Category: essay

Look at those trees! Unburned! That proves weapons were used and it’s a conspiracy!

Oh, wait, that is a picture of a fire from a decade ago, before any ‘Directed Energy Weapons’ had been trialled. The unburnt trees are standing next to burned out houses in Valparaiso because that’s what happens with urban fires. Wooden houses catch fire easily from being hit by burning embers blown on the wind. But green leaves on living trees don’t catch fire so easily from those embers. Have you ever tried putting green leaves on a bonfire? It might get a bit smoky, but they don’t burn easily. In case you’re in any doubt, you could pick from a list of major fires in the 2010s, and search for images to discover how many of the trees ‘mysteriously escaped’ any of laser beams (which didn’t exist).

The reason a wildfire can burn many trees in a forest, not an urban area, is because the fire can pass through the canopy, so an actual flame passes from tree to tree. Crucial to such wildfires is the amount of dry matter on the forest floor, and the number of dead trees due to disease – as they can catch fire easily. Extremes of heat and cold, dry and wet, as well as the shrinking of forest area due to felling, are all known to increase the number of diseased trees, and therefore the likelihood of localised fires becoming massive wildfires. That is the best explanation for why, globally, forest fires have roughly doubled in the last 20 years. In case you didn’t know it yet, I am writing about these fire dynamics because of the tragic fires in Hawaii. In particular, there is strangely popular theory about the deadly fire in the town of Lahaina. The theory has meant that popular youtubers with massive audiences have chosen to ignore the reasons why forest fires became worse in recent years, and what we could be doing to try to reduce that in future. The conspiracy theory goes like this: the fires are started by Directed Energy Weapons (DEW), to create panic about climate change, and to force cities that resist adoption of ’15-minute smart city’ policies to curb private vehicle use. Some of the conspiracy theories also like to claim that the 15-minute smart cities agendas will curb personal movement rather than just cars (although there have been no such proposals or initiatives). The ‘evidence’ put forward for this view of the fires in Hawaii, includes: the fires only burned properties not trees, that the ashes look weird, boats were burned in the water, there are images of Direct Energy Weapons being used, and that Hawaii is hosting a 15-minute smart cities conference. Writing more than a week later, there are still many videos being widely shared on TikTok and other platforms that make some or all of these claims (see the ‘screen grab’ one of the most popular).