Westall incident

[Cyber]

For example:
"Bigfoot" was all the rage, but it eventually was revealed it was a large guy in a wookiee suit...with a zipper...
And the alien dissection video turned out to be a fake, too.

Actually no. tales of a giant bipedal ape men, Lizard people and crop circles cross continents and cultures. Crop circles were supposedly "debunked" by a couple of old Englishmen named Doug Bower and Dave Chorley in 1991. They confessed to creating hundreds of complex designs using simple ropes and planks and were lauded by British scientists. But when Stanford engineering students attempted to replicate a simple crop circle, not only could they not match the accuracy, design or scale, they could not replicate the unique way the stems were bent (not broken) as if hit with some form of radiation. Bower and Chorley's claims using a plank of wood to detail giant fractal designs in crops now seems overblown.

which leads us to bigfoot. Just because some Homer Simpson dude can dress up in a gorilla suit doesn't debunk the phenomena.

 

[Cyber]

Agreed.

Though I think as good as it gets would be to refer to the incident in Rendlesham Forest in Great Britain back in 1980. Complete with eye witnesses involving the US Air Force and civilians whose testimonies were very apparent. Those willing to speak up, despite the potential occupational repercussions of doing so.

Yes it's hard to dismiss senior members of the military, what incentive would they have to invent stories that make them a laughing stock in front of their peers, risk their jobs and family and gain no financial reward.

 

[Cyber]

A particular scenario involving Major Jesse Marcel in the Roswell incident of 1947. Whose military career and reputation was largely left unscathed, despite government intent to suppress after-the-fact whatever actually happened.

Major Jesse Marcel was part of air force intelligence in the 509th division that dropped a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima Japan. the idea such a senior member of air force intelligence holding one of the highest clearance jobs from the heavily secret Manhattan project could mistake a "balloon debris" for a crashed flying saucer is beyond any credibility.

 

[Cyber]

Lizzad peeple

Don't get me started

 

[Tired]

If you are talking about MKUltra? exposing one person to hallucinatory drugs and brainwashing them like in the Manchurian candidate might feasibly induce/program them to see flying saucers. But for 200+ kids and at least a dozen adults to have an identical shared delusion is impossible. Unless the CIA have knowledge of creating some type of shared consciousness, but that's even weirder than aliens.

Wiki says " Specific details vary between accounts, which increases the difficulty of identification."
Which would mean that while they all saw smth, they didn't see same things, thus it wasn't identical. But then another question is "why did they all see a different thing?"

 

[Mary Terry]

If you are talking about MKUltra? exposing one person to hallucinatory drugs and brainwashing them like in the Manchurian candidate might feasibly induce/program them to see flying saucers. But for 200+ kids and at least a dozen adults to have an identical shared delusion is impossible. Unless the CIA have knowledge of creating some type of shared consciousness, but that's even weirder than aliens.

Mass hysteria and adopting someone else's "memories" and version of events are quite common.

 

[Mary Terry]

I'm sure a lot of people believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny. That doesn't mean they are real.

Those trolls and whatnot in Scandinavia and leprechauns in Ireland are interesting. The ancient Greeks found huge and strange dinosaur bones when they dug up fields for planting. They did not know about dinosaurs so they explained what they found by creating myths about gods, a race of giant humans, men with horse bodies, cyclops and a lot of other things. The mind tries to make sense of what it doesn't understand.

 

[Cyber]

Wiki says " Specific details vary between accounts, which increases the difficulty of identification."
Which would mean that while they all saw smth, they didn't see same things, thus it wasn't identical. But then another question is "why did they all see a different thing?"

If you watch the video there was consensus among the kids on the overall metallic structure of the object having a saucer shape, with a raised dome in the middle and a ring of windows below. It was silent and when it flew away it rotated on its axis. Mass eyewitness testimony is very hard to invalidate. Also the children literally live next door to Moorabin airport and see planes and helicopters every day, so at least one counterclaim they got "hysteric" over seeing a helicopter land on school grounds was quite ludicrous.

 

[Cyber]

Mass hysteria and adopting someone else's "memories" and version of events are quite common.

Mass hysteria is very poorly understood. It was being used as a convenient foil to invalidate all the children's experience, A strong case against mass hysteria is the success the author had in obtaining between 80-100 independent testimonies (I think the film and book came out back in 2003) all standing by what they collectively saw 40 years later.

 

[Jonn]

If you are talking about MKUltra? exposing one person to hallucinatory drugs and brainwashing them like in the Manchurian candidate might feasibly induce/program them to see flying saucers. But for 200+ kids and at least a dozen adults to have an identical shared delusion is impossible. Unless the CIA have knowledge of creating some type of shared consciousness, but that's even weirder than aliens.

Firstly:
Overwhelmingly, most of the documentation about MK-ULTRA was destroyed.
The experiments were more diverse than most people realise.

Secondly:
No, I wasn't talking about MK-ULTRA.
I am pretty sure that anal probing wasn't part of their procedure.

Thirdly:
Where did I suggest the "200+ kids and at least half a dozen adults" were delusional?
Remember, Big Foot, and the Alien Dissection Video" were real...erm...I mean real fakes...intended to deceive.
Evidently, you have gone down a different path of your own making, not mine.

BTW:
Have you not encountered the hysteria surrounding alien abductions and their exotic interest/propensity in anal probing that happened many decades ago?
A conspiracy theorist might come to the conclusion that the story was a ruse to hide the Truth of government off-the-records shenanigans.

 

[Jonn]

Actually no. tales of a giant bipedal ape men, Lizard people and crop circles cross continents and cultures. Crop circles were supposedly "debunked" by a couple of old Englishmen named Doug Bower and Dave Chorley in 1991. They confessed to creating hundreds of complex designs using simple ropes and planks and were lauded by British scientists. But when Stanford engineering students attempted to replicate a simple crop circle, not only could they not match the accuracy, design or scale, they could not replicate the unique way the stems were bent (not broken) as if hit with some form of radiation. Bower and Chorley's claims using a plank of wood to detail giant fractal designs in crops now seems overblown.

which leads us to bigfoot. Just because some Homer Simpson dude can dress up in a gorilla suit doesn't debunk the phenomena.

Firstly:
What you said was a conflation/distortion of what I said.
"Crop circles" were never mentioned by me.
Please refer to my original posts.

Secondly:
People were convinced when they saw the video of the Giant "Wookiee".
This says a lot about human psychology/gullibility.
Sheisters have used this to their advantage since time immemorial.
As P. T. Barnum said: "There is a sucker born every minute."

Some people believe there are fairies at the bottom of the garden.
Some day, this too may be disproved.

Centaurs do exist, also.
Or was someone sitting on a horse, while it was eating grass?

And so do dragons!
Or was that the result of someone finding dinosaur fossils and creatively using their imagination?

How about mermaids!!!
Surely they do exist?
Or was that the result of some love-starved ancient sailor's erotic imagination?

BTW, I have read somewhere that the Egyptians were able to do things that baffle modern-day engineers.
I find that interesting, if True.

 

[Cyber]

BTW:
Have you not encountered the hysteria surrounding alien abductions and their exotic interest/propensity in anal probing that happened many decades ago?
A conspiracy theorist might come to the conclusion that the story was a ruse to hide the Truth of government off-the-records shenanigans.

It is plausible alien abductions are a form of secret human experimentation. experimentation directly on humans is severely limited due to most countries being international signatories to ethical and moral frameworks involving human and animal experimentation. So I would not be surprised if people are being abducted and it's now camouflaged, covertly as "aliens".

 

[Cyber]

Firstly:
What you said was a conflation/distortion of what I said.
"Crop circles" were never mentioned by me.
Please refer to my original posts.

Oh sorry, I meant there are parallels between Homer Simpson looking dude dressing in a gorilla suit and a couple of drunk Englishmen staggering into a cornfield with planks of wood. Both are unlikely to explain either mathematically complex crop circles or some frat boy in gorilla suit being mistaken for a 9 foot large anthropoid being with huge feet.

 

[Cyber]

BTW, I have read somewhere that the Egyptians were able to do things that baffle modern-day engineers.
I find that interesting, if True.

Archaeologists in Egypt make sweeping assumptions when their theories conflict with geological evidence and challenging engineering/materials hurdles.

to illustrate similar levels of obstinate intellectual timewasting lets go for a trip to easter Island. Archaeologists (like from Birmingham Univ) claimed for decades the giant heads (called Moai) were moved like this.

then somebody thought maybe we should dig underneath, and, oh dear, look at what they found.

So much for dragging 1-2 tonne heads with rope (in itself difficult/challenging), now how do you lift 80-300 tonnes up hills and into place without a modern crane using coconut fibre?

 

[Mary Terry]

If you watch the video there was consensus among the kids on the overall metallic structure of the object having a saucer shape, with a raised dome in the middle and a ring of windows below. It was silent and when it flew away it rotated on its axis. Mass eyewitness testimony is very hard to invalidate. Also the children literally live next door to Moorabin airport and see planes and helicopters every day, so at least one counterclaim they got "hysteric" over seeing a helicopter land on school grounds was quite ludicrous.

I find it ludicrous that no one at the airport next door to the children saw a flying saucer that day, but the myth persists that it was a flying saucer from outer space, witnessed only by school kids and few adults at the school.

 

[Hypnalis]

@Cyber
It's very likely the status were indeed "walked" approximately as per that video.
There are better videos on YouTube that show it more clearly. This one it better (same video, but the camera angle is much better):

This technique was figured out when Thor Heyerdahl was there, and it's covered in his book.
He was contacted by a Czech engineer was thought this would work, and IIRC they tested it with a real Moai.
BTW this is a common technique for moving heavy objects like refrigerators and heavy furniture.

The track that they used to move the Moai was still there when Heyerdahl was there (maybe now too, but I don't know for sure). It was relatively level (as you'd expect), had no steep sections, and it was hard-packed in a way that was consistent with the "walking" way of moving them. Not proof of course, but if it was e.g. not hard-packed that would be evidence against "walking".

Two other relevant snippets from the book:
1. It says the Easter Island version of the Polynesian language uniquely has two words for "walk", one of which is for normal walking, the other for walking with the feet pressed together (i.e, like this method for moving the statues). There's a photo in the book of an old local demonstrating this.
2. They found some Moai with bases that were worn down in a way that's consistent with "walking". I don't know if that's been rechecked since then, but a many more Moai have been dug up since then, so the sample size should be larger.

That image is from the same book, and it's one of the largest Moai. Most are less than half that size.
That one might be too big to "walk" easily. It works partly because the statues are bottom-heavy, so they can be leaned quite far and still return to center on their own.
The (relatively few) really big ones are less bottom heavy, and much heavier. They might well have been more inclined to fall over while "walking". They can be lifted back onto their bases with very low-tech methods (also shown in Heyerdahl's book), but the bigger they are, the more work that would take.

BTW I have Heyerdahl's book with the original image of that very large Moai, but I can't find it right now.
It also has an image of the one with the Western-style 3-masted ship.
IIRC the guy in the blue "safari suit" top right is Thor Heyerdahl, the blond guy in the left one level down is one of his sons.

 

[Cyber]

I find it ludicrous that no one at the airport next door to the children saw a flying saucer that day, but the myth persists that it was a flying saucer from outer space, witnessed only by school kids and few adults at the school.

Good idea to check right, hence my point about the cover up being extensive. Children and adults saw multiple small civilian planes flying in circles over Westall that day. But Moorabbin airport has no record of odd craft on radars or reports from pilots seeing saucers. Again I believe the witnesses.

 

[Cyber]

@Cyber
It's very likely the status were indeed "walked" approximately as per that video.
There are better videos on YouTube that show it more clearly. This one it better (same video, but the camera angle is much better):

This technique was figured out when Thor Heyerdahl was there, and it's covered in his book.
He was contacted by a Czech engineer was thought this would work, and IIRC they tested it with a real Moai.
BTW this is a common technique for moving heavy objects like refrigerators and heavy furniture.

If you check the buried Moai heads they are 80-300 tonnes. Stating the obvious, stone age technology using coconut fibre simply doesn't explain it. Same with Nan Madol.
Nan Madol: The City Built on Coral Reefs

I'm afraid its like archaeologists trying to explain building a pyramid built 5000 years ago by postulating several hundred men and bullock carts dragged stones weighing several tonnes but ignoring how 100 tonne blocks were cut, quarried, transported and lifted into place hundreds of feet in the air with exact precision of a Lego block.

 

[Hypnalis]

@Cyber

Those numbers are wrong. Wikipedia:
The average height of the moai is about 4 m (13 ft), with the average width at the base around 1.6 m (5.2 ft). These massive creations usually weigh around 12.5 tonnes (13.8 tons) each.

Tallest erected: 10 meters, 82 tonnes
Heaviest erected: 86 tonnes
Heaviest uncompeted: approx 155 tonnes

None of the claims that Moai couldn't be moved by Polynesians hold up. They've been separately raised and moved in (relatively) modern times using stone-age tech. Raised in 1955/56 IIRC and Heyerdahl's "walking" experiment was in 1986 according to Wikipedia (I'll confirm when I find the book).
:
:
Nan Madol didn't use large pieces of rock. It's made of columnar basalt, which was available on Pohnpei:
List of places with columnar jointed volcanics - Wikipedia

It's impressive for the scale of the construction, but not for the scale of the components.
:
:
As with Moai, there are still open questions about the pyramids, but there's also a lot of bad information.

They're impressive, but they didn't move 100 tonne blocks to the top of the pyramids.
Quarrying blocks that big is a lot of work, but not miraculous. They were moved longer distances on barges.

I saw a video a few weeks ago that claimed there was a branch of the Nile that ran close to Giza, which would explain why they were built there. And they were capable of building canals to connect to/from the river and quarries and building sites.

There's still discussion about the finer details of how they got the materials up the larger pyramids, but that's about efficiency. It clearly wasn't magic.

 

[Cyber]

@Cyber

Those numbers are wrong. Wikipedia:
The average height of the moai is about 4 m (13 ft), with the average width at the base around 1.6 m (5.2 ft). These massive creations usually weigh around 12.5 tonnes (13.8 tons) each.

Tallest erected: 10 meters, 82 tonnes
Heaviest erected: 86 tonnes
Heaviest uncompeted: approx 155 tonnes

Sorry yes I can confirm your numbers are almost correct.
The heaviest moai ever carved is an unfinished statue named "El Gigante," which weighs an estimated 160–182 metric tons and is located at the Rano Raraku quarry. But you are right, the heaviest moai that was ever successfully erected weighed 86 tonnes. My 300 tonnes came from a blog so is not accurate.

I would still say 86 tonnes cant be moved using primitive rope pulled by a few burly Polynesians. Let alone 182 tonnes. As to "unfinished" this is a modern projection, quite clearly whatever technique they were using, they fancied being able to move 182 tonnes.
Same goes with so called:
"unfinished" Egyptian obelisk
Unfinished obelisk - Wikipedia
You can't move 1020 tonnes without modern cranes
and "unfinished" megalith at Balbaak
Baalbek Stones - Wikipedia
that one is 1650 tonnes
Archaeologists insisting "oh they quarried it out and only realised afterward it was too big" is the pinnacle of stupidity. Nobody is going to go to all that effort to cut a rock that big and then go "oops silly me". Builders of of Moai, obelisk and megaliths clearly had very sophisticated knowledge of engineering, math, measurement and weight. they cut it then they knew they could move it.