Original subtitles

I'm seeing a flying disc out by C-17.

Among the quiet towns and bustling epicenters around the world,

reports pour in of unusual aerial phenomena.

It shoots high into the air.

It's moving in an erratic way.

This is not a terrestrial craft.

Flying discs, hovering orbs,

strange biological substances falling from the sky.

To determine what it might have been,

you'd have to eliminate all the other possibilities.

The sensational becomes credible once it's crowdsourced.

Thousands of people claim to see these orbs.

UFO hotspots light up on the map.

What's made these places the target of otherworldly attention?

This might be the location of the vortex.

As vessels reappear in the same locations,

can we use the earthly to guess at otherworldly motives?

Are these mysterious visitors friends or foe?

And should we fear their return?

All over the world, repeat sightings of UFOs baffle researchers.

UAP are in our airspace, but they are grossly underreported.

The pattern begins to emerge.

These sightings are not rare or isolated.

They are routine.

What is the meaning behind these hotspots?

I can't go beyond what I've already stated publicly.

Congress, the government is not prepared.

Are we being mapped?

In Yelm, Washington, something strange is happening.

On July 29th, 2017, at 9.58 p.m., an off-duty pilot is standing at his living room window.

He has spent thousands of hours flying through the skies here, but he has never seen anything like this.

An impossibly bright, silvery-white light streaks across the horizon at mind-bending speed.

Had the pilot been in the air, he would have been able to confirm the strange object with the ground crew.

But now there is only one place he can report to.

In Davenport, an operator stationed inside an abandoned missile site tries to understand the pilot's description of the impossible object.

It sounds like a meteor.

The pilot protests.

He's seen meteors before.

This light is steady, more like a missile, but far faster, crossing the sky at an estimated speed of 12,000 kilometers per hour.

The Davenport operator has worked for the National UFO Reporting Center for more than three decades.

Descriptions of the impossible are all too familiar.

On this night alone, he will receive 12 other reports about the strange light in Yelm.

It will be recorded and filed as one in thousands of unidentified objects that have confounded scientists and citizens in the region for more than 70 years.

June 24, 1947.

Amateur pilot Kenneth Arnold flies his single-seater plane high above Washington State,

carefully observing the vast Cascade mountain range below.

He decides to take a detour to try and find a military plane that has downed recently with several potential fatalities.

A $5,000 reward is being offered for news of the plane, which had disappeared seven months earlier with 32 Marines aboard.

Looking for a downed aircraft in a mountainous area is probably one of the toughest search and rescue tasks there is.

It's the proverbial needle in a haystack.

The aircraft could be snow-covered.

It could be buried in amongst the foliage of the forest.

It could be hidden up in some valley.

Shortly before 3 p.m., Arnold Banks left, 32 kilometers from the Cascade's highest peak, Mount Rainier.

Suddenly, a bright flash to the northeast catches his eye.

At first, he thinks the flash is just a reflection from another aircraft.

But the reality is far stranger.

What he encounters is something that appears to be a group of alien aircraft.

In fact, nine of them in total.

Arnold said that these aircraft were weaving and dipping and that they appeared to be disc-shaped.

Astonished at the speed of the objects, Arnold times the fleet between Mount Rainier and nearby Mount Adams.

He estimates that they are flying between 1,900 and 2,700 kilometers per hour.

This is in 1947, at the dawn of the jet age.

We really don't have any aircraft at that point in time that can approach anywhere near those speeds.

And if they were going that fast, they would certainly leave one heck of a sonic boom.

Unless they were defying the laws of physics and aerodynamics, then what he saw was not what he thought he saw.

The whole Kenneth Arnold episode basically unleashes a kind of UFO mania in the United States throughout the late 1940s and into the 1950s.

And we even see for the first time the term flying saucer arising.

All these other reports pop up, and in some cases, having one story come out means that the other people who might have had something odd happen now feel more comfortable sharing theirs.

Now for others, it could be that some people crave attention.

It's kind of a me too. I can have a sighting and I can do it.

But then there's another side, a bit more negative. They're being quite nasty towards him.

Maybe he's making it all up. Is he crazy?

There's obviously a huge amount of skepticism, whether or not he's experienced a hallucination,

or whether or not it's a kind of a trick of the light that he is mistaken for a series of UFOs.

One suggested explanation is an unusual type of cloud formation known as lenticular clouds.

Lenticular clouds are a wild-looking cloud because most of the time we sort of associate big puffy cauliflower shapes as to what clouds look like.

But lenticular clouds can be very smooth-sided on all sides.

If you've never seen this before, it absolutely will cause you to go,

I have no idea what I'm looking at, and this is the wildest thing ever, and it must be a UFO.

Another possibility is a medical condition called hypoxia.

And that is a physiological state where you're breathing, but the oxygen is not under enough pressure to get into your bloodstream and feed the brain.

And when that starts to happen, you can experience sometimes hallucinations of a sort.

Arnold dismisses his skeptics and sticks to his story.

As news of this strange encounter spreads, media outlets and U.S. military agents alike search for evidence to corroborate the story.

And they find it.

At 2.30 p.m., a man in Richland, Washington, reports several silver disks flying rapidly westward towards Mount Rainier.

At 3 p.m., a member of the Washington Forest Service on Firewatch reports sudden flashes above the mountain, moving in perfect formation.

And as Arnold flies over with his aircraft, just after 3 p.m., prospector Fred Johnson spots the mysterious disks from the base of Mount Adams.

Even stranger, Johnson soon discovers that his compass is swaying wildly.

Could that be down to the mountains, or the environment, or was it due to the occurrence of a UFO sighting?

Well, the obvious question is, if there are UFOs in this area, what are they doing there?

What is it that makes extraterrestrials want to come to that spot?

Extending more than 1,100 kilometers over three U.S. states and into Canada,

the Cascade Mountain Range is Washington's most striking geological feature.

The effect of the Cascade Mountain Range is quite dramatic on the landscape.

Western side, it's subtropical.

But then if you go to the eastern side, you get this really arid, more desert-like landscape.

While many of the peaks here reach well over 3,000 meters,

none are as tall as Mount Rainier, ascending more than 4,300 meters.

As beautiful as the Cascades are, it comes with its dangers.

There can be unpredictable weather, there can be air currents that cause turbulence,

and this is especially to the detriment of pilots in the region.

Mount Rainier isn't just a mountain.

It's an active, very dangerous volcano that's sitting very close to a large urban metropolis.

The entire Pacific Northwest is very geologically active,

and that's because it sits right on the border of two tectonic plates.

So a mountain like Rainier is always in motion,

because magma is moving underneath that mountain at all times.

The activity at Mount Rainier started about a million years ago,

with the most recent significant eruption being about 1,000 years ago.

And in the lifespan of volcanoes, 1,000 years is nothing.

So while the volcano isn't active in the sense that it's erupting,

it really does have the potential to erupt again.

The many volcanic peaks in the Cascades leave local communities in near-constant fear of a possible eruption.

In the spring of 1980, these nightmares become a reality,

144 kilometers south of Mount Rainier, on Mount St. Helens.

For a couple of months prior to the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980,

there were some pretty dramatic effects.

When magma is moving and it begins to increase in pressure

because it's forcing its way to the surface,

you're going to get earthquakes, you're going to have steam vents happening,

you're going to have all kinds of indications that something is about to happen.

On the morning of May 18th, with no apparent warning,

a magnitude 5 earthquake strikes Mount St. Helens.

The entire side of Mount St. Helens slid down,

one of the largest landslides in recorded history.

What happened then was all the pressure blasted out sideways instead of straight up.

The landslide sends 2.5 billion cubic meters of debris,

equivalent to the volume of 1 million Olympic swimming pools flowing downwards.

While a stream of ash and rock blows out of the nearly formed crater,

reaching a height of 24 kilometers within 15 minutes.

Underneath it, it must have looked like the end of the world.

The sunlight can't get through at all,

so it goes day to night.

It's unbelievable.

Hundreds of homes were destroyed.

Bridges and roads and miles of railroad infrastructure were just wiped away.

57 people died.

There, of course, was the vast ecological damage.

Wildlife were killed and huge swaths of land were just left barren after.

The activity on Mount St. Helens continues into October,

with five more eruptions rocking the volcano.

But after months of chaos,

life around the mountain finally begins to return to normal.

Until nearly one year later.

On March 17th, 1981,

in the small town of St. Helens,

on the border of Washington and Oregon,

famous for its view of the volcano.

Shortly after 4 a.m.,

Sergeant Russell Yocum drives his usual patrol route along Highway 30,

west of the Columbia River.

Suddenly,

a strange light appears,

surrounded by a thick fog.

The light is moving towards the nearby Portland airport.

Sergeant Yocum dismisses the light as a passing plane.

It's very easy to mistake a UFO for something conventional,

especially for a conventional craft, an airplane.

And this is especially so if you're driving in a car.

Just the speed at which you're driving,

looking out your windshield,

and seeing something else moving

will cause all kinds of optical illusions.

The strange light grows brighter,

lighting up the Columbia River like a sunrise.

This is no ordinary aircraft.

Most aircraft wouldn't be a yellow light.

They don't have the intensity and the brightness,

and they don't illuminate things

so we can see detail as well.

But when you have a really bright white light

and you shine it through water vapor,

it actually removes the blue spectrum.

It shifts towards the yellow end of the spectrum

and has more of an appearance of a sunrise-type color

rather than being the original white, intense light.

A lot of attention gets paid to the light

and the light source itself.

But for me, the most interesting part is the fog.

I can't think of many conventional aircrafts

that could produce this kind of fog

that surrounds the aircraft.

Sergeant Yoakam radios police headquarters

before joining two other officers

on the banks of the Columbia River to investigate.

St. Helens PD promptly contacts

Portland International Airport

to report the strange sight.

Staff at the airport confirm

that their radar has detected the object.

Shortly after making the call,

the police officers receive a call back

from the airport.

And they've done the classic confirm

and then quickly deny what they said.

They backtrack and said, in fact,

they didn't see anything on the radar at all.

By the banks of the Columbia River,

the light is shining as brightly as ever.

Then the UFO starts to do something strange

in that it starts making a sound.

And it's odd because that's actually not typical

for UFO sightings.

In my experience, UFOs don't make any sounds at all.

Then, at 4.43 a.m., the light vanishes.

The thick fog that had accompanied it disappears,

leaving behind an eerily blue sky.

This incident takes place over a 45-minute time period,

which is actually a long period of time,

if you think about it.

And it really gives an opportunity

for those involved to take stock

of what they're actually seeing,

getting over the initial shock

and beginning to process what it is

that's in front of them.

The police officers were able to record

the sound of the UFO

and send the recording to sound analysts

hoping for answers, but to no avail.

Nothing on record can seemingly explain

the strange apparition in St. Helens.

But could there be a connection

between the massive volcanic eruption of May 1980

and the appearance of a UFO nearly a year later?

While the eruption of Mount St. Helens makes history

as the most destructive volcano ever recorded

in the United States,

experts fear that an eruption

of the larger Mount Rainier

could be far worse.

When you're dealing with a mountain that size,

it goes off with gigatons of force and ash.

Given where Seattle is in relation to Mount Rainier,

the devastation could be beyond anything

we have ever seen in North America.

One technology instrumental in tracking

the potential timeline

for the next disastrous eruption

is satellites.

The spacecraft that we have,

for example, orbiting Earth

or beyond to look out to space

can also be used to look towards Earth,

capturing things like volcanic eruptions.

And this is incredibly important

because satellite imaging

can give us a unique perspective

on what's happening on Earth.

When it comes to volcanoes,

these satellites are really, really important

because what they allow us to do

is overlay images

of the shape of mountains

day to day

or month to month

or year to year.

And we can start seeing changes

in the shape of the mountain,

whether magma chambers are filling

and domes are forming

within the craters of volcanoes.

And it can give us a lot of data

about how and when volcanoes may erupt.

In 1980,

the 24-kilometer column of ash and debris

erupting from Mount St. Helens

was captured by satellites orbiting the Earth.

And not surprisingly,

it could have been viewed from space,

not just by our technology,

but also potentially by alien technology.

When you look at the images from space,

it actually, frankly,

looks like an atomic bomb blast.

This is the scale of this

and the terrifying nature of it.

Maybe aliens might have thought

this was the first outbreak of a war going on

and they would have wanted to know

exactly what it was.

Anyone in space observing volcanic activity

on Earth would learn a great deal

about the planet's structure.

Humans love to draw lines on things.

And we have all sorts of different countries

with little lines.

But we can also map our planet

through looking at things like geology.

The ring of fire

that runs around the entire Pacific basin

is a great way to map things out.

The ring of fire is a 40,000-kilometer-long stretch

where the Pacific plate

meets the other tectonic plates around it.

So that entire area

is extremely geologically active

and that's where we find

a vast majority of volcanoes on planet Earth.

Could the sightings over the Cascades

be an alien intelligence

monitoring geologic activity

along shifting tectonic plates

to map our world?

The ring of fire runs along the perimeter

of the largest body of water in the world,

the Pacific Ocean.

Washington's Pacific coastline

is another of the state's most iconic landscapes

and another hotbed of unexplained activity.

There's a long history in UFO lore

of UFO interest in bodies of water

and particularly large bodies of water.

And so there's lots of sightings along coastlines.

It does raise questions

as to whether UFOs are attracted to the water

or are they even emanating out of the water?

Are they coming from underwater bases somewhere?

A really common form of UFO reported

along coastlines is that of the orb.

And they're described as spherical often

and particular colours as well.

The really common colours are just white,

yellow or orange.

There's a lot of optical illusions

that happen on the horizon

or across bodies of water.

So that could be one reason

why you're seeing more there.

At the same time,

when the stories start talking

about underwater bases

or other things happening with it,

it is a bit unknown.

We haven't explored it all.

The Pacific Ocean is twice the size,

twice the volume of the Atlantic.

And it really is an uncharted,

underexplored mass of water,

with trenches and mountains on the seabed.

a huge amount of things still yet to discover.

The unexplained lights

seen flitting along the Washington coastline

have baffled locals and scientists for decades.

And several kilometres inland,

even stranger phenomena materialise

when residents of the small town of Oakville

endure a surreal experience

during the summer of 1994.

So we can imagine a very typical rainy,

overcast Pacific Northwest day,

but there were multiple witnesses

who described the rain quite differently.

Initially, people were not quite able

to make out what is odd about it

until a police officer operating his windscreen wipers

notices that it's like Jell-O.

I mean, it's the most bizarre gelatinous substance.

This is not regular rainfall.

Shortly after this,

people start to feel sick

with really unexplained symptoms.

And so there's a lot of suspicion

about what's going on here.

Five more strange gelatinous showers

follow the first.

Rumours start to spread very quickly.

And one of the more extreme theories

or claims about this

was that the gelatinous mass falling

actually contained white blood cells.

Suspecting the link

between the mysterious rains

and the rash of sudden illness,

one local resident collects a sample.

Analysis of the sample

disproves the white blood cell theory.

But scientists from the hazardous material unit

at the State Department of Ecology

are nevertheless confounded by the results.

Tests showed up cells of different sizes

and two previously unidentified forms of bacteria.

But really, experts struggled

to try and understand

what the hell this substance was.

Without a clear explanation

for the odd showers over Oakville,

several theories begin to emerge,

each one stranger than the next.

Was it industrial waste?

Is the government experiment gone wrong?

And then, of course,

is it something from another world?

Some think that the blobs were fluid waste

from a passing airplane toilet.

But this theory was quickly disproved.

Another small but vocal group

believes that these are actually parts of jellyfish

dispersed into rain clouds

after bomb tests by the military over the Pacific.

Others speculate

that it's a mysterious star jelly

reported as far back as the 14th century,

thought to have rained down

from passing meteor showers.

As far as we have ever found,

that is not a thing.

We do not see any sort of gelatinous anything on meteors,

especially after they've entered our atmosphere,

because they are entering at ludicrous speeds,

and anything organic on the surface

is going to be vaporized fairly quickly.

The Oakville blobs remain an enduring mystery,

leading some to wonder

whether this mysterious shower

is connected to the UFO sightings

along the nearby coast.

Certainly, there are going to be people

who suggest that it's of extraterrestrial origin,

but we don't have any evidence

of past events happening that are similar

where we could say

this would be an example

of what could reproduce this phenomena.

You know, the sad bit

is that the samples weren't kept.

And we've got better techniques to analyze it now.

And I think that's something that is changing,

that we're making sure that we keep things

because we know that we're going to get better

at looking into things

and figure out what's happening.

As unanswered questions

continue to plague Washington's coastal areas,

still more sightings occur

along the shores of the state's Pacific Inlet,

Puget Sound.

Puget Sound is a vast, complex system

of estuaries with a shoreline

spanning well over 160 kilometers.

The waters run more than 270 meters deep,

and powerful storms regularly roll across the water

to batter the state's largest city, Seattle.

When you look further into the reports,

you'll actually notice that

it's like a hub of activity in Seattle.

There seems to be the most sightings there.

Now, of course, the obvious explanation

is more people live there,

but there is also that element

of the water at Puget Sound.

Could it be that UFOs are attracted there

in the same way that they are attracted

over the Pacific?

The description of the sightings in Seattle

is similar to those described along the coast.

Often, they're described as these shining

or flashing orbs in the sky,

sometimes flying in formation.

It's always striking when there's a conformity

to the sightings.

It tends to lend some more credence

that something's going on here,

or at the very least,

people seem to be seeing much the same thing.

Puget Sound is also home

to some of the most important military bases

in the United States.

There is a kind of contradictory

and tense relationship

between the UFO community

and the military.

On occasion, the military

might actually deem to validate

some of the claims

coming from the UFO community,

but more often than not,

they shut down,

everything's top secret,

they stymie any investigations.

Although, of course,

that in turn fuels

even more speculation.

They can be secretive,

but there's usually a very good reason.

The military does things,

knows things,

has things,

that the population does not.

They may have technology

that they don't want

the quote-unquote bad guys

to get their hands on.

If we look at the concentration

of UFO sightings

in Washington state,

then map against that

the location of military installations,

it's uncannily similar.

I mean, the two things

sit on top of each other,

which raises the whole question

about alien interest

in human military activity.

After Kenneth Arnold's sighting

in 1947,

many turned to the military

for an explanation.

Over many decades,

the U.S. has experimented

with a lot of different types

of aircraft,

and one of the interesting ones

is the flying pancake.

one-man experimental aircraft,

the Vought V-173 Flying Pancake.

And this really is a flying wing.

And one of the interesting things

about flying wings

is they have a huge surface area.

And that means

that they can actually fly

really, really slow.

They almost have the ability

to hover,

so these aircraft

could potentially be

misinterpreted as being UFOs.

To a civilian,

this is just literally outer space.

They would say,

hey, that's not normal.

That's something

that I've never seen before.

It's bound to happen.

The Flying Pancake's

top speed, however,

is only 222 kilometers per hour,

around one-tenth

of the speed of the objects

Kenneth Arnold claims

to have seen.

The Vought Flying Pancake

retires in 1947,

leaving little explanation

for the constant stream

of reports

in the following decades.

But could this plane

be responsible

for the notorious

Puget Sound sighting

of June 1947

that would lead

to one of the most

influential mysteries

in the history

of unidentified aerial phenomena?

And this is the story

of Harold Dahl,

who's out on the water

one day in a boat

with his son and his dog.

Now, they claim

to see six UFOs,

donut-shaped craft,

hovering above them

that then rain down

an enormous amount

of what could best

be described

as scrap metal

out of the skies.

This is something

very strange.

It doesn't happen

very often,

even in UFO stories.

And this is actually

cause for concern

and some danger

because he claims

that one of these pieces

of metallic material

actually strikes

and kills his dog

right in the boat.

Dahl then explains

that when he brought

his supervisor,

Fred Chrisman,

back to the same spot,

one of the craft

reappeared.

A story borne out

by Chrisman himself.

Following the incident

itself,

it gets in some ways

even stranger.

Dahl and Chrisman

are later visited

by a man in black

who warned them off

of the whole matter

altogether.

The Maury Island incident

really kickstarts

the men in black phenomenon

and it is one of the

most iconic aspects

of UFO history.

Even if there is

very little evidence

for their existence,

it nevertheless has

exploded in

the popular imagination.

After two Air Force

officers investigating

the sighting

are killed in a seemingly

coincidental plane crash,

the FBI opens

its own inquiry

into Dahl and Chrisman's

claims.

And now,

Harold Dahl

does the most

extraordinary thing.

He takes back

everything.

He says,

guys,

this was a hoax.

I made the whole

thing up.

Forget I ever said

any of it.

But of course,

some people had theories

to denounce this,

saying that he was

forced to say

it was a hoax.

Maybe he feared

for his life.

It's hard to

underestimate the impact

of the idea

of unidentified,

very serious

men in black

knocking on your door,

warning you to

keep your mouth shut

and not make any waves.

The FBI

eventually accepts

Dahl's confession

of a hoax,

but doubt continues

to this day,

particularly in light

of the many sightings

that have occurred

since.

The search for answers

about UFOs

has led to even

greater scrutiny

towards Washington's

military bases,

not least to those

housing nuclear technology.

As with military bases,

radioactivity seems

to correlate

with increased reports

of unknown objects

in the sky

around sites

with a nuclear presence.

There have been claims

that there was

a UFO

or alien presence

at the Chernobyl

disaster

in the 1980s

and also

the Fukushima

power plant

disaster

in Japan.

If UFOs

are interested

in energy sources,

this is one

of the things

that they might

be interested in

as a huge display

of power.

Nuclear energy

is really an amazing

thing because it

can produce a lot

of energy

out of a very

small area.

For every kilogram

of uranium,

I get a million

times the same

amount of energy

I can get out

of fossil fuels.

UFO sightings

have been reported

at nuclear bases

across the United States,

like Puget Sound's

naval base Kitsap,

the third largest

in the United States,

and an infamous

UFO hotspot.

In 1978,

an 1800-liter

radioactive

coolants bill

is just the latest

in a series

of accidents

at the site.

The naval base's

infrastructure

is highly specialized,

which has led

some people

to speculate

that maybe

this was the reason

for some UFO interest.

It's home

to both

a nuclear weapons

facility

and a shipyard

offering support services

to the U.S.'s fleet

of nuclear-powered vessels.

The concrete

in the area

of the spill

registers

high radiation levels.

It is broken up,

packed into steel drums,

and sent to one

of the most dangerous

places in America.

The Hanford site

looks from the air

like an industrial

installation,

but it's what surrounds it

that's particularly striking.

It is a really

suspiciously

desolate landscape.

This is somewhere

that is

incredibly

eerie.

I mean,

one can't help

feeling that

it's not a place

that you want

to stick around in.

The Hanford site

was once home

to the largest

nuclear reactors

in the world.

Deserted

since the late

1980s,

the 1,600-square-kilometer

site

is notorious

amongst locals

for its mysterious

apparitions

and for its

unidentified aerial

activity.

The sightings

on the coast

are very uniform

in nature.

There's a great

conformity to them.

People are generally

seeing the same thing.

It's quite the opposite

at the Hanford site.

There's a great variety

of different types

of sightings

and different shapes

and colors

and movements

of the UFOs

reported there.

In 2001,

a silver sphere

shoots above

the site

in broad daylight.

Months later,

fireballs are spotted

falling towards

the old buildings.

In 2008,

a silent,

black,

low-flying cylinder

floats ominously

over the area.

In 2014,

a neon-blue object

rockets towards

the abandoned site.

Then,

in 2022,

another witness

describes a cigar-shaped

object similar

to the cylinder

from over a decade

earlier.

When you hear

about these UFO sightings

occurring over

these alleged

abandoned areas,

it makes you question,

is something

drawing them there?

Those looking

for answers

to these mysterious

sightings might well

turn to Hanford's

haunting history.

The Hanford site

is particularly

significant historically

because it was one

of the main nodes

for the Manhattan

Project,

which was the

crash program

to build

the atomic bomb.

It was important

because the plutonium

necessary for the bomb

was produced

at the site.

The plutonium

produced in Hanford

was crucial

to the Manhattan Project.

It was used

in the first

atomic bomb test

and was later used

in the atomic bomb

that was detonated

in Nagasaki.

Hanford was built

on a truly

impressive scale

and there are

50,000 people

working there.

So this is

an enormous

industrial complex

and in fact

it's basically

a city.

At the Hanford site

they had a large

number of nuclear reactors

and the whole goal

of these reactors

is to produce plutonium.

Plutonium is

extremely radioactive

and a very dangerous

compound.

You really need

to separate

your facility

over a very

large area

so that you're not

having such

intense radiation

that it would be

harmful to the

workers that are there.

Following the end

of the Second World War

the Hanford site

continues to produce

plutonium

for more than

30 years

until in 1987

operations

shut down

completely.

But once

the gates

close

the real

trouble begins.

When we have

huge nuclear

facilities

we have a lot

of radioactive

material around

that's potentially

going to cause

site contamination.

When we're

talking about

radioactive waste

we're not just

talking about

the fuel

we're talking about

all the equipment

used to process

that material.

So it makes

these sites

relatively highly

radioactive.

the Hanford site

has 200 million

litres of radioactive

waste

just sitting

in underground

storage tanks

by the Columbia

River.

It's hard to even

imagine

that amount

of nuclear waste

just sitting there

and all the risks

that it could pose

even despite

the amazing

advance in science

and technology

what a price

we're paying

for having

that enormous

amount

of deadly

substance

just buried

there at Hanford.

With radioactive

materials

if the material

is concentrated

enough

it can take

thousands of years

for it to get

to a safe

radiation level

depending on

the element

that's present

it may never

become safe

to deal with.

A cleanup

operation at Hanford

begun in the

mid-1990s

is expected

to take 50 years

and cost

more than

$100 billion.

But some

living around

the nuclear dump

have already

experienced

irreparable

damages

including

unusually high

rates of cancer

thyroid disorders

and breathing

problems.

The scale

of the environmental

disaster at

Hanford

has attracted

international

attention

and some

wonder

if visitors

have been coming

from even

further afield

to monitor

the surges

in nuclear

energy.

There's been

a lot of

theorizing

about

why aliens

might be

interested

in nuclear

power plants

and nuclear

installations

and even

nuclear bombs.

If you want

the most

advanced

technology

that the

human race

has

it's also

it's most

potentially

destructive.

Now

would aliens

be interested

in that

because they

want to

tap into

it

encourage

it

protect

us

from

it.

But even

at its

most potent

this

human-made

technology

pales in

comparison

to the

destructive

power of

nature.

The eruption

of Mount

St. Helens

in 1980

resulted in

a blast

eight times

more powerful

than the

largest nuclear

device

ever detonated.

The eruption

of Mount

St. Helens

might simply

be lumped

together with

human-created

explosions

and the

whole thing

seen as

this is

an explosive

place.

There's one

theory that

perhaps

aliens are

quite literally

mapping,

surveying our

world for

one purpose

or another

and using

disasters

to do so.

And there's

plenty to

choose from.

Volcanoes

erupting,

plenty of

earthquakes,

lots of

natural

disasters

abounding,

especially

these days.

And then

we've created

our own

fair share

of them,

from the

atomic bomb

to even

something like

the great

garbage patch

in the

Pacific Ocean.

Maybe aliens

are doing a

kind of

cost-benefit

analysis

of planet

Earth.

They're looking

at human

beings,

the impact

they're having

on the

planet,

and they're

taking a

view.

One thing

that's really

interesting to

think about

is what

would happen

if aliens

did detect

us?

What would

they choose

to do?

In 2011,

two academics

from the

University of

Pennsylvania

and an

experienced

NASA researcher

publish a

paper.

In it,

scientists

examine what

could happen

if activity

on Earth

caught the

attention of

an alien

civilization.

The first

option is

that the

outcome would

just simply

be neutral.

They would

decide that

maybe that's

of interest,

but not

enough,

frankly,

and so

we'll just

ignore them.

Perhaps

they're far

more evolved

than we

are,

and they

don't want

to mess

with our

evolution,

technologically

speaking.

Maybe they're

out there

watching and

determining

we're just

not quite

ready yet.

Another option

would be a

very positive

one,

that they

would take

a very

active,

benevolent

approach

to us,

that they

would see

that we

are a lesser

civilization

that could

use some

of the

technology

that they

have,

for instance,

some of

the advanced

knowledge and

help us to

better ourselves,

and that would

be fantastic.

But then, of

course, the one

that everybody

worries about

would be the

more negative

option, that

they would

take a look

at us and

really not

like what

they see.

One reason

for that is

because of

how we

behave as

a species.

Throughout

human history,

the way that

humans have

interacted with

one another,

the way that

we've treated

our planet

in more

recent history,

it's possible

that there's

an alien

species out

there that

has strong

feelings about

how living

things should

operate within

the universe.

In the

negative scenarios,

you have the

very obvious

one, that the

aliens would

just decide to

conquer us

outright and

become our

new overlords.

But there's a

more intriguing

negative scenario

which is

sometimes

described as

the universalist

option, and

that is that

the aliens

would decide

that we pose

an enormous

threat to the

rest of the

universe, and

we are a

problem that

needs to be

destroyed, snuffed

out.

The exact

reason behind

the strange

incidents in

Washington state

remain a

mystery.

They may or

may not be

aliens, but

and their

intentions are

unknown, but

we do know

that it is

more than

likely that

we are not

alone in the

universe.

We have

trillions and

trillions and

trillions of

planets in the

universe.

The likelihood

that there is

life is becoming

more and more

likely because

it's becoming so

unlikely that

there isn't

conditions elsewhere

that leads to

life.

I'm really

sympathetic with

theories that

propose that

aliens are very

interested in us

for our benefit.

I think that

that story, that

narrative, has a

lot of power for

us.

Aliens helping us,

maybe mapping

disasters so that

we can avoid those

disasters in the

future.

You don't have to

believe in aliens to

believe that this

story can be

powerful for the

future of humanity.

We'll be