Thomas Tulien

During the 1990s, I developed a keen interest in the history of the UFO phenomenon, which led to the establishment of the Sign Oral History Project. In May 2000, we conducted an interview with Captain Bradford Runyon, a B-52 co-pilot from Minot Air Force Base, resulting in years of subsequent research and various collaborations to present the case study of the October 24, 1968 Minot AFB incident online. This study offers students of UFO history a unique opportunity to critically examine a significant UFO event in considerable detail, facilitating a deeper understanding of the phenomenon.

A four-year intelligence study by Britain’s Ministry of Defense, entitled, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) in the UK Air Defence Region (2000), aka the “Condign Report,” acknowledges that the existence of UFOs “is indisputable.” The study also notes that the phenomenon occurs daily on a global scale and attributes certain characteristics to UFOs, such as “the ability to hover, land, take off, accelerate to exceptional velocities and vanish; they can reportedly alter their direction in flight suddenly and clearly can exhibit aerodynamic characteristics well beyond those of any known aircraft or missile—either manned or unmanned.” The report concludes that UFOs can be explained as mis-reporting of man-made vehicles, natural phenomenon, or relatively rare and not completely understood natural phenomena. In particular, “the events are almost certainly attributable to physical, electrical and magnetic phenomena in the atmosphere.” Some may be triggered by meteor re-entry forming electrically-charged buoyant plasmas, however, “the conditions and method of formation… as well as the scientific rationale for sustaining them for significant periods is incomplete or not fully understood.”

For more than 70 years, the UFO phenomenon has eluded any definite explanation regarding its actual cause. The official inquiries have consistently focused on identifying UFOs without genuinely trying to determine their nature, similar to the USAF reassurances that UFOs do not pose a national security threat. Professors Wendt and Duvall argue that, in our current context, "the UFO can be known only by not asking what it is." This ignorance regarding UFOs transforms to active denial of their objective existence, and "to that extent one may speak of a UFO taboo, a prohibition in the authoritative public sphere on taking UFOs seriously, or in other words, thou shalt not try very hard to find out what UFOs are.”