Ancestors

Toot

Written by Matt McIrvin on 2024-12-21 at 14:43

The question the big "mystery drone" panic raises, that I don't see people asking themselves, is why these things light up at night if they have secret evil intent.

A hobbyist drone, like a civil aircraft, lights up so you can see it, and there are regulations and such about this to avoid accidents. But someone trying to spy on you or attack you with a drone would presumably not want it to be seen. So why would it present as a light in the sky?

The exception I could see is if someone is just trying to mess with your head, so then the light serves as part of its harassment function. But the far more likely explanation is that this is exactly like UFO panics of old and most or all of what's going on is people convincing themselves to misinterpret ordinary aircraft or astronomical objects.

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Descendants

Written by Matt McIrvin on 2024-12-21 at 15:25

(Also, if it's just some prankster, that prankster is at least as likely to be a copycat inspired by the drone panic as the root explanation of it. Nor is that thing going to be one of the car-sized objects that people are imagining they're seeing--it's going to be something you can probably buy at a toy store.)

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Written by Matt McIrvin on 2024-12-21 at 16:21

(I guess a spy drone could be trying to illuminate YOU with visible light, but then we'd be seeing enormous blinding searchlights like cop helicopters use, and that's not what anyone is describing.)

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Written by llewelly on 2024-12-21 at 17:32

@mattmcirvin

in the latest round of drone panics, I think civilian aircraft are the major source of reports, along with astronomical objects, and law enforcement drones sent to investigate drone reports.

But today's drone panics are fundamentally different from UFO panics because we never did live in a world where alien abductions were plausible, but we definitely live in a future in which law enforcement, and private security forces are definitely capable of using drones to harass people.

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Written by Matt McIrvin on 2024-12-21 at 17:34

@llewelly And random people with consumer drones, who might indeed just be pulling a prank. All that creates plausible hypotheses that the panic can be spun from.

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Written by John M. Gamble on 2024-12-21 at 19:34

@mattmcirvin

It's says something that one of the bigger laughs from this Late Night episode came from an expert saying "The reason I know is because they would turn the lights off." (it's all funny, but the expert interview starts at 5:15).

It's a surprise line of common sense after a stream of nonsense before it. The audience wasn't expecting it.

https://youtu.be/55pyJLyycYk

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Written by TobyBartels on 2024-12-21 at 21:39

@jgamble @mattmcirvin : In a little while, after this blows over, someone will have the bright idea of starting it back up by saying ‘See? they've turned the lights off; that's how we know that they were real all along’.

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