9 Conspiracy Theories More Interesting Than QAnon

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A black hole and its shadow captured in an image for the first time, a historic feat by an international network of radio telescopes called the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT).

QAnon is, unfortunately, one of the most popular conspiracy theories in town these days. But let’s not forget that there are conspiracy theories that are way more interesting and far less of a threat to American democracy.

For those unaware, QAnon is a conspiracy theory that, in general, claims we are governed by Satan-worshipping pedophiles—which include Democrats like President Joe Biden, former President Barack Obama, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, among many others—who kidnap children and then murder and eat them to extract a chemical that will extend their life. Former President Donald Trump is the hero of QAnon, with followers believing that he was recruited by the military to break up the Satanic criminal ring and lock away its members. But that’s just the basics—QAnon has since absorbed pretty much everything into its slimy dome, including other conspiracy theories.

So let’s step away from QAnon and what it’s become and focus on some conspiracy theories that are also outlandish but don’t involve Satan and a hero named Trump.

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This Research Center in Alaska Can Supposedly Control Minds and the Weather

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program site, Gakona, Alaska, is pictured with Mount Wrangell in the background.

The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, also known as HAARP, in Alaska has been the target of conspiracy theorists for just trying to do its job. Composed of 180 antennas across 33 acres of land, HAARP is a high-power and high-frequency transmitter that studies the properties and behavior of the ionosphere, the area approximately 50 to 400 miles (roughly 80 to 645 kilometers) above Earth’s surface that borders the edge of space.

Nonetheless, some people don’t believe that HAARP is doing what it says it’s doing. There are claims that HAARP controls peoples’ minds as well as the weather. The wildest one blames the research center for bringing down the space shuttle Columbia. HAARP does none of these things, but the conspiracy is so tenacious that it has had to debunk some of the theories on its website.

“Radio waves in the frequency ranges that HAARP transmits are not absorbed in either the troposphere or the stratosphere—the two levels of the atmosphere that produce Earth’s weather. Since there is no interaction, there is no way to control the weather,” the center writes.

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An Abandoned U.S. Military Complex in North Dakota Is Used by the Illuminati

East oblique of missile site control building, with better view of exhaust (the taller columns) and intake shafts - Stanley R. Mickelsen Safeguard Complex.

The Stanley R. Mickelson Safeguard Complex in North Dakota is a little weird-looking—it looks like a pyramid with the top cut off—and the circumstances surrounding it are strange, too. So, naturally, it is the subject of conspiracy theories. The Safeguard Complex was an anti-ballistic missile defense system during the Cold War era. According to Snopes, it was used as a bargaining chip with Russia during the Cold War. Congress voted to shut it down a day after it opened in October 1975, although it remained operational until February of 1976.

The Safeguard Complex remains standing today in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota. Because of its shape, which resembles the “Eye of Providence” from your $1 bills, some people believe it’s actually still used by the Illuminati secret society, which has been associated with the symbol.

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The U.S. Navy Allegedly Made One of Its Destroyers Invisible and Managed to Teleport It

US sailors look on as they stand aboard the US Navy guided-missile destroyer USS Winston S. Churchill (DDG 81), part of Destroyer Squadron 2, while it anchors in Port Sudan on March 1, 2021.

Known as the “Philadelphia Experiment,” this theory centers on a U.S. Navy destroyer in 1943, the USS Eldridge. Some believe that the Navy managed to make the USS Eldridge invisible and then teleported it from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Norfolk, Virginia. The destroyer was supposedly equipped with generators that would power a new type of magnetic field that would make the warship invisible to enemy radar.

When the generators were activated, the ship was engulfed in an eerie blue glow and then vanished on the radar and in person, or so the dubious story goes. There were then reports of the USS Eldridge appearing in Norfolk, only to reappear in Philadelphia shortly afterward. The legend states that crew members suffered terrible burns and disorientation. In what is perhaps the creepiest thing of all, some crewmen were supposedly sealed to the ship as part of the experiment while they were still alive.

After scouring its records, the Navy has said this is all baloney. It states that it has a letter from the master of the civilian merchant ship, the SS Andrew Furuseth, that supposedly saw the USS Eldridge teleport into Norfolk saying that he and his crew never saw anything unusual in the area.

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Contrails From Planes Are Also Controlling the Weather and Our Minds

Aircraft contrails circle the sun above the Old City of Jerusalem on January 26, 2021.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: The streaks left by aircraft in the sky, called contrails, are also changing the weather, making us sick, and controlling our minds. They’re not, of course. But that’s what the “chemtrail” conspiracy theorists believe.

Adherents to this conspiracy theory cite a paper published by the Air Force in 1996 as the inspiration for this theory. In that paper, titled, “Weather as a Force Multiplier,” military researchers speculated over whether they could use weather manipulation in combat. Even though this was explicitly presented as speculative futurism, conspiracy theorists had seen enough to become suspicious. Believers have gathered “evidence” that supposedly shows that chemtrails are longer, brighter, and do not dissipate as normal contrails do, Smithsonian explains. Additionally, they have also supposedly gathered samples from the air and water.

Atmospheric scientists assert that chemtrails aren’t real. In 2016, dozens of scientists published a paper stating that they had not encountered evidence of a secret spraying program and that alleged evidence could be explained through other factors, such as typical airplane contrail formation and poor data sampling.

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An Underground Bunker at the Denver International Airport Is a Sanctuary for Billionaires, Lizard People, and Aliens

A Denver International Airport employee walks with a shovel in the passenger drop-off area on March 13, 2021 in Denver, Colorado.

What do you get when you build a funky-looking airport—with a runway that some say looks like a swastika—that has 7,000-foot-long tunnels? A whole lot of conspiracy theories, including one that says the airport is controlled by the Freemasons because of a dedication plaque. There are too many theories about the Denver International Airport to get into here, so we’ve decided to focus on the weirdest one.

As told by the Denver Post, contractors who worked on the airport purportedly saw evidence of bunker entrances and underground tunnels during construction. The airport went over budget and opened more than a year later than it was supposed to, which led some to believe that builders had in fact been working on something else: bunkers for billionaires and the political elite in case of an apocalypse. Oh, and there have also been reports of lizard people and aliens that live in these bunkers. Obviously.

The truth is, about 1,000 people work underneath the airport every day carrying luggage to different ticket counters, planes and baggage claim areas. The Denver Post, which was given a tour of the tunnels by airport staff, says all plumbing and electrical infrastructure appears to end at the lowest level of the airport’s underground area. As far the aliens and lizard people, there is at least one hand-drawn alien image on airport walls. Workers have also been known to put lizard masks on as pranks.

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The U.S. Government Knows When the Giant Volcano Under Yellowstone National Park Will Erupt

Heart Spring, one of many geysers in Yellowstone National Park, is seen in Wyoming on June 11, 2019.

In case you didn’t know, besides offering splendid views of nature, Yellowstone National Park is home to a massive volcano. Beneath the park is a chamber that contains magma and is responsible for many of the park’s geysers and hot springs.

Yellowstone has experienced three eruptions in the last 2 million years, the most recent one being approximately 631,000 years ago. It has only had one “supereruption,” or an eruption with a magnitude of 8, the largest possible eruption, on the Volcano Explosivity Index. Here’s where the conspiracy theory comes in: Some people believe that Yellowstone is overdue for a disastrous eruption, and that the U.S. government knows when it will erupt.

Scientists say this is just not true. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, even if you were to average the amount of time between Yellowstone’s eruptions, there would still be 100,000 years to go. But even that is meaningless because volcanoes do not “work in predictable ways and their eruptions do not follow predictable schedules,” the USGS explains. The USGS also asserts that scientists are not convinced that Yellowstone will ever experience a catastrophic eruption again. If it does erupt again, “it need not be a large eruption,” the agency states.

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We Are Living in a Black Hole Reality Created by CERN

Some of the 1232 dipole magnets that bend the path of accelerated protons are pictured in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in a tunnel of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), during maintenance work.

Did you know the world ended in 2012 because of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN? That’s what some conspiracy theorists believe. If that’s true, what are living in now? An alternate reality, of course.

In 2012, CERN discovered the Higgs boson particle, also known as the “God Particle” (although it has nothing to do with any god or religion). To put it simply, the Higgs boson particle helps give other particles their mass. However, imaginations started to run wild over the particle, especially after reports surfaced that Stephen Hawking said the “Higgs potential” could cause the universe to “undergo catastrophic vacuum decay.” It should be noted that the Higgs potential Hawking referred to isn’t the same as the Higgs boson, but actually an entirely different concept. If you’re still worried, check this video that explains that CERN can’t make black holes yet, but even if it manages to, we shouldn’t worry.

Considering that we’re talking about CERN, which operates the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, it’s not surprising that there are tons more conspiracies surrounding it. Others state that CERN is going to use the particle accelerator to open a portal to hell or summon a god. Given the reality we’re currently living in, one can only dream.

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The Earth Is Hollow and There Is an Advanced Civilization Living in It

Apparently, we share this world with other beings. That’s what some believe because of theory from the 17th century linked to scientist Edmond Halley (yes, the guy from the comet).

As explained by Wired, Halley based his theory on the behavior of Earth’s magnetic field, which shifted its lines from year to year. He argued that this must be because the Earth is hollow, and that we’re living on the outermost of four shells. The poles of the inner shells were throwing off our magnetic field, Halley theorized. Although Halley’s theory was wrong, the scientist was working off ideas from Isaac Newton’s book Principia. At the time, his theory was well-reasoned for the knowledge available, and it wasn’t considered a conspiracy. It’s actually considered by some to be the first prediction of the modern scientific era.

As for the other civilization living in the planet part, Wired notes that this idea was a product of the closeness between science and religion at the time. Halley thought that God created a planet with multiple layers to house more people.

Now, it’s one thing to propose a theory in the 17th century. It’s another thing to still believe the Earth is hollow today when it has been proven to be false. That’s clearly nonsense.

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We Live in a Simulation and People Are Documenting the Evidence

Image for article titled 9 Conspiracy Theories We Wish QAnon People Would Obsess Over Instead — Photo: NASA

Our last conspiracy theory brings sci-fi and movies into reality (although let’s be honest, lots of conspiracy theories do). Fan of The Matrix? Well, some conspiracy theorists believe that the idea underpinning that movie isn’t so far-fetched. They believe we live in a simulation run by advanced beings, and that sometimes you can detect glitches. There are two popular subreddits dedicated to this called r/Glitch in the Matrix and r/Are We Living in a Simulation? The former gathers supposed “evidence” that we live in a matrix and the latter talks about hypotheses.

Followers of the theory present a wide range of “evidence” to support it. Some claim they remember news that Nelson Mandela died in the 1980s even though he really died in 2013. Others say the children’s book series The Berenstain Bears was actually spelled “Berentstein.” Think about it, man.

Theories in this vein some notable followers, such as Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who believes that lifelike video games have created so many simulations of reality that it’s in fact probable that we live in one right now.

What do you think? Well, if you believe in the Matrix theory, it doesn’t really matter anyway. Nothing matters. Everything is in your mind.

9 Conspiracy Theories We Wish QAnon People Would Obsess Over Instead

This Research Center in Alaska Can Supposedly Control Minds and the Weather

This Research Center in Alaska Can Supposedly Control Minds and the Weather

An Abandoned U.S. Military Complex in North Dakota Is Used by the Illuminati

An Abandoned U.S. Military Complex in North Dakota Is Used by the Illuminati

The U.S. Navy Allegedly Made One of Its Destroyers Invisible and Managed to Teleport It

The U.S. Navy Allegedly Made One of Its Destroyers Invisible and Managed to Teleport It

Contrails From Planes Are Also Controlling the Weather and Our Minds

Contrails From Planes Are Also Controlling the Weather and Our Minds

An Underground Bunker at the Denver International Airport Is a Sanctuary for Billionaires, Lizard People, and Aliens

An Underground Bunker at the Denver International Airport Is a Sanctuary for Billionaires, Lizard People, and Aliens

The U.S. Government Knows When the Giant Volcano Under Yellowstone National Park Will Erupt

The U.S. Government Knows When the Giant Volcano Under Yellowstone National Park Will Erupt

We Are Living in a Black Hole Reality Created by CERN

We Are Living in a Black Hole Reality Created by CERN

The Earth Is Hollow and There Is an Advanced Civilization Living in It

The Earth Is Hollow and There Is an Advanced Civilization Living in It

We Live in a Simulation and People Are Documenting the Evidence

We Live in a Simulation and People Are Documenting the Evidence