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The great drone freak-out is upon us
The drone age is here and the skies are going to get a lot more crowded.
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The zeal to get to the bottom of a lit-up night sky seems to know no bounds and suggests that on some level, UFOs have left an indelible mark on the American psyche.
PHOTO: NYTIMES
Alex Kingsbury
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The US public has already been given the government’s best answers to the latest panic over mysterious lights in the sky over New Jersey. Many Americans simply don’t like a mundane answer – fixed-wing piloted aircraft, smaller planes, hobbyist drones – that implies they are rubes at best and paranoid at worst.
Even assurances from New Jersey officials in particular have done little to quiet the current public clamour. Perhaps that’s unsurprising for a state where, like so many other parts of the country, people were duped by Orson Welles’ radio play, War Of The Worlds, 86 years ago this fall. Perhaps that’s a cheap shot at the Garden State on my part: A YouGov poll in 2024 found that some 18 per cent of Americans nationwide report having seen a UFO.
