30 December, 2014. 13:09
ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
THE LATEST DISAPPEARANCE of an airliner is causing a worldwide shortage of tin foil as millions around the world begin fashioning hats made from the malleable metal.
The hats have entered vogue with everyday people as the latest airline vanishing has made it socially acceptable to harbour even the most wild conspiracy.
Traditionally, tin foil hats are worn in the belief it shields the brain from threats such as electromagnetic fields, mind control, and mind reading.
The number of people choosing to wear the hats is growing each day – as many conspiracy theorists believe that governments or aliens are responsible for the air travel disasters.
The notion that a tin foil hat can significantly reduce the intensity of incident radio frequency radiation on the wearer’s brain has some scientific validity, as the effect of strong radio waves has been documented for quite some time.
Dr Michael Gamble from the CSIRO says, however, that the effectiveness of a tin foil hat is greatly decreased if it is not a full enclosure.
“For a ‘tin foil hat’ to be truly effective, it would be best for one to entirely encapsulate oneself in the tin foil.” said Gamble.
A well-constructed tin foil enclosure would approximate a Faraday cage, reducing the amount of (typically harmless) radiofrequency electromagnetic radiation passing through to the interior of the structure.
Last week, a former French airline CEO speculated that the US military may have targeted MH370 because they feared a September 11-style attack on a military base in the Indian Ocean.
Marc Dugain, who headed Proteus Airlines and is an established author, suggested an article for French magazine Paris Match, he claimed that the Boeing 777 crashed nowhere near where international search teams have been combing the ocean for wreckage, but near an American military base in the British territory of Diego Garcia.
“It’s an extremely powerful military base. It’s surprising that the Americans have lost all trace of this aircraft. Without getting into conspiracy theories, it is a possibility that the Americans stopped this plane.” said Dugain.
After Dugain made these statements, tin mining and exploration companies worldwide began noticing that the demand for tin was starting to outstrip supply.
“We’re currently operating at 104% capacity,” says Fred Ridge, lead geologist at AusTin.
“Right now, the rising popularity of tin foil hats is unsustainable.”
Early reports of the MH17 disaster suggested over 100 people working in the field of HIV/Aids research, en route to a major international conference in Melbourne, had perished.
When a clearer picture emerged, this was revised down to seven. No less horrific for those who perished or their friends and family, but perhaps less grist to the mill of those who speculated that the plane had been shot down to prevent a cure for HIV/AIDS being revealed.
Conspiracy theories are nothing new. As Tim Mendham from the pro-science Australian Skeptics group told The Advocate, governments shot down MH17 because the CIA created the AIDS virus to depopulate Africa and homosexual communities and a passenger on that plane had a cure.
He is also a firm proponent of the tin foil hat, saying they’re a necessity in modern life.
“They shot down the plane because they had the cure for the HIV on it [sic],” said Mendham.
“Rather than help modernise Africa, they want it to be sustainable so they just give them AIDS – which they do by injecting infected blood in to mosquitoes in farms then drop them in to places like Africa and Darlinghurst to give Africans and gay people HIV,”
“The only reason why people think I’m wrong is because my tin foil hat blocks the Abbott radio waves which allows me to think independently.”
Mr Mendham is also an avid “Corby Truther”, suggesting that Schappelle Corby was set up by the Australian government.
The supply and price of tin is expected to drop sharpley once wreckage of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 is discovered and a credible reason why it crashed is established.
With AAP
