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denying that UFOs exist at all, a stance that protects us, however temporarily, from having to confront this unthinkable threat to our core stability. Scientists have their own reasons to be fearful. UFOs demonstrate characteristics appearing to contradict the fundamental laws of physics on which our understanding of the universe is based; if scientists did make a concerted effort to identify them, is it possible they might find the phenomenon somehow "unknowable" through our current methodologies? So far, the UFOs have made any study difficult—they come ever so close, but not quite close enough. Does this mean we might never be able to learn what they are, even if we tried? Maybe, all of a sudden, the phenomenon will reveal itself to us before we know much of anything about it, and we'll 1 1 the reality of UFOs, a process that hopefully has already begun for most readers. We may not be fully aware of buried responses and thought patterns, especially since the resistance is universally accepted. When they ridicule UFOs, skeptics do not consciously worry about abstractions such as anthropocentric humanism, or the loss of statehood, or the threat of annihilation, but that doesn't mean these issues do not underlie their knee- jerk reactions. Government officials don't actively contemplate such fears either, when choosing to ignore UFOs or to keep information from the public, following the decades-old trend. Scientists conveniently claim there is no evidence, but they are not thinking about the potential challenge UFOs bring to the foundation of science as they know it. So much operates outside our field of conscious awareness, perpetuating a kind of blindness. A personal exploration might reveal only a strange discomfort with the whole notion of UFOs, an automatic, instinctual avoidance of the challenge they inherently represent. As Wendt and Duvall describe it, "the UFO taboo is akin to denial in psychoanalysis." Without pondering it, many would probably say they can't put their finger on what this challenge really is. For those willing to examine further, perhaps the "skeptical arguments" articulated in the previous chapter will surface; or, for others, there will be religious conflicts. Most of us would prefer not to contemplate the subject at all, because we have been handed a convenient way out—an accepted prohibition against "believing in UFOs" that allows us to identify with the "elite" position. My hope is that, maybe now, having digested all the material presented in this book, those who have managed to come this far will not be as easily influenced by this transparent taboo as they were before. Unconscious fears about the implications of UFOs most likely lodged in the larger mind of the American political system beginning in the late 1940s, when UFOs first burst upon the scene at a national level. Yet a certain portion of the American population was already predisposed to view reports of "flying saucers" as hoaxes or exaggerations. In 1938, Orson Welles's famous radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds panicked be powerless to react. Each of us can explore the roots of our own resistance to accepting