DENVER (KDVR) — Last winter, Colorado had a scourge of drone sightings in the eastern plains, night after night. Technically unidentified as far as their origin and purpose, they were spotted by many to be professional-grade drones with longer range capability when compared to most civilian drones.

They appeared to be flying grid patterns over open farmland, and possibly and more worryingly, near our ICBM nuclear missile facilities sprinkled throughout northern Colorado, southern Wyoming and southwest Nebraska. This happened night after night for a few months and even now, their purpose is unknown. Even with the assistance of Federal law enforcement agencies, no one knows who was flying them. (At least, that’s what they told media and the public.) 

How is it possible in this decade when seemingly every movement and transaction is monitored by the government? If these drones were flown by a private or corporate operator running this fleet to map the plains or whatever the reason may be, they were brilliant in their subterfuge and out-smarted our most prepared clandestine services. This is highly unlikely. Maybe it’s impossible.

If they were a foreign adversary mapping out our nuclear deterrent missile sites or hunting for new ones and went about their business with impunity, we have a big problem because even our three-letter Department of Defense folks couldn’t solve this caper.

And it’s questions like this that worried senators like Marco Rubio, from Florida. He’s asked the same questions and has advocated for a formal government disclosure of everything they know about unidentified flying objects, or as the government calls them now to avoid the stigma, “UAP’s” (unidentified aerial phenomena).

Rubio successfully got his legislation into the COVID-19 relief bill last year and the report is due by June 1. If history proves, the report will likely be largely redacted due to national security concerns, but we may at least gain a clue of what may come after, “A-B-C”, in these real X-Files. 

OK, let’s be honest — even if an extraterrestrial is real, who really cares?

Let’s face it, even if it was determined that these objects were flown by space aliens either in-person or as their own drones, anyone outside of the “ufology” community really care? (Yes, ufology is a thing: it’s considered the study of UFO phenomena using tried/test and true scientific methods and is pursued by respected investigators around the world.) 

Maybe they wouldn’t care. There hasn’t been any widespread documentation that whatever they are have ever hurt anyone, “abductions” aside. (Not to discount abductions as fake, because anyone who claims they were abducted, “know” they’re not only real and but widely reported as unpleasant experiences. But without physical means to prove it like an artifact to “bring back”, unfortunately said experiences can’t be admitted into the scientific realm as evidence). But that said, it’s important to note that you don’t have to worry about ET hurting you as you walk through a dark ally at night. Clearly, there are larger, existential threats in the human experience, like tigers roaming your neighborhood!

Existential threats

Among those existential threats to our life and to our way of being, include most recently COVID-19. I could end this argument right there. But on a more common scale as far as shared burdens go, basic struggles to make the bills every month, to keep a roof over our head and to feed the family takes most of our attention.

Who has time for aliens? There’s the threat of crashing your car on the way to work and the threat of losing one’s job. Space aliens may be last on the list for most of us — if they make the list at all. To date, as far as what’s been verified as fact, this whole thing is no more than, “lights in sky” and they’re not attacking anyone to the extent that it would make the news.

Whatever UFO news may be released in next month’s report might not change much in our day-to-day life. You’ll still have to pay your taxes!

Senators want answers

But, as Marco Rubio had said, if these are not something from a different world or a form of life we’ve not yet knowingly encountered from Earth, and it turns out to be Russia or China, we are in big trouble. Their far-superior technology allows them to jump to unimaginable speeds in less than a second, travel silently from space to atmosphere to ocean with equal agility and velocity far exceeding our understanding of physics. If an adversary figured out faster-than-light travel, their invention would far exceed to the invention of the atom bomb in World War II. If that tech was terrestrial and used against us, it’d be a short battle. If it is ET, hopefully they come in peace.

What if it is ET?

If it is space aliens, I would argue it will change everything and nothing at all. Of course, if their arrival is like the tragedy of the Conquistadors to the native populations of Meso-America, we’d be in big trouble with germs and superior weapons. But, going back to the ant comparison: a line of ants on a sugar trail will 100% ignore a child looking upon them and even interacting with a fallen leaf or stick. Much the same, we may line up in our morning commute like ant zombies focused on providing for our families, rather than worry much about what’s going on above, unless ET starts zapping us with a magnifying glass (or, “blue beam”).

Whether or not they’re peaceful, there would be some religious impacts to core belief systems. Perhaps space aliens could be part of the origin stories, developing with life in the universe just like humanity did. I’m no theologian.

But, peaceful or not and religion aside, there would be implications on the military-industrial complex as far as the perception of who has the biggest and baddest forces. It could have implications on the world order. It may result in the public’s confidence in nations waning as a whole. ET would most likely take that No. 1 spot, just as the U.S. did with the advent of nuclear fission, as the big dog on the block. Would we as a species, unite or continue to fight?

Hope and conclusions

If it was ET, or even an advanced species of this planet that we were somehow unaware of, perhaps we could gain from their advanced tech and secrets-of-civilization aspiring to the longevity of our own. But then again, if they are so advanced, they may simply continue to largely ignore us, observe the operations of our military and remain otherwise mysterious lights in the sky.