Roundup of Chilean Miner Conspiracy Theories and Weirdity

As I mentioned in last week’s Wednesday Weirdness Roundup, conspiracy folks were all over this even before the final Chilean miner was hoisted out of the mine. Generally speaking, all the theories and musings fall into one of three categories:

1. There’s something strange going on here. These people don’t actually have concrete theories yet, but they’re working on it.
2. The rescue was a distraction from something else. Like the boy trapped in a well in 12 Monkeys, I guess. Some wondered if the media was trying to avert attention from the skies, as UFOs were supposed to hover above the world’s major cities on October 13th (and there were some reported mass sightings in New York; maybe the pilots were low on fuel and had to pick just one city).
3. This was a staged event with occult significance. Freemasons, Satanists, numerologists, or whomever picked the time and circumstances of the mine “accident” very carefully.

And here are some of the theories:

1. Richard C. Hoagland announced on a recent Coast to Coast AM broadcast that he has something significant to say about the miners at some unspecified date, something that will show us the mine disaster was not an accident. This, of course, launched his fans on a spree of speculation. One person commented on Hoagland’s Facebook wall, “The Chilean miners? I’m asking basic questions, instead of just accepting it on face value. This, to me, is what Richard’s saying. Look around you. Observe. Ask questions. Make up your own mind. Skeptics would do well to do so as well.“

I’m guessing that Hoagland has taken interest in the mine rescue because NASA designed the Fenix 2 capsule that was used to lift the miners out of the shaft, and he’s all about NASA perfidy. Any organization that would hide the secrets of the universe in a series of 1950s ViewMaster slides simply can’t be trusted.

Meanwhile, someone at the Godlike Productions forum wonders why the Fenix escape capsule was freshly painted, why the miners looked clean-shaven and healthy, and why they were wearing their equipment. (All of these questions could have simple answers, but where’s the fun in that?)

Phil Umbras, on his blog The Uncanny Investigator, opens up a whole can of WTFery in regards to the mine disaster in the post “Something Suspicious About the Chilean Miners”. First, he mentions a bizarro story about a 1945 mine collapse in Pennsylvania, then he moves on to America’s mythos of underground chicanery by alien beings (the Shaver Mystery, military bases deep in the earth, etc.). Finally, he gets to questions about the Chilean disaster. How did the miners survive for 69 days with so little food? How did they keep their cool? Why are they under a gag order?

Someone at a Phish forum requests, “Someone please explain why Dick Cheney was temporarily put in charge of Chilean mines the day this accident occured.” (A joke? I hope so, but ya never know.)

2. On the conspiracy forums, people are mostly linking the mine rescue “distraction” to Stanley Fullham’s UFO prediction. But there are other theories. At The Conservative Monster.com, Steve Cooper points out that Lt. Col. Terry Lakin had a court hearing in D.C. on October 13th. “The media is playing up this Chilean mine crap as a distraction. Lt Col Lakin has a hearing today and you have to keep the sheep busy. Keep staring at the hole dopes….”
The problem with the miners-as-distraction-from-Lakin theory is that no one knows what the hell Cooper is talking about.* And even if they did, the hearing was just a brief one dealing with Lakin’s change of counsel. Yawn.

One YouTuber posits it was all a Chilean TV hoax, engineered for profit. He points to the lack of pimples on the miners’ faces.

3. Another person on Hoagland’s Facebook wall asks, “In august someone said this whole chile-trapped-miners-event might be a sacrifice of the 33 men around xmas time…now things obviously have changed. did the same “guys” change the plan/timing or did somebody else overtake the situation and change everything?“.

I was unable to find any mention of the miners being a Christmas sacrifice, but I did come across Vigilant Citizen’s article on the occult symbolism of the event. There were 33 trapped miners, and 33 is the highest degree in Scottish Rite Freemasonry.

Several people have pointed out that October 13th was the 93rd anniversary of the miracle of the sun at Fatima.

In other words: There is, to date, not one single coherent or compelling conspiracy theory about the Chilean mine disaster. Within a week or two, attention will drift to the next “false flag operation” or “psy op”, and the miners will be forgotten in the world of conspiranoia.

* Lakin is facing a court martial for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, not on the grounds of conscientious objection but because Obama hasn’t produced his orginal birth certificate for his inspection. Srsly.