The Great Drone Invasion of NJ

The INVASION

Starting in late November 2024, residents of New Jersey complained about unusual drone sightings in their area. People were seeing weird shit in the sky – blinking lights, low flying craft, larger than normal drones – and they were seeing a lot of them. Police and sheriffs fielded calls and investigated, but didn’t know what to do. They alerted the federal government and got the equivalent of a shrug.

The objects were reported to be smaller than airplanes, but larger than regular drones. Some were reported to be as large as cars. There were several types – quadcopters and fixed wing variants – and many were lit up with white, red, and green lights. As far as I can tell, they only came out at night. They appeared in coordinated swarms but also alone. They circled, hovered, and flew in chaotic patterns. Observers said they gave off a “nefarious” vibe, and people were genuinely freaked out which, YES OF COURSE THEY WERE!

Sightings increased over time, and as the country chugged toward Christmas, the story was everywhere. Media arrived and documented the phenomena, and politicians began agitating for answers from the federal government. The FBI, DHS, FAA, and DOD came together on December 17 to issue a statement saying that people were just seeing normal ass drones and helicopters. Despite receiving 5,000 reports, the FBI accused New Jersey of basically overreacting. In late December, the FAA banned drone flying in NJ and NY, probably in response to public pressure.

The Conspiracy Theories

As the story grew, so did the conspiracy theories. HERE’S WHERE THINGS GET FUN. Right wing politicians were some of the first to jump into the fray. NJ Representative Jeff Van Drew – Republican peddler of misinformation about topics ranging from George Soros to FEMA tents to voter fraud – told his constituents that the drones were dispatched by Iran from a “mothership” in the Atlantic. Fellow MAGA weirdo Dawn Fantasia (truly, has there ever been a more *New Jersey* name) called it a cover-up and blamed Biden and Governor Phil Murphy for gaslighting the public. This sounds kind of normal and MAYBE true until you hear that she wants the military there to shoot them down.

Donald Trump fan and purveyor of the “fog is poison sent by the government” meme Bethenny Frankel launched her own urban legend on TikTok. She told her followers that someone she calls “Waterhammer” had a father who was a “high level military guy,” and told her the drones were looking for radiation. I guess starving yourself so you can fit into your toddler’s pajamas might have some long term effects on the brain, huh???? Tell me, Professor Frankel – what should the good people of New Jersey do to protect themselves from poisonous fog and radiation on their land? Are you, perhaps, selling Skinny Girl Iodine Pills?

Joe Rogan shared a video claiming that the drones are searching for a long lost nuclear warhead – unclear how you lose a fucking nuke, but 8.4K people agreed and liked the post. A Facebook user claimed that the drones were beaming down space lasers to alter human physiology, and some poor sucker at Politifact had to weigh in and say that’s not possible. Don’t worry, won’t need to do that anymore!!!!

There’s A LOT of crossover with aliens on social media. Which makes total sense – these are quite literally unidentified flying objects. The Reddit Alien boards lit up, and TikTok was awash in first person videos of the drones tagged with “alien” “ufo” and “uap.” There’s a lot of AI trash and obviously altered videos doing big numbers, and a spin off conspiracy about “orbs” or “plasmoids” interacting with the drones. None of it is credible. Racist Ambien addict Roseanne Barr believes that it’s a government sponsored false flag alien invasion, which I guess is a more creative answer???? Not me over here just WISHING IT WAS AN ACTUAL INVASION SOMEONE PLEASE END IT ALL!

Practical Theories

While the federal government maintains that these are just regular ass planes, drones, and helicopters that people are seeing, other skeptics have offered theories as well. They could be run by the secret service, to protect Bedminster, the Trump golf course in NJ. They could be commercial or government drones performing LIDAR mapping. People could actually be seeing SpaceX Starlink satellites, which can sometimes light up in a pattern. SpaceX launches in general tend to generate UFO calls. Some even think that all of it is fake, and the videos and accounts are just made up.

Really, the consensus is that no one knows what the fuck they are, which is why this is the shortest section in my newsletter.

Is there a nicer word for Mass Hysteria???

This is not the first mass UFO sighting we’ve had in the US. From 1983-84, hundreds of people witnessed UFO activity in New York’s Hudson Valley. They reported seeing a boomerang shaped flying object outlined in red, white, and green lights. The object hovered above the Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant, prompting a security panic. New York State Troopers followed one of the boomerangs back to an air base, where it was discovered to be pilots practicing low flying stealth maneuvers. True believers think that some of the sightings may have been planes, but others were alien spacecraft.

In 1994, hundreds of people across Michigan called police and news stations to report strange lights in the sky. They were said to look like approaching planes, or strings of Christmas lights. A local meteorologist tracked the phenomenon on radar, but was instructed by the station not to speak about it. He later said that what he saw was similar to the objects in declassified UAP videos. This incident has not been debunked and there’s a great episode on Unsolved Mysteries about it.

The most famous mass event is probably the Phoenix Lights. In March 1997, people near Phoenix, Arizona reported seeing a strange object in the sky that looked like a boomerang shaped series of lights. Shortly after the boomerang, falling lights similar to shooting stars lit up the skies. Pilots, police officers, astronomers, the ACTUAL GOVERNOR OF AZ and actor Kurt Russell????? witnessed and reported these sights. It’s considered to be the biggest mass UFO sighting in US history. I mean, Kurt Russell you guys!!

The government made a huge joke out of it, dressing up as aliens for a press conference and making fun of the reports. Of course, the same governor who brought a tin foil alien to the podium admitted years later to having seen the lights, and wondering if they were from space. The best explanation for what people saw was military exercises. The Air Force was flying planes in formation and dropping flares that night, but most of the pilots who saw the lights say it was nothing they’d ever seen. Did I mention that K Russ was flying a plane at the time??

I bring these up to make the point that Americans have experience with this, and also with being gaslit by the government. Personally, I think the response was shitty – especially since news crews were out there documenting things. Much like my teenagers, the feds are quick to knee jerk deny everything. It’s like, we’re not mad! Just admit you don’t know! Reactionary denial and condescending statements leave room for insane conspiracy theories to flourish, and for the most obnoxious elements of our civil society to profit off the misinformation. It’s worth noting that the lore of government cover-ups of UFOs started in the 1980’s as a reaction to Nixon, Watergate, and Iran-Contra.

On the other hand, I think the sightings are partly a mass hallucination. I think they began as genuine, and then as word got out, thousands of people started looking up in the sky and seeing shit that actually belonged there, thinking it was mysterious drones. AND I AM NOT IMMUNE! Around Christmas I was driving down Fulton Street at like, 6pm, and I caught sight of a weird blinking light in the sky. It was low! The light was very bright! It seemed out of place! IT WAS A DRONE!!!! Now, Fulton is a 4 lane mini highway through the Richmond and ideally, people should be paying attention to the road, not imaginary aliens. After I scolded myself back to watching TRAFFIC instead of the UAP, I realized it was a sea plane turning to land in Sausalito. But like, they could have had some grays on board I guess.

What It Really Means

Regardless of what these drones are, I think the experience can tell us a lot about what’s going on in the culture. Urban legends, moral panics, and mass hysterias tell us what we’re afraid of; what’s in our collective subconscious. America’s about to get back together with her dirtbag ex, and I think even his supporters are anxious about it. We’re transitioning out of a year where the zeitgeist was like “can this really happen again?” to “oh shit it’s happening again!”

The initial rash of UFO sightings in America foreshadowed and followed Cold War anxieties about death coming from the sky, but now I think we’re focused on something scary coming from within. We’re worried about domestic terrorism, surveillance via phone, the fracturing of a shared reality. Looking into the sky to see nefarious craft watching us, then having the FBI tell us we’re imagining it fits the national mood, no? Especially when politicians are arguing over it?

Republicans are freaking out about the drones being from Iran because. . . well, wouldn’t we just love to be sending our own drones there? Didn’t that government hack the Trump campaign to impact the 2024 election? We’re currently embroiled in a stupid debate about TikTok and its spying capabilities, while companies like Meta and Apple are actively listening to everything that goes on around us. Maybe we’re externalizing these fears into creepy drones with some kind penetrating radar. Maybe we’re projecting our concern about the level of surveillance in our everyday lives onto anonymous corporate bots hovering overhead to know more, more, more about our toilet paper buying habits! MAYBE THE DRONE IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE YOU GUYS!

Anyway, the drones seem to have gone back to the mothership. Maybe Joe Biden put down his soup and called ET to tell them to cut the malarkey. Maybe Switzerland is actually using the drones to airlift tons of Trump’s favorite orange makeup to Bedminster before RFK Jr. bans the red food coloring in it. Maybe we’ll never know or MAYBE the truth is out there.

Xoxo,
Court