UFO believers think aliens will stop nuclear war

As global tensions reach levels not seen since the Cold War, UFO believers are crossing their fingers hoping that aliens will step in.

As global tensions reach levels not seen since the Cold War, UFO believers are crossing their fingers hoping that aliens will step in to save the world from nuclear conflict.

Crippling sanctions imposed by the global community in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine have wreaked havoc on Russia’s economy, raising fears that an increasingly isolated Vladimir Putin could resort to nuclear weapons.

Mr Putin put the country’s nuclear forces on “high alert” last month for the first time since the 1960s in response to Western sanctions, which the Russian leader later described as “akin to a declaration of war”.

Increasingly drastic measures by the US including the banning of Russian oil, gas and coal imports, and widespread boycotts by Western companies, have crashed the Russian rouble and the country’s financial system.

Investors are now raising the risk of Russia using nuclear weapons, the Australian Financial Review reported on Friday, citing comments by billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio and analysis from BCA Research, which put the chance in the next 12 months at 10 per cent.

“If Putin concludes he has no future, the risk is he will decide that no one else should have a future either,” said BCA global chief strategist Peter Berezin.

Nick Pope, who previously investigated UFO reports at the UK’s Ministry of Defence, told Metro there was the “widespread belief” within the community that aliens had “switched off” nuclear devices in the past.

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UFO researcher Nick Pope. Picture: Paul Butterfield/Getty Images

He said one notable claim was a 1980 incident near two Royal Air Force Bases in Suffolk, England – dubbed “Britain’s Roswell” – when US Air Force personnel reported seeing a strange metallic object hovering in Rendlesham Forest near RAF Woodbridge.

“It’s claimed that the UK’s best-known UFO sighting – the Rendlesham Forest incident – involved the shutdown of nukes,” Mr Pope told the outlet.

“Because of the Official Secrets Act, I can neither confirm nor deny that any nuclear weapons were stored at RAF Bentwaters or RAF Woodbridge But I’m aware of claims, from personnel stationed at the two bases involved in the Rendlesham affair, that light beams from the UFO penetrated the weapons storage area and had an effect on some of the ordnance.”

The subject has been a frequent point of discussion online since Russia’s invasion.

“I really believe the visitors will not let any nation use nukes again,” one user wrote on Reddit’s UFO forum last month.

“The documented and credible events at US bases such as Minot USAF air base along with serious incidents at other nuclear missile facilities worldwide (Poland 1980) convinced me that they will intervene to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.”

But Mr Pope said people should not expect aliens to step in if nuclear war broke out.

“I’m afraid it’s just wishful thinking,” he said.

“Even if we’re being observed by benign extraterrestrials, they didn’t intervene to stop atomic bombs being dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki, so there’s no reason to suppose they’d intervene to stop a nuclear war now. Frankly, it’s a spiritual belief that reminds me of religion, with its central premise of salvation from above. It’s an abrogation of responsibility. No gods or aliens are going to step in and prevent nuclear war – it’s down to us.”

Russia’s nuclear missile Sarmat, also known as Satan 2.

In 2010, researcher Robert Hastings arranged an extraordinary press conference in Washington DC where former Air Force personnel testified that UFOs had deactivated US and Russian nuclear missiles.

Among the ex-servicemembers who spoke were Rendlesham Forest witness retired Colonel Charles Halt, and Robert Jamison, a retired USAF nuclear missile targeting officer, who described several occasions having to go out and “restart” missiles that had been deactivated after UFOs were spotted nearby, CBS reported.

Former Air Force Captain Robert Salas also spoke of an incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967 when 10 ICBMs he was overseeing suddenly became inoperative after base security reported a mysterious red glowing object in the sky.

Hastings, author of UFOs & Nukes: Extraordinary Encounters at Nuclear Weapons Sites, says he has interviewed more than 150 veterans reporting incursions at American nuclear weapons facilities.

He told the UK’s Telegraph in 2010 that aliens may have interfered with US and Soviet nuclear weapons during the Cold War to send a “sign to Washington and Moscow that we are playing with fire”.

UFOs have seen renewed interest in recent years, with the US government declassifying a series of videos of unidentified objects encountered by the US Navy and officially acknowledging it is studying the phenomenon for the first time in decades.

A much-anticipated report to Congress by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in June last year – which focused on the potential national security threats if the sightings were Russian or Chinese experimental technology – was criticised as “inconclusive”.

The Pentagon this year formed a new office to study “unidentified aerial phenomenon”, marking the US government’s first formal, comprehensive investigation of the topic since the US Air Force ended its 22-year probe, dubbed Project Blue Book, in 1969.