The Roswell UFO Crash -
Was 1947 the Date of First Contact...?

The Roswell Case as an Instance of Deliberate First Contact,
copyright, 1997

[Keys: Roswell, Flying Saucer, 1947, New Mexico, Crash, First Contact, UFO]

I'm not going to profess great "expertise" on this subject, I haven't poured over every instance of the lore, nor have I hung around any UFO seminars; but then perhaps my modest outsider's viewpoint could offer one interpretation of the event known commonly as the Roswell UFO Crash.

As a brief reminder to those who haven't seen the movie, the book, the TV series, the tabloid exposures, something happened near the small American town of Roswell in 1947: wreckage was found of an air crash. It was quickly claimed to be the wreckage of a flying saucer before it was denied and gave birth to a whole stream of theories and speculations on the subjects of government secrecy, conspiracies, extra-terrestrials, and a survivor. Just for the sake of argument I'm going to accept some of this as the basis of my own speculation - that it really happened and it wasn't an accident.

OK, hands up all those who believe that an extraterrestrial (I use my own term extra-species intelligence, ESI/essie, in some of my stories - even moon rock is ET) could come all this way from another world, maybe faster than light, perhaps with a whole flying city of chums and, after this huge feat of science and navigation, is clumsy enough to collide with another saucer (two crash sites were said to have been found a few miles apart)? Hadn't they heard of air traffic control, identification beacons, radar, even our aircraft rarely suffer these kinds of collisions, wonky engines yes, but dodgems in the sky? OK, you can put your hands down now.

My suggestion is that another, oblique interpretation can be put on this event - that this was a deliberate act of first contact conducted to avoid scaring the natives of little planet Earth.

While astronomers make attempts at first contact with their search for extraterrestrial intelligence (see separate article SETI), others, especially science fiction writers, ponder on the possible outcome of a successful contact. Remembering the Orson Wells radio broadcast of "War of The Worlds" doesn't help them feel comfortable about the outcome. If the essies came openly it will pose the biggest cultural and psychological shock for our species (at least for all the immature members).

Ignoring the paranoid view of the world (The Truth Is Out There - And It's Nasty!) then perhaps you could grant that my hypothetical ESI Visitors have some appreciation of the matter. So how do you make a non-traumatic contact with a primitive species?

Why not give the primitives control of the situation, let them muddle it out at their own pace (a glacial pace given the clowns running the planet)?

Here's my scenario: take two saucers, ram them at a glancing blow, they will crash of course, then the natives will be given the opportunity to race to the rescue. Now the excited locals can prod and probe to their hearts content. Give them a sole survivor and watch them break their backs trying to prove what really nice guys they are, and so hospitable, really eager to learn more. Want a radio to call for help?  No problem!

I've never seen the wreckage, if it exists at all, but here's my guess - it was stripped down, really plain and simple, dead easy to take apart, clever monkeys could do it easy!  Nothing too complex to addle monkey brains, just the basics as a starter pack, and nothing to overwhelm their minds or give them too easy a time of getting into space until they're ready for it.

Now you have first contact with UFO aliens without shocking a simplistic civilisation into hysteria, and the natives have full control of the situation, every, single, step, of, the, way.

It's reported that there were bodies of essies at Roswell.  So here's a problem: would a species sacrifice the lives of their fellows just to conduct a safe act of first contact?  Well, that depends on your outlook on life, or more particularly theirs.

There is a suggestion that essies do not have the same outlook on life as ourselves. This may be because they are so different, or that they are so more culturally, physically, emotionally, spiritually advanced than we.

If you accept their existence and take that acceptance further to include some aspects of the reports from some UFO abductees (be careful here, it's a touchy subject at the best of times, but remember that an ESI agenda wouldn't stop at Roswell, nor restrict itself to the local tribal chiefs of the U.S.A.) there is a suggestion that these entities view life differently, that their bodies are treated as vessels for their souls, identities or whatever the quacks and witch doctors on this planet want to call it, and they can transfer from old to new bodies at will. Taking this for true (warning, warning, this is only a hypothesis!!) leads me to suspect that those bodies at Roswell were empties or disposables, leaving one in use for a single point of broader contact to follow the initial event.

That one survivor only needs to live long enough to initiate the process, to ensure that sufficient, but not too much, information is imparted to the natives before abandoning that vessel and moving on to a spare one waiting in readiness.

As I have said at the very beginning, this is purely speculation, but does attempt to answer a number of questions surrounding the Roswell Crash - why and how did two saucers crash (if they did so at all), how can we accept the idea of a sophisticated technology on one hand and clumsy driving on the other, could there be another motive behind this event, and what could it be? You have read my suggestion think upon it as you will.

Of course the truth could be even stranger....

They're Here!!!