The Right Time for Timelines
Is there a better way to study UFO cases?
If you ever try to write a movie, you’re going to encounter plenty of dos and don’ts as you learn the tools of the trade. One classic tip for aspiring screenwriters is to “never write a million-dollar sentence.” I’ve heard this used to refer to a couple different problems but generally it means not overcommitting logistically or financially if you’re trying to get a movie made. This is the difference between “Sally crashes her car” and “Sally crashes her car into a fiery Porsche mid-air.” That Porsche better be really important to the story, or your fancy words are going to scare off a producer long before the cameras roll.
But what does this have to do with UFOs? This isn’t a newsletter about screenwriting and I’m not a screenwriter. But this advice came to mind recently as I’ve been reading through some of the many timelines that the UFO Community seems to produce again, and again, and again. And as much as they may seem valuable for explaining or contextualizing “the Phenomenon,” I was left with one looming, inescapable feeling: these timelines were filled with million-dollar sentences. And I don’t think it’s working.
What Are UFO Timelines Doing Right Now?
Recently, investigative journalist George Knapp compiled a 177-page timeline to support a congressional hearing on “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.” This timeline, which covered a period of 76 years, included entries like this one:
(PUBLIC DOMAIN) - 1952 — CIA Project Moonstruck allegedly studies long range use of frequencies for the purpose of stimulation of the brains of targets. It is claimed these implants were placed in subjects during abductions; unknown if related to UAP phenomenon.1
Now why would this be a “million-dollar sentence?” Because you could break down those 37 words into 9 separate questions that your reader would have to answer to fully understand the entry:
What do you mean by long range frequencies?
Can long range frequencies be used to “stimulate the brains of targets?” And if so, how?
Who or what were those targets?
What do you mean by “abductions?”
Who or what are you claiming was responsible for those abductions?
What are “these implants” and what did they do?
When you say “allegedly,” why are we confident this project happened?
When you say “claimed,” who is making that claim?
When you say “unknown if related to UAP phenomenon,” why is this valuable to a congressional hearing on UAPs?
This is asking the reader to do a lot. Just like a producer trying to figure out how to make your million-dollar sentence work onscreen, many readers here would be trying to figure out how to square that entry in their heads. Some might be willing to accept the whole thing at face value but it’s much more likely they would respond by putting the script timeline down. No need to read further. You’ve provided too little and asked them to do too much.
This is the flaw I see in many UFO timelines. The scope chosen by their authors tends to set up this kind of problem because any individual entry couldn’t possibly hope to provide a satisfactory level of detail. Efforts to identify trends through all of human history (like George M. Eberharts 691-page timeline) might be appealing to committed UFO people, but their tendency to lean on million-dollar sentences are probably repulsive to everyone else.
Is There a Way We Could Be Doing This Better?
When I was an intern in D.C., I got the chance to take a tour of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) training facility in Ashburn, Virginia. One of the standouts of that tour was an opportunity to walk through the reconstructed fuselage of a Boeing 747 that had exploded mid-air (TWA Flight 800).2 My group got to ask a lot of questions about how they investigated and explained this disaster and the NTSB responded with a pretty clear answer: meticulous timelines.
In the view of my instructor, their timeline is what ultimately allowed them to pull all the human interactions and engineering conclusions into one cohesive explanation. The scale was kept tight, detailed, and precise. Each change, no matter how small, got its own distinct entry complete with the necessary context as it became relevant. Thirteen years later and I can still vaguely recall his advice that a good timeline should be answering more questions than it opens.
I’ve never had a chance to apply that skillset in the career I’ve had since, but lately I’ve thought a lot about the opportunity the UFO file presents. Assuming you’re interested in actually getting at the truth, a tight timeline focused on one single incident could present one of the best vehicles for doing that. I believe granular detail might appeal to a skeptical public and I’m a firm believer that we should welcome the conclusions that emerge, whatever they may be.
Next week, I’m going to show you what this might look like using the 1944-45 Hanford Sightings that I’ve profiled recently. No lengthy page counts. No million-dollar sentences. Just four pages and 33 distinct entries that I think present the best assessment in the spirit of the NTSB. I hope you’ll find that the format helps clear up the questions that sometimes emerge from a narrative summary. And if it works, I hope to apply it to as many cases as possible in an effort to reveal what may be a poorly presented truth.
P.S. The Other Topic is a weekly newsletter released every Tuesday at 9:00am (EST). If you’d like to see content like next week’s Hanford timeline, then:
Knapp, George. “Untitled UAP Timeline.” PDF Host, July 27, 2023. https://web.archive.org/web/20230727103115/https://pdfhost.io/v/gR8lAdgVd_Uap_Timeline_Prepared_By_Another. Pg 7.
Note: While this timeline does not have a formal author listed on the document, it has been widely attributed to investigative journalist, George Knapp, by online sources.
Zimmer, David. “‘First Conspiracy of the Internet Age’: How the TWA Flight 800 Explosion Sparked Online Rumors for Years.” USA Today, July 15, 2021. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/07/15/twa-flight-800-crash-anniversary-conspiracy-theories/7830073002/.