. Take your pick! Some think that the buildings were imploded but all the hijackings were real. Others think the hijackings never happened either but the plane crashes were real. Still others think that even the plane crashes were faked. And the looniest of all say no one died in any way that day and all the victims were just made up.
The only thing in common is that pissed off Muslim radicals didn't do it and somehow the same George W Bush that let Hurricane Katrina turn into the costliest disaster in US history nevertheless pulled it off.
Why it is crazy
Well for starters there is the fact that the plane crashes were not only seen live on TV but witnessed by several hundred thousand people first hand. Claiming they didn't happen is just looney. Claiming the victims didn't exist is the kind of crazy you couldn't even get out of the dude that rants on the street corner about the ghost of Walt Disney wrestling with blood soaked clowns. So we'll kind of leave that alone.
Now about the supposed implosions. Well, in short they were not. Everything about their appearance looks just like a building failing from structural compromises caused by fire. Nothing about it appears like an implosion except that the building falls down and the end result is a pile of rubble.
Imploding any building is no small feat. Even moderate structures require weeks of preparation. So having an explosives initiated collapse of the WTC would not only require some sort of new invisible explosive device but would require some sort of new invisible installation method. Thinking this is possible is sort of like thinking your new swimming pool isn't filled with water but with a new holographic illusion of water that somehow still makes you wet.
Take also into account that no sign or evidence of explosive demolition was ever discovered in the rubble. And don't give me some line about how they weren't looking for it. You might not be looking for a man dressed as a leprechaun holding a flame thrower in one hand and the severed head of Queen Beatrix in the other while riding a unicorn but if you came across it you damned well would notice.
Oh and did I mention that the collapse of the building was studied by professional organizations in at least four separate countries (including China) and not one of them seems to have a problem with the idea that fire brought the buildings down? Well now I have mentioned it.
"But....Owen the plane at the Pentagon wasn't real!"
Shut it. Why use a fake plane at the Pentagon if you used real ones at the WTC? Oh, and about the non-existent plane...funny how the firefighters took lots of pictures of dead people still strapped into airliner seats. Google it.
Birtherism
What the Conspiracy Theorists believe
That Barrack Obama is not the rightful President of the United States because he was born in Kenya. Other variants say he can't be president because both parents have to be citizens. Yet another variant says he rescinded his citizenship when he moved to Indonesia for a time while a child.
The human like form of pond scum that believe in this abomination of an idea are called "Birthers".
Why it is crazy
Well the two latter theories are not only stupid but lack any legal support. No court has ever ruled that those premises are even correct let alone that they apply here.
As for the original one....well think about it. We are supposed to believe that his mom, Stanley Ann Dunham, decided to leave the United States while pregnant in order to give birth in Kenya for no reason that anyone can explicate. Oh and she did this all in secret because there is no record of her leaving the country during that time period. Sure. I totally believe that happened.
But what makes this extra looney was that there was never anything to even get this started. A long time ago when he seemed to be the imminent Democratic Party nominee Obama turned over a certified copy of his birth certificate so he could be verified. There was nothing wrong with his certified copy. And that isn't just my opinion. Not a single Birther has, to date, ever articulated a single discrepancy or irregularity with the certified copy.
But does that stop crazy people? Nope!
So, despite not having a single reason to protest the certified copy, Birthers demanded to see the "real" birth certificate. Which was not only uncalled for but rather difficult to accomplish as the state of Hawaii doesn't let people take their birth certificate from their records division. Of course being president has its privileges so Obama had some staffers go to Hawaii and scan a copy of the damned thing in order to shut people up.
And that worked about as well as you might expect. And if you expected it to work then you are probably a person who looks at a pen full of barking dogs and thinks that the best way to shut them up is to throw a few feral cats in there.
Chemtrails
What the Conspiracy Theorists believe
Chemtrails are the kind of conspiracy theory that happens when Luna Lovegood (from the Harry Potter universe) has a child with an eco-terrorist who they then torment by punishing it whenever it learns a correct fact. This conspiracy theory is so stupid it is exactly the kind of dreck you'd get if you outsourced the creation of conspiracy theories to a third world nation where science books are banned.
Essentially they think that the government/New World Order/Illuminati/Reptillian Alien Shape Shiffters are poisoning us from the air. They point to contrails behind jet airliners as evidence.
Why it is crazy
Chemtrails are kind of unique in that even if the conspiracy theorists were right it wouldn't matter. Seriously, let us suppose that there really were evil people who had large tanks on jet airliners spraying mind control neurotoxins. It wouldn't work.
You can spray mind control neurotoxins, infertility chemicals or whatever you want from 30,000 feet up in the sky all day, every day, and it won't do a damned thing. It'd be like trying to get a woman pregnant by ejaculating into a swimming pool two days before she even takes a dip. It will work only in the fantasy world of the delusional.
And all that is ignoring the obvious that there is no spraying plot because what they are calling "chemtrails" are actually just good old fashioned contrails formed from low pressure condensation in the wake of aircraft. And in case you think it unlikely that someone would make such a mistake I will point out that chemtrail believers also think rainbows didn't used to exist until someone poisoned our water supply.
HAARP
What the Conspiracy Theorists believe
That an isolated antennae array up in Alaska can perform magic.
Why it is crazy
Before we get into why this is the craziest and stupidest conspiracy theory going at the moment I want to explain what HAARP is. It is essential in seeing just how ridiculous the entire concept is.
Earth has an atmosphere that has been broken up into various layers by those that research it. One of those layers is called the ionosphere. This is a region of the atmosphere about 70km up where the air is thin enough that both X rays and UV rays from the sun penetrate but thick enough that those high energy rays are intercepted. This creates a region of the atmosphere were free electrons are very abundant. This actually allows the ionosphere to act as a giant reflector of sorts for numerous means of long distance radio communication.
Research into this region of the atmosphere is important but very hard to do. It is so high that the air is actually too thin to support balloons but just dense enough that orbiting satellites can't dip into it without becoming smoking junk down on the surface. As a result a unique project was undertaken to try and understand it better.
So the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program came into being. It is an antennae array that projects a 3.6 MW signal into the ionosphere which excites the particles at that altitude. Various instruments then observe the way those excited particles move about.
That's it. That is what HAARP does. It is a glorified HAM radio.
So what do conspiracy theorists think it does?
Got that? A humble antennae array has apparently acquired abilities that even wizards would find farfetched.
Why do conspiracy theorists think this? Mostly because a man named Tesla once existed and speculated on high energy fields that could maybe do half the things they think HAARP does. And apparently to the conspiracy theorist crowd this is all they need. Because, armed with only that, they have gone off and blamed HAARP for everything from the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the tsunami in Japan, the blackout at the Superbowl and, of course, the meteor explosion over Russia.
In essence they have turned HAARP into a physical deux ex machina that they can employ whenever they run into something they don't understand. And that happens a lot. Therefore HAARP is blamed for damned near everything.
But, if it were real......you'd be rethinking giving the HAM club guys a hard time back in high school. Because apparently this is a weapon any super villain would love and they would know how to build and operate it. Which might just put you on the top of their magic, hurricane machine hit list.
You probably do even if you don't realize it. They are like a cockroach to the human condition. Undying, often unseen and always so filthy and disgusting.
Which is why I love to mock them. Here I rank some popular conspiracy theories and explain why they are flipping nuts.
Apollo Hoax
What the Conspiracy Theorists believe
Essentially that we didn't really go to the Moon. Sometimes coupled with the idea that maybe the Nazis really did go to the moon and that is why we can't go there now. Another faction think there are aliens up there and that is the reason we can't go there.
The proponents of this idea like to point out discrepancies in photographs and claim it is evidence of fakery. These oddities include the lack of stars in said pictures, a lack of a blast crater under the lander and shadows that are not parallel.
Outside of that all they really have is lots of wild ass speculation.
Oh, they sent up a rocket. To Cleveland. Or something.
As soon as my update to Wikipedia goes through, this will be canon.
Which is also a type of ballistic.
Why it is crazy
Well almost all of this comes down to the fact that conspiracy theorists tend to know very little about anything.
They claim you should see stars in the pictures. You should not as all the Apollo photographs were taken during the day! You don't see stars when the sun is up whether you are on earth or the moon. They claim you should see a blast crater under the lander when in reality you should not as rocket engines exhaust quite differently when there is no atmosphere. Similarly the non parallel shadows shows their apparently lack of experience with reality. Because in what we know as "reality" shadows are diffuse and conform to the ground they lay on.
Then there is the claim that the Van Allen Belts are some sort of instantaneous death zone. It is not. No one believes this except the conspiracy theorists. And you don't get to invent physical properties to make your pet conspiracy theory more likely. If that were possible you could claim that large stones slamming into the atmosphere at 7.5 km/s will turn into bread pudding and thus the Russian meteor wasn't real because.....well.....no pudding.
Then add in the some odd 1000 kg of moon rocks that NASA somehow has. Rocks verified by microscopic analysis to have formed in an environment devoid of water—something not possible on earth after the late heavy bombardment—and it just kinda really looks like NASA actually went there.
But the kicker is how huge the conspiracy would had to have been. Factor in that every major contractor would be involved (this means Grumman, North American Aviation, Boeing, Rockwell, Douglas, IBM, etc) along with thousands of people at places like the Marshall Space Center, the thousands that worked mission control and the freaking USSR since the Soviets claim they tracked the Apollo missions all the way to the moon listening in on the live audio feed. Add in all the people that would be needed to actually film the hoax on special vacuum sound stages and the number of co-conspirators easily reaches 100,000+ people in multiple countries including some that were essentially at war with each other (can you imagine the UK and Germany getting together to hoax a mountain climbing expedition in 1937?).
Crazy? You betcha.
September 11th
What the Conspiracy Theorists believe
Goodness. Take your pick! Some think that the buildings were imploded but all the hijackings were real. Others think the hijackings never happened either but the plane crashes were real. Still others think that even the plane crashes were faked. And the looniest of all say no one died in any way that day and all the victims were just made up.
The only thing in common is that pissed off Muslim radicals didn't do it and somehow the same George W Bush that let Hurricane Katrina turn into the costliest disaster in US history nevertheless pulled it off.
Why it is crazy
Well for starters there is the fact that the plane crashes were not only seen live on TV but witnessed by several hundred thousand people first hand. Claiming they didn't happen is just looney. Claiming the victims didn't exist is the kind of crazy you couldn't even get out of the dude that rants on the street corner about the ghost of Walt Disney wrestling with blood soaked clowns. So we'll kind of leave that alone.
Now about the supposed implosions. Well, in short they were not. Everything about their appearance looks just like a building failing from structural compromises caused by fire. Nothing about it appears like an implosion except that the building falls down and the end result is a pile of rubble.
Imploding any building is no small feat. Even moderate structures require weeks of preparation. So having an explosives initiated collapse of the WTC would not only require some sort of new invisible explosive device but would require some sort of new invisible installation method. Thinking this is possible is sort of like thinking your new swimming pool isn't filled with water but with a new holographic illusion of water that somehow still makes you wet.
Take also into account that no sign or evidence of explosive demolition was ever discovered in the rubble. And don't give me some line about how they weren't looking for it. You might not be looking for a man dressed as a leprechaun holding a flame thrower in one hand and the severed head of Queen Beatrix in the other while riding a unicorn but if you came across it you damned well would notice.
Oh and did I mention that the collapse of the building was studied by professional organizations in at least four separate countries (including China) and not one of them seems to have a problem with the idea that fire brought the buildings down? Well now I have mentioned it.
"But....Owen the plane at the Pentagon wasn't real!"
Shut it. Why use a fake plane at the Pentagon if you used real ones at the WTC? Oh, and about the non-existent plane...funny how the firefighters took lots of pictures of dead people still strapped into airliner seats. Google it.
Birtherism
What the Conspiracy Theorists believe
That Barrack Obama is not the rightful President of the United States because he was born in Kenya. Other variants say he can't be president because both parents have to be citizens. Yet another variant says he rescinded his citizenship when he moved to Indonesia for a time while a child.
The human like form of pond scum that believe in this abomination of an idea are called "Birthers".
Why it is crazy
Well the two latter theories are not only stupid but lack any legal support. No court has ever ruled that those premises are even correct let alone that they apply here.
As for the original one....well think about it. We are supposed to believe that his mom, Stanley Ann Dunham, decided to leave the United States while pregnant in order to give birth in Kenya for no reason that anyone can explicate. Oh and she did this all in secret because there is no record of her leaving the country during that time period. Sure. I totally believe that happened.
But what makes this extra looney was that there was never anything to even get this started. A long time ago when he seemed to be the imminent Democratic Party nominee Obama turned over a certified copy of his birth certificate so he could be verified. There was nothing wrong with his certified copy. And that isn't just my opinion. Not a single Birther has, to date, ever articulated a single discrepancy or irregularity with the certified copy.
But does that stop crazy people? Nope!
So, despite not having a single reason to protest the certified copy, Birthers demanded to see the "real" birth certificate. Which was not only uncalled for but rather difficult to accomplish as the state of Hawaii doesn't let people take their birth certificate from their records division. Of course being president has its privileges so Obama had some staffers go to Hawaii and scan a copy of the damned thing in order to shut people up.
And that worked about as well as you might expect. And if you expected it to work then you are probably a person who looks at a pen full of barking dogs and thinks that the best way to shut them up is to throw a few feral cats in there.
Chemtrails
What the Conspiracy Theorists believe
Chemtrails are the kind of conspiracy theory that happens when Luna Lovegood (from the Harry Potter universe) has a child with an eco-terrorist who they then torment by punishing it whenever it learns a correct fact. This conspiracy theory is so stupid it is exactly the kind of dreck you'd get if you outsourced the creation of conspiracy theories to a third world nation where science books are banned.
Essentially they think that the government/New World Order/Illuminati/Reptillian Alien Shape Shiffters are poisoning us from the air. They point to contrails behind jet airliners as evidence.
Why it is crazy
Chemtrails are kind of unique in that even if the conspiracy theorists were right it wouldn't matter. Seriously, let us suppose that there really were evil people who had large tanks on jet airliners spraying mind control neurotoxins. It wouldn't work.
You can spray mind control neurotoxins, infertility chemicals or whatever you want from 30,000 feet up in the sky all day, every day, and it won't do a damned thing. It'd be like trying to get a woman pregnant by ejaculating into a swimming pool two days before she even takes a dip. It will work only in the fantasy world of the delusional.
And all that is ignoring the obvious that there is no spraying plot because what they are calling "chemtrails" are actually just good old fashioned contrails formed from low pressure condensation in the wake of aircraft. And in case you think it unlikely that someone would make such a mistake I will point out that chemtrail believers also think rainbows didn't used to exist until someone poisoned our water supply.
HAARP
What the Conspiracy Theorists believe
That an isolated antennae array up in Alaska can perform magic.
Why it is crazy
Before we get into why this is the craziest and stupidest conspiracy theory going at the moment I want to explain what HAARP is. It is essential in seeing just how ridiculous the entire concept is.
Earth has an atmosphere that has been broken up into various layers by those that research it. One of those layers is called the ionosphere. This is a region of the atmosphere about 70km up where the air is thin enough that both X rays and UV rays from the sun penetrate but thick enough that those high energy rays are intercepted. This creates a region of the atmosphere were free electrons are very abundant. This actually allows the ionosphere to act as a giant reflector of sorts for numerous means of long distance radio communication.
Research into this region of the atmosphere is important but very hard to do. It is so high that the air is actually too thin to support balloons but just dense enough that orbiting satellites can't dip into it without becoming smoking junk down on the surface. As a result a unique project was undertaken to try and understand it better.
So the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program came into being. It is an antennae array that projects a 3.6 MW signal into the ionosphere which excites the particles at that altitude. Various instruments then observe the way those excited particles move about.
That's it. That is what HAARP does. It is a glorified HAM radio.
So what do conspiracy theorists think it does?
- Collapse bridges
- Create earthquakes
- Create massive weather systems
- Create droughts
- Steer hurricanes and other tropical cyclones
- Deflect or steer meteorites
- Reverse time
Got that? A humble antennae array has apparently acquired abilities that even wizards would find farfetched.
Why do conspiracy theorists think this? Mostly because a man named Tesla once existed and speculated on high energy fields that could maybe do half the things they think HAARP does. And apparently to the conspiracy theorist crowd this is all they need. Because, armed with only that, they have gone off and blamed HAARP for everything from the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis, the tsunami in Japan, the blackout at the Superbowl and, of course, the meteor explosion over Russia.
In essence they have turned HAARP into a physical deux ex machina that they can employ whenever they run into something they don't understand. And that happens a lot. Therefore HAARP is blamed for damned near everything.
But, if it were real......you'd be rethinking giving the HAM club guys a hard time back in high school. Because apparently this is a weapon any super villain would love and they would know how to build and operate it. Which might just put you on the top of their magic, hurricane machine hit list.
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