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Page 8 of 15 overloaded! Missile grounds (White Sands), Fort Bliss, Holloman Air Force Base, and numerous airports were all blacked out (with no emergency power backup), and this was when President Johnson's telephone call to the White House in Washington, D.C. was cut off. In response to his request for an explanation, President Johnson was told that his calls were fed into a cable system that went dead when the surge of power caused by the El Paso regulator blow-up hit it, and the backup batteries didn't work. Though it may be debatable whether the above cases of electrical transmission failure were merely coincidences with UFO activity, an incident on April 18,1962, involving a UFO that had been tracked from New York, through Kansas to Eureka, Utah, was well documented. The Air Force spokesman admitted that the object had landed, and during the 42 minutes that it was on the ground near the power station there was no power, but it was restored when the UFO left. The object was pursued by jet interceptors summoned from Phoenix and Stead Field in Reno until it exploded over the Mesquite Range in Nevada in a brilliant glare that was visible over five states.(67) The second major disastrous effect that UFO activity, real or imagined, can have on the populace, is the creation of fear, panic, flight, and all kinds of irrational behavior. We have mentioned already the rather well- documented case of hysterical contagion and mass hysteria created by War of the Worlds, the radio drama by Orson Welles about an invasion of Martians. It was broadcast on Halloween of 1938 during the period of the invasions of Germany into Austria and Japan into China. "The drama, realistically presented in the form of news bulletins and interviews concerning an alien spaceship landing in New Jersey, resulted in many kinds of hysterical actions, including thousands of panic-stricken phone calls, wildly fleeing automobiles, and impromptu shot gun brigades."(68) Though most persons reporting UFOs do not interpret them as personal threats, it is possible that some of the large volume of reports may be attributable to hysterical contagion. In any case, one of the reasons often cited for the tight secrecy on government UFO research findings is the need to prevent the possible panic that a revelation of the truth might arouse. Rumors that people were being abducted, dematerialized, burned, made radioactive, rounded up and impounded, liquidated with ray guns and lasers or shipped off to Mars or Venus might well give rise to fear--fear of the unknown. Hysteria could cause frightened persons to imagine that their water was poisoned, the air contaminated with undetectable but lethal aerosols or nerve gases. With hundreds of UFO squadrons zooming across the landscape from California to New York, Toronto to Mexico City, communications disrupted, widespread power failures, airports and railroads paralyzed, highways turned into giant parking lots of immobilized vehicles full of terrified motorists, the problem of restoring order and sanity would be a tremendous challenge to all of the emergency services, assuming their personnel would remain calm, detached. and able to resist the human impulse to put the safety and well being of their own families ahead of the public's. To make matters worse, some of the more excitable gun owners might be tempted to rush out Rambo fashion, and in utter disregard of the damage that falling bullets might cause innocent residents below their fallout, start firing at the evasive objects regardless of the range. The force field affects on the physical environment-- communication, transportation, illumination, and computerized data storage--have already been considered. We might have added that some physical effects have been observed at locations where UFOs have landed-- circular patterns of crops destroyed by heat or radiation and baking or sterilization of the soil at the site. On a more practical basis there may be grounds for concern that more than just the environment can be adversely affected by UFO actions. While pursuing UFOs, military aircraft have disappeared in mid-air, exploded, and suffered harassment. Persons on the ground have sustained serious burns, paralysis, and "blows" from a force field, radiated emissions, or rays and beams that have been described like that of a "stun-gun"(69) In 1980, three witnesses saw a red ball of light hovering above houses in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, when suddenly a bolt of blue light shot down and two houses burst into flames.(70) An Indiana man saw a bright light flash pass his window; the power went off in his house so he went outside to investigate and found a brilliantly lit object hovering above him; when he started to walk toward it his body commenced to tingle and he was unable to move until the object disappeared. A similar tingling sensation swept over another man in Lvnn, Massachusetts. one night when he approached a domed object with a red glowing cone rising from a parking lot. He too was 4/6/2008 FIREFIGHTERS UFO MANUAL UFOS - The Panic Hazard Personal Hazards - Physiological http://www. greatdreams.com/ufos/firefighters.htm