Obviously there’s no way to know the actual answer to this question and the answers are subjective, which is why I ask it here. But if you were to learn the government’s biggest secret, on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 least, 10 most) how shocked and surprised do you think you’d be?
Let’s assume we’re talking about the government with the biggest, most shocking secret - probably the USA.
By way of example, if we’ve really had aliens and alien spacecraft at Roswell and Area 51 along with ongoing communication with said aliens, allowing them to abduct people and mutilate livestock, I’d consider that a 10. If the biggest secret is some accounting mistake concerning the Teapot Dome scandal, I’d consider that a 1.
Not looking to debate specific conspiracy theories, just wondering, being as realistic as possible, how big do you think the biggest government secret out there actually is? What sort of secret do you think would be at that level of surprise?
It would merely confirm my opinion that people suck.
Edit: By that, I mean: in order for a secret to be “shocking” to me, it would have to be a negative one. Discovering alien spacecraft at Area 51 would be surprising, but not shocking.
I’m not trying to make a distinction between shocking and surprising.
How AMAZED do you think you would be. It could be a positive thing or a negative thing. Gov’t created human life from a rock or government killed 10 million people without anyone noticing… either one would be shocking, surprising, amazing.
Nitpick: You did say “shocked and surprised”, at the end of the first paragraph. I took that to be two seperate (if related) emotions.
I’m sure I can be stunned by some big reveal. 9/11 stunned me.
I sat for a few hours watching the news while my brain wrestled with trying to “digest” the images I was seeing, trying to put them in context, to figure out what they might mean for myself, and what it all might mean for other folks.
Anything that challenges by preconcieved world view would do so, and I think that the U.S. government is capable of that kind of thing.
The FBI announces that the Kennedy assassination was arranged by the CIA, and they’ve known this all along, but have been forbidden to say so due to presidental order (from Johnson on up). I’d say this would be about a 8. No higher, because so many people already figure that there was a coverup.
Aliens and teleportation are cool and everything but I think the biggest government secret is north Korea. People who escape and start to find out that everything they’ve been taught is not only a lie but intentionally the opposite of truth can have a bad adjustment.
As far as the US, if the whole illuminati/reptilian 9/11 thing we’re true that would be a 7 or 8.
Reptilian aliens living among us would only be a 7 or 8?
The lies of north korea and what the people there believe is an interesting answer. An express lie to the people isn’t what I had in mind by a government secret, and it’s something the rest of the world is aware of, but for a north korean who finds out the truth about the rest of the world and the stupid kims, for them it would be a 9 or 10.
I’m not sure how high up on the “shocking secret” scale a large organization such as the US government can keep. They couldn’t keep a lid on Snowden, which is probably the biggest whistle blown in our times. And people already suspected it, Snowden just confirmed, with detailed evidence, the scope of US spying.
I mean, the moon hoax, aliens living among us, 9/11 was an inside job – these are bullshit precisely because there could not be a cover up that big without most of the US population being in on it.
But some big ones are still possible. Something along the lines of rigging national elections, another Tuskegee experiment, the CIA assassinated MLK, things like that.
Even Area 51, though I don’t think I’d call that a 10. “10” would imply, to me, a large enough scale that it couldn’t actually be kept secret. A few aliens in the desert isn’t big enough, though a MIB style “alien foreign policy” branch of our government would be.
I think the biggest secret about Area 51 is that absolutely NOTHING is done out there other than gov’t workers drinking coffee and cleaning stuff (they’re all just janitors), and nothing has been done out there since the testing of the SR-71. This would be a 3-4 for me if it were admitted. Huge waste of money.
Kennedy conspiracies involving the govt, whether they actually killed him or covered up who did and set up LHO as a patsy are so common that if any such secret came out it wouldn’t be above a 5 or 6 for me.
Teleportation being invented and suppressed because it would mean the end of governments as well as the end of many industries (cars, airlines, shipping/mail, etc) would be a 10. Time travel would also be a 10.
DrCube: i used to agree with the notion that a big gov’t is too incompetent to keep truly huge secrets. But there are two topics where people simply won’t take any evidence contrary to the gov’t position seriously: UFOs and drugs aren’t as bad as the gov’t claims (i.e. ending drug prohibition). So no matter how many documents or whistleblowers come out and say there are aliens in the desert (I don’t believe there are) or that the gov’t is lying to us about drugs and prohibition needs to end today, the media will always report on it in a joking manner and people will always be snarky and say something about what the whistleblower is ‘smoking’. So these are two big secrets that, if actual secrets, the gov’t would be able to keep regardless of incompetence. But for all other subjects of secrecy, I agree.
As I’m fond of saying (in the CT threads, mostly), what was probably the biggest genuine government secret of the late 20th century was at one time known only to five or six men, all of whom had the strongest reasons possible to keep it secret, and it stood for about six weeks. Most secrets (of any public interest) last days if more than a dozen people know them.
So conspiracies that require dozens, hundreds or thousands to maintain near-total silence for decades really have a hurdle to clear.
*The Philadelphia Experiment led to the discovery of time travel and allowed researchers to go back and observe that everything in the bible actually happened the way it says it happened! Even the talking snake!
*Highway fatalities actually skyrocketed during the first year of the 55mph speed limit. But local & state governments were so strapped for money the feds lied and kept the limit after the oil embargo ended so funds could be generated from traffic citations.
*The missing link in the Kennedy assasiination is…JFK himself! Kennedy was in such pain from his back and other ailments that he arranged for his own assasination to spare him, his family, and the nation the embarrassment of suicide.
*And the most shocking of them all:
Cecil Adams is actually Marilyn vos Savant eek::eek:
I think a moon colony would be pretty easy to hush up and pretty shocking since the official and generally accepted wisdom is that it’d be ridiculously difficult to make in the first place. Enough rockets go “up” to install satellites that you could shoot a good quantity of supplies to the moon without raising eyebrows. There are a brazillion folks who build and service the rockets, but I have to imagine only a handful get to actually assemble & touch the payloads. If there is a colony, and if it is as close to difficult as we think, there would be ethical questions about sending folks on what is most likely a one way or even suicidal mission to set it up. Secrecy would be a necessity to skirt public outrage, and possibly to mitigate a hostile military takeover of the base by a foreign power once it’s functional. I’d give it a 8-10, depending on the overall human and monetary cost of setting up the bustling city of 200,000 people officially listed as KIA in various wars & disasters worldwide.
Hm…you are one of only half a dozen immortal organisms of your kind, and you really are kept in suspended animation while your brain runs a series of “life” simulations which are installed, read, and analyzed by creatures resembling large cockroaches (the cockroaches that infest our cities are just a programming gag installed by bored technicians). The experiment of which you are a part is, naturally, kept secret from the general population of huge dung-beetles.
Nitpick: You did say “shocked and surprised”, at the end of the first paragraph. I took that to be two seperate (if related) emotions.