The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

If clouds of aluminium were not bad enough there are yet more terrifying alternatives. Conspiracy theorists claim that biological weapons are being used by supporters of the New World Order to reduce the global population. The American authors of the http://educate-yourself.org website claim the US government is under the control of the Illuminati (architects of the New World Order). This group’s goal to reduce the world population from 6 billion to 4 billion by 2050 is openly stated, the authors say, in the Global 2000 report assembled by the Carter administration in the late 1970s.

Obviously, genocide on this scale would require some exceptionally devious means, not just to reach enough of the population but to be carried out without anyone noticing. This method might also have to be more subtle than just poisoning whole populations. To which end, what better than to spray us all with a biohazardous pathogen which will slowly attack the immune systems of vulnerable groups such as the elderly, the young and the sick, particularly those already suffering such auto-immune disorders as AIDS, allowing them to succumb fatally to a barrage of influenza-type illnesses, which, as everybody knows, are notoriously difficult to contain or treat, there being so many different strains? Telltale symptoms to look out for next time there’s a jumbo jet in your area are: hacking coughs, upper respiratory and intestinal distress, pneumonia, extreme fatigue, lethargy, dizziness, disorientation, headaches, aching joints and muscles, depression, loss of bladder control, nervous tics.

Barium salt mixtures have been identified as carriers for a whole host of pathogens or chemicals which could contaminate the people living beneath the chemtrails, breaking down their immune systems and poisoning them slowly and undetectably. To support their argument, chemtrail researchers point to recent rises in the incidence of «flu-type» epidemics across the Western world, along with an increase in mystery illnesses, allergies and respiratory disorders.

Other theorists, by contrast, suggest that chemtrails are being used not to kill people but to inoculate them secretly against the biological weapons that might be unleashed by enemy states, and that it is the reaction to this inoculation process which causes the flu-like symptoms.

The fact that its supporters appear to be singing from different hymn sheets rather dents the credibility of the chemtrail theory. While one camp maintains chemtrails are intended to reduce world population by 85 per cent, China is apparently exempt because it is viewed as such a perfect example of the New World Order in action that it is being groomed to replace the US as the next superpower. Other camps state, however, that bird flu is one of the organisms that has been spread by chemtrail; if so, that would seem to scupper the Chinese-immunity theory, as bird flu was first identified there — not to mention the fact that, as holder of 20 per cent of the global population, China would have to bear a stupendous death rate in order for the world’s population as a whole to achieve that 85 per cent reduction. Might there be only the Chinese left? Not much fun being a superpower with no one left to lord it over, is it?

But this particular conspiracy theory is undermined by a much simpler flaw. It is a question not so much of what might be in the chemtrails but of how they are delivered in the first place. If as theorists claim these trails are dispensed by special units attached or hidden in the fuselage of both military and commercial jets, that would imply that every airline pilot and every maintenance-crew member was party to the conspiracy, and that not one of all these people has let the secret slip out. Even claims that rogue chemicals are being added directly to jet fuel seem highly implausible: what pathogen could survive ignition in a jumbo jet engine?

Official sources in the American military and scientific community remain adamant that what people are noticing are not chemtrails but ordinary contrails. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station observed the absence of contrails on the days following 9/11. «I’ll tell you one thing that’s really strange. Normally when we go over the US, the sky is like a spider web of contrails,» outpost commander Frank Culbertson told flight controllers at NASA’s Mission Control Centre in Houston. «There are no contrails in the sky. It’s very, very weird.»

A prominent meteorologist quoted on the wonderfully named New Mexicans for Science and Reason website (www.nmsr.org) cites atmospheric differences as the cause of persistent contrails, saying that, if relative humidity is high, especially at the subzero temperatures of the upper atmosphere, the addition of even a tiny amount of water vapour acts as a catalyst, causing the thin cirrus-type clouds to form.