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December 16, 2024 - 12:00pm
The great American panic over unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) continues. Originally centred on New Jersey, reports of strange lights in the sky — mostly assumed to be drones — have spread to other parts of the United States, including Texas and Florida.
As Tom Rogan explains for UnHerd, these craft are almost certainly of terrestrial origin, but by playing down public concerns the US authorities haven’t done the best job of calming the nation. Nor has the President-elect, Donald Trump. Referring to what he calls the “mystery drones” — his advice is to “shoot them down”.
There is a danger of this story spiralling out of control. Take, for instance, the widely-shared image of a glowing ball of light. This one really does look extraterrestrial, which, indeed, it is — because, as Liv Boeree points out, it’s just an out-of-focus shot of a star or planet.
But before the misinformation bores show up to blame the whole thing on social media, it’s worth recalling that all this has happened before. I’m not talking about the UFO crazes that started in 1947 and have continued ever since, but the phantom airship sightings of the late 1890s. This was huge news at the time, but is largely forgotten today.
It all began on 17 November 1896, when the citizens of Sacramento, California saw a bright light and a shadowy shape moving across the darkened sky. Some witnesses reported hearing voices coming from above — presumed to be the pilots of the mysterious craft. What followed was a wave of similar tales spreading from the West Coast all the way inland to Chicago. These continued for months, each breathless report feeding the next.
The parallels to the current phenomenon are intriguing. Then, as now, there were loud condemnations of “yellow journalism” and public gullibility. Many of the sightings were assumed to be (and probably were) ignorant misidentifications or deliberate hoaxes. In a minority of incidents, there were wild claims of alien involvement. That said, the main focus of the panic was on a technology that actually existed.
The first manned hot air balloon rose from the ground in 1783. The first powered airship to stay successfully aloft did so in 1852. It wasn’t until the First World War that airships were used to bomb civilian populations, but the panic of 1896 — no matter how inaccurate in its specifics — was clearly prophetic. The American public were right to look up and shudder.
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SubscribeI think they may well be right. Something is going on and for the government to claim it has no idea is absurd.
I’ve observed over many years that most UFOs etc turn out be pigs.
This isn’t 1896. We have the capability of determining what these things are.
More and more people will look to the skies now and see more drones in more states. Its just mass hysteria about nothing.
Something similar happened worldwide in the 1950s when people were seeing flying saucers hovering overhead every night. Nuts.