"I don't think it at all likely that the nearest star system is inhabited with sentient life with technology that superior to us."

Huh????????? Why? What in the world do you base that supposition on?

"Given that level of sacrifice does anyone else think it unlikely that they would come all the way here to buzz airports and stick probes up hillbillies' butts?"

Yeah! ;-) I think that's highly unlikely. Happy now?

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To be more serious about it...I think if they are coming here it is not to buzz airports and stick probes up hillbilly's butts. They may be coming here because they are concerned about two specific things:

1. Our recent development of nuclear weapons.
2. Our recent fledgling forays into space.

I would be deeply concerned if I was them. We are potentially very dangerous people.

The number of AFO sightings went up dramatically in the postwar years (after WWII), and they have remained high ever since. The first A-bombs were exploded in 1945. I think there may be a connection, frankly.

There were a good number of aerial sightings during the late war years, by the way...by both Axis and Allied airmen...they saw unexplained craft that were uninterceptable and did not appear anything like our airplanes at all. The Allied pilots called them "Foo-fighters".

Both sides assumed that those were secret weapons belonging to the other side. Both discovered that they were wrong about that when the war ended. Neither side had such vehicles.

In any case, the number of sightings of such unusual vehicles increased greatly from the late 40's...and my feeling is that it was due primarily to their concern about our atomic weaponry and their desire to observe and monitor what the hell we are up to on this planet.