Alien Newspaper Prank Sends Town into Chaos
At first look this story may seem like nothing more than a case of weird news, but as the true implications of the event set in days later, it could be considered nothing less than a true social experiment that dictates just how local authorities may respond to the sudden presence of aliens and may provide some insight into how the political establishment views all sorts of paranormal phenomena.
On April first an Al Ghad newspaper ran a front page article detailing the events of a strange encounter and mankind’s first encounter with extraterrestrial entities who had landed near the town of 13,000 residents. The town’s mayor, Mohammed Mleihan was one of the newspaper prank’s most high profile victims, and he called security forces in to investigate and protect the town. The newspaper report described the beings as being over ten feet tall and having technology vastly superior to anything on Earth. Of course local authorities had cause for alarm as the creatures did not attempt direct communication with the established governmental order.
Students were kept home from school, many people didn’t show up for work, and the mayor considered evacuating the 13,000 residents out of fears that an attack may be brewing from an extraterrestrial source. Security forces spoke on the condition of anonymity about the events, saying that the town had almost implemented a security plan to combat fears and potential riots over the event and possibly to fight back if the invaders turned out to be hostile.
The events was comparable to the Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” broadcast which has often been compared to a social experiment in itself. The 1938 radio broadcast which was narrated largely by Welles himself drew a mass panic from those who tuned in to the broadcast late, and the region of Downer’s Grove in which the fictional events of the broadcast were taking place was roped off to stop onlookers from getting too excited and raiding the area along with newspaper reporters.
It seems in this experiment, though it too was merely a prank shows an interesting trait in mankind’s tendency to react with hostility to events beyond their understanding. Of course this is not, as some sources claim, an event that proves the unyielding hostility of man, but rather serves as a reminder to how cautious people are when faced very suddenly with events that they cannot understand. The War of the Worlds incident showed specifically how the average radio listener would react when faced with an alien invasion scenario and the incident just last Thursday shows the early stages of a small town reacting to the early stages of interaction with a fairly secretive alien encounter that refused to undertake an important first step in contacting the human race while being on their planet: actually talking to us. Had the security measures escalated to include a reaction by security officials to “shoot on sight” before any hostility was shown by the aliens, then it seems the violent nature of humans against aliens would be evidenced.
