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submitted 8 months ago by Wanderer@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

I'm not a conspiracy theory guy but I seen the post on 9/11 on no stupid questions and it seemed more fleshed out than I expected.

So what are conspiracy theories that turned out to be true?

And what are the most believable conspiracy theories out there?

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[-] LopensLeftArm@sh.itjust.works 43 points 8 months ago

If you're looking for the most believable conspiracy theories out there, I'd say the one that says Jeffrey Epstein was murdered and it was covered up as a suicide is way up there.

[-] RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago

See, it’s still a conspiracy if he committed suicide. I don’t see why people are obsessed with him being murdered, or makes no difference in the end because the chain of events leading to either outcome is pretty much the same. IMO the suicide is more lurid because all the things had to happen to give him the time, tools, and someone basically telling him to do it or someone would indeed kill him. The man knew he was fucked, and there’s zero distance between him being told and others just setting it up knowing he was suicidal anyway.

Point being - there absolutely was a conspiracy to give him opportunity, tools, and lack of monitoring so he could kill himself. The pursuit of anything to do with his associations or activities was dropped so fast it approached relativistic speeds as it vanished into the distance.

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[-] boredtortoise@lemm.ee 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

That's pretty certain. On the other hand, the real conspiracy theory is that Epstein is alive and the body was a double

[-] trackcharlie@lemmynsfw.com 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Or the theory, given how many meetings Epstein had with the former PM of isreal, that he was working for Mossad/CIA to create a large honeypot/blackmail ring of highly influential people and politicians.

[-] Wanderer@lemm.ee 38 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The only two I know to be true off the top of my head are:

The American government is spying on everyone. Which Edward Snowden showed to be true.

And the, every personal printer has a secret code on it for identification.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_Identification_Code

So in all likelihood there are others out there yet to be uncovered.

[-] RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago

I miss when conspiracy theories were (mostly) harmless. Black helicopters. Secret UFOs at Groom Lake. Bigfoot. Chemtrails.

Now they’re out of hand and damaging, even deadly. Vaccines containing microchips. Ineffective medications are used because it’s a conspiracy to not use them. Deadly viruses are a leftist conspiracy. Q helping sabotage the democratic process. Etc.

They’re not fun anymore. They’re getting scary.

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[-] BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 8 points 8 months ago

Well those are not really conspiracy theories if they are true and proven.

Mine is that a part of the US government knew 9/11 was going to happen and didn't try to stop it. It was too great of a casus belli to let it slip, the amount of money some people made because of it is astounding.

[-] Wanderer@lemm.ee 16 points 8 months ago

Well they were conspiracy theories long before they were proven to be true.

[-] shinigamiookamiryuu@lemm.ee 5 points 8 months ago

The best conspiracy theory is probably going to be the one about who killed JFK. It's so validated even the government entertains the thought all the time without really being official on anything.

[-] BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 5 points 8 months ago

In that sense then yes.

One was MKUltra where the US government experimented on mind control, which then gave us the Unabomber.

[-] fastandcurious@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Operation Midnight Climax was an MK-Ultra project in which government-employed prostitutes lured unsuspecting men to CIA “safe houses” where drug experiments took place.

The CIA dosed the men with LSD and then—while at times drinking cocktails behind a two-way mirror—watched the drug’s effects on the men’s behavior. Recording devices were installed in the prostitutes’ rooms, disguised as electrical outlets.

Holy Fuck!

[-] BestBouclettes@jlai.lu 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The US government did some crazy shit. And that's what we know about, I can't even imagine what we don't.

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[-] livus@kbin.social 6 points 8 months ago

And the, every personal printer has a secret code on it for identification.

Oh god am I going to have to go back to cutting letters out of the newspaper and glueing them on.

[-] stoy@lemmy.zip 32 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

There is only one conspiracy theory that I believe in.

It concerns the submarine incident in Hårsfjärden here in Sweden.

During the cold war, a foreign submarine was detected inside a military protection area in Hårsfjärden in Sweden.

This was assumed by the media and government to be a Soviet sub, but after watching a documentary about the incident I disagree.

The sub was never caught, officially it escaped, but I believe it was let go.

Ok, so a foreign sub was detected inside a military protection area near a Swedish naval base, this much is true, the navy closed the entrences and exits to the area with mines and nets, they dropped depth charges over the suspected sub, but the sub refused to surface.

This is what a documentary I have watched explain as facts pointing away from a Soviet submarine, and towards a NATO submarine.

During the incident, several audio recordings were made by hydrophones, the Swedish military claims that they recorded the sounds of a Soviet sub, but independent experts are less sure.

On one of the recordings a signal is intercepted, the Swedish military have claimed that the signal came from one of the sonars used to listen for the sub that malfunctioned, but the fault is increadibly unlikely to happen, and a retired officer incharge of training the sonar operators at the time is on record saying that the fault would be impossible to happen during normal operation.

The signal also shows another fact, it carried a subsignal from the electrical system onboard the submarine, and from that subsignal, it is possible to determine that the frequency of the electrical system used by the transmitting entity was not used by Soviet submarines.

Then we have the paint, during the depth charge attacks a yellow/green color spot was spotted on the surface, this was at the time one of the standard distress signals of NATO submarine, this spot was promptly lost and never investigated.

Then we have the weird orders given to a manned sea mine station at one of the exits of the area, standard practise was that the station was given direct permission to blow the mines if they had a verified target, this order was given every night, but one evening the station was reminded by their commander that could not blow the mines unless given permission.

Well, the permission didn't arrive at the normal time, so when they heard a submarine passing their line of mines that night they could do nothing, hours after the sub passed they got permission, as they did the next day as well.

The Swedish millitary's surpreme commander's diary are missing the pages for this date.

There was also wittness statements taken and a drawing produced by wittnesses who saw a submarine in the area just before the incident, the drawing they made has the profile of a West German submarine. This is obviously unreliable, but still interesting.

So, what do I think?

That a foreign sub was inside the military protection area is documented, and not disputed, however I don't believe it was a Soviet submarine, I believe it was a NATO submarine.

Why would NATO want to do this?

NATO felt at the time that Sweden did not have the capabillity to prevent Soviet submarines from entering our waters, the year before in 1981, a Soviet submarine ran aground deep inside Swedish waters just outside one of the largest Naval bases in Sweden. I believe that NATO wanted to scare the Swedish people to create a political will to strengthen the Swedish naval defence.

I like this conspiracy theory, it has zero impact on life and politics today, and it feels kinda fun to keep it alive.

Now, in the end I must admit a big weakness of this theory...

Where are the crew of the submarine, and why have they not spoken about this?

It has been 40+ years since the incident, it seems remarkable for there to have been zero people from the crew leaking some details about the incident, especially with the internet...

I can see three explanations for this:

  1. There never was a submarine in Hårsfjärden, it was all hysteria, the recordings made are from Swedish naval ships that have been misstakenly identified, the signal likwse.

  2. The sub was a Soviet sub, in my experience Russia has often been isolated due to the language barrier, so finding the crew could be impossible, this means that they might not even realize that people are talking about that specific mission at all, and if there have been leaks it is possible that they went unnoticed by the western world.

  3. The sub was a NATO sub, the crew was orderd not to talk about it, and later forgot about it, this seems unlikely as I doubt being depth charged is something you would forget, still even being ordered to silence I doubt that would stop any leaks over 4 decades, it might be that there are leaks but they never got any attention.

I don't have the answer, and I am not going to pretend I do, I believe that it was a NATO submarine, but if you have more info, please post it, I'd be happy to be wrong if I can verify the facts.

Here are a few links to articles about the subject, the YT video is the Swedish documentary I am basing this comment on.

https://youtu.be/8Gyi8WTHXAM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A5rsfj%C3%A4rden_incident

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_submarine_incidents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_S-363

[-] el_bhm@lemm.ee 4 points 8 months ago

It was farting red herrings.

[-] Spiralvortexisalie@lemmy.world 21 points 8 months ago
[-] Nusm@yall.theatl.social 12 points 8 months ago

I read that book cover to cover when it came out (still have my copy somewhere), and I must say that the author makes a pretty compelling case.

The main theory is that someone (maybe Oswald, maybe someone else) was shooting from the book depository, but they only got off two shots. The 3rd shot was from the rifle of a Secret Service agent in the convertible directly behind Kennedy, which went off accidentally as he turned to return fire to the book depository.

The author shows how the bullet that blew off the top of Kennedy’s head was a soft metal jacket like the Secret Service used, while the first two shots were hard metal jackets, which was what was found in the depository. (He goes into great detail on the ballistics.) Because of the shape and acoustics of Dealy Plaza, a gunshot coming from the car behind Kennedy could sound like it came from the grassy knoll. Lastly, it would explain why people in the plaza claimed they smelled gunpowder, which wouldn’t be possible if the only shots came from the book depository.

The author posits that the two shots that got Kennedy from the book depository might have killed him anyway, but the 3rd and fatal headshot was an accident from the Secret Service agent who was sitting on the back of the convertible in front of Kennedy with his feet in the back seat. He stumbled as he tried to stand in the seat to turn and return fire to whoever was shooting from the book depository behind him, and the rifle accidentally discharged, thus the title of the book Mortal Error.

[-] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 10 points 8 months ago

Wait—so the idea here is that it was an accidental discharge that just so happened to hit the same guy, in the same spot, that the assassin was already shooting at? And here I thought that Archduke Ferdinand was unlucky!

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[-] skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Putin did 9/99 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Russian_apartment_bombings

if you even want to call it a conspiracy theory, that is

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[-] livus@kbin.social 18 points 8 months ago

Conspiracy theories I like = Time Cube, Birds Arent Real, Roswell Rods, Reptilian Shapeshifters

Conspiracy theories I hate = Qanon, Agenda 21, Plandemic, Elders of Zion

Conspiracy theories that seem to be very complex/fleshed out = Fake Moon Landing, Jet Fuel Doesn't Melt Steel Beams, Gangstalking

Conspiracy theories that turned out to be true = Tobacco company cover ups, US govt spying on people, various assassinations and political destabilization efforts eg assassination of Lumumba, carpet bombing of Laos, Operation Condor, weird shit like Israel facilitating the funding of Hamas.

[-] Shalakushka@kbin.social 12 points 8 months ago

Jet fuel doesn't have to liquefy steel beams, it has to heat them enough to warp them beyond the structural integrity needed to hold up a fucking skyscraper

[-] TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee 11 points 8 months ago

The whole jet fuel can't melt steel beams theory also requires a flawed understanding of thermodynamics to work. A fire's fuel is just part of the equation needed for temperature output. A coal fire will naturally burn around 900c, but with the proper air flow behind it, you can increase it to 1200c.

The theory is also dependent on people assuming that jet fuel is the primary combustion material, instead of what it really was, the primary ignition source. It was the early 00's, a time before the age of digital storage, and that building had literally tons of paper in their storage rooms. Office fires are known to get very hot, there are plenty of pictures on the Internet of steel joists in an office building "melting" from just a regular old paper fire.

Finally, there is a difference between heat and temperature. Heat is the rate of which energy is transferred to material, temperature is how hot or cold something is. Meaning a large cooler fire may transfer more heat energy to a structure than a smaller hotter fire. It's the equivalence of throwing a bar of iron in a bonfire compared to heating one end of the iron bar with a torch.

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[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 11 points 8 months ago

Conspiracy theories that turned out to be true

My favourite of these is MK Ultra

[-] livus@kbin.social 5 points 8 months ago

@bionicjoey The Men Who Stare At Goats blew my mind. It seems way too nutty to be real.

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[-] athos77@kbin.social 14 points 8 months ago

Sorry to re-direct you to ~~hellsite~~ rexxit, but there's this one guy who always posts the same time when these things are posted on the old place: Diana Ross and Smokey Robinson are Michael Jackson's real parents. I don't know that he's convinced me, but it's an interesting theory.

[-] ivanafterall@kbin.social 3 points 8 months ago

Damn, that's a good one.

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[-] Dieinahole@kbin.social 13 points 8 months ago

Peta is a front by the meat industry, to discredit vegans and environmentalists.

[-] mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago

I can almost believe this one...

[-] PP_BOY_@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago

JFK's assassination was planned with Johnson's involvement because of Kennedy's plans to withdraw from Vietnam. Johnson's wife, Lady Bird, was a main stockholder of Bell helicopter and made millions off of defense contracts from the war.

[-] ivanafterall@kbin.social 8 points 8 months ago

At this point, it'd almost be more interesting to learn about the handful of Americans who weren't conspiring to kill JFK.

[-] ExtraMedicated@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

I read one about the shot that killed him being accidentally fired by a secret service agent while reacting to the first shot.

[-] habitualcynic@lemmy.ml 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

If there’s a cover up, this is the one that makes the most sense to me. It aligns with Occam’s Razor; it’s simple and understandable why it would be hidden. Edit: posted with more detail elsewhere in the thread: https://lemmy.world/comment/7523091

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[-] Waldowal@lemmy.world 10 points 8 months ago

I guess it's technically part of the larger "Q-Anon" stuff, but I particularly like the one that says liberals have an underground submarine base under Central Park in NYC where they go to drink baby blood.

[-] ivanafterall@kbin.social 10 points 8 months ago

Where are you liberals organizing all of this stuff? Is there a Discord chat or something? Can I get an invite?

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[-] cali_ash@lemmy.wtf 9 points 8 months ago
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[-] K0W4LSK1@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 8 months ago

Mk ultra turned out to be real

[-] mods_are_assholes@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

And most of the unabomber's manifesto ended up being accurate as well...

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[-] CM400@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

I don’t have any good “real” ones that haven’t already been posted here, but you should check out The Illuminatus! Trilogy (https://a.co/d/6hqz5kX). It has elements of nearly all the popular conspiracy theories around at the time it was written, plus it makes up a few more, and then wraps them all up neatly with a bow.

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[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

"America is the land of opportunity."

Edit: Maybe this just falls under "lies."

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[-] Telodzrum@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago
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[-] eightpix@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

CoIntelPro.

Just, go look.

[-] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 3 points 8 months ago

Well that's hardly a theory, it's proven fact at this point

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this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2024
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