From the “Ethically Dubious” file, which is in the “What could possibly go wrong?” filing cabinet, comes the news that researchers have grown mouse embryos outside of a mouse womb and kept them growing for 12 days – which would be about the length of the first trimester for a human embryo. Speaking of human embryos – the researchers are already discussing growing them outside of the womb for much longer than the few days embryos grow at invitro fertilization clinics before being implanted in a mother or destroyed. Is this the start of a brave new world, the end of ethics, the plot of the ultimate dystopian horror movie … or something far more unimaginable?

“It’s not only about being able to grow [mouse] embryos, but being able to manipulate them.”

If you picked “far more unimaginable,” you’re probably right. Jacob Hanna at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, is the senior author of the mouse-embryo-growing-in-a-jar study accepted for publication in the journal Nature Research and the purpose was not just to see if it could be done but to play/experiment with the embryos. Mice have a 20-day gestation period, so the 12 days in a jar was enough for them to grow tissues and organs – and be observed by researchers doing little more than peering through the glass. In fact, the only thing stopping the mouse embryos from growing to term in the jar of liquid nutrients was the lack of a blood supply to their hearts. Hanna told MIT Technology Review that he’s not interested in going to term – his goal is “to watch and manipulate early development.” One idea is to introduce viruses such as Zika, to learn how exactly they harm the fetus. That’s fine for mice (but not for animal rights activists) but Hanna wants to go beyond mice to … human embryos.

HANNA, ET. AL./WEIZMANN INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE/YOUTUBE/SCREENSHOT

“Once the guidelines are updated, I can apply, and it will be approved. It’s a very important experiment. We need to see human embryos gastrulate and form organs and start perturbing it. The benefit of growing human embryos to week three, week four, week five is invaluable. I think those experiments should at least be considered. If we can get to an advanced human embryo, we can learn so much.”

(Insert screams here.)

Hanna recognizes and respects the so-called 14-day rule – an unwritten guideline for embryologists which keeps them from growing human embryos more than two weeks. However, the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) wants to allow for a much longer term and that’s what Hanna is waiting for. He told MIT Technology Review he wants to conduct experiments where human embryos could be altered to limit their potential to develop fully – for example, by installing genetic mutations in a calcium channel to prevent the heart from ever beating.

Is Jacob Hanna making plans to help humankind through science … or is he a mad scientist helping to make a new kind of human? A little of both? One thing is for certain – he’s not alone in this thinking. And one other thing is probable – this is already being done somewhere else.

Do you want this brave new world? What could possibly go wrong?

UFO abductees come in all flavors. Some are highly respected or educated people who seem to have impeccable credentials, some are from more questionable sources. Some come from those who have stories that seem to follow some rational internal logic, while others fly right off the charts into the realm of the completely outlandish. Certainly some reports are way off the meter when it comes to pure bizarreness, and one of these is the time a farmer says he was whisked away to Mars, the Moon, and Venus by aliens.

The man named Buck Nelson was once pretty much a nobody. Born in 1895, he lived on his rural farm in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri, and there wasn’t really much that was remarkable about him. That is, until 1954, when one evening would turn his mundane world inside out. On this night he was out at his farm when his radio began acting up, changing channels on its own and turning on and off. As he tinkered with the radio trying to fix it, his dog began barking uncontrollably outside. The animal was apparently going absolutely nuts, so he went out to see what was going on and was startled by three disc-shaped crafts hovering in the sky above, one large one and two smaller ones. The startled farmer then tried to signal these crafts with his flashlight, and that was when he claimed to have been hit with a beam “much brighter and hotter than the sun.” This apparently did not hurt him, but it left him paralyzed and unable to move, after which the UFOs moved off into the night.

After this strange encounter, he claimed that chronic back pain he had dealt with for years suddenly disappeared and his eyesight improved, but this was only the beginning of the weirdness. The flying saucers would begin to make regular appearances over his farm, and there would also appear two “friendly human spacemen” who called themselves Bucky and Bob, with a large black dog that apparently looked exactly like a regular old Earth dog and which they called “Bo.” These men claimed that they were actually human beings who had long ago been brought to live with the aliens on their home world and that there were other humans up there as well. The spacemen apparently explained to him that they were from the planet Venus, and they then looked around his house and asked him various questions about his life and stuff. Nelson would say of this odd encounter:

They stayed with me for about an hour and they were interested in everything in the house, especially my radio. When I told them a battery on top of it was for power, they smiled and said, with all this power around you in the air?…they went past a picture of Christ and I asked them if that meant anything to them and they said, “yes, we understand but you people don’t.

Before leaving they told him that they would be back again to take him onto a trip to space. The aliens were apparently true to their word, because one night they took him aboard their spacecraft and allegedly took Nelson on a tour of the solar system. They stopped off at the moon, which was described as a manufacturing base, then Mars, which was colorful, vibrant, and similar to Earth, and then Venus, which was a fantastic peaceful utopia where there was no war or crime. On Venus, they apparently showed him a “book machine,” about the size of a TV set, which you could put a book into and it would read the pages and play music. Bucky and Bob also told Nelson about what they called “The Twelve Laws of God,” which are suspiciously nearly exactly the same as the 10 commandments from the Bible with a couple new ones tacked on, explained that they only used solar power, that many of the Venus aliens and abducted humans like them lived on earth, many in important positions and in the space industry, and that they were keeping a careful eye on the increasing development of atomic weapons. According to them, countless galactic civilizations had destroyed themselves with nuclear weapons and they feared Earth was careening along this doomed path.

Nelson would write of all of this in a booklet imaginatively titled My Trip to Mars, the Moon, and Venus, which includes instructions for building a “saucer detector,” and he also began holding an annual “Spacecraft Convention,” all of which made him a bit of a minor celebrity at the time. He would present many pictures as proof of all of this, and even samples of hairs from the spacemen’s dog, as well as alleged recordings of Bucky’s voice, but they are weak evidence at best. Considering that the spacemen looked exactly like humans, pictures of them are useless, and the hairs of the dog were merely dog hairs, prompting Nelson to comment “Dawgs is dawgs. Don’t matter what planet they’re from.” As for the voice caught on tape, although it is eerie, high and oddly shaky, it still sounds an awful lot like Nelson’s voice. Nelson would hold his conventions and bask in his minor fame all the way to his death in 1982, and remains a lesser known, but very odd feature of the 1950s contactee movement.

Nelson’s story is absurd on many levels. For one, we know now that Mars is hardly colorful and vibrant, that Venus does not have an atmosphere conducive to a utopian life, or even life in general, and it all seems to borrow heavily from the science fiction available at the time from writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and others. The booklet that Nelson wrote is also poorly written, thin on details, and reads exactly like one would expect from an uneducated farmer spinning yarns about aliens. Despite its quirky charm it reads like hack fiction, in fact, yet Nelson maintained to the last that it was all true. There is nearly zero chance that any element of the story is true, but it is nevertheless a fascinating peek into one of the weirder individuals in the contactee scene that was all the rage at the time, and a strange little tale to add to the lore of such stories.

There was a time when I thought it was at least feasible that cattle mutilations might be the work of aliens. That, however, was more than a few years ago. The more I dug into the mystery, the more I came to believe that the subject had far less to do with aliens and far more to do with government activity. Within in the field of Ufology, there is an acceptance that the first real animal mutilation case (as ufologists see it) was that of Snippy, a horse found dead under bizarre coincidences. As the Denver Library state of the Snippy affair: “On September 7, 1967, near the town of Alamosa in the San Luis Valley, Snippy, a 3-year-old Appaloosa, failed to return to the Harry King Ranch where she was stabled. Two days later, Mr. King (the ranch owner) discovered Snippy’s remains roughly a quarter-mile from the ranch house. According to his account, the neck and head had been completely stripped of flesh, leaving nothing but bare, seemingly sun-bleached, white bone, while the remainder of the mare remained unscathed.”

The problem here is not the story, but the fact that the more I dug into the matter of the mutilations, the more I came to find that secret government studies of the United States’ cattle herds had been going on for decades. In fact, way back. The reason: the U.S. government was quite rightly very worried about foreign nations and agents using deadly viruses to bring the herd down and, as a result, cause chaos in America. So, the government – periodically and careful and quietly – ran tests on cattle to see how such attacks on the U.S. were working or not on the poor animals. If that disappoints you, too bad. And if you think that such a thing couldn’t be done, consider the data contained in the documents I’m about to share with you now. It was back in 2001, while spending about in the National Archives, that I found out the extent to which government agencies were secretly tied to America’s cattle.

Bacteriological Warfare in the United States is a fascinating FBI document – declassified into the public domain via the terms of the Freedom of Information Act – that covers the years 1941 to 1950. Notably, of the file’s original 1,783 pages, no less than 1,074 have been firmly withheld from declassification by the FBI. The file reveals a wealth of illuminating and disturbing data on animal disease and death, and their potential, theoretical links to bacteriological warfare and sabotage by enemy nations and individuals. For example, J.R. Ruggle, the FBI Special-Agent-in-Charge at the Savannah, Georgia office of the Bureau in the early-to-mid 1940s, wrote thus to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover on February 3, 1943: “This office has received a copy of a communication from John T. Bissell, Colonel, General Staff, Assistant Executive Officer, Military Intelligence Service, Washington, D.C., dated December 29, 1942, to directors of intelligence in all Service commands…” Colonel Bissel’s communication read:

“It has been brought to the attention of this division the possibility in the immediate future of an attempt on the part of the enemy to plant bombs containing germs or to endeavor to create an epidemic, such as hoof and mouth disease, among cattle and other livestock. It is requested that should any information concerning the above come to the attention of the Directors of Intelligence of the Service Commands or the A.C. of S. [Assistant Chief of Staff], G-2 [Army Intelligence], Western Defense Command, that the same be transmitted by the most expeditious means to the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 War Department.” And what did the government do? I’ll tell you: they very carefully began to take a look at the cattle herd and to determine the extent to which those “enemy nations and individuals” might be. And the secret investigations were undertaken wherever it seemed the cattle were being subjected to viruses by our enemies.

The FBI even found examples of such concerns going back to the First World War: “Anton Dilger, a German-American medical graduate from John Hopkins University, was in Germany when the First World War broke out. He offered his services to the Kaiser, and was promptly detailed by Colonel Nicolai to do secret service work in the United States. Dilger returned to America with a supply of cultures of glanders and anthrax germs. Financed by von Papen, he set up a laboratory in Chevy Chase, near Washington, and started breeding germs on a large scale for infecting mules, horses, and cattle awaiting shipment to the allies. This man then organized a band of some twelve assistants to travel around the country, carrying Dilger’s germs in small glass phials stopped with corks through which a needle extended. This roving band jabbed their deadly needles into the livestock. They also spread germs by placing them in fodder and drink. Thousands of soldiers, as well as horses and cattle, died as a result of Dilger’s germs. At last Dilger revolted against his mission of silent death. He was murdered by German spies a few months before the end of the war. Could it happen here? It did happen here!”

Now, let’s take a trip to 1949. Particularly notable is a July 11, 1949 document that refers to the government’s desire to acquire “world-wide information on animal diseases and animal population” [italics mine]. And, one year later, the FBI was still collecting such data. On October 19, 1950, the FBI prepared a document titled Abnormal Loss of Hogs in Nebraska and Illinois that dealt with an unusually high number of hog deaths in the aforementioned states – as a result of cholera. The files, however, make it clear that, in official, FBI quarters, the nature of the animals’ deaths had been viewed with deep suspicion. It was concluded that the deaths were due to a “variant virus” or “atypical virus”” that stemmed from “local conditions and the physical conditions of the hogs.” The important factor, however, is that this document was found within a file specifically focused upon bacteriological warfare. In other words, the FBI was still looking closely at any and all animal deaths that might not have wholly conventional explanations.

So, we’ve seen that government concerns went back the First World War. Then, in the late 1940s the secret investigations were still going on. And, as was shown above, secret investigations of hogs in the 1950s took place. Then, a decade later, cattle mutilations began. I could have made this article at least a 4-part one, such is the sheer number of documents now available on the subject (if you know where to look). There are thousands and thousands of pages. Had cattle mutilations suddenly surfaced out of nowhere in 1967, I might be a bit more open to the alien angle. The fact is, though, that covert studies of America’s cattle have been going on for around a century. Sometimes with the bodies of the dead left where they were covertly studied. Add to that a bit of government disinformation to the effect that all of this is due to aliens, then it’s very easy to see how government agencies were able to undertake their secret studies and with the real (and far more disturbing) story kept hidden.

RELATED VIDEOS, selected and posted by peter2011

Something strange is happening in the skies over Malargue, Argentina – multiple UFO sightings have occurred there recently and the Argentine media is covering them in a way U.S. ufologists should be jealous of. What are these UFOs, what is attracting them to Malargue and why isn’t the U.S. media reporting on them? Could it have something to do with the space observatories there?

“Some friends from Alvear pedaled through the area of the Castles of Pincheira in Malargüe. They took several photos of the landscape, and in one, this appears.”

“This” is a UFO photographed and posted on Facebook by Lucio Aguirre. Grupo La Provincia posted the photograph, remarks that it looks like a “flying saucer” and points out that this “is the third time in the year that a similar case occurs in the same Mendoza department, and locals say it is a “common area for UFO sightings”.” That’s understandable, since Argentina is a common country for UFOs. (More on that in a minute.) Aguirre writes that his group was cycling “through the area of the Castles of Pincheira in Malargüe.” This is in west-central Argentina near the Chilean border – a beautiful area with gorgeous scenery that attracted their eyes more than the “flying saucer” he found later in the photos … if indeed that’s what it was. A common comment was “lens smudge” or a thrown rock, which are certainly possibilities … if this wasn’t a UFO hotspot.

“In mid-January of this year, Daniel Castillo, from Salta who was traveling to Neuquén, took some photos at a viewpoint on Cuesta El Chihuido in the southern department. Then when reviewing the images, he noticed a UFO coming out.”

Cuesta Del Chihuido is also in Malargüe, and Malargüe Ardiario reported on that January sighting, along with magnifying the photo and pointing out what looks like its shadow on the ground below it. Radio Mitre reported on a train of lights in February 2021 that was identified as Starlink satellites. In April of 2020, two women driving towards Malargüe called the police to report a UFO that frightened them. Fortunately, they recorded it and shared it with Malargüe a Diario and El Ciudadano (watch it here).

“The object consisted of very strong lights that, at times, were turned off. In addition to following them along the route, he changed colors, made sudden movements and accompanied them from the side. Although the video is not of good quality, the frightened women can be heard in it and it is striking that only that light was seen in the sky.”

Malargüe is home to the Pierre Auger Observatory, an international observatory searching for ultra-high energy cosmic rays, and the European Space Agency’s deep space ground station, part of its ESTRACK network. Are these what is attracting UFOs to Malargüe? The city has a small airport and is also infamous for the 1972 crash in the Andes of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, whose survivors resorted to cannibalism until they were found – a story told in “Alive” and other movies.

Or is it just Argentina? In March 2021, UFO hunters made a concerted effort to identify a mysterious UFO over Pie de Palo. In February, an “inverted walnut” UFO was seen by multiple witnesses in in Roque Pérez. Both of these locations, like Malargüe, are being referred to as “UFO hotspots.” Is it individual cities or the entire country that’s a hotspot? We could go on and on about Argentine UFOs because there are so many sightings there – enough that eliminating the lens smudges, rocks, bugs, birds and other non-UFOs doesn’t solve them all. It has to be more than just opportunities for repairs and refueling at gold, silver and other mineral mines in the mountains.

Do aliens like to tango? Until we have a reason, this writer is going with that.

The late Stephen Hawking managed to live a long (for his condition) and certainly fulfilling life after being diagnosed and ultimately debilitated by the motor neuron disease (MND) amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) – with the help of a speech generating device, a sophisticated wheelchair and the help of many friends. Peter Scott-Morgan also has motor neuron disease, but he’s gone a big step further that Hawking by making the decision and the necessary surgical changes to connect to machines and become what he calls the first human cyborg. The process, begun in 2019 just two years after his diagnosis, has reached the point where he’s announced to the world that he’s now Peter 2.0. Is he really a human cyborg?

“In short, as a transitioning cyborg my overall quality of life is exceptional,’ he said. ‘I have love, I have fun, I have hope, I have dreams and I have purpose and did I mention, I’m still alive. Really alive, not just one of the living dead, not just surviving, thriving. So when you ask the best thing in the last four years, not being dead is right up there.”

Scott-Morgan is more than “not dead” – the world-renowned roboticist is a living advertisement for the technology he has developed, along with the risky and controversial surgical decisions he has made in order to use much of it. He describes the steps in great detail in his new autobiography “Peter 2.0,” which was recently serialized by The Daily Mail. Those include a gastrostomy, a cystostomy and a colostomy all performed in a single operation so that tubes and devices could take over the functions of his stomach, bladder and colon. After training a computer to mimic his voice, he said his last words and received a laryngectomy (removal of the voice box) to prevent saliva from entering his lungs. Laser eye surgery improved the vison he needs for seeing the computer and eye-movement-controlled devices. And he was able to record a library of facial expressions while he could still make them which are now a realistic avatar.

The scientist remains determine to use technology to transform his body before being 'locked in' by the condition

While his partner of 45 years, Francis, is indispensable both physically and emotionally, his true inspiration comes from a surprising source.

“For one simple reason, all my early science education game from Doctor Who and Star Trek. Every week I learned if you’re smart enough and brave enough and have access to enough super cool technology then whatever the odds you can change everything.”

All of this work to build Peter 2.0 is not just to save Peter 1.0 – it’s to help others with motor neuron disease and other debilitating conditions. He’s starting with his voice simulator, which actually allows him to speak in any language.

“Building on the research we conducted to create my Peter 2.0 voice, world-leading @cereproc and The Scott-Morgan Foundation will be announcing a wonderful first – the chance for ANYONE losing their voice to clone it affordably!!!”

CereProc Ltd. developed the world’s most advanced text to speech technology for multiple platforms and Scott-Morgan’s foundation is helping those without his robotics knowledge, support system and financial backing to afford the same tools in a world where medical advances that give people quality of life are not a right but a product with a price that’s usually exorbitant.

“I’m not just surviving… I’m thriving!”

Peter 2.0 is obviously not the end, just the beginning. As Peter Scott-Morgan upgrades himself, he will help upgrade those like him. As he puts it, his mission is “to completely rewrite the future of disability.”

ALL RELATED VIDEOS AND INFO, selected and posted by peter2011

WHAT IS MOTOR NEURONE DISEASE?

It seems that in the realm of UFO sightings and encounters they often seem to be drawn to certain places or regions of the world. For whatever reasons, these mysterious forces seem to gravitate towards certain areas, with these places seeming to boast an inexplicable number of reports compared with other locations. Most of the time there seems to be no knowing why this should be, but in some cases it seems plain that if there are otherworldly forces visiting our planet there is a good reason for why they come to one type of location in particular, and that is nuclear weapons facilities. Rather eerily and spookily, UFOs have long seemed to be intensely attracted to such places, and one place with its share of intense encounters is an Air Force base and nuclear weapons facility in the U.S. state of Montana.

Located in Cascade County, Montana, just outside the city of Great Falls, Malmstrom Air Force Base was originally constructed in 1942 as Great Falls Army Air Base. It was envisioned to be a strategic bomber base for World War II, also serving as a training base for four Bombardment Groups, the 2^nd, 385^th, 390^th, and 401^st, as well as a location for assembling various aircraft, including P-39 Airacobras, C-47 Skytrains, B-25 Mitchells, and A-20 Havocs. After World War II, the base became important as a strategic defense site during the Cold War era, playing an important role in many missions, and from 1959 it became the home of the 341st Strategic Missile Wing and the 10th Strategic Missile Squadron, acting as a base for nuclear ICBM missiles. By 1967, it was the largest in the United States, covering 23,500 square miles, and not long after that it boasted a total of 200 Minuteman II missiles. The base’s missiles were on the forefront of America’s nuclear defense, on constant alert during the Cold War era, and were on a high level of strategic alert and a hair trigger during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet it seems as though there were other forces besides the Soviets that were interested in all of those nukes.

Malmstrom Air Force Base

There have been many reports of some very intense UFO activity at Malmstrom AFB over the years, much of it compiled by UFO researcher Robert L. Hastings, author of The UFO/Nukes Connection, who through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews with numerous witnesses has managed to piece together a rather ominous tapestry of UFO reports from several nuclear-equipped Air Force Bases, chief among these being Malmstrom. Hastings has been researching the phenomenon involving UFOs and nukes for over 30 years, and some of the reports he has uncovered from Malmstrom are sobering, to say the least. One of these people with a tale to tell is former USAF Minuteman ICBM targeting officer 1st Lt. Robert C. Jamison, who says that in March of 1967, Air Fore Security police began to chatter over the radios about a UFO sighting in the vicinity of the base, after which there were orders from their superiors instructing them to get underground if any UFO was to appear near one of the silos, as well as orders to keep superiors informed of the UFOs’ movements, and shortly after this 10 of the base’s Minuteman ICBMs suddenly and inexplicably shut down, which required his team to go restart them. This wouldn’t even be the end of it, as Hastings adds:

Jamison said that immediately after the missile shutdown incident, for a period of approximately two weeks, his team received a special UFO briefing before being dispatched to the field. Jamison said that approximately two weeks after the full-flight missile shutdown, his team responded to another, partial shutdown—involving four or five ICBMs. Prior to being dispatched, Jamison’s team received a report that the missile failures had occurred immediately after a UFO was sighted over the flight’s Launch Control Facility. Jamison recalls that this incident took place at a flight located south or southwest of Great Falls, possibly India Flight, and during daylight hours. Jamison said that he had subsequently spoken with several individuals, mostly missile security guards, who had witnessed various UFO-related incidents. He reports that they were “visibly shaken” by their experiences. Jamison’s statements are important because they indicate that the Air Force was fully aware of UFO involvement in at least two missile flight shutdown incidents prior to dispatching the missile maintenance teams to restart the ICBMs. Specifically, according to Jamison, the 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron undertook certain precautions and formally implemented various procedures to protect the teams’ safety while in the field. In this respect, his testimony is unprecedented.

Were these UFOs responsible for the missile shutdowns, and did the military know about them, hence their detailed instructions on how to proceed? Who knows? It seems like 1967 was the year for these UFOs to be taking a very keen interest in the base, because there were several other reports from that same year. One of these comes from former US Air Force Captain Robert Salas, who says that on the morning of March 16, 1967 security forces reported a red light glowing in the sky near the front gate. This light was soon joined by another, this one white in color, and both of them flew about in a zig-zag pattern. Salas wasn’t sure how seriously to take this report at first, but when another panicked call came in from security who claimed that the lights were still there and one of the men had been injured, after which the call went dead.

Salas immediately contacted his superior, Lt. Fred Meiwald, and as they were speaking a security alarm went off indicating a “no go” alert, meaning that missiles had been somehow disabled. In this case, as with Jamison, a full flight of 10 missiles had gone offline. As this was going on, more security air control personnel were calling in to say that the lights were still hovering around the gate, and then they suddenly sped off, the missiles coming right back online as soon as they were gone. An investigation into the incident by a team of engineers from the Boeing company could find no rational reason for why the missiles had shut down and been knocked off alert, their best guess being that it had been the result of some kind of EMP pulse. But who directed that pulse? Salas was convinced it was directly related to the UFOs seen, but that it was not an aggressive gesture, saying:

They could have a lot more damage, permanent damage, to our weapons systems, and they didn’t. If they wanted to destroy them, with all the powers they seem to have, I think they could have done that job, so I personally don’t think this was a hostile intent.

Another report comes from a Staff Sgt. Louis D. Kenneweg, who at the time of these incidents was stationed at Malmstrom as a Minuteman ICBM maintenance clerk. His bizarre story begins one night as he was driving to the base to report for duty when he saw something in the sky, of which he would say:

As I traveled down one of the roads parallel to the flightline. I saw something that I first thought was a private plane’s lights, blinking. As I watched it get closer, I realized that it wasn’t blinking at all, but zig-zagging. First here, then there, traveling too fast for a plane, then looming over the flightline. I got up late, and I knew that I had little time, but I stopped anyway. I opened the car door, got out, and focused on the lights. I watched it as long as I could, without being late to work. I remember saying to myself that this pilot was going to be in a lot of trouble, coming across the runway, or at least across the Air Force Base property. I don’t remember it traveling that close to me, but I do remember the image of it disappearing in a low southerly trajectory over the [MIMS] hangar. Of course, it was much farther away than it appeared. At that point, it wasn’t ‘blinking’ anymore but had more of a glow. It appeared as a bright light the size of the moon, on a cloudy night, although I don’t remember it being cloudy.

He continued to the base and found it to be in a state of chaos and high activity when he arrived. Obviously, he had not been the only one to have seen the strange object, as the whole area was buzzing with frantic activity, with several large trucks being loaded and missile maintenance teams being sent out into the field. Although no one directly informed him of what had happened or what all the fuss was about, it did not take long for him to hear rumors whispered by the other men. He would say:

The barracks was buzzing. Stories about how when they got to the missile silos and found no damage, and how all the batteries were dead. I also heard a story that UFOs were seen on radar, then they were gone. Our missile sites each had a tertiary power system. The main power source was delivered by Montana Power. Telephone poles, transformers and wire. The second system was the diesel generators, and the third was the battery back-up within the silo itself. Numerous reports came back saying that they had found no damage to the fences, wires, transformers, microwave intrusion system, locks on the three-foot-thick concrete blast doors, or to the batteries. So, no evidence of damage from intruders or animals, lightning or fire. Just three sources of power vanished and the batteries were dead. As I recall, there were other nights where the guys would come back and look a little shaken, all within that same time-period.

In that same time frame we have the account of Airman 1st Class David Hughes, who was stationed at Malmstrom between 1966 to 1967 as an Air Policeman with the 341st Combat Defense Squadron. At the time, he was working at what he calls the “Foxtrot” Flight Launch Control Facility, and he says that on many occasions he and the others would see a strange light in the sky between Choteau and Augusta, Montana, often hovering about near the base and seeming to circle around it. Although there were no inexplicable missile malfunctions reported, it was definitely eerie, and he has said of it:

This light would move at incredible speeds, make right-angle moves, and continue for hours. When seeking further information from wing command, we were often insulted when told it was a Telstar satellite. On one occasion we were told by other friends working in the air traffic control tower at the base that aircraft had been launched to seek to identify a strange radar echo that had appeared on their screens and on the screens of the local airport. This was later denied the next day, but if memory serves, the local newspaper had an story on it the next day. This must have happened sometime in early 1967, or late 1966. All I know is that some strange things consumed our attention many nights while on patrol. We patrolled from Augusta to Choteau each night and frequently saw something that lent credence to the UFO concept. To us, ‘UFO’ simply meant it was an Unidentified Flying Object, either from our military or some unknown source. We never believed the satellite story. However, when we learned that the jets had been scrambled and the next day it was denied, then we knew something was up.

In later years reports of UFOs at the base would continue. From 1975 we have the report made by Staff Sgt. Joseph M. Chassey, a former Minuteman ICBM maintenance technician with the 341st Missile Maintenance Squadron. He claims that in the fall of that year, he overheard radio chatter between Air Force Security Police excitedly talking about a strange light hovering right over the weapons storage facility. The following day he would hear more rumors from a colleague, who told him that two helicopters had actually been scrambled to intercept it, but that it had flown away at high speed towards the town of Belt, only to circle back around to hover over the storage area again, each time speeding away and coming back when the helicopters tried to chase it, with Chassey saying “It flat outran the helicopters. We heard that it zipped out to Belt and back to the base in no time.”

What did this craft want and why was it so interested in that storage area? No one has a clue. In that same year, a Lt. Col. Robert Peisher was advised by the local police that there had been a series of cattle mutilations near the missile sites and ICBM launch facilities, although what connection this may have to what was being seen is unknown. Reports of UFO activity at the base continued on right into the 1990s. In 1992, a base security policeman by the name of Staff Sgt. Joseph M. Brown says that he and his partner were posted at one of the missile silos, staking it out due to an alarm system malfunction that had also knocked out power on the ground. Their job was to make sure the silo was safe until the systems went back online, and they were taking turns on watch. As his partner slept, Peisher noticed a bright white light in the sky, “moving erratically.” The light apparently was lurking about near one of the silos, speeding off and then coming back to hover, which was enough to get him to wake his partner. He told Hastings of what had happened:

This light was doing some wild things in the sky, sudden direction changes, moving very fast, then stopping, then shooting off in another direction. I watched this for about 15 to 20 minutes. I started getting spooked, so I reached out the window of the truck and started banging on the camper shell to wake my partner up. He finally came around the front, asking me what was wrong. I pointed to the light and told him I’d been watching it for around 20 minutes and I didn’t know what it was. He got into the passenger side of the truck and we kept watching this thing doing its acrobatics.

Before long, their radio came alive with security chatter from people who were all seeing the same exact thing. The mysterious object would lurk about the area until the sun began to come up, after which it disappeared off into the distance. According to Peisher, all of the security teams who had witnessed the object were later debriefed and told by their superiors in no uncertain terms not to discuss what they had seen with anyone. In 1995 we have a case from January 20 of that year, when an Alert response Team sighted a light in the sky that they could not explain. They radioed it to a missile maintenance team at a nearby silo, who confirmed that they saw it too. This light was apparently very large, with other multicolored lights along its sides, and described as moving slowly over the missile field. After some time, it moved off into the distance. It would later turn out that there had been several sightings of a UFO in the region in the days before and after this incident.

More recently still is an account from February of 1996 from Tech. Sgt. Jeff Goodrich, who was the Team Chief of Missile Handling for the 341st Maintenance Squadron. He claims that he and his team were working at a remote site called the Missile Roll Transfer Building when they observed a formation of five triangular-shaped objects flying completely silently and in unison near the base, and on two occasions stopping to hover motionlessly. Calls to Malmstrom’s air traffic control tower and that of the nearby civilian airport showed that they had not picked up anything on radar that could explain what they had seen. In the meantime, the objects slowly moved over a portion of the missile field and then continued off into the distance. These reports from Malmstrom AFB and others like them are only the tip of the iceberg, and there have been accounts very similar to these from other Air Force bases harboring nuclear weapons. Why should this be and what do these mysterious forces want? Hastings believes that it is all tied to our leaps and bounds in nuclear weapons since World War II, and that indeed the increase in worldwide UFO sightings in general since that time is likely related to our nuclear capability. He says of this:

Considering these and similar accounts—too numerous and credible to dismiss—I would argue, as others have before me, that the heightened presence of the UFO phenomenon since the end of World War II is a direct consequence of the advent of the Nuclear Age. To suggest that this is the only explanation for widespread UFO sightings during our own era would be presumptuous, simplistic, and undoubtedly inaccurate. Nevertheless, I believe that the nuclear weapons-related incidents are integral to an understanding of the mystery at hand.

Reports like this have come in from various nuclear facilities throughout the United States and paint a rather spooky picture. There definitely seem to be some correlation between UFO reports and nuclear facilities, and it leaves us to wonder what is going on here. Are they watching these places, perhaps from time to time letting us know that they know what we are up to and that they can shut it all down? Or is this all due to some other phenomena, being misinterpreted and misidentified even by these experienced men? It is hard to say just what is going on here, but the fact that so much strangeness in the skies seems to go on over nuclear weapon facilities seems to be decidedly creepy at the very least.

Some people just seem to draw strangeness to them. One area where this can be seen are so-called “contactees,” those unique individuals who, for whatever reasons, seem to attract UFOs and aliens. There are numerous stories along these lines, each more bizarre than the last, and they leave us struggling to know what to make of them. One very weird such case comes to us from an ex-Marine who has been continually visited by alien beings and who says that it is an ominous sign of things to come.

Terrell Copeland, of Suffolk, Virginia, is not the kind of person one would think would make up far-fetched stories. A former United States Marine, he has long been considered by friends and family to be a no nonsense, hardworking and practical guy, not prone to telling strange tales, but this would change starting in on the night of October 24, 2005. On this evening he was on a street not far from the Dismal Swamp when he saw off in the distance about 2 miles away “a massive ball of light” that was at an estimated altitude of 15,000 feet and being circled by jet fighters. As he watched, the ball of light and fighter jets moved off into the distance out of sight. He wasn’t quite able to wrap his head around what he had seen, and then three nights later he saw something strange again over a Suffolk shopping center. He says of this:

I was driving in front of the Fresh Pride grocery center and saw it up close. The light was hovering over the center. I pulled up to the parking lot and was not prepared for what I saw. There was an object inside the light. The light had been an illusion. At first, I thought it was just a stealth bomber, but I realized a stealth wasn’t that big.

Terrell Copeland

He would describe the object as a massive triangular shape that moved very slowly out across the sky. These two sightings would prove to be just the beginning of a series of strange incidents he would witness over the coming years. He began to have numerous sightings of strange objects in the sky, often seen from the window of his apartment, while others seemed to occur mostly over lakes and landfills, which led him to believe they were using these places as hiding spots. Some of these objects he actually managed to film, which led to some bizarre and frightening experiences. One time he claims that he was visited by a mysterious man in military clothes who told him to remove one such video he had posted online, and another even more surreal experience happened after he captured another video on his cell phone from his apartment window and posted it online. He says after the video was posted he woke from a nap to hear someone at the door, and he explains of this:

It was an orb of light. Just a big ball of light. It wasn’t moving. One was solid white. The other was directly across the street from it … up 300 feet above ground and was changing colors very rapidly. I thought “This is … this is not usual. Something’s wrong here. Maybe I am in over my head. I’m not supposed to be looking at this stuff. I woke up from the nap by the sound of someone trying to enter my apartment. And I said, ‘Who is it?’ There was no answer. Still just, you know, you could see the door knob moving and like a scratching at the door. And I keep a firearm. It was on my table. And my thought was to get up and check. But I was in complete paralysis. The only things I could move were my eyes. And I heard a voice through the door say, ‘You don’t need that weapon. We won’t harm.’

After this, he says his experiences began to get more intense. He found he would often have bouts of missing time, that he could not account for, as well as temporary paralysis and occasions in which he was visited be strange entities in his sleep but later be convinced it had not been a dream. He says of one such episode:

The first time was during the last Saturday in February of 2008. I went to sleep on my couch and woke up in a massive dining hall. There were lots of tables. Everything was white. People were eating. They all looked like human beings. They were tucked away in a position that made no sense. It’s not something I would do. The only conclusion for me was that they brought me in and out through the window.

These unsettling incidents came to be more and more common, to the point that he was sure that he was being abducted by alien beings who had for whatever reasons taken an interest in him and wanted to study him. Sometimes he would remember what happened clearly, at other times is was all blurry and indistinct like a half-remembered dream, whereas many times he remembered almost nothing at all. He tried keeping a sort of dream journal, jotting down whatever he could remember in the wake of these odd encounters. He would say of one such incident:

I was in a room and I saw a woman who did not have complete human features. She had the typical black eyes that you hear about. She had an elongated skull. And that startled me. And the next memory I have is me standing on my balcony waving at this cylinder-shaped ship.

Copeland began to look into the alien abduction phenomenon and even travelled 600 miles to attend a seminar of people who had experienced similar things to him, which was attended by 1500 people who were either abductees, those curious about UFOs and aliens, or ufologists. It was partly his participation in this conference that captured the attention of The History Channel’s UFO Hunters series, which did a whole segment on his experiences. Host Bill Birnes even speculated that Copeland was an alien hybrid and didn’t know it, and that’s why he was being so closely watched, to which Copeland responded, “That’s heavy. It’s not surprising to me, though. After all that’s happened these last couple of years, it could be true.” The UFO Hunters team even brought Copeland to medical experts for testing, where he was found to have an “unknown, rare blood disorder,” whatever that means, which the show claimed was also shared by other supposed alien abductees. As to why these aliens might have taken an interest in him, Copeland can’t really say, although he firmly believes that these beings are monitoring us and are preparing to meet humanity face to face, whether we like it or not. He says of this:

I truly believe that’s what all of this is leading to – a meeting with a biological entity. Every culture from the Aztecs to the Egyptians talks about someone coming from the sky. The information is there for us. Unfortunately, we don’t look at things with a logical mindset. … As humans with modern civilization, we’ve been blessed and think we’re at the top of the proverbial food chain. But that isn’t the case. They will reveal themselves and intervene in human affairs. We need to get off our high horses. People will not take the integration lightly. … They’re going to show themselves. Get ready. You want change? Change is coming.

It is a rather ominous note to end on, leaving one to wonder what sort of change this might be. Copeland seems to be on the surface a very sincere and reliable witness, but one has to wonder just how much of his bonkers tales are true. Is there anything to be learned from this all, and if so, what? If any of this is real, then what are these entities trying to tell us? Your guess is as good as anyone’s, and while we try to figure it all out, similar reports keep coming in.

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