It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
The Cold War was the state of conflict, tension and competition that existed between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies from the mid-1940s to the early 1990s. Throughout this period, rivalry between the two superpowers was expressed through military coalitions, propaganda, espionage, weapons development, industrial advances, and competitive technological development, e.g., the space race. Both superpowers engaged in costly defence spending, a massive conventional and nuclear arms race, and numerous proxy wars.
Although the US and the Soviet Union were allied against the Axis powers during World War II, the two states disagreed sharply both during and after the conflict on many topics, particularly over the shape of the post-war world. The war had either exhausted or eliminated all of the pre-war great powers leaving the US and USSR as clear economic, technological and political superpowers. In this bipolar world, countries were prompted to align themselves with one or the other of the superpower blocs (a Non-Aligned Movement would emerge later, during the 1960s).
Early on Tuesday, July 8, the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release which was immediately picked up by numerous news outlets:
"The many rumors regarding the flying disc became a reality yesterday when the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb group of the Eighth Air Force, Roswell Army Air Field, was fortunate enough to gain possession of a disc through the cooperation of one of the local ranchers and the sheriff's office of Chaves County. The flying object landed on a ranch near Roswell sometime last week. Not having phone facilities, the rancher stored the disc until such time as he was able to contact the sheriff's office, who in turn notified Maj. Jesse A. Marcel of the 509th Bomb Group Intelligence Office. Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up at the rancher's home. It was inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field and subsequently loaned by Major Marcel to higher headquarters."1
That same day, at approximately 4:30 P.M. CST., Brig. General Roger Ramey, the commander of the Eighth Air Force at Fort Worth, presented the press a counter story; a Rawin target device (weather balloon with radar reflective kite).2
... it is not a far stretch to reason that the events which had unfolded in Roswell were nothing more than the U.S. military covering its’ collective derriere regarding a secret military project surreptitiously linked to the Cold War. After all, the military being involved in covert action against a rival superpower is not considered to be the least bit of a surprise.
Kenneth A. Arnold (March 29, 1915 in Sebeka, Minnesota – January 16, 1984 in Bellevue, Washington) was an American businessman and pilot.
He is best-known for making what is generally considered the first widely reported unidentified flying object sighting in the United States, after claiming to see nine unusual objects flying in a chain near Mount Rainier, Washington on June 24, 1947. Arnold described the objects' shape as resembling a flat saucer or disc, and also described their erratic motion as resembling a saucer skipped across water; from this, the press quickly coining the new terms "flying saucer" and "flying disc" to describe such objects, many of which were reported within days after Arnold's sighting. Later Arnold would add that one of the objects resembled a crescent or flying wing.
On June 14, 1947 William "Mac" Brazel noticed some strange clusters of debris while working on the Foster homestead, where he was foreman, some 30 miles north of Roswell. This exact date (or "about three weeks" before July 8) is a point of contention but is repeated in several initial accounts, in particular the stories that quote Brazel and in a telex sent a few hours after the story broke quoting Sheriff George Wilcox (who Brazel first contacted). However, the initial press release from the Roswell Army Air Field said the find was "sometime last week," suggesting Brazel found the debris in early July. Brazel told the Roswell Daily Record that he and his son saw a "large area of bright wreckage made up of rubber strips, tinfoil, a rather tough paper and sticks." He paid little attention to it but returned on July 4 with his son, wife and daughter to gather up the material. Some accounts have described Brazel as having gathered some of the material earlier, rolling it together and stashing it under some brush. The next day, Brazel heard reports about "flying discs" and wondered if that was what he had picked up. On July 7, Brazel saw Sheriff Wilcox and "whispered kinda confidential like" that he may have found a flying disc. Another account quotes Wilcox as saying that Brazel reported the object on July 6.
Sheriff Wilcox called Roswell Army Air Field. Major Jesse Marcel and a "man in plainclothes" accompanied Brazel back to the ranch where more pieces were picked up. "[We] spent a couple of hours Monday afternoon [July 7] looking for any more parts of the weather device", said Marcel. "We found a few more patches of tinfoil and rubber." They then attempted to reassemble the object, but Brazel said they could not. Marcel took the debris to Roswell Army Air Field the next morning.
"The balloon which held it up, if that was how it worked, must have been 12 feet long, [Brazel] felt, measuring the distance by the size of the room in which he sat. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in diameter. When the debris was gathered up, the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds. There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine, and no sign of any propellers of any kind, although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil. There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction. No strings or wires were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used.”
With this brief statement was started the most notorious, infamous, and controversial UFO/Alien case in human history.
And this official statement would indicate the first and last time that Army and government officials would be truthful on the subject.
On July 2, 1947, during the evening, the flying saucer crashed on the Foster Ranch near Corona, New Mexico. The crash occurred during a severe thunderstorm.
On July 3, 1947, William "Mac" Brazel and his 7-year-old neighbour Dee Proctor found the remains of the crashed flying saucer. The pieces were spread out over a large area, perhaps more than half a mile long. When Brazel drove Dee back home, he showed a piece of the wreckage to Dee's parents ...
On July 6, 1947, Brazel showed pieces of the wreckage to Chaves County Sheriff George Wilcox. Wilcox called Roswell Army Air Field (AAF) and talked to Major Jesse Marcel, the intelligence officer. Marcel drove to the sheriff's office and inspected the wreckage. Marcel reported to his commanding officer, Colonel William "Butch" Blanchard. Blanchard ordered Marcel to get someone from the Counter Intelligence Corps, and to proceed to the ranch with Brazel, and to collect as much of the wreckage as they could load into their two vehicles.
Soon after this, military police arrived at the sheriff's office, collected the wreckage Brazel had left there, and delivered the wreckage to Blanchard's office. The wreckage was then flown to Eighth Air Force headquarters in Fort Worth Texas, and from there to Washington.
Meanwhile, Marcel and Sheridan Cavitt of the Counter Intelligence Corps drove to the ranch with Mac Brazel. They arrived late in the evening. They spent the night in sleeping bags in a small out-building on the ranch, and in the morning proceeded to the crash site.
On July 7, 1947, Marcel and Cavitt collected wreckage from the crash site. After filling Cavitt's vehicle with wreckage, Marcel told Cavitt to go on ahead, that Marcel would collect more wreckage, and they would meet later back at Roswell AAF. Marcel filled his vehicle with wreckage. On the way back to the air field, Marcel stopped at home to show his wife and son the strange material he had found.
On July 7, 1947, around 4:00 pm, Lydia Sleppy at Roswell radio station KSWS began transmitting a story on the teletype machine regarding a crashed flying saucer out on the Foster Ranch. Transmission was interrupted, seemingly by the FBI.
On July 8, 1947, in the morning, Marcel and Cavitt arrived back at Roswell AAF with two carloads of wreckage. Marcel accompanied this wreckage, or most it, on a flight to Fort Worth AAF.
On July 8, 1947, around noon, Colonel Blanchard at Roswell AAF ordered Second Lieutenant Walter Haut to issue a press release telling the country that the Army had found the remains of a crashed a flying saucer. Haut was the public information officer for the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell AAF. Haut delivered the press release to Frank Joyce at radio station KGFL. Joyce waited long enough for Haut to return to the base, then called Haut there to confirm the story. Joyce then sent the story on the Western Union wire to the United Press bureau.1a
On July 8, 1947, in the afternoon, General Clemence McMullen in Washington spoke by telephone with Colonel (later Brigadier General) Thomas DuBose in Fort Worth, chief of staff to Eighth Air Force Commander General Roger Ramey. McMullen ordered DuBose to tell Ramey to quash the flying saucer story by creating a cover story, and to send some of the crash material immediately to Washington.
On July 8, 1947, in the afternoon, General Roger Ramey held a press conference at Eighth Air Force headquarters in Fort Worth in which he announced that what had crashed at Corona was a weather balloon, not a flying saucer. To make this story convincing, he showed the press the remains of a damaged weather balloon that he claimed was the actual wreckage from the crash site. (Apparently, the obliging press did not ask why the Army hurriedly transported weather balloon wreckage to Fort Worth, Texas, site of the press conference, from the crash site in a remote area of New Mexico.)1b
1c
The only newspapers that carried the initial flying saucer version of the story were evening papers from the Midwest to the West, including the Chicago Daily News, the Los Angeles Herald Express, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Roswell Daily Record. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune were morning papers and so carried only the cover-up story the next morning.
At some point, a large group of soldiers were sent to the debris field on the Foster Ranch, including a lot of MPs whose job was to limit access to the field. A wide search was launched well beyond the limits of the debris field. Within a day or two, a few miles from the debris field, the main body of the flying saucer was found, and a mile or two from that several bodies of small humanoids were found.
The military took Mac Brazel into custody for about a week, during which time he was seen on the streets of Roswell with a military escort. His behavior aroused the curiosity of friends when he passed them without any sign of recognition. Following this period of detention, Brazel repudiated his initial story.
Its classified purpose was to try to develop a way to monitor possible Soviet nuclear detonations with the use of low-frequency acoustic microphones placed at high altitudes. No other means of monitoring the nuclear activities of a closed country like the USSR was yet available, and the project was given a high priority. One of the NYU tasks was the development of constant-level balloons for placing the acoustic microphones aloft. After some preliminary flights in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in April 1947, which failed due to high winds, the project moved to New Mexico.
In June and early July 1947, numerous NYU balloon flights were launched from Alamogordo Army Air Field in New Mexico. Some of these flights consisted of very long trains containing up to two dozen neoprene sounding balloons, having a total length of more than 600 feet.
"The balloon which held it up, if that was how it worked, must have been 12 feet long, [Brazel] felt, measuring the distance by the size of the room in which he sat. The rubber was smoky gray in color and scattered over an area about 200 yards in diameter. When the debris was gathered up, the tinfoil, paper, tape, and sticks made a bundle about three feet long and 7 or 8 inches thick, while the rubber made a bundle about 18 or 20 inches long and about 8 inches thick. In all, he estimated, the entire lot would have weighed maybe five pounds. There was no sign of any metal in the area which might have been used for an engine, and no sign of any propellers of any kind, although at least one paper fin had been glued onto some of the tinfoil. There were no words to be found anywhere on the instrument, although there were letters on some of the parts. Considerable Scotch tape and some tape with flowers printed upon it had been used in the construction. No strings or wires were to be found but there were some eyelets in the paper to indicate that some sort of attachment may have been used.”
"I have prepared, in my life, probably more than a hundred of these targets for flight. And every time I have prepared one of these targets, I have always wondered what the purpose of that tape marking was. But . . . a major named John Peterson, laughed . . . and said 'What do you expect when you get your targets made by a toy factory?'"
However, following some initial confusion at Roswell Army Air Field, the “flying disc” was soon identified by Army Air Forces officials as a standard radar target.
Marcel reported to his commanding officer, Colonel William "Butch" Blanchard. Blanchard ordered Marcel to get someone from the Counter Intelligence Corps, and to proceed to the ranch with Brazel, and to collect as much of the wreckage as they could load into their two vehicles.
On July 7, 1947, Marcel and Cavitt collected wreckage from the crash site. After filling Cavitt's vehicle with wreckage, Marcel told Cavitt to go on ahead, that Marcel would collect more wreckage, and they would meet later back at Roswell AAF. Marcel filled his vehicle with wreckage. On the way back to the air field, Marcel stopped at home to show his wife and son the strange material he had found.
They certainly would not need two vehicles to collect a weather balloon.
... to collect as much of the wreckage as they could load into their two vehicles.
In 1978, former nuclear physicist and author Stanton T. Friedman interviewed Jesse Marcel, the only person known to have accompanied the Roswell debris from where it was recovered to Fort Worth. Over the next 15 years or so, the accounts he and others gave elevated Roswell from a forgotten incident to perhaps the most famous UFO case of all time.
By the early 1990s, UFO researchers such as Friedman, William Moore, Karl T. Pflock, and the team of Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt had interviewed several hundred people who had, or claimed to have had, a connection with the events at Roswell in 1947. Additionally, hundreds of documents were obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests, as were some apparently leaked by insiders, such as the disputed "Majestic 12 (1)" documents.
Their conclusions were that at least one alien craft had crashed in the Roswell vicinity, that aliens, some possibly still alive, were recovered, and that a massive cover-up of any knowledge of the incident was put in place.(2a)
A UFO crashed northwest of Roswell, New Mexico, in the summer of 1947. The military acted quickly and efficiently to recover the debris after its existence was reported by a ranch hand. The debris - unlike anything these highly trained men had ever seen - was flown without delay to at least three government installations. A cover story was concocted to explain away the debris and the flurry of activity. It was explained that a weather balloon, one with a new radiosonde target device, had been found and temporarily confused the personnel of the 509th Bomb Group. Government officials took reporters' notes from their desks and warned a radio reporter not to play a recorded interview with the ranch hand. The men who took part in the recovery were told never to talk about the incident. And with a whimper, not a bang, the Roswell event faded quickly from public view and press scrutiny.(2b)
Air Force activities which occurred over a period of many years have been consolidated and are now represented to have occurred in two or three days in July 1947.
"Aliens" observed in the New Mexico desert were actually anthropomorphic test dummies that were carried aloft by U.S. Air Force high altitude balloons for scientific research.
The "unusual" military activities in the New Mexico desert were high altitude research balloon launch and recovery operations. Reports of military units that always seemed to arrive shortly after the crash of a flying saucer to retrieve the saucer and "crew," were actually accurate descriptions of Air Force personnel engaged in anthropomorphic dummy recovery operations.Air Force (3a)
So unless the Air Force is in possession of a time machine, the dummies included in their report didn't exist in 1947.
"In 1949, a contract was awarded to Sierra Engineering Company of Sierra Madre, Calif., and deliveries began in 1950.4b
Operation High Dive (also known as Project High Dive) was a secret project carried out during the 1950s by the United States Air Force. It tested high-altitude parachutes using anthropomorphic dummies. The dummies went into a 200 rpm flat spin, which would be fatal to a human. Further investigations on this led to Project Excelsior. It may later have been confused with Project Mogul and thus helped form the account of the Roswell UFO Incident.(5)
In general, “Roswell Incident” scenarios claim that a disabled alien craft momentarily touched down at the site 75 miles northwest of Roswell, leaving behind parts of the spaceship (material that has been subsequently identified as components of a Mogul balloon train) to create the original “debris field.” The scenarios further contend that the damaged craft again became airborne and flew to its final crash site, at either the location north of Roswell or 175 miles northwest of Roswell on the San Agustin Plains.
Lie 1.So unless the Air Force is in possession of a time machine, the dummies included in their report didn't exist in 1947.
"In 1949, a contract was awarded to Sierra Engineering Company of Sierra Madre, Calif., and deliveries began in 1950.
Claims of bodies at the Roswell Army Air Field hospital were most likely a combination of two separate incidents:
1) a 1956 KC-97 aircraft accident in which 11 Air Force members lost their lives; and,
2) a 1959 manned balloon mishap in which two Air Force pilots were injured.
Lie 2. Project mogul was created to spy and monitor the USSR's nuclear activities/possible detonation via ultra low frequency microphones. All the balloons carried were microphones and radio transmitters. They could not carry anthropomorphic dummies
Lie 3. The project that could and did carry these dummies was "Project High Dive," which did not exist in 1947.
By the early 1990s, UFO researchers such as Friedman, William Moore, Karl T. Pflock, and the team of Kevin D. Randle and Donald R. Schmitt had interviewed several hundred people who had, or claimed to have had, a connection with the events at Roswell in 1947.
After a career in Washington, D.C., that included a stint in the Reagan administration Pentagon as a deputy assistant secretary of defense, Pflock turned in 1992 to writing and UFO research full time.
*snip*
For Pflock, Roswell offered something most UFO cases do not — the possibility of tangible, physical evidence of an alien visitation. "That's the holy grail," he said.
Nine years of investigation led Pflock to a different conclusion. It really was a research balloon, not a spacecraft, that crashed near Roswell 54 years ago, Pflock argues in his newly published book "Roswell: Inconvenient Facts and the Will to Believe."
*snip*
…The U.S. government covered it up, Pflock believes, not because it was an alien spacecraft, but because the balloon experiment was a Cold War secret.
"The bulk of what they remember," Pflock said of the eyewitnesses who actually saw the debris, "matches project Mogul."
Whoa! What would turn a prominent and high-profile UFO researcher who dedicated nearly a decade of his life in pursuit of the truth surrounding the Roswell incident?
cont.
So, there you have it. Straight from the lips of a renowned UFO researcher, who has investigated the Roswell incident for nearly a decade.
Haut's affidavit talks about a high-level meeting he attended with base commander Col William Blanchard and the Commander of the Eighth Army Air Force, General Roger Ramey.
Haut states that at this meeting, pieces of wreckage were handed around for participants to touch, with nobody able to identify the material.
He says the press release was issued because locals were already aware of the crash site, but in fact there had been a second crash site, where more debris from the craft had fallen.
The plan was that an announcement acknowledging the first site, which had been discovered by a farmer, would divert attention from the second and more important location.
Haut also spoke about a clean-up operation, where for months afterwards military personnel scoured both crash sites searching for all remaining pieces of debris, removing them and erasing all signs that anything unusual had occurred.
This ties in with claims made by locals that debris collected as souvenirs was seized by the military.
Haut then tells how Colonel Blanchard took him to "Building 84" - one of the hangars at Roswell - and showed him the craft itself.
He describes a metallic egg-shaped object around 3.6m-4.5m in length and around 1.8m wide ... no windows, wings, tail, landing gear or any other feature.
He saw two bodies on the floor, partially covered by a tarpaulin ... described in his statement as about 1.2m tall, with disproportionately large heads.
Towards the end of the affidavit, Haut concludes: "I am convinced that what I personally observed was some kind of craft and its crew from outer space".(2)
So the ex DoD guy said there was no UFO at Roswell. Consider us placated.
I don't think so.
Mr. Pflock's interest in UFOs is virtually lifelong, and his investigations have left no doubt in his mind UFOs are real. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he served as a member and chairman of the National Capital Area [investigations] Subcommittee of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), then the world's largest private UFO research organization. He also has carried out independent research on humanoid/UFO-occupant sightings, allegations of UFO-connected animal mutilations, and claims of contact with "ufonauts."
An Associate of both the Society for Scientific Exploration and the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, a Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) State Section Director, and a member of the Permanent Organizing Committee of the National UFO Conference, Mr. Pflock currently is pursuing retrospective research on the landmark Barney and Betty Hill experience (September 1961), the infamous Florida scoutmaster "saucer attack" case (August 1952; he contributed an article on this case to UFOs 1947-1997, edited by Hilary Evans and Dennis Stacy), and the granddaddy of all crashed flying saucer tales, the Aztec, New Mexico, hoax that spawned Frank Scully's 1950 bestseller Behind the Flying Saucers (see his "What's Really Behind the Flying Saucers?: A New Twist on Aztec," The Anomalist, Spring 2000).
Pflock was not overly popular for bucking prevailing ufological wisdom, but it was not in his nature to fudge conclusions that he felt were firmly supported by the evidence. As his friend and one-time Capitol Hill colleague Fred Whiting said: “A meticulous researcher and a superb writer, Karl was the essence of intellectual honesty. He followed the facts wherever they led. And he admitted his mistakes and foibles with the same spirit in which he defended his ideas.” Although he helped to dispose of Roswell as an ‘alien’ event, and had a highly plausible debunking solution (sadly never published in full) to the notorious Travis Walton ‘abduction’, he also endorsed other well-known UFO cases as genuinely anomalous. His interest in UFOs was virtually lifelong, inspired in part by his own sighting as a boy in 1951 or 1952. Sights in the sky fascinated him: he was a member of the American Aviation Historical Society and an accomplished amateur astronomer.
Notice the highlighted piece of paper in Gen. Ramey hand.
I give you the computer generated deciphered version:
Granted this latest piece of evidence should be taken with some skepticism, the original image is blurry, so even with the latest photo-analytic software we cannot be 100% sure that all the words are correctly interpreted. However the two most crucial and legible words in this communique happen to be "disk" and "the victims."
Keep your arguments as abstract and theoretical as possible. This will "send the message" that accepted theory overrides any actual evidence that might challenge it -- and that therefore no such evidence is worth examining.
Avoid examining the actual evidence. This allows you to say with impunity, "I have seen absolutely no evidence to support such ridiculous claims!
State categorically that the unconventional arises exclusively from the "will to believe" and may be dismissed as, at best, an honest misinterpretation of the conventional.
Maintain that in investigations of unconventional phenomena, a single flaw or misstep invalidates the whole.
(1)
On July 8, 1947, around noon, Colonel Blanchard at Roswell AAF ordered Second Lieutenant Walter Haut to issue a press release telling the country that the Army had found the remains of a crashed a flying saucer. Haut was the public information officer for the 509th Bomb Group at Roswell AAF. Haut delivered the press release to Frank Joyce at radio station KGFL. Joyce waited long enough for Haut to return to the base, then called Haut there to confirm the story. Joyce then sent the story on the Western Union wire to the United Press.
2
This was a really good back-and-forth. The posts were short and succinct, stripped of any excess baggage - something a Judge appreciates. I was expecting maria_stardust to keep with the weather-balloon argument. She surprised me by introducing a secret government program (Project Mogul) being the cause of the incident. By post five she had me convinced of her side...a time by which SchrodingersDog only had a sentence in a newspaper to offer as evidence.
Post six (SchrodingerDogs third) then came on strong, introducing several contradictory stories on Roswell in the late seventies and early nineties - thereby proving that something is amiss.
SchrodingerDogs position was strengthened by pointing out that Pflock worked for the DoD...the very source of the contradictory information.
maria_stardust took the debate back into her hands in the next post by pointing out that Pflock was indeed a UFO-Believer. Her weakness though, was that she neither addressed the witness-accounts mentioned by Schrodingers Dog nor the other UFOlogists working on the case. As a Debate Judge, when I see certain data being ignored, I begin to wonder.
At the end of the debate I still dont have enough evidence for the idea that what crashed in Roswell in 1947 was of alien origin. Schrodingers Dog did not succeed in proving that.
He did succeed in proving that at least 3 contradictory "official statements" were made, and this is, in my judgement, enough to win him the debate by a very narrow margin. Were it not for his third post, and marias failure to address the contradictory "official" statements, he would have lost the debate by a large margin.
Speed Debate: Maria_Stardust vs Schrodingers dog: Roswell Never Happened. Or Did It?
Maria Stardust= MS
Schrodingers dog= SD
MS
MS Made initial headway in her opening by outlining her approach; that of a secret military project gone awry. In this way she pushed her opponent in the direction she wanted him to go.
MS made a mistake in my opinion by bringing into the debate the UFO eyewitness account of Kenneth Arnold.
MS Made headway and rallied back on course in her second reply nicely.
After the second reply, it appeared that MS began to wander around the topic a little. It would have been far more productive for her to have hammered home the “Military Project” angle and ignored her opponent’s assertions.
SD
SD lost points on his opening by addressing the “Balloon” theory. While possibly a valid theory, MS was not going there and this was wasted space for SD.
SD Rallied and even turned the debate back around to the direction he was intending on pursuing. SD very astutely handled MS’s Kenneth Arnold insertion.
SD relied to heavily on source material and I never really got a feel for what “he” thought of the entire issue.
SD was able to seemingly “pull” MS off her game on several occasions and basically plotted the direction of the debate quite nicely.
Cutting to the chase:
Perhaps it was the debate format, but neither debater was able to, or simply did not, present a convincing case using their own perspective and thoughts. This was disappointing.
However that being said, SD did give a better accounting and was able to more thoroughly refute MS’s argument even though MS did a great job of “directing” the debate initially. SD took the lead in the latter part of the debate and MS was never able to again gain control
Schrodingers dog wins by a hair