The current fear of mass sightings of drones over the United States can be understood through the lens of social psychology. US history is full of similar waves of mass sightings of all kinds of strange creatures and unusual things, as well as reports of UFOs. Many years ago, I completed my master’s thesis on the history of UFO waves and related phenomena. As a result, my eyes were opened to a range of fears caused by similar psychological processes.
Let’s start with the fear of drones. The United States has experienced dozens of similar scares from unidentified flying objects (UFOs) over the past 130 years. Here are just a few.
1915, Eastern Canada: Between 1915 and 1917, there were a series of phantom aircraft sightings by rumored German sympathizers in the United States, who conducted aerial reconnaissance missions as a prelude to an eventual attack. It is said that Sir Courtney Bennett, the British Consul General in New York, said that in 1915, thousands of highly trained German-Americans were drilling at Niagara Falls and Buffalo, and the invasion of Canada from northwestern New York state. He incited fear by making sensational claims that he was planning to do so. .
1916, Delaware, New Jersey, and Washington, DC: A series of mysterious plane sightings are reported amid claims that German secret agents are targeting military installations and government agencies. Popular books such as The German-American Conspiracy in America by William Skaggs and The German-American Conspiracy by Frederick Weill suggest that the main targets of such operations were military forces along the East Coast near Europe. This fueled rumors that it was a military base.
1917, New Hampshire: Numerous sightings of mysterious lights over the strategic naval base at Portsmouth raise fears that German agents are spying in preparation for an attack. A week after America entered the war in April 1917, two National Guardsmen from the 6th Massachusetts Infantry near Portsmouth opened fire on a mysterious aerial light believed to be of German origin.
1947, United States: Reports of “flying saucers” abounded that summer after Kenneth Arnold, an Idaho businessman, spotted nine disc-shaped objects while flying over Washington state.
1974, Midwest: A series of “cow mutilation incidents” coincided with a series of UFO reports.
The phantom airplane that caused fear during the war was almost certainly not an airplane at all. Airplanes at the time were crude devices and dangerous to fly, especially at night. It was impossible to take off and land from a secret base in the mountains and remain in the air for hours at a time. Most of these wartime sightings coincided with the appearance of Venus, or were fire balloons similar to today’s Chinese lanterns that were later discovered nearby.
When Kenneth Arnold was interviewed after the 1947 sighting, he told a reporter that the crescent-shaped object he had spotted moved “like a saucer when it flew over water.” Journalists mistakenly wrote them as “saucer-like”, which led to a spate of reports of “flying saucers”.
During the 1974 “cow mutilation” and UFO wave, media coverage of farmers finding mutilated cows and nearby UFO sightings assumed great importance. Such claims are meaningless, considering that there are always mysterious objects in the sky, from Venus to small airplanes. Dramatic media coverage made residents more aware of dead cows and aerial lighting.
After all, several studies of cattle mutilation, including one by a former FBI agent, concluded that the animals died of natural causes and were attacked by predators such as buzzards, black flies, and coyotes. Their wounds gave the impression of surgical incisions, as they tended to feed on exposed areas such as eyes and genitals.
There are several contributing factors to these fears, which are similar to the mass sightings of Bigfoot, the Chupacabra, and the Loch Ness Monster. These waves were usually caused by sightings that received sensational media coverage. This led readers to scrutinize environments such as lakes, forests, and skies for evidence of the reported objects and creatures.
There are always strange objects swimming or floating in the lake, moving through the forest, and rustling in the bushes. Usually we don’t pay much attention to it. However, prompted by media coverage, people tend to notice what has always been there.
New Jersey is home to one of the world’s busiest air routes. And human perception, like the brain, is notoriously unreliable. We tend to see what we expect.
In this respect, to believe is to see. The brain is wired to connect the dots and create meaning where there is none. face of mars. An image of Jesus on a tortilla. Add fear of nefarious foreigners such as Iranians and Chinese people, along with widespread distrust of governments and politicians, and you have a recipe for drone phobia.
In the words of Carl Sagan, “When people have strong emotions, they tend to deceive themselves.”
