With the recent NYT revelation that the US government was, in fact, sighting and researching UFOs on taxpayer money, UFO discourse has revived; yet, discussions in online fora have highlighted that evidence is scarce—it seems that most photographic evidence was from a relatively long time ago, at least long before digital cameras and HD images were a thing.

On the one hand, restricting the availability of evidence to low-fidelity, high-noise evidence sources makes it possible to doctor evidence (or outright fabricate it).

On the other hand, what if, what if indeed our extraterrestrial visitors did indeed visit en-masse in the 50’s and 60’s, and then not any more (or only very rarely) afterwards?

What sense would that make?

Well…

Shower thought: aliens came over to check on us when they noticed we used atomic bombs. To check that we’re not a danger to either them or ourselves. Or maybe they wanted to check whether we destroyed everything already and see if the place was clear for them to settle. Then they checked again a few times while the cold war was going on. Then once they satisfied themselves that we’re probably not using nuclear weapons again, they left.

What about a prediction: the moment we start using advanced weaponry in a way that’s conspicuous from outside the atmosphere, we’ll get visitors again.