A.D. After Disclosure

What Does NASA Know?

UPDATE: When we first wrote about the Thursday NASA news conference, we ended with the advice to "Lower your expectations."

On that much, at least, we were right. Arsenic-laced life may be a big biological moment, but it's not life on Europa or copping to the truth about ET/UFO reality.

In any case, here is the original post...

NASA has called a news conference for this Thursday "to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life." Their words, not ours.

Of course this causes people to speculate about what those carefully chosen words might mean. Life on another planet? A new way to look for life? Evidence of previous life?

And, if you read the coverage from the establishment media types, many of them use the blog chatter the NASA announcement has stirred up to then imply "there go those crazy UFO guys again." It's a maddening game, to be sure. This graphic to the left is what CBS used to illustrate its coverage. They get to have their cake (invoking real ET contact) and eat it, too (making people who know something about the subject seem goofy). There's another excellent example of this shell game on CNN where they have goofy aliens in the photo and use the story as a springboard to smackdown people who take the bait and discuss this on the Internet. Sigh...

Back to NASA. We don't know what they've discovered, and they're not talking until they're good and ready, so we'll just have to wait. We tend to think that this will not be a blockbuster type of event, just something that moves the ball a little further down the field. A few yards gained, no score.

Clearly whoever's writing press releases for NASA has put something in writing that makes it seem that they may have found evidence to support the existence of ET life. Of course, Walter Haut wrote a pretty famous press release from Roswell back in 1947 and then had to pull that one back... you never know...

It's been a busy year, looking for life. The Kepler Mission has already found almost a thousand possible alien worlds while scanning a small section of space holding less than 200,000 stars. In September, NASA found Gliese 581g, a planet they think could hold liquid water on its surface. Two months later, NASA said they'd catalogued the 500th planet beyond our solar system. 

But that's not what they're going to announce.

From a basic reading of the press release (you can read it at the end of this post), this has all the earmarks of the space agency finding the right chemical signatures -- possibly relating to the Moon or Mars or (our own pony to bet on) one of Saturn's moons. Rhea has been found to have some oxygen and CO2. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is also the subject of speculation given that two of the panelists named have written about the place in relation to the search for off-Earth life. 

Then there is Europa, of course, with (we believe) more liquid water than Earth!

Reason to consider the Microbes-on-Moons theories: the group of scientists in attendance includes an oceanographer who has used photosynthesis, arsenic and life in the same sentence; a geologist who's used knowledge of rocks to look for life on Mars; and a biologist who has speculated that Titan strikes him as resembling an adolescent Earth. There's also an ecological astrobiologist who specializes in the chemistry that has to happen in an environment to create life.

The bottom line is that these are not SETI-type disciplines. They are, however, relevant to planetary issues, or findings from our own solar system as opposed to Hubble-like discoveries of planets out there that might be suitable for life.

As for the huge revelation, don't look for NASA to make a disclosure with a capital "D." They haven't found a whale on Europa or even an insect on Mars. And even if they had, recall that these people are historically very closed minded on the subject of there actually being intelligent life visiting us here on Earth. For NASA, the action is all "out there."

As evidence that we should temper our sense of anticipation about Big-D "Disclosure," we offer this statement from NASA's own website, lifted from their "Ask an Astrobiologist" page, which goes to the mind-set of the astrobiologists who'll be sitting at the conference table:

Question: Has NASA any had UFO problems? (I'm doing a school project on them.)

Answer:  No, I can't imagine that NASA would have any problems with something that doesn't exist. The sad thing about UFO reports is that they distract so many people from understanding and enjoying real science.
(There is a lot of nonsense on the Internet about UFOs, but I do recommend the website http://skepdic.com/ufos_ets.html). 
David Morrison
NAI Senior Scientist

Thank you for your open mind, Mr. David Morrison. After Disclosure, you will have to sit in the corner and wear a special dunce cap. We hope you won't be too distracted. We digress...

We're not saying the news conference has anything at all to do with UFOs -- it doesn't. What we're saying here is that the way they think is to get excited about the discovery of an organism that can thrive on a cold moon but maintain a completely closed mind to the actual evidence for advanced, complex life-forms coming to visit us right here on Earth. 

The smart money is on Microbes-on-Moons. This is a far bigger deal than who Kim Kardashian is dating but it is not as big a deal as it probably should be, given that NASA -- or at least a few people there -- must actively know that Others are running around in our skies in vehicles that aren't supposed to exist from places that aren't here and that the life-forms operating these vehicles are definitely not just microbes.

Because of this head-in-the-sand mentality, we have one piece of advice for the rest of us about Thursday:

Lower your expectations.

• Just so you can see for yourself, however, here is the word-for-word release that NASA has up on its official site as we speak.

One Week A.D.

This cover to your left, from August 2009, is the only cover story Newsweek has ever done about aliens that wasn't really about a movie version (they did a Close Encounters cover in back in 1977 when the film was released). But the article inside this issue barely mentions UFOs, and the whole thing is only a page or so long. You see, Newsweek doesn't cover UFOs, except to ridicule the idea, and they certainly aren't going to give their precious cover real estate to a subject their editors and reporters treat with such contempt.

So we did it for them.

Here is a faux tricked-up version of a Newsweek magazine as it might look the week that Disclosure arrives. We originally thought we might be able to use it in the book as one of our between-chapters "vignettes" but eventually the decision was made not to use heavy graphic design elements like this. But we present it here, well, just because we like it, and it's fun to imagine this artistically interpreted version of how the establishment media (like Newsweek) which has ignored this important story for so many decades will pivot instantly to riding it to big newstand sales.

The alien and the flag concept was originally done by Alicia Fernandez and Michael Kaplan of Blue Sky Creative for NBC's Dark Skies promotional campaign. Our graphic designer Nancy Tokos re-interpreted it for us for After Disclosure and, at one time, we were going to use it on our book cover but the more we wrote on the book, the more we felt it would say "science fiction" to buyers when we wanted them to think "science faction." We still have affection for the design, however, and it's nice to bring it back for a stage bow here on the website.

Maybe someday, and even someday soon, a cover like this one will grace the cover of an establishment media giant like Newsweek (especially with Tina Brown taking over as editor!). 

If you want to know a bit more about the book itself, here is the link to read the Introduction to A.D. After Disclosure. It is easily available through Amazon.com. Or you can order it through your local bookstore.

As always, we thank you for considering a purchase of the book through the button below at Keyhole Publishing. It will be shipped directly from the publisher signed by co-author Richard Dolan, and you will receive a free MP3 of "Need-to-Know: The UFO Disclosure Song," currently available on iTunes.

Why The Event Hasn't Quite Become One...

It's an eventful time for "The Event." It's beginning a three-month hiatus before emerging again on March 7, 2011. Back in the optimistic days of 2010, NBC ordered up a full-season of episodes, only to watch the ratings slide, with one week's airing coming in fourth in its time slot (5.2 million viewers, 1.7 rating). Going into the hiatus, the show is, charitably, "on-the-bubble."

I've worked as a writer/producer on a lot of series in their first seasons and I know it's hard to make great TV. In actual fact, it's hard to make even modestly okay TV because of crushing schedule challenges, challenging executive notes, turf wars, budget constraints, and network dictated concept changes. If history is a guide -- given the ratings troubles -- the obviously experienced creative team at "The Event" is hearing a lot of often mutually contradictory ideas about changes they should or should not be implementing in their final episodes.

"The Event" certainly provided lots of action (more bullets per minute than most series), plenty of intrigue (everybody lies and manipulates), and some great actors (Blair Underwood, Hal Holbrook). There's just one thing I wish it had more of, something that would have deepened it, and maybe provided the hook it never found -- UFOs.

The series doesn't seem to take UFO/ET reality seriously, and probably never intended to. It's a clever and often-compelling aliens-are-here concept that seems to take place in a parallel universe where there was no Kenneth Arnold sighting, no UFOs over Washington, D.C. in 1952, no military interceptions, no abductees, no Twining Memo, no Project Blue Book, no Condon Report, no Grays, and, basically, no on-going public interest in the UFO issue.

"The Event" seems to take place in a parallel universe where there was no Kenneth Arnold sighting, no UFOs over Washington, D.C. in 1952, no military interceptions, no abductees, no Twining Memo, no Project Blue Book, no Condon Report, no Grays, and, basically, no on-going public interest in the UFO issue. 

In the world of "The Event," the only brush with "The Others" was a crash, not at Roswell in July 1947, but in Alaska in November 1944. No character in "The Event" has ever so much as uttered the word UFO or connected these alien visitors held at the Inostranka Facility into a larger picture of actual continuing contact and secrecy stretching over six decades. In the world of this series, they crashed up north, they got swept under the ice, and most people just forgot about them.

So, in their pilot, the President of the United States is about to disclose that we've been keeping dozens of youthful human-looking aliens up in cold storage for sixty years -- like he's outing a cosmic Gitmo -- but he's making no connection to the UFO issue that really does exist in the real world. But the readers of this site know that if the President were going to disclose a secret Alaskan facility with incarcerated aliens, the truth-telling wouldn't have stopped there. A thousand million real questions about black ops, secret technology, underground bases, and so on, would have been asked in response.

I'm not saying their limited way in was the wrong decision; it did keep the focus on their primary storyline. But it carried certain other risks, given the core audience they may have been going for. Examples:

{voices} ERIC WARGO | Childhood's End

To me, the most haunting image in Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel’s new book A.D. After Disclosure is this paragraph (p. 86): "There is … a story offered by a high-level intelligence official about a UFO briefing President Carter received in June 1977. It was unknown to the source what specifics were discussed, only that when the President was seen in his office, he was sobbing, with his head in his hands, nearly on his desk. It was clear that the President was deeply upset."

Although they comprehensively discuss the various possibilities, the authors of A.D. appear, along with almost everyone who has ever given an interpretation of the data, to basically favor the extraterrestrial hypothesis. My question in this post is: Would revelation of extraterrestrials on earth be enough to bring a president to tears?

A.D. After Disclosure continues with a collection of guest essays by researchers and thinkers in the UFO investigation field, themed on the subject of Disclosure, and how the world will change in its aftermath.

Today's essayist is Eric Wargo, a science editor and writer, who has a PhD in Cultural Anthropology. He lives in Washington, D.C. where he blogs about UFOs, psychology and what he calls "Western esotericism" at www.thenightshirt.com. We are proud to include it as as part of the dialogue here at A.D. After Disclosure.

My only criticism of A.D. is that the scenario for how humans would react to the knowledge of “Others” among us seems overly predicated on those Others being from somewhere exotic — if not space, then other dimensions, the future, etc. I think the reaction to a disclosure that aliens were actually from right here on earth — that is, that they were cryptoterrestrial (to use Mac Tonnies’ term) rather than extraterrestrial — would be far, far more unsettling to us individually and as a society than the authors consider. It would make sense of Carter’s reaction. It would also put the decades of government secrecy and disinformation in a whole new light. To my mind, it could almost justify it. (And bear with me.)

Our natural anxiety at the prospect of extraterrestrial visitation (anxiety over their advanced technology, their uncertain motives, our newfound insignificance in the cosmos, etc.) would in an A.D. situation be tempered by a great deal of awe. There would be so much to learn, so many ways in which our minds and our lives would be forced to grow and change, so much redefinition of our place in the universe. Awe may even ultimately triumph over anxiety. This would certainly be the case if, as many predict, Disclosure came with a reassurance that such beings are here to observe us, perhaps even help us, and basically mean no harm. For this reason, whatever the conflicted feelings they’d arouse in us, beings from other planets would probably not seem like monsters. Who wouldn’t want to meet one, touch one, talk to one? I know that it would be the greatest moment in my life to stand in front of an extraterrestrial being face to face.

Expopolitical Lessons from the First Thanksgiving

For nearly four centuries, Americans have celebrated Thanksgiving. I suppose it’s one of the holidays that make you reflect a little more than usual. We gather together with our families, enjoy a nice home-cooked meal, catch some football, and usually at some point remind ourselves of what exactly we do have to be thankful for. 

It is important to remember this, because life really is hard. More than once have I wondered if we are at the mercy of an indifferent trickster demi-god, like Loki. Every thoughtful person I know lives, in one way or another, with pain. We give it out, we soak it in. And yet, I remind myself, although the ride may be difficult, at least we are on it. Every moment that we live is in fact a miracle for which we should be thankful. Let us make the most of our time. 

But it is this our all-too-human tendency to give and receive pain that prompts me to see the irony in our own Thanksgiving history. 

The modern tradition of this holiday was born in 1621, when the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast. The Pilgrims certainly had much to be grateful for. One of the members of the Wampanoag tribe, named Squanto, had taught them how to catch eel and grow the ever-important corn. Another Wampanoag leader, named Massasoit, had brought desperately-needed food to the new colony during their first, terribly hard, winter.

So at that moment, it seemed that the native peoples of North America and the English colonists could find a way to co-exist with one another, to learn, to appreciate, to share the land. Some months before, Massasoit had signed an alliance with the Pilgrims, giving them about 12,000 acres of land. It seemed a decent thing to do for people who had gone through such a hard winter, and who surely seemed too weak to pose a threat. 

Humanity is a complex species. We want to be good, but there is something about us that just can’t help sticking it to the other guy. History is laden with examples of one group of people pushing out another group because those other people were “different.” They were “The Others.” 

Even in the early year of 1621, the die had been cast for the native peoples. Diseases for which Europeans had developed immunity turned out to be deadly to them. Already, the Wampanoag were suffering from some sort of plague brought from the French traders who had established a foothold farther north.

Disease was one problem. Constant land grabs proved even worse. Other colonists began to arrive in greater numbers. These were the Puritans, and they did not take kindly to native people whose heathen ways were an abomination in their eyes, and who also occupied some very choice land. 

The eBooks Are Coming!

Finally, after a long, frustrating wait, a transformational creative product is being offered for sale by a top on-line retailer of digital media.

No, sorry, we're not talking about The Beatles catalogue coming to iTunes.

We're talking about A.D. After Disclosure coming to Amazon as a Kindle book. Since the hardcover edition first started shipping to buyers on October 25, we've received a lot of interest from readers who wanted to get their Kindles, Nooks, iBooks and Sony Readers loaded up with A.D.

We've been taking our time to get the adaptation right, there are always a few bugs, but now they are worked out and the book is up, first, on Amazon as a Kindle. We have a dedicated Kindle and a Kindle for iPad application, for example, and have taken it for a test ride on both. 

By next week, you will also find it available across the board in all e-formats. We have great affection for the hardcover -- there is just something about the physical handling of a book, and the cover by graphic artist Nancy Tokos is striking -- but the content reads the same in digital, and the content here is what we're most proud of.

Our hardcover always remains available at Keyhole Publishing as well as Amazon. When you buy the hardcover from Keyhole, you get a signed edition, plus a free download of "Need-to-Know: The UFO Disclosure Song" (which, like The Beatles, is also available from iTunes).

But if you need to have it RIGHT NOW... and you need to go get it right this second from Amazon... then here it is!

"Thoughtful Scenarios... Refreshing Wake-Up Call"

There's a new review up on Amazon from Randall Sherman of Nevada City, California that we want to pass on. He's also picking up -- as other commentators have -- on the book's approach to not spend time trying to prove that UFOs are real to skeptics but to instead focus on how the world might change after we all know the truth. Here is his comment in full:

This is a terrific book. I'm immensely impressed by the quality of writing, thinking and exploratory nature on a subject that will clearly have a profound impact on our planet in the very near future. 

I'm so delighted to read an expose on the subject that simply accepts UFO reality and then moves forward. Long ago I took this position and decided that arguing against skeptics and debunkers was futile and non-productive. After listening to all the noise it was clear that it was no longer useful to try and convince those who cannot accept the overwhelming evidence presented over the last 60 years. It is simply passé in today's discussion among intelligent people. 

If you agree even a little bit, then you will find this book tremendously stimulating in terms our future world. Dolan's solid historical credentials and Zabel's terrific story-boarding make a combination that produces a very enlightening book. Just as good is the engaging review of the best evidence concerning background and plausible scenarios. I found myself wanting to rush forward throughout the book, yet needing to take rests in reading to absorb all the implications. 

This book utilizes one in one my most favorite exercises of logical discussion, the `thought experiment' which was popular with Einstein and even before with Galileo (it has extended into fields such as philosophy, math, history, political science, economics, law, cognitive psychology and even marketing). Generally, it involves prefactual speculation on possible future outcomes such as "What will be the outcome if event E occurs?" Think tank operatives employ this technique extensively and it has shown to be profitable in business/science (et al) and in this book. 

I've often performed my own thought experiment about extra-terrestrial biological entities as to why they would appear in our solar system. As such, it seems entirely plausible that they would search out a habitable and beautiful, resource-rich planet, which unfortunately is occupied by a frequently hostile civilization. Therein the story begins. AD gives consideration to some very thoughtful scenarios that will possibly unfold. What a gift to benefit from the forethought. 

Unfortunately, this book will be mainly read by UFO-enthusiasts, yet it deserves wider dissemination. It is a book for all people - researchers, sci-fi thinkers, government secretives, citizens and sociologists who want to be prepared for the next stage of cooperation with our star-neighbors. Forewarned is forearmed. AD is a refreshing wake-up call for those of us in the know and those who want to contemplate the profound implications of such change. 

If you agree, or if you want to comment further, you can read give a thumb's up to any of the comments on Amazon or make your own. We appreciate the feedback and the on-going discussion.

Why I Wrote A.D.

(or How I Stopped Worrying About the Past and Learned to Love the Future)

For the sake of exactitude, the title of this article ought to be why I co-wrote A.D., as I had the pleasure and superb fortune to write this book with Bryce Zabel. But what I mean to discuss is why I wrote A.D., and not Volume Three of UFOs and the National Security State. 

Anyone who has followed my career in ufology understands this question. My first book, Volume One of UFOs and the National Security State, was published a full decade ago, in mid-2000, although it really wasn’t until toward the end of that year that people began to take notice. 

That book wasn’t the first serious history of the modern UFO phenomenon (that would be David Jacobs’ The UFO Controversy in America), and it wasn’t the first attempt to describe the UFO cover-up (that had been done countless times by many authors). It was, however, the first attempt to provide a fairly comprehensive historical underpinning to both the phenomenon and the cover-up. That is, it attempted to make a strong case for the historical reality of some sort of UFO government conspiracy between the years 1941 and 1973. 

I felt while I was preparing that book that it had the potential to be special. Even so, I was not prepared for the strong response I received from so many readers. Today, a full decade later, when I can see a number of shortcomings of that first book, I am still sometimes taken aback by the praise people offer to me about it. 

Immediately after I published it, people began asking the inevitable question: when was Volume Two going to come out? I had originally thought that I would not need more than three or four years to research and write that follow-up volume, which was to cover the UFO reality and cover-up from 1973 to the present day. 

That volume ended up being much more work than I ever imagined. Had I tried to complete it as planned, it would easily have exceeded 1,000 pages. Once I realized this fact, I decided to split it into two books and end up with a trilogy. A much neater solution for sure, but even so it was not until mid-2009 that the second volume was able, finally, to see the light of day. The level of relief expressed by many of my readers was easily exceeded by my own. A 600-page albatross was taken off of my neck. Now, I had taken the ufological football, so to speak, to the year 1991: past the 50th yard line and well into enemy territory. 

I knew that the long delay between Volumes 1 and 2 would not be repeated for Volume 3. By the end of 2009, the research for that was nearly all collected and organized. It was mainly a matter of simply writing the book. 

That was when I began talking to Bryce, a former CNN journalist and the producer of the television series, Dark Skies, which aired on NBC. He initially contacted me because he felt that my books would make a strong foundation for a television or cinema treatment, and he wanted to option them. Through the winter of 2009 and 2010, we had quite a few conversations about how such a thing might be done. Then, by degrees, our discussion evolved into something else, a project that we realized was close to both of our hearts.

That project was to envision something that many people involved in UFO studies think about, but seldom make concrete: a world in which the reality of UFOs were openly acknowledged. 

The Theme of DARK SKIES? Disclosure.

The People's Right-to-Know -vs- The People Can't Handle the Truth

The news breaking across the Internet today is that the DVD company Shout! Factory has officially put out its press release stating what readers of this website have known for months: that the NBC series Dark Skies, which had been caught in a limbo of music rights and other issues, is finally coming to DVD on January 18, 2011 (and, if you pre-order now from Shout, you can still have it in time for Christmas).

In fact, the series was one of the first things that series co-creator Bryce Zabel and A.D. co-author Richard Dolan bonded over. Bryce had called Rich to discuss optioning his UFOs and the National Security State for film and television and, it turned out, Rich had been a big fan of Dark Skies. The more they talked, the more they realized they had to write A.D. After Disclosure: The People's Guide to Life After Contact.

When discussing Dark Skies, they realized that, at its core, it is really a twenty-hour film experience on the subject of UFO/ET Disclosure. In fact, it was conceived to be just that from the very beginning. Bryce and his co-creator of Dark Skies, Brent V. Friedman, wanted to put the argument about Disclosure into the very heart of the series and so they did it with two central characters. John Loengard (played by Eric Close) begins the series as a naive congressional aide during the Kennedy administration who is lured into a covert role as a Man-in-Black working for Majestic-12. Throughout, he maintains the position that the people have a right to know the truth, whatever it is. His boss, Captain Frank Bach (played by J.T. Walsh) takes the opposite position based on his experience working in Naval intelligence, that the people can't handle the truth. In order for the drama to work, this push-pull of Disclosure had to be a fair fight.

Here is a scene from the pilot episode of Dark Skies, "The Awakening," that takes place during the Cuban Missile Crisis where Loengard confronts Bach on the issue of secrecy.

Presumably, most of the sympathy of readers of this A.D. After Disclosure site probably lies with the Loengard position. But the opposite position, coming from the gifted actor J.T. Walsh, has its own compelling logic, as seen through the eyes of a man who has the ultimate responsibility.

If you want to see the Emmy-winning main title sequence, the NBC promos and other related videos, please visit our dedicated Dark Skies YouTube page. Finally, here is the Shout! Factory press release:

{voices} BRUCE MACCABEE | They Are Real

Recently there has been much discussion about what happens after “disclosure” occurs. What will be the effect on civilization, humanity, etc.? 

I first provided a discussion of this a paper originally published in the MUFON Journal in 1987 in anticipation of the possibly dire consequences for civilization of the then-future release of the famous (notorious?) MJ-12/Eisenhower Briefing Document (EBD) which, if taken at face value, was evidence of both UFO reality and government cover-up. Of course, we now know that the consequences were not "dire," in fact the document had hardly any effect on civilization. Nevertheless, the discussion is still germane to the question of what happens when absolute, incontrovertible proof becomes available. What follows is my take on what might happen “After Disclosure.”

Let's suppose that UFOs are real and that at least some are craft piloted by intelligent entities. 

When you suddenly realize that they are real... they are real (shall I repeat it again?)... that they can travel about virtually at their will and we can't stop them (perhaps we can't even see them as they travel at high speed), that they can interfere with us or not as they desire, that some people have been used as physical and probably also as psychological guinea pigs (the abductees), you may start to lose your sense of perspective.  You may become frightened of that which is unknown and therefore uncontrollable... the ultimate fear of the unknown. Don't panic!

A.D. After Disclosure continues with a collection of guest essays by researchers and thinkers in the UFO investigation field, themed on the subject of Disclosure, and how the world will change in its aftermath.

Today's essayist is Bruce Maccabee, who holds a PhD in Physics from the American University. He has been active in UFO research since late 1960s when he joined the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) and was active in research and investigation for NICAP until its demise in 1980. He became a member of MUFON in 1975 and was subequently appointed to the position of state Director for Maryland, a position he still holds. In 1979, he was instrumental in establishing the Fund for UFO Research and presently serves on the National Board of the Fund. Maccabee wrote an original version of this essay in 1987, and has updated and expanded its scope in recent years. We are proud to include it as as part of the dialogue here at A.D. After Disclosure.

To help combat that fear you have to realize that they have been around for at least 60 years and haven't taken over (at least not yet). On the other hand, if they have been around for 60 years, why not 600 or 6,000? If they have been around for this long then it would appear that overt interference with human society is not their goal (at least not yet). You still have your own "free will" to do whatever you want in relation to human affairs, except, perhaps for abductees (covert interference may have already occurred, however).

Will you panic when you realize that they can travel about wherever they want to go, when you realize that they can interfere with us any way they wish?  Will your first instinctive reaction be to hide -- to "head for the hills?"  And what happens when you realize that they can "get" you in the "hills," too?  Do you sit still and wait... and worry?  Or do you place other priorities in life ahead of thinking about the implications of AFCs (Alien Flying Craft)? 

Most people consider important problems to be similar or identical to the following: putting food on one's table and a roof over one's head; transportation; population growth; pollution (connected with population growth); justice for one versus justice for many; peace; war; and relations with in-laws.  For the largest fraction of the human population (99%?) these problems are of much greater importance than whether or not AFCs and aliens are flying around doing their thing.