#AtoZChallenge2022: T is for Tunguska (and Tesla)

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: T is for Tunguska (and some Tesla)

On the morning of June 30, 1908 near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia an explosion of roughly 12 megatons occurred.  This is not in doubt and was well documented at the time.

What is in doubt is why it happened and what caused it.

Since then there have been over 1,000 scholarly papers and countless more less reputable inquiries as to what happened.  The best guess so far is it was some sort of meteor that hit the Earth with a glancing blow. 

Others have speculated that it was a comet, a small asteroid, or even more fanciful ideas like a bit of "dark matter" or even anti-matter.  Though in those last two cases we would need to figure out what dark matter actually is first and for it to be anti-matter where did it come from because it would not last long in space and not at all in any part of the Earth's atmosphere.   Going on the even more fringe it was a black hole, alien spacecraft, or Tesla's Death Ray.  More on those in a bit.

Tunguska has fascinated me for years.  I wish I could recall when I first heard about it.  It have to have been Carl Sagan's Cosmos ('Heaven and Hell') since I can't recall anything talking about it before that.  I found it so strange and yet so cool.  It would later be a throwaway line from Dan Aykroyd's Ray Stanz in Ghostbusters.  It would come again as a major plot point in the X-Files.

Let's look into the two big fringe theories, one of which is a conspiracy theory.

Nikola Tesla and the Death Rays

This is one that has received the most ink in my library.  It is also a proper Conspiracy Theory.  In the late 1890s, early 1900s, Nikola Tesla was working on the means to transfer large amounts of electricity through the air.  His experiments were failures for the most part.  But there is the claim that while working on this he sent a blast from Colorado to the North, over the North Pole, and hitting Sibera causing the Tunguska blast.  The government then came in to hush it all up to keep the Russians and Czar from knowing.  The US Government then kept pressuring Tesla to repeat the experiment for a long range "death ray."

We do know that when Tesla died FBI officals rushed into his New York hotel and confescated all his belongings.  Among these were supposedly plans for his death ray.

UFOs Over Russia

Another popular idea (it's not a theory) is that the blast happened due to a crashing or exploding UFO.  This might help with the question of where did the anti-matter come from if it were an anti-matter explosion.   Of course there is no evidence for this.  It was 1908 in the remotest part of Russia.  Even if good records had been keept in a little more than 10 years the Communists would have control and anything like records or evidence could have been lost.

These notions all come from more recent scientific forays into Siberia. One as recently as 2004. So not quite a 100 years after the fact.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Look. You can't mention Tesla and not get my ideas generating!  He is the epitome of the mad scientist.  If you have a game that has an inventor or weird science then at some point you are going to need to talk about Tesla.

So what was Tunguska in the worlds of NIGHT SHIFT?  Easy. It was e.) All the above.

There were UFOs over Siberia.  The US government had found about them and Tesla blew them up with his death ray.  Something he felt terrible about ever after.  The aliens would then later investigate again only to crash in Roswell, NM.  That's USA 2, Aliens 0!

A possible adventure idea is that someone has found Tesla's notes and now has their own death ray! 

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF). 

#AtoZChallenge2022: S is for Satanic Panic

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: S is for Satanic Panic

This one might get a little meta.  But the Satanic Panic is something that all gamers of a certain age know all about. But if you think this particular corn-filled nugget was left behind in the 1980s then I have some news for you all.

A satanic panic is a form of moral panic that also has an element of a conspiracy theory behind in.

The notion is that there is a worldwide conspiracy of Satanists out there stealing babies and trafficking in children.  

Which of course is insane.

80s Satanic Panic

In the 1980s we went through a period of Satanic Panic that kept bubbling up. There were allegations of ritualistic abuse and that some daycare centers were fronts for sex trafficking and cannibalism.  Some children even came forward to talk about it.  The people that bought into this panic claimed there was a conspiracy of Satanists and it went on even persecute and jail innocent people.

The agreed start of the Satanic Panic scare, was Michelle Remembers, a book about recovered memory of ritualistic abuse. Though I claim it is a backlash of the 70s Occult Revival that has it's ceremonial start with the 1972 Time magazine cover of "The Occult Revival. Satan Returns."  Once both of these publications had hit the public consciousness the Wee Care Nursery School and McMartin preschool incidents and trials began.  Millions of dollars were spent, thousands of hours, and several lives of those accused destroyed.  The very few convictions were voided, but not before some people spent time behind bars.  The testimony of the children interviewed was later looked back on and many errors and outright miscarriages of justice were found.

All in the fear of Satan.

We even felt it in my small town in Central Illinois. Someone "found" a "satanic altar" in a cornfield south of our high school.  People were losing their damn minds.  I thought it was so fascinating that everyone at the school was so freaked out over what I considered nothing. I had been a pretty strong atheist at this point so I did not even remotely think there were any Satanists here, at least not the type that could do the things some of my peers thought.   This was an isolated situation, but not really a conspiracy. 

Here are some links to help you with the right feel of the 80s Satanic Panic.  This is nowhere near as long as it could be. But to put up everything would be pages of links. 

• My older A to Z of Witches featuring Turmoil in the Toybox
• Gizmodo: A Brief History Of "Satanic Panic" In The 1980s
• YouTube: The Thinking Atheist podcast153 - Satanic Panic
• Good Ol' Wikipedia (great to get you started)
• Satanic panic
• Moral panic
• Day-care sex-abuse hysteria

Pizzagate

Speaking of people losing their damn minds. You would think that the Satanic Panic would have stopped by the mid-90s.  After all, this is the 21st Century, the 3rd Millenium, we are obviously too smart for this sort of fairy tale nonsense.

Yeah, you know where I am going next.

So back during the 2016 Presidential election when new bars were being set for stupidity every day the latest rumor from QAnon connected a pizzeria, Comet Ping Pong Pizza, to a supposed ring of Satanic pedophiles. Things only got worse, or stupider, from there. 

I don't want to go into the whole Pizzagate saga or even into QAnon. They don't deserve my mental energy and especially no place on my blog.  You can read all about Pizzagate online if you wish. I mean seriously, these idiots claimed there were underground areas in a building with no basement.  Suffice to say this: There are still plenty of people that believe, like Hal Lindsay once proclaimed, Satan is alive and well.  

Are there Satanists? Yes. There is the legally recognized Church of Satan and other Satanic and Luciferian religionists.  There is no worldwide Satanic conspiracy. There is no worldwide anything for Satanists in fact. They rather famously don't see eye to eye on many things after Anton LeVey's death. 

Does child trafficking happen?  Sadly yes it does.  But there is no evidence that there is any connection to Satanists. 

We are not done with Satanic Panics.  Who knows what shape the next one will take.

For NIGHT SHIFT

So in the real world, there is no Satan and most Satanists are fairly harmless.  But NIGHT SHIFT is a different story. There are really demons and devils and evil spirits.  But there is no conspiracy here.  Demons, historically in games, are "Chaotic Evil" and they rarely work with each other. Their followers never do. 

I have used demons and trafficking in a game before. It was my "Vacation in Vancouver" campaign. Everyone in the game agreed it was going to be NC17 and very dark. But it is not something I would recommend for most groups but for the most serious and trusting players.  

All of this being said here is what I would do.  The characters catch wind of a possible Satanic Conspiracy.  Being big bad monster hunters they seek to investigate and possibly kick some demonic ass.  Instead, they find not demons and devils, but just garden variety humans being evil little fucks.

Why this? Two reasons. First I like to show that most often the evilest things we encounter are other humans.  Humans have a capacity for evil unmatched.  Secondly, it is a nod to the personal history I and many gamers have with Satanic Panics.  Many of us were on the receiving end of this just for being gamers.   So instead of it being Satanists, it is members of the local community doing this to get rid of the "undesirables" in their community.  If they look like the local PTA or HOA that is a mere coincidence. 

Yes, I know this is also essentially the same plot of the comic and TV series "Runaways" and the rather terrible Dan Ackroyd and Tom Hanks "Dragnet" movie. Though not as bad as Tom Hanks' other starring role in "Mazes & Monsters."

Given the nature of these work in real life, I would these sparingly, maybe only once per RPG title ever. 

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF). 

#AtoZChallenge2022: R is for Radio Conspiracies

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: R is for Radio Conspiracies

There is something about many modern conspiracy theories and their connection with radios.  I think it is because, like the Internet, conspiracy theories were often shared in less than reputable papers and tabloids but also via ham radios and various pirate radio stations.

So today I thought I'd look into a couple of these.

The War of the Worlds

The first is the 1938 broadcast of War of the Worlds. It seems that people missed the repeated remarks on this being the fictional broadcast.  But as Orson Welles was broadcasting wide-spread panic sat in by people believing that the US was really being attacked by Martians.  Why am I including this here?  It shows that people were taken in rather convincingly by what they heard on the state-of-the-art technology of the time.  So really, can we be surprised that people are taken in by stuff they see on the Internet?

Numbers Stations

These are weird.  I mentioned them back in October and I have looked into them a little more since then.  These are short-wave radio broadcasts believed to be coded messages to intelligence officers in the field.  If you can find them they are actually a little creepy to listen to.  While some, a minority, have been found out this leaves a majority who have not been discovered. Where uncertainty leaves a gap it is usually filled with a conspiracy theory. 

Some of the best I have heard/read is that these codes are for programming people that hear them.  Someone hears these numbers and they are pre-programmed to do some activities that they will not remember later.  Others claim they are alien broadcasts, either to or from aliens.

I can't recall if "The X-Files" ever covered Numbers Stations, but the recent History series "Project Blue Book" (not to be confused with the older, similar series on NBC "Project U.F.O.") featured them.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Taking a page from Banshee Chapter, the characters can discover a new Numbers Station; or be given a story by their editor in a Weirdly World News.  The station is not communicating with anyone human but the extra-dimensional aliens.  What are they doing? What do they want?  Maybe these numbers are not a coded message, but rather the frequencies are for opening up a portal to let in even more aliens.

Story or not, these aliens should probably be stopped. 

Oh. Looking for what I have said about another R word, Roswell? I have a whole entry in the latest NIGHT SHIFT book Night Companion: A Sourcebook for Night Shift: VSW.

Given all this talk about Radio, I thought this was a good choice. 

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

#AtoZChallenge2022: Q is for Queen is a Lizard

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: Q is for Queen is a Lizard

One of the strangest conspiracy theories I have ever encountered was that the Queen of England, and presumably the entire Royal Family, are in fact shape-shifting lizard people.

I first heard about this during the 1986 Illinois gubernatorial election.  There is a lot to it, but briefly A couple of candidates, called "LaRouchies" by my dad, had run on the National Democratic ticket and won some major primary wins.  Because the people were confusing them with the Illinois Democratic Party (the one that would later back future President Barrack Obama). Anyway, it caused a lot of confusion, not that it mattered, Thompson won for like the 300th time.   But it did introduce me to National Democratic founder Lydon LaRouche.    

LaRouche was, as we used to say, bat-shit crazy.  Among his other ideas (including fascism, antisemitism, and racism) he believed that the Queen of England was not just a lizard person, she was in charge of an international drug ring along with the USSR. She also had put a hit out on him.  LaRouche was a constant bogeyman in Illinois politics until his death.  I remember one time they were on the campus at UIC (the University of Illinois at Chicago) and I asked them as I walked by on my way home from work if they still thought the Queen was after them.  They got mad but I didn't stick around to talk to them. 

I later found out that this whole Queen is a shape-shift lizard person comes from professional crazy person David Icke.  Icke really is the architect of this whole Lizard person/Reptiloid/Reptilians idea so maybe I do owe him some slack. After all, I have gotten a few hits this month from his ideas. Just a quick glance I have grabbed ideas related to this for A (Ancient Aliens), E (Extraterrestrials on Earth), I (Illuminati), N (New World Order), and  O (Outer Space).

Icke might not be picking on the Queen in particular, he seems to think that anyone in power is actually a lizard person. It should be noted he is also a Holocaust denier. 

There are others that share these ideas, but they seem to stem from Icke.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Again going with the obvious choice here, but finding out local government officials are shapeshifting aliens.  The trick for Game Masters is how deep does this conspiracy go?  Is it all of them or just a fringe group of weirdoes?  Given the history I have, I am likely to go with the whack-a-doodle fringe group is really the lizard people.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

Want to learn more about  NIGHT SHIFT and our plans for the game?  Check out this post from my co-creator Jason Vey on Powered by O.G.R.E.S.: A Multiverse of Systems.

#AtoZChallenge2022: P is for Paul is Dead

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: P is for Paul is Dead

Ok. This one is VERY different from my other conspiracy theories posted here this month, but maybe one of the most important ones to me.  Why?  Because this is the conspiracy theory that introduced me to all the others.

Back in the 80s my dad (or maybe it was my mom, both were voracious readers) had a book about conspiracy theories and urban legends.  One grabbed my attention because my older brother Mike had gotten me into the Beatle recently and I was tuned in to anything Beatles.

The rumor was that Paul McCartney was dead and the clues had been scattered across all their albums if you knew what to look for.   And the list was a tantalizing one.

The rumor began in 1967 that Paul, singer, songwriter, and bass player for the Beatles was killed in a car crash.  The rumor was denied later, but it caught on and fans began to look for clues.  Here are some of the things they found.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

• On Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band, the album cover had a hand over Paul's head, which many people claimed (with no evidence) was an ancient sign of someone about to die.  
• Paul's uniform had a patch on the shoulder with the initials "O.P.D." on it which fans took as "Officially Pronounced Dead."  It was, according to McCartney from the "Ontario Police Department." This can be seen on the cover and the gatefold.
• The lyrics page of Sgt. Pepper's had all of the band, except for Paul, facing the camera.  
• The lyrics page also had George Harrison pointing to a lyric from "She's Leaving Home."  The line says "Wednesday at 5 o'clock."   This was not just when Paul died, but also to signify George Harrison's disappointment that Paul was replaced.
• The flowers on the cover represented a left-handed bass or a P, both for Paul. 

The Beatles, aka The White Album (1968)

• Ringo's song "Don't Pass Me By" features the lyrics, "You were in a car crash, And you lost your hair."  
• John Lennon's song "I'm So Tired" has some mumbling in the recording that when played backward says "Paul is a dead man. Miss him. Miss him. Miss him."
• If you play the end of "Revolution 9" backward (the "Number 9. Number 9" bit) you can hear John saying "Turn me on Deadman."   Producer Alan Parsons confirms that this is true, but only because John liked the sound of it. 
• The song "Glass Onion" has the line "the Walrus was Paul."   People decide that the walrus was the "Viking animal of death" or whatever that means.  

Abbey Road (1969)

One of the most famous covers of Beatles' albums is also full of clues.

• Each Beatle is crossing the road in step with the other, except for Paul.
• Paul is barefoot (as a corpse, so it is claimed) and smoking his "last cigarette."
• Each Beatle represents a different person in a funeral.  John is the priest in all white, Ringo the undertaker, Paul the corpse, and George in work clothes the srave digger.
• There is a Volkwagon (also known as a "Beetle") in the background with the license plate "28IF." Paul would have been 28 IF he had lived. Though in truth he was only 27 at the time.

And there are more, some going back to the Beatles catalog to find more clues.  Some even going back to "Revolver", released in 1966 BEFORE Paul "died."

The idea, which I clearly knew was false, fascinated me that people could be so caught up in it.  I would later see the same sort of behavior when the Satanic Panic happened.

Of course, this happened all by word of mouth and rumor and shoddy reporting and less than critical DJs on FM and college radios.  Certainly, something like this would never happen in the days of the Internet and fact-checking websites? 

WRONG.

Avril Está Morta / Avril is Dead

The newest version of this rumor is that Canadian singer Avril Lavigne died in 2003.  She was replaced by someone named Melissa Vandella (oh I have to use that name sometime) and was used to support their perception that Avril's style, both musically and personally, had changed from 2003 on.

What must they think of Lady Gaga then?

Both of these though bring up an interesting point in contrast.

Avril is Dead is a rumor or urban legend.  Paul is Dead is a conspiracy theory.

What is the difference?  Well, the key here is twofold.  Both seem to have grown from fans reactions to their artists and rumor getting out of hand.  While that seems to be the beginning and the end for Avril's supposed death, there is some evidence that Paul is Dead was embraced by at least John Lennon, and clues were seeded.  These are largely in the backward masking of songs from The White Album.  

Intentional involvement to hide the truth (or a lie) is the key element here.

For NIGHT SHIFT

This is the harder bit.  Despite my enjoyment of this particular bit of Beatles trivia, I have not found a good way to use it in a game except for the obvious.  Doppelgängers.  Someone famous has been replaced by a doppelgänger, or maybe a shape-shifted Reptoid, and the characters are the only ones who have noticed.  OR better yet.  Someone else has noticed and collected all this data but is then later killed.  It is up to the characters to discover the truth. Is the person a doppelgänger? Victim of a false rumor? Or did they cook the whole idea up to sell more whatever, albums, books, hits on YouTube.

Up to the characters to find out.

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF). 

#AtoZChallenge2022: O is for Outer Space

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: O is for Outer Space

This is a catch-all for various things I wanted to talk about but didn't have enough on their own.

They do all have at least one thing in common.  A serious distrust of NASA.

Moon Landings Faked

This is a big one really. There are some people out there who think the moon landings were faked.  We have a word for these people.

Idiots.

But it does give me a chance to use one of my favorite movie jokes.  

"NASA went to Stanely Kubrick to convince him to film their fake moon landing, but Kubrick was such a perfectionist he demanded the film it on location."

It is the same distrust of NASA that gives us the Flat Earthers. 

The Planet Nibriu 

Nibriu has tried to kill us not just once, but twice. There has been some version of this for decades.

Face on Mars / Pyramids on Mars

Back in 1979 the Viking I mission to Mars took orbital photos of what appeared to be a face on the planet Mars.  Later the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Mars Global Surveyor in 1998 and 2001 took better pictures and showed that the "Face" was a trick of the light and pareidolia.  Humans are programmed to recognize faces.  Great when you are a newborn baby looking to get fed, bad when trying to separate signal from noise.  

Mars in general has fascinated us since we started looking up to the skies and noticed this one reddish-looking point of light was a bit different than the others.   I suppose it is hard to let go of some ideas after they have been ingrained for so long, even with the best data out there.

Of course, all the data in the solar system won't change the minds of those that feel that NASA is lying to them. 

Area 51

I talked a bit about this in "Night Companion: A Sourcebook for Night Shift: VSW" in my "Weirdly World News."  Area 51 is neat and all, but it is likely nothing there save for advanced aircraft. Advanced, sure, but not alien.   Besides, I have my own ideas for Area 51.

For NIGHT SHIFT

Nothing in particular that I have not mentioned already.  Save I want to do some more sci-fi style games with NIGHT SHIFT.  Come back in two week when May starts off Sci-Fi month here at the Other Side!

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).

#AtoZChallenge2022: N is for New World Order

The A to Z of Conspiracy Theories: N is for New World Order

The New World Order is a conspiracy theory that gets rolled out once every few years. We are about due for it to come back up.

The idea behind it is that some great disaster, usually a false flag one, will cause all the countries in the world to cede control to some World Government, usually the UN, so there is a one-world government.

The term seems to come from early 20th Century political figures Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill.  It was much later popularized again by the first President George Bush.   

There are SO MANY conspiracy theories about the New World Order. More than I could even pretend to cover here.  But here are a few.

The first big one centers around the "End Times" of the New Testament.  Some readings of Revelation led people to people that the time of the Anti-Christ would coincide with the rise of a One World government.  This one got a lot of press back in the time when the European Union was founded (1993).  I remember having a conversation with a woman I worked with at a head injury clinic.  Like me she was a Qualified Mental Health Professional so not a dumb person by any measure, in fact very bright and very good at her job. Yet she told me she was not making any plans for the future.  She took the formation of the EU as a sign of the Beast returning. She even pointed out to me that the number of countries was the same as the number of horns of the great beast.  I don't think she was right, but she was convinced.  She even told me she expected the world to be over by 1999.  I kinda wish I had kept in contact with her.

There is a New Age philosophy that takes the NWO into a positive light with the arrival of the Age of Aquarius.  This will be a new age of peace and love.  I have used these ideas before with my witches and Sisters of the Aquarian Order.

There are plenty more involving the Illuminati and the Masons (of course).

David Icke, in particular Icke fashion, claims this is the time when we will be invaded by aliens.

And there are more, but you get the idea.

There are so many problems with any sort of New World Order.  I am not saying that we won't get to a One World Government, but it won't be any time soon.

Capt. Burnham and Earth's President in the 32nd Century

Honestly, look at Brexit.  Not even Europe can hold itself together even when there are solid financial reasons to do so.  

Plus there is no single body of government that can even make the claim of being able to gather everyone together even through force.  

New World Order conspiracy theorists have a remarkable faith in humanity that I simply do not share. 

For NIGHT SHIFT

If anything the world of NIGHT SHIFT is even more chaotic than our real world.  Getting humans together is hard enough.  Add a bunch of supernatural creatures on one side and now a bunch of extraterrestrials on the other side, the notion of a New World Order is laughable.  Unless...

There is fear of a New Word Order, and the ones that are feared are normal humans.  This works well with my Ordinary World setting. Here the supernatural creatures are worried that humans will discover all about them and wipe them out.  As we know, scared groups tend to panic, and panicked groups tend to lash out violently.  

The situation would play out with various groups of supernatural creatures working together that normally hate each other joining forces to fight what they consider the bigger threat, united humanity. 

Like the Doctor Who episode, The Pandorica Opens, they gather together based on a faulty premise. The Doctor wasn't destroying the universe and the humans are not gathering together to destroy all the supernatural. Well...no more than usual. And certainly not a coordinated effort. 

So no New World Order here. 

--

Of course, this song was the first thing I thought about. 

The NIGHT SHIFT RPG is available from the Elf Lair Games website (hardcover) and from DriveThruRPG (PDF).