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Alternative 3

A

Anonymous

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For those who don't know, "Alternative 3" was broadcast in 1977, and supposedly gave proof that the then USSR and the USA amongst others were planning to evacuate the planets best and brightest to Mars, as Global Warming is irreversible and fatal. There were also claims that UFO abductions were in fact said superpowers taking ordinary people so that they could surgically alter them and use them as a slave race. The program was supposedly a serious documentary, but was claimed as a hoax after the fact.

Pretty weird so far, huh!

It's a hoax, but if you wan't to take a look at the original TV version, try this link: http://www.thule.org/alt3.html
It's in Real Media Format.

For an explanation, try http://www.hotgossip.co.uk/98august/unexgoss.html
The Alternative 3 Story is about half way down.

To me, it ranks along side "Ghostwatch" (sorry non-UK contributors - was a Hallowe'en spoof) as a fantastic piece of Barnum TV - "You can fool all of the people some of the time, etc..."

If other conspiracy theorists aren't enough to deal with, we also have TV on our backs!
 
there was a copy of it in Scawthorpe library (Doncaster) a few years ago, the paperback version
 
what quite IS the famous alternative three?
 
Alternative One - elimination of a huge portion of world population.
They are in the process of doing that. If they are not able to execute THE PLAN some population thinning will be blamed on acts of terrorism.

Alternative Two - to build many underground bunkers, as large as small towns, to protect the government in seclusion until the surface population thinning was finished.
They have built over 200 such "underground cities". (Mt. Weather)

Alternative Three - to build a "transfer station" on the backside of the Moon, build an underground base on Mars and remove a certain limited "Noah's Ark" cross section of Earth's population, artists, scientists, engineers, writers, etc., to Mars as a survival colony in the event of "catastrophy" on Earth.
They started this project in 1961 and may have accomplished most of this as well.
Not insane. Not insane.
Rather more reliable source.
 
I remembered this exchange from the original TV programme and was glad to see it made it to the book.

GERSTEIN: You already know about Alternatives 1 and 2 -
and why they were rejected. Well ... Alternative 3
offered a more limited option -- an attempt to
ensure the survival of at least a small proportion
of the human race. We were theorists, remember,
not technicians ... but we realized we were talking
about the kind of space travel that - twenty years
ago - seemed no more than science fiction.
BUTLER: You mean...go to some other planet?
GERSTEIN: I mean get the hell off this one - while
there was still time!

I've got the book somewhere packed away. Given the myths about it being mysteriously suppressed, I wonder if I could flog it of to gullible conspiracy theorists on ebay?

How many other people have noticed the similarity between the conspiracy in Alternative 3 and the conspiracy in Ben Elton's fist novel 'Stark'?
 
I read the book and found it facinating. It takes you in. Even if you read it knowing that it's a hoax you find yourself beleiving it.

Very well writen, and yes, I do think Stark resembles it.

Cujo
 
But isn't this before Stark?

What does it say on the back of the book? Fiction/Non-fiction?

Is this an accepted hoax?

I must say that the text builds up tension and pace like a work of fiction- along with the pretty and unnecessarily long descriptions of place and atmosphere underpinned with very little actual information. It seemed more about the investigation and what they said to each other than what they actually claim to have uncovered. As I began reading this without knowing exactly what it was all about I found it frustratingly evasive about telling me exactly what it was banging on about without first coaxing you down every page looking for the next inadequate 'scrap' of fact. I have read other expose's that read like a novel but this one began to tug at my scepticism more and more the further i read. Most of them lay the facts and accusations down thick and fast but this one does a lot of 'more of which we will present later...'

What does interest me is how cleverly (if hoax) other facts and mysteries that I've read elsewhere have been woven together.

However - it stretches the bounds of credulity to believe that not ONE of the disappearing scientists, artists, medical experts would not have been able to RESIST leaving a note or something for SOMEONE to find at some time or another! Human nature just isn't that neat no matter how hard you try and tidy up the loose ends.
 
Chant said:
But isn't this before Stark?

What does it say on the back of the book? Fiction/Non-fiction?

Is this an accepted hoax?

Yes, what I was saying was Ben Elton probably saw Alternative 3.

Can't remember (and the book's in storage), it may have been something like Mysteries or Paranormal or Supernatural.

Yes, it's definitely fiction though of course it picked up on a lot of UFO lore, conspiracy theories, tales of spontaneous human combustion and a concern about the environment and other stuff that was kicking around in the early seventies. There's even stuff about something else being on the Moon, which was a topic of several books in the post-Apollo era.

The book is a very clever parody of some of the UF0/Paranormal/Earth mysteries books that were around at the time.
 
haven't read it, but Arthur Clarke wrote a series of papers in 1962 one of which proposes that overpopulation would devastate the world's resources and the only hope for the human race was selective migration to the moon and mars etc.
 
It's very clever. I've only started getting interested in UFOlogy and conspiracy theories for 6 months or so and have read as avidly as i could find the books. Since I have only started touching on the Moon landings, (aren't i a novice:D) I thought this might be real.

Can I just ask, though? I have read the apollo transmissions quoted somewhere else, only, as REAL transmissions edited out by NASA. That's why I was confused.

Are these real bits of fact interwoven into the fabric of the hoax for credibility or are the 'transmissions' a hoax as part of the book? If so, then another very credible book I've read is guilty of misinformation.:mad:

Saying that, I'm glad it is fiction. Though I don't think I'll bother reading the last one now, as i found myself skipping heavily through the third just finding quotes in an attempt to cut to the chase, as it were!

Unless there's some big twist I'm missing?
 
Authenticity in Alternative 3

Chant said:
Can I just ask, though? I have read the apollo transmissions quoted somewhere else, only, as REAL transmissions edited out by NASA. That's why I was confused.

Are these real bits of fact interwoven into the fabric of the hoax for credibility or are the 'transmissions' a hoax as part of the book? If so, then another very credible book I've read is guilty of misinformation.:mad:

A lot of the stuff in Alternative 3 is cited without attribution by other UFO/conspiracy books and websites without sorting out the fact and fiction.

I've tried to sort out some of the stuff, but this could take weeks if I did it thoroughly

Anything attributed to Bob Grodin is fictional he’s a fictional character, played by Shane Rimmer, who was the voice of Scott Tracey in Thunderbirds (who was named after Scott Carpenter, the second of the Mercury Astronauts)

In the book he’s introduced after some true facts about ex-Apollo astronauts,
Edgar Mitchell, did become interested in parapsychology and now promotes the ETH and alien contact as real. James Irwin did become a minister, regarding his flight on Apollo 15 as a religious experience.

The trick is to drop in two strange but true facts and then sneak in strange but bogus factoid

The chap whose supposed to have revealed the missing segment of the Apollo 11 transmission.


Otto Binder was a member of the NASA space team. He has
stated that NASA "killed" significant segments of
conversation between Mission Control and Apollo 11 - the
space-craft which took Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong to the
Moon - and that those segments were deleted from the official
record: "Certain sources with their own VHF receiving
facilities that by-passed NASA broadcast outlets claim there
was a portion of Earth-Moon dialogue that was quickly cut off
by the NASA monitoring staff."
Binder added: "It was presumably when the two moon-
walkers, Aldrin and Armstrong, were making the rounds some
distance from the LEM that Armstrong clutched Aldrin's arm
excitedly and exclaimed - "What was it? What the hell was
it? That's all I want to know."
Then, according to Binder, there was this exchange -

MISSION CONTROL: What's there ? ... malfunction
(garble) ... Mission Control calling Apollo 11...
APOLLO 11: Theses babies were huge, sir...enormous....
...Oh, God you wouldn't believe it!...I'm telling
you there are other space-craft out there...lined
up on the far side of the crater edge...they're on
the Moon watching us...

The chap who is supposed to have originated this story – there was an Otto Binder who was an SF writer, also as Eando Binder with his brother – The ‘I Robot’ Story on both the original and new Outer limits series was one of his from a series of stories ‘Adam Link- Robot’ (Asimov of course used the same title for a collection of his robot stories).

Later in life Otto Binder wrote here some UFO/ancient alien books including ‘Mankind Child of the Stars’ with Max H Flindt (of whom I can find nothing except what’s cited here http://www.ozarkmt.com/flindtbinder.shtml).

The name’s an SF in joke.

If you Google for Otto Binder NASA, you mainly come up with the quote above (or paraphrases of it), cited as real by people including Timothy Good, and inevitably on David Icke’s site.

I think this one’s made up.

NASA Mission Control at
Houston and the Lunar Command Module Pilot during a 1972 moon
mission. And Clements puzzled over it when he first played
it at the Sceptre studios:


MISSION CONTROL: More detail, please. Can you give
more detail of what you are seeing?
LUNAR MODULE PILOT: It's...something flashing. That's
That's all so far. Just a light going on and off
by the edge of the crater.
MISSION CONTROL: Can you give the co-ordinates?
LUNAR MODULE PILOT: There's something down
there...Maybe a little further down.
MISSION CONTROL: It couldn't be a Vostok, could it?
LUNAR MODULE PILOT: I can't be sure...it's possible.

I can’t track this, the Apollo astronauts did see odd lights on the moon, I suspect this is a paraphrase of something from the Apollo 17 mission.



SCOTT: Arrowhead really runs east to west.
MISSION CONTROL: Roger, we copy.
IRWIN: Right...we're (garble)...we know that's a
fairly good run. We're bearing 320, hitting range
for 413...I can't get over those lineations, that
layering on Mount Hadley.
SCOTT: I can't either. That's really spectacular.
IRWIN: They sure look beautiful.
SCOTT: Talk about organization!
IRWIN: That's the most organized structure I've ever
seen!
SCOTT: It's (garble)...so uniform in width...
IRWIN: Nothing we've seen before this has shown such
uniform thickness from the top of the tracks to
the bottom.
From a transcription of the actual flight journal (Worden was the third crew member At http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/ap15fj/11day5_wakeup.htm

095:03:51 Worden: There's a very interesting little fissure just below us here, Bob. It looks like there might be a little flow coming out of it, but it's - it's almost an arrowhead-shaped affair. And, it certainly doesn't have any features like any - any impact. It's very sharp and distinct and makes a very distinct arrowhead. Here we come up on the ridges on the west side of Serenitatis, just at the foothills of the Hadley Apennines.

095:04:18 Worden: And you can see, there is - there is some relief as we look back to the south there, there is some very distinct relief in - in - in the shore of Serenitatis, with some wrinkle ridges that follow the contour.

095:04:34 Worden: And some - what look like fairly distinct arcuate rilles that also follow the contour. I think that when we get up very close here, you can see...

095:04:44 Worden: ...In - in the field of view there right now is a lineament that looks like it might be some sort of a collapsed lava tube, and you can also see down in here the - the mare material looks like it's pooling in the - in the foothills of the mountains; and in some places, you can even see what appears to be a frozen shoreline, so to speak.

Again a paraphrase/adaptation

Two Soviet Cosmonauts failed yesterday to dock
their Soyuz-25 craft with the Salyut-6 orbiting
laboratory.
Mission commander Vladimir Kovalyonok and flight
engineer Valery Ryumin, thought to be planning a long
stay aboard the new space station, were ordered back to
Earth after abandoning the link-up.

This is true, the flight lasted From 9–11 October 1977

Here http://www.aerospaceguide.net/spacestation/salyut6.html

Again this is the Alternative 3 Method drop in snippets of fact into fictional scenario.

The book gets quite postmodern at times incorporating a real complaint by the late Mary Whitehouse (a veteran anti-TV campaigner) with completely fictional complaints about upsetting the families of fictional people (e.g. Sir William Ballantine) by spreading lies about them

This is just a sample of the way the book works – don’t believe everything you read.
 
I'm such a novice at this game. When I was a kid I was just scared of the dark because we lived in a haunted house and it used to whisper to my brother, yes omigod!, but I kind of drifted away there for 15 years or so into the solid world of bills and kids and now I've stepped back into my old interests, everything went and got all grown up and now I'm hopelessly lost in this labyrinthe of conspiracies and the paranormal mixed up in it and Keels ultra-terrestials - which I never even suspected!!!!:eek!!!!:
I've obviously got a long way to go yet. I thought I was just about getting a handle on this and everything just keeps getting bigger and bigger and you can't help but be drawn down it. Will study your post. Thanks.
 
After looking at this thread I went back and re-read the book. It was quite intriguing and I found the details about MK Ultra and the greenhouse effect interesting especially as they fell into the category of always believed they were true.

On the back it is listed as being world affairs/fiction but the last page of the text makes clear that this was a compromise to allow it to be published.

But that last chapter stretched belief to breaking point, explosions on the moon , moonbase completely destroyed in tragic accident, it felt more like bad SF than a serious attempt at a conspiracy theory.

Got to thinking if there would be any "proof" it was true and I realised a few things since it was published:
Space travel has ceased within the same rough time period as the greenhouse effect failed to have the major immediate effects it was supposed to,
Satellites sent to photograph Mars have stopped transmitting before any could be taken (amid rumours of missiles being spotted in the final frame),
people are seriously looking and apparently finding proof the official moon landings were faked.

Time for a new improved version methinks.
 
RE:Alternative 3.

How many of you have read the book Alternative 3 ?
It relates to the Mars story that GW Bush is telling us now.
Things did'nt look good for the human race then.
Bill.
 
I read the book about 8/9 years ago, a little bit chilling. The original tv program was on the web somewhere (iirc there's a thrad on here with the Url).

[edit] no it wasn't for anyoe who saw the missing sentance it was Mars[/edit]
 
i saw it on telly when it first went out.... sheese it had one of the guys who did Thunderbirds as an astronaut... its wernt right convinceing even to a teenager.
 
To Side Car John and others.

Thundbirds as the astronaughts???????think you were watching the wrong network.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the way i have two copies of the book,one before it was banned in the u.s.a(it said on the back cover File under :WORLD AFFAIRS).
The other copy came out some years later and it says on the back cover File under :FICTION.
I would like to know what is written on the backs of the books that people on this Forum have read.
Greetings
Bill.
 
Re: To Side Car John and others.

Bill said:
I would like to know what is written on the backs of the books that people on this Forum have read.

"property of Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Library":D

and iirc it was orange, paperback version, and said something like "the book they tried to ban", before giving details of the three alternatives. I might go to the library tomorrow and see if the copy's still there.
 
look it was a long time ago... but inthe original telly program...the atsronaut who is freeked out by seeing things on the moon he didnt ought to have seen is played by the guy who did the voice for Scot Tracy in Thunderbirds...
 
Re: To Side Car John and others.

Bill said:
Thundbirds as the astronaughts???????think you were watching the wrong network.
Not the puppet, Bill, the actor who played the puppet's voice. ;)

...
According to the original comissioning editor, Nick Austin, it started out as a spoof and got out of hand!

The Fortean Times Nº121 Article is to be found on the site:

http://www.forteantimes.com/articles/121_a3.shtml

Of course, Alternative 3 (A3) - the TV documentary and the book - was a joke, a hoax, a spoof, a put-on, whatever. No one in their right mind could have seen it as anything else, whether at the time of the original television transmission on 20 June 1977 or when the paperback book was published nine months later, in March 1978.

The TV company concerned - Anglia TV - had, after all, told the media in advance that this edition of Science Report had originally been intended to go out on 1 April. (Certainly the preview note that I had seen in the Sunday Times of the weekend before had made this point.) And the internal evidence of the programme itself - after the first few minutes - was pretty conclusive.


'Alternative 3' by Nick Austin
Additional material by Jane Watkins and Mark Pilkington.
April 1999 FT 121
When the 'spoof' was found out it went from Non- to Fiction, a bit sharpish. :p
 
Despite the fact that it was not only originally labelled a parody, and many have said they recognised various "witnesses" from their work as actors in other programmes, there still seems to be a number of conspiracy nuts who think it was real.

There is, for example, the book Casebook on Alternative 3 which is actually about how the labelling of the show as a parody was an attempt to divert attention from the reality of the situation.

Of course my favourite is the guy who rang up someone with the same surname as one of the "missing" soldiers, and claimed he'd been gotten to by the authorities, because he not only denied having a son, he also had a different first name.
 
Yes, it's a piece of non-fiction - I'm still suprised that some people take it seriously. I think some people believe it as being something else simply because it was on TV. I think it works along the same lines as Orson Wells' 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast.
 
sidecar_jon said:
the atsronaut who is freeked out by seeing things on the moon he didnt ought to have seen is played by the guy who did the voice for Scot Tracy in Thunderbirds...

I might be going completly mad, but wasnt that bloke out of 'Allo 'Allo in it as well?
 
RE:Disclaimers

Yes i heard about these disclaimers,but if were in there shoes and i was warned of the conciquences by a govermental power i might call it a day to.
ps;colour TV was happening in Germany in the 1040es(but the war delayed its modification), only the eleate(higer class) had acces to it .
 
Re: RE:Disclaimers

Bill said:
Yes i heard about these disclaimers,but if were in there shoes and i was warned of the conciquences by a govermental power i might call it a day to.
ps;colour TV was happening in Germany in the 1040es(but the war delayed its modification), only the eleate(higer class) had acces to it .
What did they watch?
 
Let me re-frase that.

The posibilitys of colour TV where around in the 40es,the transmission was something else.
FACT: Werner von Braun is the man responsible for the start of space flight(this happened in the 40es to)without him we would not be on the Moon or Mars or in space.
 
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