To most people, conspiracy theories sound so ridiculous that they're given little credence.
Like Jewish space lasers causing wildfires.
Really, Marjorie?
But every now and then, the ridiculous turns out to be reality.
However, one wild story that turns out to be true doesn't immediately offer validity to the millions of other false narratives. Only very rarely getting something right actually makes other conspiracy theories and the people who spout them less credible.
Reddit user LuckyAreaBeta asked:
"What’s something that sounds like a conspiracy theory but is actually true?"
MKUltra Just Sounds Made Up
"The CIA fed unreasonable amounts of drugs to people to document the effects and search for new weapons."
"I can't imagine taking heroic doses of LSD and then getting grilled by government scientists for days."
"CIA Project MKUltra—searching for a new truth serum—and the agents they dosed had no idea at the time."
"Fun fact: its predecessor was called Project Artichoke."
~ Awesome_hospital
Jim Crow Commode Kerfuffle
"The Pentagon has an insane number of bathrooms because as they were building it, the Jim Crow segregation of bathrooms was still in effect."
~ Petite_0Doll
"It says more about the times and the bureaucracy of institutional racism than anything else. Ground was broken on September 11, 1941, and the building was dedicated on January 15, 1943."
"The Pentagon is physically located in Virginia. At the time of its construction, Virginia was a segregated state, but the Federal Government had desegregated via Executive Order 8802 a few months prior to construction commencing."
"In the early phases of the project, the governor of Virginia pressured the planners insisting that Virginia law and building codes mandated 'separate but equal' bathroom facilities."
"In the interest of expediency and to not inflame racial tensions amongst a project labor force that had already had several brawls break out along racial lines, the planners (which included Leslie Grove who's next assignment was The Manhattan Project) inserted the additional bathrooms into the design figuring they'd keep the project on track and would also prevent costly renovations in case the political winds changed and 8802 was ever rescinded, legislated against, or lost court challenges."
"During construction, FDR visited the site and while on a tour of the completed areas saw the 'Whites only' signs, inquiring why they were present in a Federal facility."
"Being told that the governor of Virginia had insisted, FDR reminded them that he was the President and federal authority superseded Virginia's laws and had all 'Whites only' signage removed over the protests of the governor."
"As such, for 22 years the Pentagon was one of the only and the largest desegregated building in Virginia."
~ El_Kikko
Mission Impossible
"Operation Snow White—basically, during the 70s the Church of Scientology was concerned with all the bad press surrounding them and all the other dirt on them that could be released."
"So they used a huge number of contacts that they had in various US government agencies to destroy all negative information about the church of Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard."
"The crazy thing is, they succeeded with much of the plan before they were caught."
"There was a ton of negative info on Scientology in the 70s, possibly enough to destroy the church, and it'll never see the light of day because they used their huge influence to have it destroyed."
~ GazelleSome6177
Big Brother Has Your Browser History
"In 2002 a cable technician named Mark Klein working for AT&T in San Francisco was sitting at his desk when he received an email from his bosses that a representative from the National Security Agency (NSA) would be coming to visit for some unspecified reason."
"He was to give this NSA technician access to a cable substation for him to perform some work. The tech did his thing and Mark moved on without thinking anything of it."
"A year later in 2003, Mark was transferred to that cable substation and by chance was assigned to monitor the 'Internet Room'. This was the room where all the fiber optic ocean cables that carry the countries internet traffic terminate."
"While he was reviewing engineering drawings, he realized that the schematics revealed a secret room. More importantly, the plans showed cabinets filled with fiber optic splitters coming off every cable and feeding into the secret room. And to make it even crazier, neither he nor anyone on his team had access to the secret room."
"Through his investigation, he discovered that the NSA representative he had escorted the previous year had worked to install this system which was sending a copy of all the internet traffic that passed through the substation straight to the NSA. In other words, he had proof that the federal government had the capacity to tap into all internet traffic in the country."
"And I mean all of it. Every email, instant message, electronic sale, medical or criminal records, research databases. Everything. Complete unrestricted access."
"Like any sane person, he was extremely disturbed by this discovery. He went to his higher ups but was essentially told to just keep it quiet."
"After retiring in 2004, he linked up with a group called Electronic Frontier Foundation and essentially blew the whistle. He did interviews and handed over all his evidence to reporters."
"I watched one of these interviews in 2006 which is how I know about this story. I remember thinking it was so obvious once he explained it."
"Why wouldn’t the NSA tap into the internet traffic in the age of the war on terror? I’d watched Enemy of the State."
"But nothing happened. No one I spoke to seemed to believe it and Mark Klein’s story eventually seemed to just fade away."
"7 years later, in 2013, Edward Snowden leaked documents essentially confirming EVERYTHING and then some. But to this day everyone looks at me like a crazy person when I talk about knowing about it as early as 2006."
~ FriendlyEngineer
An Undisclosed Secure Location
"The Greenbrier Bunker. People love conspiracies about huge underground complexes built for the rich and famous to survive nuclear fallouts (think Denver airport), and that's exactly what Greenbrier is."
"The bunker was built under the Greenbrier Resort for congresspeople to escape to, and was kept a secret for 30 years, even though people suspected ('why is there a 7,000 foot air strip for a town of 3,000 people?')."
"For the entire time it was functional, every Congressperson was assigned a bunk. These days you can take tours, and I'm sure we'll hear about the next bunker once it's defunct."
~ Own_Possession_1769
Should Have Recruited Theresa Caputo
"That the US Government actually had a Paranomal unit. That movie, The Men Who Stare at Goats? It was based on a true story—the US military was actively trying to see if they could find people with skills like stopping the heart of a goat, or dowsing, or psychic spying."
"The whole thing pretty much fell apart when it was deemed that the people participating were not very effective (if you have to stare at a goat for hours in order to get it to fall over and die, how are they supposed to make use of it for assassinations?)"
"But, bottom line, it DID exist."
"Same with the Nazis having a paranormal unit during the 40's. Hitler believed in acquiring the Spear of Destiny because he believed it would help him win the war, along with other occult stuff. That's partly what the Wolfenstein games made popular."
~ Sprzout
☣️☣️☣️
"The UK government secretly tested low-impact (non-fatal/permanently debilitating) biological weapons on its own coastal towns to see how far they could make it inland."
"The Dorset Biological Warfare Experiments."
~ Lovely-1Angel
Corporate Genocide
"Nestlé's baby formula scandal."
"Nestlé aggressively marketed baby formula to mothers in developing countries by giving free samples—and monetary incentives—to hospitals and buying up billboards. The mothers would use them instead of breast milk and eventually stop producing breast milk."
"Then they'd need to buy formula to continue feeding their babies. Formula needed to be mixed with water, but because they often didn't have clean water, they'd put their babies at risk mixing the formula with unclean water."
"Also, literacy rates were lower in a lot of the places they deliberately targeted, so the mothers didn't know how to clean the bottles and couldn't read the instructions on the packaging. Those that did often didn't have the means to carry them out."
"A lot of them being poorer also resorted to watering down the formula to try and make it last longer, but then it wouldn't have enough nutrients for the baby."
"A lot of babies died."
"Nestlé downplayed all of this and said it wasn't their responsibility that people there didn't really have access to clean water and that they were just giving people the freedom of choice."
~ indianajoes
☢️☢️☢️
"The US did nuclear experiments at the Hanford site."
"They purposely released a ton of radioactive material on the local area and population so they could see what it looked like in order to detect Soviet nuclear sites."
"Look up the Green Run."
~ Master-CylinderPants
Smoke Screen
"'Big Tobacco Cover-Up' is a prime example."
"For decades, tobacco companies knew about the harmful and addictive effects of smoking, but actively suppressed research, manipulated data, and marketed cigarettes as safe."
"It wasn’t until the 1990s, after internal documents were leaked, that the truth about their deceitful practices was fully exposed."
~ TheNaughtyMare_
Human Sacrifice
"In the Tuskegee experiment, for 40 years hundreds of African American men were purposely selected, deceived and intentionally given fake syphilis treatments. 102 of them died."
~ Waltz8
Slave Labor
"Many prisons—mostly state, not federal—in the US are private, for-profit companies."
"They get paid by the head, and also employ the prisoners for pennies per hour to do work like telemarketing. You've probably talked to a prisoner on the phone without realizing."
~ sonic_tower
"Corporations that run private prisons spend millions each year lobbying to keep offences like minor drug possession a felony, as having more non-violent people incarcerated as cheap defacto slave labour is good for their business model and their shareholders."
~ cruiserman_80
Apocalypse Cheese
"There are entire caves of cheese owned and operated by the US government. 1.4 BILLION pounds."
~ KravenArk_Personal
Reaping What You Sow
"The US and the UK conspired to overthrow Iran's democratically-elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and restore the autocratic regime of the Pahlavi monarchy."
"They did this because Mosaddegh tried to nationalize Iran's oil industry."
~ JusticeFrankMurphy
"This set the stage for the next 70 years of Middle East conflict. The Iranian monarchy gets overthrown by anti-western Ayatollahs in 1979 so then we throw in with Sadaam Hussein in Iraq because he hates the Iranians."
"But Sadaam invaded our allies Kuwait in 1990 and we had to drive him out. He used chemical weapons (which we gave him) against Iran and the Kurds."
"But eventually he made enough people nervous (at least in the Bush administration) that we used 9/11 as an excuse and invaded Iraq at the same time as Afghanistan."
~ antoltian
Have A Coke And A Smile
"A main ingredient in the flavor of Coca-cola still only comes from processing coca leaves into cocaine."
"The extract goes to the Coca-cola flavor profile, and the cocaine that is produced as a by-product gets sold to the health science industry for medicinal or research use."
"There is only one company in the US—Stepan Company—authorized to do this that has had a special arrangement with the DEA for nearly 100 years."
~ wholenewguy
What true, but outrageous sounding, event would you add to the list?
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