UFO conspiracy theorists may be in for a letdown. A new book — Area 51 by Annie Jacobsen — says no alien spacecraft crashed to Earth in the famous so-called Roswell Incident of 1947. According to Britain's Telegraph, Jacobsen says the craft that smashed into the desert in a terrible storm was actually a top-secret Soviet plane with "grotesque, child-size aviators" bred in horrific human experiments and sent by Joseph Stalin to create panic in the U.S. Is that possible — or is this story even harder to believe than tales of shipwrecked aliens?
This is even harder to believe than the UFO stuff: "Does this whole story sound too outlandish to be true? Obviously," says Cyriaque Lamar at i09. But given "the extraterrestrial hysteria following Orson Welles's 1938 War of the Worlds radio reading," this alleged plan might have been "just crazy enough to work." And the addition of Nazi eugenics scientist Joseph Mengele to the story, as the monster who created the mutant child-pilots, is a nice touch.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.