Regardless of its past evaluations, the Air Force could be wrong about a number of things. "It can't even guess within a couple of billion dollars what one of its planes is going to cost; maybe, despite the skepticism of the scientists and other investigators, the UFOs sent from other planets do exist and have visited earth" s1"Shooting Down The Flying Saucers," Los Angeles Times, December 15,1959, Pt. Il, p. 5. And maybe they have exhibited some destructive effects, whether or not intentionally in every instance, which we need to consider when drafting a plan for coping with an emergency situation where UFOs are involved. Some of these documented effects are as follows.
The two principal hazards noted with relation to UFOs have been attributed to powerful electrical fields which they can project in a general or localized area and the psychological effects they have produced on the general populace or individual contacts.
The disruption of air and ground travel has often been reported in the presence of UFOs. The ignition systems of auto and aircraft engines have apparently been affected by energized force fields to such an extent as to stop their operation; the headlights and radios have also ceased to function. Here are a couple of examples. In Buenos Aires, on March 29, 1978, "A strange force shut off their engine and headlights of their Citroen CG, lifted it 15 feet off the road, then set it down a minute later and 75 miles to the north." The driver had noticed a yellow and violet light shining in his rear view mirror while driving the last leg of a long stock car race, and he realized that it was approaching too fast to be a competitor. A month later a Colombian bank manager and a navy officer had their car headlights go off when buzzed by a UFO, with the navy man suffering temporary paralysis.
Other South American countries in which similar actions were reported around that time included Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Uruguay s2Boudreaux, Richard. "South Americans Take UFOs Seriously," Los Angeles Times, November 29, 1978. Pt. VI, p. 7. These effects have also been noted to influence the controls and instruments of aircraft, e.g., the pilot of a Piper PH-24 reported that his controls became inoperable when he was approached by three disk-shaped objects, 10 to 12 feet in diameter, over Mexico City on May 3, 1975 s3See note 6, p. 224. Similar cases have been reported by military pilots, illustrated by the classic case of the near mid-air collision of an army helicopter with a UFO on October 18, 1973, over Ohio, where not only did both the UHF and VHF radio wave- lengths go dead temporarily, but the downward movement of the helicopter with its four occupants was levitated upward by a green beam from the UFO in time to prevent its crash into the ground s4Randles, Jenny. The UFO Conspiracy, NY: Sterling Pub. Co.. 1990, p. 105.
In addition to the impedance of radio transmissions and reception, such as that described in the preceding incident, telephone interference has occurred, illustrated by the chagrin of President Lyndon Johnson in having his conversation from the Texas White House cut off while talking to assistants in Washington, D.C. s5See note 1, p. 267. The ability to render inoperable all electronic forms of communications, including those that control the launching of defense weapons systems, has been considered within the range of UFO capability. Whether this could extend to the erasing of recorded computer data such as bank records, personnel data, FBI, CIA, and NSA files, along with critical information of every kind, is not beyond the realm of possibility.
It has long been suspected that UFOs have the capability of blacking out a city, state, or many states by exerting a force field sufficient to overload the circuits of public and private utility installations. "Few things are more disturbing than to be plunged into pitch darkness without warning; it is dangerous for masses of people. It paralyzes cities, blocks highways, stops trains, leaves elevators suspended between floors. In general it simply plays hell with the modern way of life" s6See note 1, p. 255.
You would think that the power companies would have achieved sufficient reliability in their high tech systems that a mass failure such as that which blacked out New York and New England in 1965 would never happen--but it did. Although, as we have mentioned before, it was known that UFO activity was associated with disturbances with compasses. instruments, ignition systems, radios, etc., it was inconceivable that it could also interfere with generation and distribution of electrical power. Such a connection was also inferred in November 1953, when a glowing red object went over a residential area of New Haven, Connecticut, causing lights to dim out on both sides of the object's path and then come on when it went out of sight.
Power failures were also reported in association with UFOs in Brazil in 1957 to 1959~ Rome, Italy, in 1958; and Mexico in 1965. Likewise, in Uberlandia, where the power station operators promptly closed the circuits when the UFO apparently caused them to open, it did no good, and they were unable to restore the power until the UFO departed.
"The Granddaddy of all blackouts to date was the stygian blanket that fell over 30 million people in the northeastern corner of the U.S. during the early evening rush hour period on November 9, 1965" s7Ibid. p. 259. Relay services that were supposed to automatically transfer the load in case of failure in one area to an alternate source malfunctioned. Military communications relying on public power without alternate backup systems also failed, but communications were operable to make a quick public announcement that there was no military emergency. Though it was largely over by the next morning, the official explanation about a malfunctioning small device in a Canadian hydroelectric generating plant never accounted for the failure of millions of dollars worth of electronic devices to shift the load when the breakdown occurred.
Airplane pilots reported that UFOs were being chased across Pennsylvania about 4:30 P.M., and electronics and construction engineers who were driving in the area of the Syracuse airport saw UFOs moving about 5:30 P.M., just prior to the Great Blackout. A veteran flight instructor who had been flying over Syracuse on a training flight saw a glowing globe over the power lines leading to the Niagara Falls generating plant. Hundreds of others saw the glowing object in the sky on the night of the big power failure.
That was on November 9th. On December 2nd, about 700,000 persons in Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico also had their power fail. It was said to have originated in a regular failure in El Paso; then on December 5th, three nights later. 40,000 homes plus military installations in the area of East Texas were also blacked out-- overloaded! Missile grounds (White Sands), Fort Bliss, Holloman Air Force Base, and numerous airports were all blacked out (with no emergency power backup), and this was when President Johnson's telephone call to the White House in Washington, D.C. was cut off. In response to his request for an explanation, President Johnson was told that his calls were fed into a cable system that went dead when the surge of power caused by the El Paso regulator blow-up hit it, and the backup batteries didn't work. Though it may be debatable whether the above cases of electrical transmission failure were merely coincidences with UFO activity, an incident on April 18,1962, involving a UFO that had been tracked from New York, through Kansas to Eureka, Utah, was well documented. The Air Force spokesman admitted that the object had landed, and during the 42 minutes that it was on the ground near the power station there was no power, but it was restored when the UFO left. The object was pursued by jet interceptors summoned from Phoenix and Stead Field in Reno until it exploded over the Mesquite Range in Nevada in a brilliant glare that was visible over five states s8Ibid. p. 269.
The second major disastrous effect that UFO activity, real or imagined, can have on the populace, is the creation of fear, panic, flight, and all kinds of irrational behavior. We have mentioned already the rather well-documented case of hysterical contagion and mass hysteria created by War of the Worlds, the radio drama by Orson Welles about an invasion of Martians. It was broadcast on Halloween of 1938 during the period of the invasions of Germany into Austria and Japan into China. "The drama, realistically presented in the form of news bulletins and interviews concerning an alien spaceship landing in New Jersey, resulted in many kinds of hysterical actions, including thousands of panic-stricken phone calls, wildly fleeing automobiles, and impromptu shot gun brigades" s9See note 4, p. 216.
Though most persons reporting UFOs do not interpret them as personal threats, it is possible that some of the large volume of reports may be attributable to hysterical contagion. In any case, one of the reasons often cited for the tight secrecy on government UFO research findings is the need to prevent the possible panic that a revelation of the truth might arouse. Rumors that people were being abducted, dematerialized, burned, made radioactive, rounded up and impounded, liquidated with ray guns and lasers or shipped off to Mars or Venus might well give rise to fear--fear of the unknown. Hysteria could cause frightened persons to imagine that their water was poisoned, the air contaminated with undetectable but lethal aerosols or nerve gases. With hundreds of UFO squadrons zooming across the landscape from California to New York, Toronto to Mexico City, communications disrupted, widespread power failures, airports and railroads paralyzed, highways turned into giant parking lots of immobilized vehicles full of terrified motorists, the problem of restoring order and sanity would be a tremendous challenge to all of the emergency services, assuming their personnel would remain calm, detached. and able to resist the human impulse to put the safety and well being of their own families ahead of the public's. To make matters worse, some of the more excitable gun owners might be tempted to rush out Rambo fashion, and in utter disregard of the damage that falling bullets might cause innocent residents below their fallout, start firing at the evasive objects regardless of the range.
The force field affects on the physical environment-- communication, transportation, illumination, and computerized data storage--have already been considered. We might have added that some physical effects have been observed at locations where UFOs have landed-- circular patterns of crops destroyed by heat or radiation and baking or sterilization of the soil at the site.
On a more practical basis there may be grounds for concern that more than just the environment can be adversely affected by UFO actions. While pursuing UFOs, military aircraft have disappeared in mid-air, exploded, and suffered harassment. Persons on the ground have sustained serious burns, paralysis, and "blows" from a force field, radiated emissions, or rays and beams that have been described like that of a "stun-gun" s10Blundell, Nigel, and Roger Boar. The World's Greatest UFO Mysteries, NY: Berkeley Books, 1990, p. 175.
In 1980, three witnesses saw a red ball of light hovering above houses in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, when suddenly a bolt of blue light shot down and two houses burst into flames s11Ibid. p. 176. An Indiana man saw a bright light flash pass his window; the power went off in his house so he went outside to investigate and found a brilliantly lit object hovering above him; when he started to walk toward it his body commenced to tingle and he was unable to move until the object disappeared. A similar tingling sensation swept over another man in Lvnn, Massachusetts. one night when he approached a domed object with a red glowing cone rising from a parking lot. He too was immobile until the object moved out of sight. Some believe that even animals may be at risk by UFOs; in trying to account for the death of 15 ponies, the leader of an investigative team believed they were crushed by the anti-gravity field of a flying saucer as it took off s12Ibid. p. 179.
Thus, UFOs may not only have the power to control some of our military and industrial establishment's highly technical scientific hardware, they may also possess the ability to impose pain and control over people who attempt to attack them, even to the extent of "liquidating" them in one way or another.