Hysteria over thousands of drone sightings in New Jersey: Is there a reason for the hysteria?
Blessed be New Jersey! No one likes flies when they swarm around you, hover so close to your head you might mistake them for the low flight of a U.S. Navy Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, and test your patience as you try to reread the day’s obituaries. And drones are, well, nasty flies. At this hour, at dusk each day, residents of Burlington County, New Jersey, are seeing a soupçon of drones hovering over power lines, and they look very little like flying ladies late for church.
That forgotten state that many consider only the enormous roundabout of New York and Philadelphia has a problem, or better yet, two: in recent weeks there have been up to 5,000 reports of mysterious drones and the authorities of the Biden Government assure that there is nothing to worry about (perhaps while they go down to the bunker loaded with whiskey, hamburgers and letters).
Stealth drones. Drones that appear in the night, buzzing like metallic swarms of bees with attitude problems. The administration's secrecy is only fuelling hysteria.
The beginning of the chaos
It all started with strange reports. Several nights in a row, groups of drones began appearing over power lines in New Jersey, which is the typical location where you wouldn’t order a three-for-one from a drone-delivery pizza place. Paranoia grew faster than a TikTok cat video with AI-made music playing in the background. Theories started flying (faster than the drones themselves): from terrorists preparing an attack to Chinese spies taking photos of power substations (as if there weren’t better things to photograph in Jersey, like its iconic gasoline smell). Others suspected it might be aliens, though honestly, if I were an alien with the ability to travel through time and space, I’d also avoid Manhattan and stop in a less-trafficked area.
But… what if it was a dirty bomb?
This is where Hollywood-level panic sets in. Or worse: actual suspicion.
The words “dirty bomb” have the power to turn even the most hopeless optimist into a Discovery Channel reality-show survivor. Not that the idea is absurd. After all, a dirty bomb (a device that disperses radioactive material without the need for a mushroom cloud) is the kind of thing that appears in any self-respecting terrorist brainstorm. And of course, having drones over critical facilities makes the most paranoid start thinking about Chernobyl 2.0, but with the Bada Bing Boys from The Sopranos as protagonists.
Luckily, this is where science comes in to water down our terrifying and shocking journalistic story. According to bored experts who wear white coats, thick glasses, and work with lots of graphs (those who got it right during the pandemic… oh wait!), the worst thing a dirty bomb would do is close down a city block for a few weeks while a guy in an NBC suit (referring to Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, i.e. the perfect dress code for entering a kebab shop) cleans the area with a dustpan and an industrial vacuum cleaner. Something like having to fumigate for termites, but with more press and fewer cockroaches.
So who is to blame?
If it's not the Russians (hopefully), or the Chinese (hopefully), or an alien invasion (not likely), who the hell has the free time to fly drones over electrical substations in New Jersey in the moonlight?
The most plausible theory, and also the least sexy, and the one that the Government repeats over and over again is that it is drone enthusiasts or, worse still, some company carrying out industrial studies.
In a statement written by all of America’s big-name institutions, namely the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Defense, and McDonalds, they claim that there is nothing anomalous about the drone salad that has been dancing over New Jersey every night for weeks: “After carefully reviewing the technical data and inquiries from concerned citizens, we have assessed that the sightings to date include a mix of legal commercial drones, hobbyist drones, and law enforcement drones, as well as manned fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters, and stars mistakenly reported as drones,” they said, in something that could be translated into Twitter language by a shorter text: “drones are people’s fault for being assholes.”
According to a report of National Review, concerns about a nuclear threat, such as a “dirty bomb,” in events like the drone sightings in New Jersey are somewhat overblown. While drones could be a conduit for transporting radioactive materials, the likelihood of them being used to create a dirty bomb is low due to the technical complexity and risks involved in handling radioactive materials. In addition, authorities have strict controls in place to prevent these materials from being stolen or used for malicious purposes. However, we’re not convinced yet (and neither are you). “If there really was a nuclear or dirty bomb in real time somewhere in the New Jersey area, you would see a lot of government and law enforcement activity around the clock, not just in the skies at night,” the report’s author adds.
Honestly? Brilliant, but overconfident in the competence of public administrations.
Moral of the story: Don't panic!
For his part, President-elect Trump has urged the Biden administration to stop playing the famous game of where-is-the-ball with public opinion and show all its cards at once. At his press conference yesterday, he said: “The government knows what is going on. Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it is a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went, and for some reason they don’t want to comment. And I think it would be better if they said what it is.”
“Our military knows it and our president knows it, and for some reason they want to keep people in suspense,” added the winner of the last US elections, “I can’t imagine it’s the enemy because if it was the enemy, they would blow it up. Even if they were late, they would blow it up. Something strange is going on. For some reason they don’t want to tell people and they should because people are really… I mean, it turns out they’re in Bedminster and they want to know the truth.”
In short, if you see a swarm of drones, don't throw yourself on the ground screaming. You're probably not about to die in a radioactive attack. You might find it more useful to pull out a fly swatter, but be careful. In the last few hours, the FBI has issued an urgent notice asking local residents to stop trying to shoot down the drones, because they could be manned aircraft, which is another polite way of telling citizens, again, that they're a bit of an idiot.
Are drones a prelude to a global conspiracy? Unlikely. Most likely, they are just bored guys playing with expensive toys or workers doing inspections that no one understood. And if you are watching the phenomenon from your comfortable seat in Madrid, Valencia, Buenos Aires, or Miami, try not to laugh your head off. This is the typical thing that happens once, because from now on it will happen many more times. In fact, I don't want to keep you up at night, but it could already be happening in your neighborhood. Have you looked out the window one of these nights? Say hello to the jihadist!
