Among the documents recently published on the U.S. Department of Defense’s new website, there is one that is particularly intriguing. In 1963, the State Department asked one of its experts on international relations how the U.S. should prepare for potential contact with extraterrestrials. His response astonished everyone.
Unexpected document from the past
The documents published on May 8 on the U.S. Department of Defense’s new website mostly contain rather dull and far from sensational information. However, there is one document in which experts predicted that an encounter with extraterrestrial intelligence would cause panic, and that trying to prepare for it in advance would be futile.
This story dates back to 1963. By that point, rumors of UFO sightings had been circulating in American society for more than fifteen years. And all of this was compounded by long-standing fears of a Martian invasion, fears that could be traced back to the era of the all-too-realistic film adaptation of The War of the Worlds.
Therefore, the U.S. government decided to ask its experts in international law how likely they thought contact with extraterrestrials was and how the country should prepare for it. The response came from an expert named Maxwell Hunter.
There will be panic
The document, written by Hunter, runs to several pages of printed text. The author mentions both religious beliefs and the Soviet Union, but primarily examines the possibility of extraterrestrial life from the perspective of the astronomical, physical, and biological knowledge available at the time.
However, it is clear from the text that he is not an expert in these fields, but he understands them well enough to convincingly demonstrate to officials what they already knew: there is no compelling evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. It is more likely that its presence in the immediate vicinity of Earth can be ruled out—but not its existence in general.
But apparently, he wasn’t very keen on educating government officials in areas that should have been the purview of biologists and astronomers, so the document ended up being shorter than it could have been, given the breadth of the subject.
The best part of the document, without a doubt, is the conclusions, which are written with a good sense of humor. The author concludes that there is no particular reason to expect an encounter with extraterrestrials. And if it does happen, he says, it will mean that humanity finally has problems more serious than those it creates for itself.
However, the author believes it is unnecessary to prepare for contact in advance. In his view, if contact with aliens occurs, the reaction will inevitably be panic. The conclusion may sound a bit ridiculous, but one cannot deny Hunter’s logic and understanding of people’s natural reactions.
According to www.war.gov/UFO
