Stuff They Don't Want You to Know

Most conspiracy theories have some basis in truth. When people dismiss these theories out of hand, the proponents point to the facts and justify their continued belief in the theory. This book explores many common conspiracy theories and some of the facts behind them.

There are some people that see contrails as a means of poisoning the population. They point out that there are now more and larger contrails. The general public will dismiss this out of hand. Air travel is now much more common. Commercial aircraft are concentrated on certain routes, thus increasing the presence of contrails. The conspiracy theorists are not dissuaded. The US government has in fact conducted past secret experiments to see if there could be ways of impacting populations through the clouds. These were done during the peak of the cold war and were kept totally secret. Urban areas were a target (as they wanted to see if it could be done over soviet cities.) 

Other conspiracy theories connect a few "true" items to jump to a conclusion. There were rumors that Church's Chicken or a cheap sodas would poison blacks or make them infertile. These products were sold primarily in poor and black neighborhoods. If people wanted to target a certain population, these products would be a good way to do it. Past attempts at eugenics had targeted "inferior" populations for elimination. Put these two together and we have a conspiracy theory.

The book does a great job of providing the details behind many other conspiracy theories. Some conspiracy theories have a little bit of truth with a lot of conjecture, while others contain a significant amount of truth, with only a small amount of guesswork. The best way to debunk these is to fully understand where they come from and the parts of the theories that are true.