What is your "red line" that would make you unambiguously and sincerely say with full belief, "Aliens are real and are or have been on Earth"?

[AllTheQuestionsToday]

I realize in my limited posting here I may come off as a "believer", but if on a 0-100 scale, that a hard zero (I will say unapologetically) is a clown like Phillip Klass who even left it in his last will and testament that no one should ever have confirmation of aliens out of his virulent spite, and a 100 is the sort of person who will literally believe anything that implies "alien", no matter how wildly crazy or improbably... I'm somewhere in the 50-75 range.

Sort of like:

• 0: "I'm Phillip Klass, and you're an idiot."
• 1-25: we're alone in all the totality of space/time. There's just us.
• 25-50: obviously we're not alone today or previously, or in the future, but they sure ain't here.
• 51-75: obviously we're not alone, and there sure is a reasonable amount of circumstantial evidence of Earth and human alien contact... I want to believe in it.
• 76-99: I think they're probably here and at least some of these persistent reports/leaks are 100% true, such as a Grusch or Ariel.
• 100: "By the end of 2027, you'll be seeing things like I do. It's all true. All of it."

I think it's absurd statistically to assume "Earth" is some magical place in all the infinite number of galaxies in space that we are the only intelligent life to ever appear some 16 billion years after the Big Bang. I certainly can't prove they've been to Earth, but something is out there somewhere. I believe the evidence is fairly overwhelming that the US government at minimum aggressively classifies anything that overtly could prove or disprove any such topic to totally obtuse ends, and has for generations. I don't believe the hundreds upon hundreds of leakers and whistleblowers, and multiple witnesses of notable mass sightings like Stephenville are wrong or crazy: we can't today prove they saw a space ship, or NHI controlled space ships, but it seems fairly inane to deluded to say thousands upon thousands or more people over the past century all are wrong, from regular people to various otherwise trustworthy people in their government roles.

On that scale, I'd put myself somewhere around 60-70, and some days I'd say I bump up around 76~. I'm very keen, for instance, to especially read Colonel Carl Knells remarks at the Sol Foundation this coming Saturday.

My soft red line is the US government from the Executive Branch/White House simply saying so, especially if it comes from POTUS. There is basically no walking it back or a "do over" if the President sat at the Resolute Desk says "We are not alone." If and when that happens, it can only happen once, ever.

My hard red line is literally seeing them on standard "TV news" such as live cameras, on something like CNN or MSNBC, with "flying saucers" or equivalent in plain sight in daylight over somewhere like DC, NYC or London, up to seeing occupants get out and enter the White House. I don't need peer reviewed academic journals if we have starships and aliens literally running humanitarian missions, for an example hypothetical, with human media doing a "ride along", or Anderson Cooper doing a "live report" from orbit on a giant ship. It'll be fun to read the rapidly expanding Wikipedia articles (plus seeing the schadenfreude devour the fairly obnoxious and rude "anti-ufology" crowd on Wikipedia) and scientific papers, but that would come later.

So I'm a firm "I want to believe" but want proof, and those are my broad red lines.

What are your red lines, and where are you on the 0-100 scale?

 

[flarkey]

I'm probably around a 30. My soft red line is probably the same as yours. If the President of the USA says they're here, or they have material/craft that they think are from aliens then I'd probably initially accept that claim, but obviously would want to see the evidence. The longer that they didnt show evidence then the lower my belief would fall. But also, if they say they don't have evidence then i'd probably believe that too. I'm not necessarily a believer in the 'cover up'.

For an independant video I think it would have to show more than just a white light in the sky, ie an actual craft with surface texture, and preferably from more than one camera. Plus it would have to be from a news organisation or government agency, not from an individual.

The problem as I see it is that so many 'good' videos of UFOs , that is - videos that appear to be of good evidence, such as Aguadilla, Chile, Mexico, Go Fast, Turkey, and all the Racetrack UAP - just appear to be 'good'. But upon detailed analysis by the right people can be shown to be just optical illusions of prosaic phenomena. We need to have a video of something which not only looks like an alien spaceship, but is unambiguously a space ship. Not an optical illusion, not a point of light in the night sky, not a blob in 420p 20 FPS. Something real, published by someone without an agenda.

 

[Haliate2854]

What a great thread. Great question. I agree with your soft and hard red line.
I am at 25, I think there is "life" out there somewhere, but nowhere near here, nor have they visited.
To be convinced there is aliens, I would need a current government official, speaking on behalf of POTUS, to speak in public and say even something as small as:
"We dont know what they are, or where they come from, but we have confirmed with absolute certainty that they did not come from Earth"
That would be enough for me. Not intelligence, not former officials, it would have to be someone speaking on behalf of POTUS.
They wouldnt need to even say aliens, they would only need to say "these ships were NOT built here"

 

[JimJam]

This scale seems a bit off, just reading wikipedia on Klass it doesn't sound like he excludes the existence of aliens, just that we won't know anything about UFOs, because they aren't on earth

Article:

Klass left this statement, originally published in Moseley's newsletter Saucer Smear on October 10, 1983.[33]

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF PHILIP J. KLASS
To ufologists who publicly criticize me, ... or who even think unkind thoughts about me in private, I do hereby leave and bequeath: THE UFO CURSE:
No matter how long you live, you will never know any more about UFOs than you know today. You will never know any more about what UFOs really are, or where they come from. You will never know any more about what the U.S. Government really knows about UFOs than you know today. As you lie on your own death-bed you will be as mystified about UFOs as you are today. And you will remember this curse.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_J._Klass

Still pretty spiteful I'll admit.

In terms of where I stand on the believer scale I'd probably be around the 30 mark as well, but if you were to split that scale into belief in some life outside of earth I'd sit much high around 70; and that UFOs and extra-terrestrials exist on earth and are causing UFOs I'd be about a 3. (bump it up to a 4 if ET on earth is microbial and unrelated to all the UFO stuff)

 

[deirdre]

0: "I'm Phillip Klass, and you're an idiot."

do i have to think youre an idiot to be a 0? (and klass believed ets may exist way out there, so shouldnt he be like at least a 27 or something?)

 

[deirdre]

but it seems fairly inane to deluded to say thousands upon thousands or more people over the past century all are wrong,

Article:

Do not describe their theory as "stupid", "moronic", "idiotic", "delusional", etc
...
Do not suggest they are mentally ill, or that they need help
Do not suggest anyone who believes in [any particular theory] is mentally ill.

Source: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/politeness-policy.1224/

 

[Arthur 33]

This scale is asinine.

My scale:

0-25 Life may exist out in the cosmos but there is zero evidence they are visiting earth, the physics says it would be too hard to travel interstellar so no point even looking.
25-50 There is some strange observations and sensor readings of objects doing things we can't explain, but no reason to assume ET
50-75 There is very convincing witness testimony and sensor data that suggests we are being visited but I need a alien body or ET craft to know for sure. Needs to be reproducible.
75-100 The evidence is overwhelming, thousands of credible witnesses, and strong historical documentation of a coordinated cover up going back to the 1940's. If this were a court case it would be beyond reasonable doubt that we are being visited.

 

[Rum]

I'm too skeptical of officialdom to accept such an announcement from, say, POTUS, or Antonio Guterres, or even King Charles III. For me it would need to come from someone who has reached the absolute highest credibility a human being can ever attain. So yes, I am saying it would need to come from Keanu Reeves.

As for the scale, I hover (without any obvious signs of propulsion) somewhere in the 34.3 ± 6.1 range. All that I've seen/read/heard has me tending a little lower, but the "I want to believe it's aliens dang it!!!" part of "51-75" kind of skews me some way toward the heavens. Because why wouldn't it? It's the most fun part!

In what feels now like another life I was more firmly in the 51-75 club, but the more I've learned over the years about how much more fallible the human brain is (especially when it comes to how memory actually works, or the way evolution actually favours false positive/type I error interpretations of sensory inputs to some extent) than most of us seem to realize, the less I've leaned toward the "reasonable amount of circumstantial evidence" camp.


(And yes, that very, very human fallibility extends even to those "witnesses" who are counted among the most credible. As someone with a lifelong interest in military affairs I've read/watched/listened to many hundreds of hours of military or former military folks telling their stories and one of the themes it's easy to pick out is that even the most elite, highly-trained and carefully vetted members of the armed forces - your fighter pilots, intelligence officials, special forces operators etc. - are plenty prone to getting things wrong, so even though I enjoy their stories, respect their courage and am super grateful for their service I don't hold Top Gun types up as anything close to flawless in the judgement department, especially when it comes to encountering situations for which they have no experience and for which they are not trained.)

 

[JMartJr]

This scale is asinine.

...could have been omitted without losing anything in terms of quality of your post, I 'd say.

My scale:

Me, I don't have a scale and don't feel a strong need to adopt one. My position is: Insufficient data, across the board. Evidence of aliens being HERE is, I think, beyond weak, and evidence of them being anywhere else is lacking too. (In Drake's Equation, the first two variables look pretty good, the remaining five are unknown. While none of them can BE 0, since we are here, if several of them closely approach 0, we may be all alone in here. Or they may all be high enough that Jupiter's clouds are full of lightning-eating blimp whales and Oumuamua was the first Raman ship after all, 2 and 3 are incoming -- we just don't know.)

My "red line" would be something like a craft or alien found, or clear and consistent (and persistent) signal detected, evidence of which is made public and available for peer review, which it withstands.

I can envision a sufficient mass of evidence accumulating, none of which crosses a "red line," for me to decide on the balance of probability I think we've "found them" and to be at least provisionally convinced. Adding mountains of poor evidence won't get me there (0+0=0, 0+0+0+0+0+0+0+0 still =0!) At the moment I see nothing that does not seem almost infinitely more likely to be prosaic and boring -- with the admission that that's just, like, my opinion, man. But that's what the thread question is, so that's my answer, and I'm sticking to it!

 

[Ann K]

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF PHILIP J. KLASS
To ufologists who publicly criticize me, ... or who even think unkind thoughts about me in private, I do hereby leave and bequeath: THE UFO CURSE:
No matter how long you live, you will never know any more about UFOs than you know today. You will never know any more about what UFOs really are, or where they come from. You will never know any more about what the U.S. Government really knows about UFOs than you know today. As you lie on your own death-bed you will be as mystified about UFOs as you are today. And you will remember this curse.

Content from External Source

The "curse" thing is obviously tongue in cheek. This is a prediction ...and so far the prediction is completely true, and not at all spiteful. Anyone who reads spite into that is apparently short of a sense of humor.

I'm going to go with "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" here. And considering that we have never had ANY evidence that stands up to critical examination, I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for people to come up with the extraordinary ones. I'm going to stick with zero chance of alien visitation UNTIL the evidence shows up. The proper time to believe something is after the evidence, not before it.

As for the chance that they exist on some other planet in some other part of the universe, statistically it seems likely, but (here's my personal prediction for the future) I don't think any of us will know that definitively in our lifetimes. And the earth will continue to spin on its axis without that knowledge. We have quite enough earthly problems for us to worry about instead.

 

[Ann K]

but it seems fairly inane to deluded to say thousands upon thousands or more people over the past century all are wrong

We just discussed this, but you're not paying attention. If there ARE no aliens visiting the earth, then yes, they must all be mistaken. It's that simple. Thousands times zero is still zero.

 

[Duke]

This scale seems a bit off, just reading wikipedia on Klass it doesn't sound like he excludes the existence of aliens, just that we won't know anything about UFOs, because they aren't on earth



Still pretty spiteful I'll admit.

In terms of where I stand on the believer scale I'd probably be around the 30 mark as well, but if you were to split that scale into belief in some life outside of earth I'd sit much high around 70; and that UFOs and extra-terrestrials exist on earth and are causing UFOs I'd be about a 3. (bump it up to a 4 if ET on earth is microbial and unrelated to all the UFO stuff)

Back in the early 90s, I wound up sitting next to a writer for AW&ST on a flight from St. Louis to Los Angeles. Having been something of a fan, I asked if he had ever worked with or knew Klass (who had been a senior editor for the magazine.) The guy slowly nodded his head, then said, "Phil Klass is a SoB, but he's a very smart SoB."

 

[JimJam]

The "curse" thing is obviously tongue in cheek. This is a prediction ...and so far the prediction is completely true, and not at all spiteful. Anyone who reads spite into that is apparently short of a sense of humor.

I do imagine delivery of the curse in the fashion of Captain Ahab "from hell's heart I stab at thee" line. Which I find both humorous and tongue in cheek, but if you are a believer you likely feel spited, and I read a certain amount of intent into that.

 

[Mendel]

This scale seems a bit off, just reading wikipedia on Klass it doesn't sound like he excludes the existence of aliens, just that we won't know anything about UFOs, because they aren't on earth



Still pretty spiteful I'll admit.

Please provide the source for quotes, and quote external content using EX tags:

Article:

The UFO curse​

Klass left this statement, originally published in Moseley's newsletter Saucer Smear on October 10, 1983.

​

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF PHILIP J. KLASS​

To ufologists who publicly criticize me, ... or who even think unkind thoughts about me in private, I do hereby leave and bequeath: THE UFO CURSE:​

No matter how long you live, you will never know any more about UFOs than you know today. You will never know any more about what UFOs really are, or where they come from. You will never know any more about what the U.S. Government really knows about UFOs than you know today. As you lie on your own death-bed you will be as mystified about UFOs as you are today. And you will remember this curse.​

​

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_J._Klass

That prediction has stood up well for 40 years. It has nothing to do with spite, but is a realistic extrapolation of the 40 years that preceded it.

Though it's possible that with the AARO report next year, we'll know that the US government doesn't know anything. But the UFO believers won't trust it, and so they'll be the only ones who still won't know.

 

[Mendel]

Klass's red line, btw:

Article:

In 1966, Klass made an offer that stood for the remaining thirty-nine years of his life. By 1974, the offer had changed slightly, to the following form:

• Klass agrees to pay to the second party the sum of $10,000 within thirty days after any of the following occur:

(A) Any crashed spacecraft, or major piece of a spacecraft is found to be clearly of extraterrestrial origin by the United States National Academy of Sciences, or
(B) The National Academy of Sciences announces that it has examined other evidence which conclusively proves that Earth has been visited by extraterrestrial spacecraft in the 20th century, or
(C) A bona fide extraterrestrial visitor, born on a celestial body other than the Earth, appears live before the General Assembly of the United Nations or on a national television program.​

• The party accepting this offer pays Klass $100 per year, for a maximum of ten years, each year none of these things occur.[31]​

Source: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_J._Klass

 

[JimJam]

Thanks for advice regarding external sources.

I think it's a great curse because it is true and it will be generations before it is 'broken', but I think the act of cursing carries at least a little spite (by it's dictionary definition) with it. I'm not really making a full character judgement of Klass suggesting he was often spiteful, He could have said in his will "my final prediction", this would have carried no spite, been far less funny and been entirely unmemorable and unlikely to still be of discussion today.

 

[Mendel]

I think it's a great curse because it is true and it will be generations before it is 'broken', but I think the act of cursing carries at least a little spite (by it's dictionary definition) with it.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/spite
noun: "petty ill will or hatred with the disposition to irritate, annoy, or thwart"
verb: "to treat maliciously (as by shaming or thwarting)"

If Klass had the power to actually enact this curse, it would be very spiteful, but he didn't (which makes this a prediction in fact). Did it have the capacity to annoy or shame someone? At most, barely.

It's a reasonable prediction, overstated for dramatic effect. It counters those that claim Klass makes light of actual alien sightings, and if that standpoint was true, knowledge about aliens should start to pour forth once Klass is dead. The only way for his critics to still blame that on Klass is a posthumous curse. So he gave them one.

The position that we don't know anything about aliens because Klass debunks every report of them is untenable, and his "testament" pokes fun at that notion. (@Mick West is looked at the same way, he's just more polite than Klass to reply in the same vein.)

Believers: you debunk UFO reports to spite us!
Klass: if I really wanted to spite you, here's what I'd do

 

[FatPhil]

I don't think this neatly fits into 1 dimension. How about:

The diagonal isn't a real cutoff, but the upper left extreme is obviously illogical.

 

[FatPhil]

it seems fairly inane to deluded to say thousands upon thousands or more people over the past century all are wrong

I'm pretty sure that *many billions* of people over the past century have been wrong about all kinds of things. If *only a millionth of those* have been wrong on this particular question, there's your thousands.

 

[FatPhil]

I think it's a great curse because it is true and it will be generations before it is 'broken',

You say that with absolute certainty, but provide no evidence for your assertion.

However, perhaps you are a useful example of a datapoint on my graph at (100%, 100yrs)?

 

[MyMatesBrainwashed]

What's the difference between a 0 and a 25?

Do we really know if Klass was actually in the 1-25? There being life out there and being extra terrestrial life here are 2 entirely different things.

 

[JimJam]

You say that with absolute certainty, but provide no evidence for your assertion.

I don't think we are on the cusp of an ET or anomalous explanation for UFOs, but I'll happily retract that back to a strong belief that thus far it has been true, and a belief that it will continue to be true for a long while. Who knows what the future holds.

 

[Mendel]

but it seems fairly inane to deluded to say thousands upon thousands or more people over the past century all are wrong, from regular people to various otherwise trustworthy people in their government roles.

Aether theory is a historical example of many people, including renowned scientists like Isaac Newton, being wrong. It is ignorant to propose it can't happen, because similar has happened already.

Evidence is judged on quality, not quantity.

(And many of these people are quoted misleadingly out of context.)

 

[deirdre]

Aether theory is a historical example of many people, including renowned scients like Isaac Newton, being wrong

Newton said he SAW this substance? Guessing how something works is not an equivalent.

Ectoplasm would be a more viable example.

To ufologists who publicly criticize me, ... or who even think unkind thoughts about me in private, I do hereby leave and bequeath: THE UFO CURSE:No matter how long you live, you will never know any more about UFOs than you know today. You will never know any more about what UFOs really are, or where they come from. You will never know any more about what the U.S. Government really knows about UFOs than you know today. As you lie on your own death-bed you will be as mystified about UFOs as you are today. And you will remember this curse.

To Metabunkers who publicly criticize me,..or who even had unkind thoughts about me in private, I do hereby bequeath:
THE SKEPTIC CURSE: [redacted]. And as you lie on your death bed you will still be trying to figure out the fix for your internet. And you will remember me and remember this curse.

^Despite being funny and cheeky, that's "ill will" meant to annoy. I dont know Klass at all, so impossible to determine if the spite was very mild or full-on. But imo, the fact that he singled out the [bottom of the politeness pyramid] people indicates some level of [likely justified] spite.

 

[JWrightBrain]

I wouldn't just take the President's word for it. Considering how one former President kept spouting nonsense about how the last election was stolen from him because of a vast conspiracy.

No. I'd believe it when we see the larger scientific community discussing crashed crafts and alien bodies like they do any other topic of study. When papers can be sited and shared then I know it's real.

Or if they actually reveal themselves and visiting alien dignitaries have to have security similar to when the Pope is visiting a city. When it becomes part of life and not a vague whisper with easily falsifiable proof.

 

[NorCal Dave]

I don't know about a red line of some type. I would argue for something much less faith based than it is today. Believers can point to a bunch of people claiming to see things and various videos and photos. As @flarkey pointed out above, many of those get explained if there is sufficient evidence to work with.

Any and all physical evidence seems to be held in secret by the government, or when people like Burchett fail to find the government stash of UFOs, it's because they're all held in secret at Lockheed. So again, the existence of UFOs is faith based.

UFOs are a lot like Noah's ark. The story has been around for centuries in multiple forms. They can't all be wrong. Right now, millions of people in America believe the Ark was real and its remains are on Mt. Ararat. Are they all kooks and nutters or do they just hold a peculiar belief. Are they all wrong?

Since the Turks conquered Constantinople, people have been going up Ararat and finding bits of woods. 20th century expeditions have brought back photos and more wood, but the Cold War kept the mountain off limits. Government cover up. Now that Mt. Ararat is more accessible, more groups have gone up claimed to have found the Ark or at least evidence that points to it. Some were complete hoaxes but some are by actual archeologist from Turkish Universities.

But there is still no definitive proof of the Ark. There are stories, bits of wood, blurry photos, some government cover ups, endorsments from experts in the field, but no real Ark. It's a matter of faith. UFOs seem to be the same thing.

Show me an Ark.

 

[Horsehockey]

I’m waiting for a crash Landing. Any decent UFO has to be a machine unless we end up with this weird theory out of physics having to do with alternate dimensions. I want a silver saucer to crash land (mechanical trouble) in a cornfield and we’ll send both the four surviving alien beings and their somewhat dented up craft on public view at the Smithsonian. Is that asking too much?

 

[JMartJr]

Show me an Ark.

Can't, the "top men" are working on it now...


Oh wait, wrong ark, sorry...

 

[qed]

Nothing short of an anal probe is going to convince me.

 

[Duke]

Nothing short of an anal probe is going to convince me.

For your sake, I hope it's a short one.

 

[Eburacum]

Alien DNA would convince me, I think. Not just human DNA mixed with bean DNA, but entirely novel (yet evidently viable) DNA. For every organism yet encountered on Earth, it is possible to use the mutation rate of genetic material to work out how long ago that organism diverged from the ancestral line of other creatures on Earth. Some organisms, such as humans and chimpanzees, diverged a few million years ago; others (such as humans and protobacteria) diverged several billions of years ago. This is the so-called molecular clock, and it seems to demonstrate that all life on Earth has a common ancestor - and coincidentally, leaves little or no room for any interaction between Earthly organisms and extraterrestrial organisms at any significant level in the past.

In fact, there is no guarantee that aliens would use the same genetic coding system as earthly organisms do, or even that they use DNA at all. If we found alien DNA with a molecular distance greater than the age of the universe, or using a non-standard genetic coding system or different macromolecules to carry information, then we would know that they did not come from Earth.

 

[Mendel]

Nothing short of an anal probe is going to convince me.

Ah, but if they don't have one?
https://www.metabunk.org/threads/bi...n-bodies-ebos-exo-biospheric-organisms.13031/

Excreto-sudoriferous system: This system is completely different from what I've seen. As mentioned earlier, there is no large orifice, like an anus or urethra, to get rid of biological waste. Instead, there are countless small pores on the surface of the skin.

Content from External Source

I think that's where their fascination with these probes comes from.

 

[RTM]

Nothing short of an anal probe is going to convince me.

There's a red line joke there somewhere.

 

[Bob Jase]

I'll believe when Antonio Villas-Boas part alien grand daughter goes to dinner with me.

 

[unclepaulie]

I met Phil Klass in 1989 and we communicated for quite a while. That "ornery old bastard" was a lot more fun than you'd imagine. Phil always wanted to be the one who got to prove a case was real, he was sorely disappointed. He demanded real data. When he was smug it was because he was damned sure about his answer. He couldn't stand a liar or a "distortion artist". He UFO community is rife with claims of education, work and military experience. If the low number means you need absolute proof, that's a pretty good place to be.

 

[Alexandria Nick]

I think that's where their fascination with these probes comes from.

One of the best Saturday Night Live sketches of the last 10 years makes this joke and absolutely excels.

"So, these guys don’t have butts. Regular butts. I don’t think they’re ever seen a crack before. So, my theory is, right, they thought I had like, broken into two pieces and they were trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again."

 

[Gary C]

In fact, there is no guarantee that aliens would use the same genetic coding system as earthly organisms do, or even that they use DNA at all. If we found alien DNA with a molecular distance greater than the age of the universe, or using a non-standard genetic coding system or different macromolecules to carry information, then we would know that they did not come from Earth.

That works for me. I'd want to see independently reproduced studies of an extant biological system that at a minimum uses other than the 20 amino acids found in DNA/RNA based terrestrial life.

 

[Riverman63]

The existence of life somewhere else in the universe and the proof of the ufo phenomenon are not necessarily connected in any way, apart from in our minds.

 

[JMartJr]

The existence of life somewhere else in the universe and the proof of the ufo phenomenon

Depends on what "the UFO phenomenon" would be proven to be, don't it? If it were to prove that hidden in the noise of LIZ balloons and airplanes, there are, say, angels and demons flitting about, then yeah, no connection to whether or not there are aliens. If it turns out there are a couple of aliens flying their saucers around, then there would be a connection.

When I look at the list of things UFO "believers" are talking about as what "real UFOs" are, to me alien space travelers seem the least unlikely, as compared to inter-dimensional whatsises, time travelers, Atlanteans, hollow Earth reptilians from down below somewhere, or the aforementioned visible angels and demons. Your mileage on that may vary.

But yeah, the questions of "is there anything to the phenomenon beyond hoaxes, mundane things that particular folks couldn't identify in the moment, and LIZ stuff" is not dependent on there being aliens out there.

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

I met Phil Klass in 1989 and we communicated for quite a while. That "ornery old bastard" was a lot more fun than you'd imagine. Phil always wanted to be the one who got to prove a case was real, he was sorely disappointed. He demanded real data. When he was smug it was because he was damned sure about his answer. He couldn't stand a liar or a "distortion artist". He UFO community is rife with claims of education, work and military experience. If the low number means you need absolute proof, that's a pretty good place to be.

I communicated with him briefly via email. Sadly he was on his last legs by then and wasn't able to even go downstairs to his basement where his UFO materials were stored. I'd asked for original prints of the Lonnie Zamora/Socorro UFO site, you see.

I have no idea what happened to all of the stuff in that basement.