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What I find most fascinating about aliens and UFOs is that they always seem to be heading for America. If a UFO arrived from another galaxy it might choose any

What I find most fascinating about aliens and UFOs is that they always seem to be heading for America. If a UFO arrived from another galaxy it might choose any place to land, but talk is always America-centric. Do other countries feel so UFO special?

madspindel 3y ago
Ghost rockets in Sweden, 1946? The country with the best fishing nets would probably catch more fish than countries with bad fishing nets, even if they have the same amount of fish in the oceans.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  The US may have the best electronic "nets". Other places have a lot more eyeballs per square mile/km, though.
kodah 3y ago
America is hardly special in their belief in UFOs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reported_UFO_sightings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reported_UFO_sightin... Generally UFO reportings increased with astronomy, radar, and surveillance technology development. Of which, the US has a lot of all three, which probably means we have a sufficiently complex system that we can notice anomalies but not sufficiently complex enough to identify them. You could've googled this theory you had before putting it in text.
- bbor 3y ago
  They did end their comment with a question mark - no need to get snippy :)
  - kodah 3y ago
    I've come across a number of low effort commentary recently that's easily googlable where folks themselves are inappropriate. In this case, there's amerocentricism heavily implied when that's obviously not the case. I think maybe what this suggests is that HN really isn't the place for me at the moment.
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  You still trust Google to give good results? That (air)ship has long sailed...
kneebonian 3y ago
So not saying I necessarily believe (but "I want to believe") the argument could be the US has better airspace monitoring than other countries and more ability to publish and disseminate information. If a UFO lands in the middle of.the Congo whose going to know or be aware. The other alternative if Russia which is similarly sized and equipped but they tend to be pretty cagey sharing information. So it ends up being the US not because they only land there but because they have the combination of obsessively watching the skies with the ability to share their information and the freedom to do so.
- HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
  > If a UFO lands in the middle of.the Congo whose going to know or be aware. People with smartphones and Meta/WhatsApp/TikTok accounts are all over the planet.
- sph 3y ago
  The "US tech is light years ahead" is nonsense when this time around the story is that the US has an ultra secret UFO retrieval agency. How is it possible that no UFO has crashed outside the US jurisdiction, where they can't send their MIB in 2 hours? Also, I'd like to remind Americans that we're not caveman here. We do have radar and jets flying and cameraphones. The problem is that if you want to believe, you're ready to throw any kind of common sense and elementary logic out the window. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and this ain't it.
birdyrooster 3y ago
Why did Jesus allegedly air travel to America after being resurrected according to Mormons? It’s American exceptionalism, duh.
- BoxOfRain 3y ago
  He allegedly spent his teenage years wandering around Glastonbury in England as well and we get plenty of UFO sightings!
shiftpgdn 3y ago
One of the most notable UAP/UFO encounters ever took place in South Africa at an elementary school.
- umeshunni 3y ago
  Did you mean Zimbabwe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_School_UFO_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_School_UFO_incident
  - quickthrowman 3y ago
    > On 16 September 1994, there was a UFO sighting outside Ruwa, Zimbabwe.[1] Sixty-two pupils at the Ariel School aged between six and twelve[1][2] said that they saw one or more silver craft descend from the sky and land on a field near their school.[1][2] One or more creatures dressed all in black then approached the children and telepathically communicated to them a message with an environmental theme, frightening the children and causing them to cry. > The sightings at Ariel occurred at 10am on 16 September 1994, when pupils were outside on mid-morning break.[1] The adult faculty at the school were inside having a meeting at the time. How convenient that all the adults were inside and only 6-12 year old children saw it. Anyone who believes this story is far too credulous.
    - youngtaff 3y ago
      When I was a kid there was something known as the ‘Broad Haven Triangle’ in West Wales, UK One evening on the news there were reports of an alien spaceship landing next to the village school complete with interviews with kids A few years later I went to senior school with some of those kids and they told me they made it all up
      - DANmode 3y ago
        Imagine throwing away the value of your word for such little gain.
  - shiftpgdn 3y ago
Stranger43 3y ago
When it comes to "strange lights in the sky" there is a fairly uniform body of observation around the world with some(typically dry or mountainous) regions being hotpots so there is definitely things happening in the skies we don't fully understand but that's not the same as extraterrestrial spaceships and could easily be unusual "weather patterns", or some other natural phenomena. Where the us is alone however is in the reports of sightings/abductions of entities exiting those craft but then again most of those stories tend to either be "retrieved memories", straight up hoaxes or so vague in details that other explanations cannot be ruled out.
SkyMarshal 3y ago
Assuming this isn’t just a big psyop trying to scare US adversaries, and that UFO’s are real… the US was the first to detonate nukes in 1945, and on its own territory, which might explain some of it. Maybe the UFO’s were investigating how scientifically and technologically advanced humanity was becoming, and naturally focused on nuclear tech as a leading indicator. The 1936 Berlin Olympics TV broadcast might also have alerted them to humanity, and travel time of the broadcast plus travel time of UFO’s to Earth (assuming they have lightspeed capability) might have resulted in them arriving right around when nukes were invented (if they’re from, say, Alpha Centauri which is 4 light-years away). The US and Europe also have free press where things like this are more likely to be publicly reported than in say, the USSR back in the day, or China under the CCP. Which in conjunction with the above may explain sightings maps like this one, where sightings are most frequent in the US and secondarily in Europe: https://updb.app/map?zoom=1.00&lon=149.0917&lat=37.3003 https://updb.app/map?zoom=1.00&lon=149.0917&lat=37.3003 Also, if you search number of reports by date ranges, look at what you get: 1-1943: 1566 sightings reports 1944-2023: 294,641 sightings reports Two orders of magnitude more sightings reports in the 80yrs since nukes were invented, vs in the almost two millennia previously. Obviously we also had more robust and technologically advanced media in the latter time frame, so that contributes much to the discrepancy. But still a huge discrepancy.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  That data is slighty suspect. Not just the reliability of reporting between 1-1900, but also the data on the site - apparently there was a siting in Chicago Illinois in the year 600? There's a lot of reports for American locations even earlier than that. I think most importantly we started watching the sky when humanity started to fly. Suddenly the heavens were a viable place for mankind to be, especially after we ourselves got to space. The post-WW2 era also had a whole culture that was used to watching the sky because there had been very plausible threats of death from that direction. We suddenly cared when we saw something weird in the night beyond just a passing curiosity.
  - SkyMarshal 3y ago
    All good points. I doubt the folks running that site have vetted every one of their hundreds of thousands of data points, so it's not an authoritative source, just a descriptive one at most. And, when did science fiction literature start getting big and developing plots involving aliens, and might that have stimulated people's imaginations about UFOs and aliens (which then conversely stimulated more scifi about them)? Was this happening prior to the atomic age or space age, or did that kind of scifi really get started with the space race? If the latter, that might also explain the huge increase in imaginings... er, sightings. I also can't help but wonder at the timing, with geopolitical tensions rising and China challenging US military and technological supremacy. It's quite a coincidence. Maybe it's the mother of all CIA mindfuck psyops, to introduce a new source of uncertainty and deterrence into the CCP and Russia's strategic calculations. There's "whistleblowers" on TV claiming the US is in possession of "exotic materials", aka alien tech, since the 1940s. Just how much has been reverse engineered in that time, and deployed in super secret weapons systems that not even Congress knows about? Would the CCP really want to risk WWIII against the US when there's even a small possibility of that? There's a great scene in "The Expanse" relevant to this situation, where UN Deputy Undersecretary Avasarala has a meeting considering the possibility of first contact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYRLV-qm3Qs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYRLV-qm3Qs "I have a file with nine hundred pages of analysis and contingency plans for war with Mars, including fourteen different scenarios for what to do if they develop an unexpected new technology. My file for what to do if an advanced alien species comes calling, is three pages long, and begins with 'Find God'".
mike_hearn 3y ago
Technically, all that's being claimed is that the USA has whistleblowers. Grutsch has said before that other countries also have UFO retrieval programmes. So if we suspend disbelief for a moment and assume there's real craft flying around, all it'd take for this current set of events is if the USA had a monopoly on whistleblowers. Given that most famous whistleblowers in recent years have been American this doesn't seem unlikely. Five Eyes has five governments in it, but only the USA had someone who went to the press. The US Government is both very large so more people can leak things, and very well funded, so more chance of secret programmes, and (IMHO) has a civic-minded culture in which people are more inspired by things like the Constitution and stated cultural ideals than in other countries.
throwaway743 3y ago
Not true. Many other nations have had their own crashes. You're just hearing american sources of info.
wing-_-nuts 3y ago
Actually one of the first 'known' UFOs supposedly crash landed in 1930's Italy, and Mussolini blabbed about it to the Pope, who warned the US. Allegedly. We're not the only country that's supposedly had contact.
wsintra2022 3y ago
I’m wondering if you have ever been to Australia. I went once and noticed there were a lot of Astra aliens, then I understood how it got its name!

madspindel 3y ago

Ghost rockets in Sweden, 1946? The country with the best fishing nets would probably catch more fish than countries with bad fishing nets, even if they have the same amount of fish in the oceans.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
The US may have the best electronic "nets". Other places have a lot more eyeballs per square mile/km, though.

kodah 3y ago

America is hardly special in their belief in UFOs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reported_UFO_sightings https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_reported_UFO_sightin... Generally UFO reportings increased with astronomy, radar, and surveillance technology development. Of which, the US has a lot of all three, which probably means we have a sufficiently complex system that we can notice anomalies but not sufficiently complex enough to identify them. You could've googled this theory you had before putting it in text.

bbor 3y ago
They did end their comment with a question mark - no need to get snippy :)
- kodah 3y ago
  I've come across a number of low effort commentary recently that's easily googlable where folks themselves are inappropriate. In this case, there's amerocentricism heavily implied when that's obviously not the case. I think maybe what this suggests is that HN really isn't the place for me at the moment.
InCityDreams 3y ago
You still trust Google to give good results? That (air)ship has long sailed...

kneebonian 3y ago

So not saying I necessarily believe (but "I want to believe") the argument could be the US has better airspace monitoring than other countries and more ability to publish and disseminate information. If a UFO lands in the middle of.the Congo whose going to know or be aware. The other alternative if Russia which is similarly sized and equipped but they tend to be pretty cagey sharing information. So it ends up being the US not because they only land there but because they have the combination of obsessively watching the skies with the ability to share their information and the freedom to do so.

HeyLaughingBoy 3y ago
> If a UFO lands in the middle of.the Congo whose going to know or be aware. People with smartphones and Meta/WhatsApp/TikTok accounts are all over the planet.
sph 3y ago
The "US tech is light years ahead" is nonsense when this time around the story is that the US has an ultra secret UFO retrieval agency. How is it possible that no UFO has crashed outside the US jurisdiction, where they can't send their MIB in 2 hours? Also, I'd like to remind Americans that we're not caveman here. We do have radar and jets flying and cameraphones. The problem is that if you want to believe, you're ready to throw any kind of common sense and elementary logic out the window. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof and this ain't it.

birdyrooster 3y ago

Why did Jesus allegedly air travel to America after being resurrected according to Mormons? It’s American exceptionalism, duh.

BoxOfRain 3y ago
He allegedly spent his teenage years wandering around Glastonbury in England as well and we get plenty of UFO sightings!

shiftpgdn 3y ago

One of the most notable UAP/UFO encounters ever took place in South Africa at an elementary school.

umeshunni 3y ago
Did you mean Zimbabwe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_School_UFO_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariel_School_UFO_incident
- quickthrowman 3y ago
  > On 16 September 1994, there was a UFO sighting outside Ruwa, Zimbabwe.[1] Sixty-two pupils at the Ariel School aged between six and twelve[1][2] said that they saw one or more silver craft descend from the sky and land on a field near their school.[1][2] One or more creatures dressed all in black then approached the children and telepathically communicated to them a message with an environmental theme, frightening the children and causing them to cry. > The sightings at Ariel occurred at 10am on 16 September 1994, when pupils were outside on mid-morning break.[1] The adult faculty at the school were inside having a meeting at the time. How convenient that all the adults were inside and only 6-12 year old children saw it. Anyone who believes this story is far too credulous.
  - youngtaff 3y ago
    When I was a kid there was something known as the ‘Broad Haven Triangle’ in West Wales, UK One evening on the news there were reports of an alien spaceship landing next to the village school complete with interviews with kids A few years later I went to senior school with some of those kids and they told me they made it all up
    - DANmode 3y ago
      Imagine throwing away the value of your word for such little gain.
- shiftpgdn 3y ago

Stranger43 3y ago

When it comes to "strange lights in the sky" there is a fairly uniform body of observation around the world with some(typically dry or mountainous) regions being hotpots so there is definitely things happening in the skies we don't fully understand but that's not the same as extraterrestrial spaceships and could easily be unusual "weather patterns", or some other natural phenomena. Where the us is alone however is in the reports of sightings/abductions of entities exiting those craft but then again most of those stories tend to either be "retrieved memories", straight up hoaxes or so vague in details that other explanations cannot be ruled out.

SkyMarshal 3y ago

Assuming this isn’t just a big psyop trying to scare US adversaries, and that UFO’s are real… the US was the first to detonate nukes in 1945, and on its own territory, which might explain some of it. Maybe the UFO’s were investigating how scientifically and technologically advanced humanity was becoming, and naturally focused on nuclear tech as a leading indicator. The 1936 Berlin Olympics TV broadcast might also have alerted them to humanity, and travel time of the broadcast plus travel time of UFO’s to Earth (assuming they have lightspeed capability) might have resulted in them arriving right around when nukes were invented (if they’re from, say, Alpha Centauri which is 4 light-years away). The US and Europe also have free press where things like this are more likely to be publicly reported than in say, the USSR back in the day, or China under the CCP. Which in conjunction with the above may explain sightings maps like this one, where sightings are most frequent in the US and secondarily in Europe: https://updb.app/map?zoom=1.00&lon=149.0917&lat=37.3003 https://updb.app/map?zoom=1.00&lon=149.0917&lat=37.3003 Also, if you search number of reports by date ranges, look at what you get: 1-1943: 1566 sightings reports 1944-2023: 294,641 sightings reports Two orders of magnitude more sightings reports in the 80yrs since nukes were invented, vs in the almost two millennia previously. Obviously we also had more robust and technologically advanced media in the latter time frame, so that contributes much to the discrepancy. But still a huge discrepancy.

SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
That data is slighty suspect. Not just the reliability of reporting between 1-1900, but also the data on the site - apparently there was a siting in Chicago Illinois in the year 600? There's a lot of reports for American locations even earlier than that. I think most importantly we started watching the sky when humanity started to fly. Suddenly the heavens were a viable place for mankind to be, especially after we ourselves got to space. The post-WW2 era also had a whole culture that was used to watching the sky because there had been very plausible threats of death from that direction. We suddenly cared when we saw something weird in the night beyond just a passing curiosity.
- SkyMarshal 3y ago
  All good points. I doubt the folks running that site have vetted every one of their hundreds of thousands of data points, so it's not an authoritative source, just a descriptive one at most. And, when did science fiction literature start getting big and developing plots involving aliens, and might that have stimulated people's imaginations about UFOs and aliens (which then conversely stimulated more scifi about them)? Was this happening prior to the atomic age or space age, or did that kind of scifi really get started with the space race? If the latter, that might also explain the huge increase in imaginings... er, sightings. I also can't help but wonder at the timing, with geopolitical tensions rising and China challenging US military and technological supremacy. It's quite a coincidence. Maybe it's the mother of all CIA mindfuck psyops, to introduce a new source of uncertainty and deterrence into the CCP and Russia's strategic calculations. There's "whistleblowers" on TV claiming the US is in possession of "exotic materials", aka alien tech, since the 1940s. Just how much has been reverse engineered in that time, and deployed in super secret weapons systems that not even Congress knows about? Would the CCP really want to risk WWIII against the US when there's even a small possibility of that? There's a great scene in "The Expanse" relevant to this situation, where UN Deputy Undersecretary Avasarala has a meeting considering the possibility of first contact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYRLV-qm3Qs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYRLV-qm3Qs "I have a file with nine hundred pages of analysis and contingency plans for war with Mars, including fourteen different scenarios for what to do if they develop an unexpected new technology. My file for what to do if an advanced alien species comes calling, is three pages long, and begins with 'Find God'".

mike_hearn 3y ago

Technically, all that's being claimed is that the USA has whistleblowers. Grutsch has said before that other countries also have UFO retrieval programmes. So if we suspend disbelief for a moment and assume there's real craft flying around, all it'd take for this current set of events is if the USA had a monopoly on whistleblowers. Given that most famous whistleblowers in recent years have been American this doesn't seem unlikely. Five Eyes has five governments in it, but only the USA had someone who went to the press. The US Government is both very large so more people can leak things, and very well funded, so more chance of secret programmes, and (IMHO) has a civic-minded culture in which people are more inspired by things like the Constitution and stated cultural ideals than in other countries.

throwaway743 3y ago

Not true. Many other nations have had their own crashes. You're just hearing american sources of info.

wing-_-nuts 3y ago

Actually one of the first 'known' UFOs supposedly crash landed in 1930's Italy, and Mussolini blabbed about it to the Pope, who warned the US. Allegedly. We're not the only country that's supposedly had contact.

wsintra2022 3y ago

I’m wondering if you have ever been to Australia. I went once and noticed there were a lot of Astra aliens, then I understood how it got its name!