The Non-Existent Secret Alien Base Hidden off the California Coast
At the end of 2024 there was a rash of sightings of purported UFOs in the United States. Social media filled up with blurry footage (and it is, of course, always blurry footage) or strange lights in the sky.
For the main this footage is easy to pick apart. Aside from anything else a lot of the lights are either single dots, lacking in any detail and therefore entirely beyond scrutiny, or clusters of lights which, if you take a step back, are clearly private or commercial aircraft.
For a start the footage shows red and green lights at the extremities of the craft, as mandated by the FAA. It is unlikely that alien craft would follow United States regulations to the letter, but civil aircraft obviously would.
And then there are the various attempts to obscure the true origin of what is being filmed. Aside from the footage being blurry, it is almost always without sound, shaky and unclear, and invariably at night because such a wild misidentification could never hold up to scrutiny in the day.
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Still, it beats all the CGI footage from the last few years, and at least what is being filmed here is “real” rather than entirely made up. But as long as there is karma to farm on Reddit there will be attention seekers looking to surround themselves with gullible idiots.
And to be fair to the observers and commentators, there does appear to be something going on off the east coast of the United States. There are an awful lot of drones of an indeterminate origin in the sky, and what they are doing is also uncertain.
But this latest rash of “UFO” footage has churned up all the old stories from the past about aliens walking among us, and the various fanciful things that are associated with the “wouldn’t it be cool if” school of historical theory. It seems that a certain portion of the internet simply wants to believe.
So, let us for a moment humor these experts on UFOs. If these are aliens, intent on buzzing around the skies of New Jersey, where have they come from?
The answer, according to many such theorists, is well known in the community: a hidden alien base, underwater and off the coast of California. And there have been claims about this base for decades.
Terror From The Deep
The idea of an alien base near San Diego and Baja California is nothing new. It is surprisingly hard to find the start of this rumor, but it seems to concern an unusual object on the edge of the Pacific shelf, some 250 km from the coast of North America and near the island of Guadalupe.
The underwater object is vast, it is flat topped and it appears to jut out from the North American plate into the deeper water to the west. It is unarguably a prominent underwater feature and equally it has an unusual physical appearance, looking like a giant block with a level top.
The problem with the identification is this: what you have just read above is the entirety of the “evidence” for the existence of this base. This is the flimsy basis on which this entire theory of an alien presence has been built. Nobody, at least nobody who claims it is an alien base, has gone to check for sure.
Why do people choose to build such a theory on such little evidence? The reasons are myriad, and actually much more interesting than this underwater feature.
Most people interested in this story are merely curious observers, but let us consider the true believers and the motivations which might lead someone to claim that such a wildly implausible story is true. In the absence of actual evidence, a lot of it comes down to the certainty in the mind of the individual.
If they believe, truly believe that this is an alien base, then they believe themselves to be in possession of secret knowledge of which only a select few are aware. This elevates the individual in their own mind: only they know the truth.
Such a individual becomes locked in a self-reinforcing spiral as they champion their alternative belief. The more they espouse this belief in defiance of what everyone else says is true, the more embarrassing it would be if they were ultimately proven wrong, and the less likely they are to accept any evidence which contradicts their preconceived notion.
Then there are the people who do not believe, but pretend to do so. These usually take the form of “experts” who, through pretending to know something, find themselves the center of attention, a beguiling position to be sure. They are feeding the masses with disinformation for their own self-importance.
These are the fakers, who either wilfully misinterpret evidence or outright manufacture it, all to keep themselves in the spotlight. This can be for financial gain but it often isn’t, as it is frequently enough to be seen as an authority on a topic. Bragging rights and all that.
Ultimately these people find themselves in the same trap as the believers, but with the added dangers of their fraud being uncovered. They cannot admit their fakery to anyone, lest the truth get out and ruin their reputation.
Undersea locations hold a particular charm for such theories. Such locations are not easily checked to confirm or deny the claims, and are unfamiliar landscapes which lend themselves to be exotic and the unknown, places where aliens could be hiding because humans don’t go there.
This is why some believe there is an ancient fortification off the coast of Japan, or a road through the Caribbean. This is why some claim the sunken bridge between India and Sri Lanka was not a geological feature, but in fact built by an army of monkeys.
Then, finally, there is the sheer implausibility of alien life being present on Earth at all, at once intelligent enough to build an undersea base and close enough to our own development to be recognizable. On the cosmic scale of time, the possibility of aliens reaching roughly the same point in their development of us at the same time (after fire, before Dyson Spheres) is zero.
We are sure there are some who, if they have read this far, will cry foul at the above assessment. Yes there may have been many cases of mistaken identity, many hoaxes and many examples of wishful thinking in the past, they will cry, but this time, this time it really is aliens.
But of one thing we are sure. Whatever the drones over New Jersey turn out to be, they are not extraterrestrial. They may be unidentified, but they are definitely man made.
Header Image: Feel free to go check whether the strange rock off Baja California is a secret underwater alien base; we fear you will be disappointed. Source: Spiritual People / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
