Government meeting aliens in Antarctica?

Why has this conspiracy theory persisted for so long?

Greetings Gold and Silver Level Templar Knights! So, what about this conspiracy theory that the government holds meetings with aliens down in Antarctica? How did this ever get off the ground as a “fact”? Well, it’s complex…

Global governments and elites have covered up the presence of an alien base at Antarctica. Well, that's the claim of conspiracy theorists. I'm more intrigued to know how this idea originated and gained traction. I'm fascinated by these theories, not because I think they're true, but why they're believed. What is it about the icy land mass at the south pole that makes some think there are aliens running a covert base and that they regularly meet with government and military figures?

The first obvious reason for belief is that Antarctica is the last semi-explored region on the planet barring the ocean deep, due to its inhospitable conditions. As somebody who grew up in Britain, we were always told at school about a heroic if slightly insane figure called Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1868-1912) who died on an expedition to the South Pole. It was a typical tale of British Empire derring-do. So, the idea of the Antarctic as a desolate wasteland that consumes those who dare to approach was fixed in my mind from childhood.

And clearly for many people, it appears to be a terrifying place. The kind of area that ancient mariners once feared as being populated by dreadful monsters intent on sinking ships and killing any approaching humans. So, replacing monsters with aliens has proven to be an easy stretch. We don't believe anymore in gigantic squid-like creatures downing ships in a deathly embrace. We've discarded those beasts, once depicted on maps, in favour of scheming extraterrestrials.

Science Fiction prepared the way for belief in alien activity at Antarctica

The second reason for belief in alien activity in Antarctica is that sci-fi fiction prepared the way. As is so often the case, works of fiction have somehow come to be regarded as factual in our post-modern, relativistic time. So who is to blame?

In 1938, the American John W. Campbell, writing under the pen name Don A. Stuart, penned a sci-fi horror novel, Who Goes There? A group of scientists are trapped in the Antarctic with shape-shifting aliens able to imitate any living creature on Planet Earth. Sound familiar?

The book was adapted into the 1951 movie The Thing From Another World and more famously by the director John Carpenter with his excellent and nerve shredding film The Thing, released in 1982. In Campbell's book, the scientists have discovered an alien spacecraft that crash landed on Antarctica twenty million years ago and a surviving alien shifts among them with disastrous and murderous results.

As early as 1940, a young Arthur C. Clarke, the 20th century's foremost sci-fi author, wrote a parody of the increasingly popular theory that aliens were active in Antarctica. In Clarke's story, a human expedition encounters some aliens and asks how they came to have such a detailed knowledge of mankind. One alien responds:

"That was very simply arranged. We started writing stories about ourselves, and later we subsidised authors, particularly in America, to do the same. The result was that everyone read all about us in various magazines such as Weird Tales, of which incidentally I hold 50% of the preference shares, and simply didn't believe a word of it. So we were quite safe."

Arthur C. Clarke was being massively sarcastic but you get the point. The whole alien/Antarctic story had moved into the mainstream jumping from the realm of fiction into conspiracy theory. It has only proliferated massively since then fed by social media and TV.

And cue all your fave conspiracy theory connections!

Into the late 20th century and 21st century, we have all the usual, predictable connections being made to bolster the alien Antarctic theory. There's a group of islands called Omicron. Yeah - makes you think. Covid. See the connection? Only these islands were named back in the 1940s by Argentina. So I'm seeing a Greek letter and no connection.

There's a Rothschild island in Antarctica which gets the conspiracy theorists salivating but again, the investment house funded an expedition. They're not in cahoots with Martians down there. Same goes for the Rockefeller Plateau you can also find in the icy waste.