Sometime in the mid-1960s I went with my parents to a Washington D.C. airport. My father occasionally flew for business, usually on Allegheny Airlines, but that’s all I can remember.

Except one clear memory of a Greyhound bus sign. My father even bought me a miniature bus from the gift shop. These were the busses that they called something-liners, with an upper windscreen tinted green. Yes, I’m old.

What nobody knew at the time: in 1965 biological and chemical agents were used in those two locations by the U.S. military to “test” how biochemical weapons would spread if “used in aerial or ground-based attacks”.

Did it work? Did it happen at all?

It is fact.

And it didn’t happen only once.

The most infamous among these “tests” was perhaps Operation Sea Spray which seemed to have not just involved the United States, but also the United Kingdom. Elements of naval and air groups actually dispersed a bacterium of the yersenia genus, and if that name seems familiar to you, let’s add a name after it: yersenia pestis. Heard of it now? Of course I had to look it up to see why it was ringing a bell. It’s the bacterium respsible for the disease Bubonic plague in humans. There was another agent involved as well. From 20 September to 27 September 1950, in the San Francisco Bay area, these agents were released. Scientists from the US and UK both studied dispersal rates and distances, and there is no reason to believe that they hoped or believed that no one would get sick.

The suspected casualties checked into Stanford Hospital in early October, eleven total, and one died. The infections were linked to common UT infections which can happen when catheters are used, and all were “reported” to have had recent surgeries, leaving them open to post-op infections. What’s more, that bacteria is crawling all over hospital walls, and the government was never found responsible, because of this, for the man’s death.

Well, what about him? He’s just one guy, right? And his family didn’t sue until decades later. No proof. Too bad.

But there’s more. Minnesota was hit by chemicals, carcinogenic chemicals. New York City was hit an innumerable amount of times including light bulbs they dropped in the subway. Loaded light bulbs. It spread pretty far, estimated as miles. That could place in any of one or even two buroughs. It was Bacillus Subtilis Niger, an extremely hard to kill, spore producer. Current uses include testing disinfectant efficiency. It is not known whether there were casualties, but who can say by this point whether the books were cooked. But seriously, dropping light bulbs onto the tracks? That is rather covert, and damn sleazy.

Why fear other countries using biological and chemical agents against us when our own government does it?

They were tests.

But for what? Because hospitals were monitored. The dispersal was always tracked.

Given my loathing for conspiracy theories, why am I bringing this up? Seems silly that I would jump from Sherwood Schwartz TV conspiracy theories (Gilligan’s Island, The Brady Bunch) to this, right?

But I did warn you that more was coming. And this is where it all leads: the granddaddy of all conspiracy theories: depopulation, plagues, the Illuminati and the New World Order.

I have scoffed in the past about the chemtrail story. Only to look back and find, there’s some real history there. And if that’s true, I have no reason to be convinced that it is not an ongoing method of research. No matter what the government denies, do I have any way of telling whether they are being truthful?

Not exactly, no.

Now, do I trust the government?

Mostly, I do.

But I have serious doubts about serious things.

Several video game analyses follow this article. I hope that you will carefully consider what they have to offer. I have played both games mentioned and truly, they slammed me in the gut. You never see the end coming in any well-written show, film or game. But in the case of Deus Ex:The Conspiracy and Metal Gear Solid 2: The Sons of Liberty, the conclusions were bleak, disturbing and left me feeling hopelessly depressed. And that is not my expectation when gaming.

Well, not back in 2000 and 2001. Maybe now I’m a bit more of an edge-of-my-seat gamer, but only because of those two games.

They outline a future in which secret societies and artificial intelligence rob people of freedom in the name of civilization and rule humanity. That’s way too much for one sentence, and I apologize for that. The premises are that AI deems humanity incapable of avoiding self-destruction and seizes control of key military and government facilities. In each game, the AI explains to the protagonist why it is doing this. One AI is belligerent, antagonistic and insulting while the other is more sneaky, but the end results are the same: no one seems able to stop them.

Of the three possible endings in Deus Ex, one has the main character destroy the AI, causing a dark age where the world is deprived of power to the grids, communications and everything we know and count on. Canonically all three endings are partly correct, which doesn’t make me feel any better.

The Illuminati, Majestic 12, and others are used to great effect as antagonistic elements, but the main point I want to get across is that the AI in both games want to stop the flow of misinformation to the people. Fake news, slander on social media, chaos, vengeful killings over words and ideas. It must stop, and the AI is the only way.

A new world order.

Currently the world population cannot be fed or given adequate health care given limited supplies, corporate greed, government tribalism, and, of course, failed crops due to global warming and freak weather. Inflation is impossible to distinguish from price gouging, with glaring examples of some products doubling in price in one or two weeks.

Fake news makes the whole thing worse, and the blame is always leveled at the wrong people, or, if not, those people face no consequences. How many times was a truth discovered but we were not informed?

There is no way to answer that. That, by the way, makes me mistrustful of government. And for the most part, I trust our democracy when it works, when good people do good things. I don’t like conspiracy theories or the hysteria they cause. They’re chaos.

However, I can’t help wondering: given our history, what pieces of truth might lie within some of them.

The Tuskegee infections were real. A conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy was almost certainly real. The secret bombings of Cambodia did happen. Even the ridiculous plot by the CIA to make Fidel Castro’s beard fall out was real.

What I encourage you to do, as always, is, to the extent that you are able, is to think for yourself. The truth is out there, but you are the final arbiter, and once you have found something sound, reliable, stand up for what’s right.

Because one person–you–can make a big difference. On which side of history will you stand?