A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact (26 page)

But there has always been a certain percentage of UFO witnesses who experience deep, powerful fear during their sighting. For many, it is the most intense, overwhelming fear of their life. The history of UFO encounters is replete with examples of witnesses who became hysterical, filled with sheer terror. What was happening to them was the shattering of a once-solid worldview, and a sudden feeling of powerlessness in the face of an unknown and alien intelligence. Not everyone collapses at such a time, but some do.

After Disclosure, even the panic of a minority of people will pose a serious challenge to society. If as few as 10 percent of the people have a deeply negative reaction to the news, there will be dramatic repercussions. If that number is 20 or 30 percent, so much the worse. The manner of Disclosure will be all-important, but for some, any Disclosure at all will push them close to the edge. Others will go right over.

It would be nice if the world could plan for this extraordinary event as it did for Y2K, when computer scientists methodically tweaked our technology in preparation for the Year 2000. In order to do that regarding Disclosure, however, it must be handled openly. Books similar to this one can be written, but realistically most people will not see what is coming until it is on top of them. Besides, no amount of planning can conceivably cover all the contingencies. We must expect the unexpected. Exopolitics activist Stephen Bassett once stated, accurately we believe, that Disclosure will “mark the birth of a new world.”
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And how can anyone truly prepare for that?

Reaction will be full of contradictions. Some will see it as humanity’s best hope for survival. Others will see it as a harbinger of catastrophe. Only time and shared experience will allow these two groups to begin to see things through the same set of eyes.

None of this is an argument to postpone the event. Despite what anyone wants, what anyone feels is right, Disclosure will happen. It is only a matter of time. In later years, long after the fact, our memories will recall the frightening, thrilling, challenging, arduous, and momentous time.

The Fire Spreads

For a time, however, people may feel like Japanese civilians walking through the rubble in Hiroshima in 1945—dazed, frightened, and unable to fully comprehend what just happened. The first 12 months will be so challenging because the strife and deprivation that accompany them will largely feel self-inflicted by humans, not the Others.

In the immediate aftermath, the world will go to red alert. People will hoard. It is a natural human reaction, seen repeatedly throughout history when people receive destabilizing news. Workplace productivity will drop for a time, as each workplace will have some employees who will not cope well. Distribution systems will sag. Perhaps the driver who drives the truck to your local supermarket every Thursday has a nervous breakdown, or is hurt in a looting incident. Other drivers will be found, but perhaps not immediately nor reliably.

Store shelves will soon look thin and picked over. Bulk buys will be up everywhere and consumers will stock up in massive quantities, beyond what they have done before. The Wal-Marts and Costcos will hire extra security, issue lottery numbers, and limit purchases. Even so, a week after the announcement is made, most of them will be temporarily closed, waiting for re-supply. The black market on the streets for common items like toilet paper, aspirin, and canned soup will thrive.

The shortages will trigger fear, which will trigger more hoarding and more shortages in a vicious cycle that may last the greater part of that first year.

Panic will express itself in two forms of personal behavior. Some people will pull in, shut themselves inside, watch the news, and wait to see how things play out. Others will need to get out, feeding off the company of friends and coworkers in order not to be alone as they sort out the changes.

Sorting the winners from the losers. The Great Panic of Year One starts the chaotic process. Japan earthquake aftermath, 2010
. Photo courtesy of Kelly Kaneshiro, via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.

If, during the initial announcement, people shrugged their shoulders, they will not be doing so now. Every day will bring a new set of headlines reporting the forward momentum of contact. Even the old headlines, which will still be with us, will be reported differently. The earthquakes, volcanoes, bombings, assassinations, and other calamities will be seen through a different filter.

Suspicion will rule, not merely directed at the government or the Others, but at each other. Today, only a small, fringe group of people believe aliens walk among us. That will change after Disclosure. During the first year A.D., you may be viewed with suspicion by other people, and if you are an average type of person, you might look at your own neighbors and friends that way.

People with second homes may flee to them. As the days turn into weeks, however, they will realize that supplies in their mountain and sea communities are even lower than where they came from. And the news will carry reports of unattended homes being robbed. They will return home to protect what they have and wait it out. If they are not armed, they will pay a premium to get that way.

Sales of guns will be up at least 500 percent from the previous year. The number of arrests for driving with a concealed weapon will skyrocket. Police officers will stop making routine traffic stops because they will not risk getting shot. The number of domestic gun accidents will reach an all-time high.

Because of the initial looting and riots, martial law will be common in much of the world, and some of the largest cities will be first. As smaller municipalities see how it has worked, they too will experiment with it in order to calm nerves, although martial law will undoubtedly make matters worse in many places.

For those who live through it, A.D. will be remembered as a great surprise, followed by an ominous feeling about how deeply the world changed. People will look back at how they endured it all, just so they could return to a good life that they hoped will still be there, much like how an earlier generation viewed the Great Depression.

Cracked Foundations

Like everything else in life, Disclosure will come with winners and losers.

Certain institutions will suffer a loss of confidence, because they either participated in the secret (government, military) or, by virtue of their niche in society, should have alerted the public (media, academia).

Others will have to adjust their business models because they operated in good faith that UFOs were bunk. Now, realizing they were duped, they will have to cope and change. Those sectors include the economy, industry, and the legal system.

These are all familiar institutions that will be changed by Disclosure. There is one, however, that will be unfamiliar to almost everyone. That will be the Breakaway Group. Its members, hidden for so long, will now be exposed. In the immediate world, A.D., these people will be a target for public anger and hostility, the kind previously reserved for arrogant Enron, AIG, and British Petroleum executives.

Government

There will be great fury directed at the governments of the world, in particular the U.S. government. Their salvation will be to acknowledge their complicity and show the public that they are doing all they can to atone for past sins. The path to renewed legitimacy will be to align with the incensed public against the secret-keepers themselves. One of the great issues of the age will be whether this occurs.

Among the many hard questions will be, “Where were our elected representatives for all these years?” We know that most members of Congress were kept in the dark, but that hardly means they should have ignored the signs, the stories from their constituents, the warnings from experts, and the prodding from a few of their own who were laughed at rather than embraced. Instantly, Capitol Hill will come alive with a fervor to investigate.

The United States Senate has never held open hearings on the subject of UFOs. The House of Representatives has held two, both of which were limited.

The first one was initiated in 1966 by House Minority Leader (and future U.S. president), Gerald R. Ford of Michigan. UFOs were turning up all over his state, and he called for hearings. When the House Armed Services Committee convened them, only three individuals testified. All were connected to the Air Force’s Project Blue Book: Harold Brown, secretary of the Air Force; Dr. J. Allen Hynek, scientific consultant to the Air
Force; and Major Hector Quintanilla, Jr., chief of Project Blue Book. As a result, Air Force Secretary Harold Brown announced the formation of an independent review of Project Blue Book and current UFO cases. The University of Colorado was soon contracted to conduct a “scientific study of UFOs.” This was the infamous Condon Committee.

The second congressional hearing on UFOs took place in July 1968 by the House Committee on Science and Astronautics. This was during the final stages of the Condon Committee. This time, six scientists testified and six others submitted prepared papers. One who testified, atmospheric physicist Dr. James E. McDonald, recommended the rapid escalation of “serious scientific attention to this extraordinarily intriguing puzzle.” Another expert, UCLA Engineering professor Dr. Robert Baker Jr., called for a government-sponsored UFO action and investigation team. In fact, of the six scientists who testified, five thought UFOs presented a genuine scientific anomaly that demanded further study (only Dr. Carl Sagan disagreed).

But within months, the Condon Committee concluded that there was no convincing scientific evidence for UFOs, and recommended closing Project Blue Book. When Blue Book was disbanded in 1969, the United States government officially got out of the UFO business.

That is the sum total of U.S. Congressional action regarding UFOs. Most members of Congress, more worried about elections and lobbyists, have steered clear of the topic. During the 1990s, however, there was one prominent exception: Representative Steven Schiff (R-New Mexico).

During the early 1990s, when the Roswell case was resurrected in the public eye, some of Schiff’s constituents asked him to look into it. In early 1994, after continual Pentagon stonewalling of his inquiries, Schiff persuaded Congress’s investigative body, the Government Accounting Office (GAO), to examine Air Force records on Roswell. Shrewdly, the Air Force initiated its own report and beat the GAO to the punch, in which it stated that the crash of a Mogul balloon had caused all the commotion. In a later report, the Air Force announced that claims about seeing alien bodies were probably caused by its dropping of “test dummies” from high altitude parachutes—despite these having taken place in the following decade, and
despite the dummies being 6 feet tall and weighing 180 pounds. The GAO, meanwhile, had concluded that key records that would have shed light on the Roswell crash were inexplicably missing.
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Schiff’s crusade for UFO truth ended in 1998. While serving his fifth term in Congress, he developed a sudden and rapid onset of squamous cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancer. He was dead at the age of 51. Roswell researcher Don Schmitt investigated rumors of foul play, but admits the case is weak. However, one source (well known to the authors) stated adamantly of his knowledge that Schiff was murdered, but declined to name names.
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Perhaps, as files are turned over in those first days A.D., some of them may shed some light on Schiff’s death.

Schiff’s inquiry into UFOs was the exception. In the world after Disclosure, the men and women elected to serve the public’s interests will be exposed as having missed the most important public policy matter ever.

Investigating for crimes. Asking again, “What did you know and when did you know it?” The Watergate hearings of 1973
. Photo courtesy of the Sam Ervin Library (Daniel R. Smith, Curator).

But now, politicians will rally. Scurrying to the nearest microphones, they will condemn being kept in the dark. They will promise congressional hearings. They will allocate money for their own investigations. They will jockey for position to get on the right committees.