What is the strangest conspiracy theory that you have ever heard?

[Dark Kaiser]

The Flat Earth Society. Yes, this is real.

I checked the "evidence" page, and they had a "come back when we have our act together" sign. Sigh.

I also checked another page which stated that if the earth were round, we'd fall off. In grade 11 physics, I can already disprove that...

I thought newton already did that with a little thing called gravity.

 

[Sable Gear]

That the fluoride in some countries' drinking water damages the drinker's brains so they're more susceptible to mind controll...or something...

 

[Fightgarr]

Digimon Are Real [http://digimonportal.ourprofile.org/]. I couldn't get the site to work properly but if you can it's an entire forum of people who believe that Digimon are real things. Most of them believe that the show Digimon was created to make us aware of them. A lot of people believe they were created by government scientists when the internet was invented.
Read the stories, some of them are fucking hilarious. So is the entire 'Theories' section.

 

[ObliviousSight]

The best one I've ever heard is that not only is the moon hollow and is built of a frame work of metal, but it is also an AI that controls the feminine menstrual cycle in order to take away human control over when to have children. The purpose behind this is to maintain large stocks of available human DNA for various experiments.

 

[Dorian]

Digimon Are Real [http://digimonportal.ourprofile.org/]. I couldn't get the site to work properly but if you can it's an entire forum of people who believe that Digimon are real things. Most of them believe that the show Digimon was created to make us aware of them. A lot of people believe they were created by government scientists when the internet was invented.
Read the stories, some of them are fucking hilarious. So is the entire 'Theories' section.

Did you hear that? That was the sound of my jaw banging my keyboard. That is just........ wow.

 

[TheDoctor455]

A contest between the origins of the Bible's existence as a text and some bloke on The Mad Revisionist constantly going on about "THE MOON ISN'T REAL!!!"

 

[lacktheknack]

The Flat Earth Society. Yes, this is real.

I checked the "evidence" page, and they had a "come back when we have our act together" sign. Sigh.

I also checked another page which stated that if the earth were round, we'd fall off. In grade 11 physics, I can already disprove that...

I thought newton already did that with a little thing called gravity.

I meant disprove mathematically. But I'm too lazy to do it here.

You're right though, I learned the formulas on the Isaac Newton page.

 

[Altorin]

the moon landing skeptics.

I'm a skeptical guy, I like to be shown evidence of things

but every single claim that the moonlanding conspiracy nuts claim can easily be refuted by science, experiments done by the MythBusters, and other independant labs have shown:

Spoiler: Spoiler'd for length.. I go into detail debunking several of the myths that still linger even though the answers are EASY to grasp

Shadows not being parrallel: "THERE WAS MORE THEN ONE LIGHT SOURCE TO MAKE THOSE SHADOWS!"
No, this is a trick of light when shining on objects that are at different distances from the light source and at different elevations relative to the light source.

Astronauts in the shadows being lit up: "IF THERE WAS ONE LIGHT, THEN HOW CAN WE SEE AN ASTRONAUT WHO'S IN THE SHADOW OF THE LANDER?!"
Light reflects off things.. it's a basic property of light that allows us to see. Sometimes, when the light is particularly bright (such as, during the daylight on the moon), the light will bounce several times before it reaches our eye. Light bounced off the luminous ground of the moon, onto the astronaut, into the camera.. It's the same reason that if you're under a beach umbrella you aren't cloaked in utter darkness.

The flag moving: "OMG!! DID YOU GUYS JUST SEE THAT? THE FLAG WAVED! ITS A VACUUM ON THE MOON! THERES NO WAY IT COULD WAVE!"
Yup, it is a vacuum on the moon, but did you know that air resistance is one of the main reasons why flags on earth in teh same situation would stop flapping? Without the air to slow the flag down, it can "wave" for 5-10x longer then it would on earth. Think of flapping one of those paper fans.. On earth, the harder you flap it, the harder it becomes to move.. that's air resistance.. if you did that in a vacuum, you wouldn't feel any pressure against your movement.

No pictures of the stars: "THEY'RE TRYING TO HIDE SOMETHING - WE COULD TELL BY LOOKING AT THE STARS WHERE THEY WERE, SO THEY HID THEM!"
The astronauts didn't go to the moon to take pictures of the stars, they went to the moon to take pictures of the moon. Also, it was daylight when they were taking pictures - the reason the earth's sky is blue in daylight is due to water vapor in the air, and the huge amount of blue water in the oceans. The moon doesn't have either of those things.. just lifeless grey plains.. The daylight sky on the moon is black. The sun is still so bright that you can't see the stars, it's just as bright as on earth, but the sky is black. The cameras were set for daylight to get the best pictures of the moons surface, ergo, the stars didn't appear on the film.

Firm footprints: "WATER IS WHAT MAKES FOOTPRINTS DISTINCT ON EARTH! NO WATER ON THE MOON MEANS THE PICTURE OF THE FOOTPRINT MUST BE A FAKE!!"
Well, the dust on earth is different then the dust on the moon. Dust on the moon is jagged, Dust on earth is smooth. There is also a lot more gravity on the earth, pulling the dust down into a indistinct print. Those two factors (jagged dust keeping its shape easier then earth dust, and lower gravity) allow you to make distinct footprints in moon dust on the moon.

Low Gravity Walking: "THEY COULD HAVE EASILY DONE THAT WITH WIRES! I THINK I CAN SEE THEM EVEN!"
While you can get a jump that looks low-g by using wires, the resulting movement doesn't line up with the footage of the astronauts on the moon. Using planes, and going on a parabolic descent, you can experience low-g, similar to that on the moon, and that action look a lot more similar to the moon footage then using wires.

Our lack of return trips: "IF WE WENT 30 YEARS AGO, WHY DIDN'T WE GO BACK!?"
Well, we did, a couple times, but once we had beaten the russians to the moon, and we were deep in the middle of the cold war, there wasn't money, or real reason to go back to the moon. It was a really really expensive and dangerous proposition to go to the moon, and without any real reason to, it sort of faded away in light of better goals. However, we are having talks of going back to the moon recently, and maybe when our space shuttles get replaced, we'll go back. In the meantime, we have the ISS to work with in space.

edit: I say "Our" as the west.. I'm canadian, and we sort of piggy back on the US.. I mean the west when i say Our.

actually, i have a claim you cannot dispute at all: in a 2003 press conference, a NASA Public relations person (they don't like non-PR types talking to the media) admitted, and I quote, "we do not currently have the technology to send a spaceship safely to the moon and bring it back with its crew." so how could they have done it 30 years ago?
also, a reporter asked Buzz Aldrin to swear on a Bible that he had really gone to the moon, Buzz pucnhed him in the face instead. while I accept the possibility that buzz may not have been religious, couldn't he have simply suggested something else to swear upon, rather than knocking some teeth?

I'm not trying to be as zealous "WE WENT TO THE MOON IN 69!!" as the conspiracy theorists are against it.. I'm just saying.. almost all of the "evidence" that they try and use against it are just assumptions based in falsehood.

that being said, I may have a couple suggestions (although these are not facts, they're suggestions)

a lot of the basic systems used in our current space shuttles haven't changed much in 20 years. The shuttles are being officially retired in 2010. The shuttles that they do have are outdated, and dangerous. During the space race, the equivalent of hundreds of billions of dollars was spent on getting to the moon.. And people were willing to take risks with the knowledge and equipment they had to prove their superiority in space over the soviets.

On the subject of Buzz, Imagine for a second, you went to the moon.. spent 2 weeks feeling sick to your stomach, pissing and shitting in gigantic condoms.. You come from a time when a man's word is his bond, you're an idealist and a patriot. Some little snot nose punk who hasn't done anything comes up to you, spits on your word, spits on your honor, insinuates that you're a liar and a fraud...

I might not punch the guy out, but I wouldn't want to answer the guys question with anything other then "fuck you, I fucking went to the moon you little snot nosed little punk".. Sure, it'd look suspicious, and if he had a PR agent, he probably got read the riot act for doing it, but if you sit in his shoes, you might see a reason why he might have done what he did.

As I said before, I didn't mention those in my original post, because I wanted to focus on myths about space travel that have festered far past the time when they've been shown to be based on false assumptions.

 

[Argentavis]

Digimon Are Real [http://digimonportal.ourprofile.org/]. I couldn't get the site to work properly but if you can it's an entire forum of people who believe that Digimon are real things. Most of them believe that the show Digimon was created to make us aware of them. A lot of people believe they were created by government scientists when the internet was invented.
Read the stories, some of them are fucking hilarious. So is the entire 'Theories' section.

We have a winner.

 

[Undeed]

The moon is made of cheese. Also, a much better one I heard during the presidential election:

When John McCain was a POW he was brainwashed by the vietnamese as a sleeper agent. His bid for the presidency was an attempt by the vietnamese to gain control of the US government from the top.

 

[puppydogvaan]

The one about penis-melting combs. Not kidding.


Also the one about the world ending 12/12/12. Logically, they had to end the calendar at some point...it couldn't go on forever, right...?


Though by my own logic the world can't go on forever either...>.>

 

[Alanthewhite]

for me, that would probably be the legend of Charlie Chaplin's bones being stolen.

 

[Iskenator67]

The moon landing was faked. That's just stupid.

 

[PirateKing]

Ever hear about the car that supposedly got 300 miles to the gallon? Some guys stole the technology so we can't have it!

 

[PirateKing]

for me, that would probably be the legend of Charlie Chaplin's bones being stolen.

Actually, I think that's true.

 

[TheLastCylon]

John Wilkes Booth killed Abraham Lincoln AND John F. Kennedy.

According to the person who told me, John WIlkes Booth was a member of a secret time traveling group of assassins which also included Caius Cassius, Marcus Brutus, and Gavrillo Princep. Apparently while running from the police during the aftermath of the Lincoln assassination, John Wilkes Booth created a rip in space time to Dallas, November 22, 1963. Booth then fired and killed JFK, afterwards stepping back through the time warp to his own time.

Weird I know.

 

[Rigs83]

That fluoridation was a communist plot to corrupt and contaminate our precious bodily life fluids.
That is from "Dr. Strangelove: or how I learned to relax and love the bomb"

 

[Rigs83]

The most insidious one I have heard of is about vaccines and autism. Apparently it is better to have your kids die of something like whooping cough and endanger everyone else with new strains of childhood diseases than to risk a so far proven false belief that the vaccines triggers autism.

 

[hcig]

ive heard some weird ass shit, mostly because i worked around weird ass people

but 9/11 inside job, etc; has got to be the most retarded thing ive ever heard

of course, there was the theory that japan nuked itself...whats with people needing to think everything is a friggin inside job? does it make their life more exciting? or are they all scared that reality means not knowing who or why?