Bigelow's contact contingency planning (1999)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 9
| Date | 9 January 1999 (NIDS Science Advisory Board meeting) |
|---|---|
| Recorded in | Jacques Vallée, Forbidden Science: Volume Four, p. 439 |
| Speaker | Robert Bigelow, founder of the National Institute for Discovery Science |
| Proposal | A private contingency plan in case humans were found to share the Earth with controlling non-human entities |
| Related work | "Day After" scenarios (from 1996); Roper poll of 1,971 Americans (June 1999); online survey; religious-reaction survey (1994) |
| Later echo | UAP Disclosure Act of 2023 |
| Topics | Beings & bodies (topic) |
| People | Robert Bigelow, Jacques Vallée, John Petersen, Chuck Schumer, Mike Rounds |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 137 |
| Year | 1999 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1999 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 6 |
According to Jacques Vallée's journals, at a meeting of the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) Science Advisory Board on 9 January 1999, Robert Bigelow reviewed the institute's "Day After" work. He argued that NIDS should have its own contingency plan in case it turned out, as he put it, that "we were cohabiting on the Earth with non-human entities that controlled our destiny".[1] That year NIDS commissioned a national Roper poll on how Americans would react to proof of extraterrestrial visitation, part of a wider effort to study the social effects of contact.[1]
Background
Bigelow, a Las Vegas real-estate developer, founded NIDS in 1995 to study UFOs and other anomalies. It was disbanded in October 2004.[5][6] Vallée, a member of its Science Advisory Board, kept a diary of its meetings, published in the Forbidden Science series. The fourth volume covers 1990 to 1999.[1][3][4] His entries, gathered by the researcher Keith Basterfield, show the "Day After" theme building over several years:[1]
- 4 August 1996 (p. 324). Bigelow introduced "the Day After" at a board meeting, asking what would happen if the government announced alien intrusions, whether there had been a 50-year program of indoctrination, whether the knowledge was "digestible", and whether people would bother going to work the next day.
- 10 January 1997 (p. 349). The futurist John Petersen of the Arlington Institute presented alternative futures, game-changers, "wild cards" and "day after" scenarios to the board.
- 12 January 1997 (p. 353). At a private meeting, Petersen, still certain a major announcement was imminent, kept worrying about the Day After. Vallée wrote that his own plan for the Day After was "to kneel in the dust and pray, just in case".
- 9 March 1997 (p. 359). Vallée listed Petersen's "Day After" scenarios among the projects Bigelow was funding through NIDS.
- 11 January 1998 (p. 402). Bigelow proposed sponsoring two studies, on the social effects of announcing a major asteroid impact and of announcing that UFOs were extraterrestrial craft. Vallée sensed a deeper agenda: Bigelow's inner certainty that a dramatic development would come "soon".
The 1999 meeting
On 9 January 1999 (p. 439), Vallée wrote that Bigelow was "still fascinated" with Day After scenarios. Standing before the full board, he went over the history of the effort, from an initial appeal to the military to the more recent idea of a contingency plan of their own for the scenario of controlling non-human entities.[1] The journals do not describe the plan's contents or say whether it was ever written.[1]
The Roper poll
Later in 1999 NIDS contracted the Roper organization to survey a national cross-section of 1,971 American men and women, interviewed face to face in their homes.[1] A NIDS press release of 7 June 1999 asked what would happen if Americans were confronted with undeniable proof that extraterrestrials existed and had visited Earth. It reported that one in four thought most people would "totally freak out and panic".[1] The release noted that a 1960 Brookings Institution report and an internal RAND document of 1968 had both predicted profound social consequences if contact were confirmed.[1] NIDS also published a six-page paper, "The Day After Contact: Forecasting Reactions to Extraterrestrial Life", by Albert A. Harrison, later a NIDS board member, and Colm Kelleher, dated June 1999.[1]
NIDS then put the same questions to 2,046 self-selected visitors to its website, while acknowledging that such online surveys are wildly inaccurate as samples of public opinion.[1] Comparing the two groups:[1]
- Who should make first contact. 86% of online respondents chose scientists or a private organization that had planned for the contingency, against 49% of the public. 20% of the public preferred the military, compared with 4% online.
- What UFOs are. Exactly 25% in both groups said UFOs were alien spaceships.
- Trust in the government. About 71% of the Roper sample and 74% online thought the government would classify the information, suppress civilian sources, or both. Only 23% of the public but 47% online said it would do both.
- Readiness. 75% online but only 32% of the public felt fully prepared to handle undeniable evidence. 25% of the public, against 8% online, thought others would panic.
The religion survey
The NIDS website also carried an earlier "Day After Contact" survey on how organized religion in the United States would react to confirmed contact with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization.[1] It was carried out in 1994 by Victoria Alexander for the Bigelow Foundation, by mailing questionnaires to 1,000 randomly chosen religious bodies, with a 23% response rate. It found that the theologians surveyed did not think their faith, or their congregations', would be threatened.[1] An earlier version of this article credited the survey to John Alexander; the NIDS material attributes it to Victoria Alexander. The researcher Jeff Levin revisited it in 2012 in the Journal of Scientific Exploration.[1]
Later echoes
Planning for disclosure resurfaced in the UAP Disclosure Act of 2023, proposed by Senators Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds.[2] It would have had the National Archives collect UAP records with a presumption of immediate disclosure, and given the government eminent domain over recovered "technologies of unknown origin" and biological evidence of non-human intelligence held by private companies.[2] Parts of it were included in the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2024, which President Joe Biden signed on 22 December 2023. These covered a UAP records collection at the National Archives and limits on funding for undisclosed UAP work. The eminent-domain provision was stripped, and journalists described the result as heavily watered down.[2]
People and topics
- Robert Bigelow — Businessman who founded NIDS and Bigelow Aerospace and ran the AAWSAP contract.
- Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.
- NIDS — Robert Bigelow's research institute (1995–2004) that studied UFOs and other anomalies.
- John Petersen — Futurist who founded the Arlington Institute.
- Arlington Institute — The futurist think tank founded by John Petersen in 1989.
- Non-human intelligence — A term for intelligent beings of non-human origin, used in UAP legislation.
- UAP Disclosure Act — A 2023 Senate proposal by Chuck Schumer and Mike Rounds to release UAP records.
- Chuck Schumer — Senate Democratic leader who co-wrote the 2023 UAP Disclosure Act.
- Mike Rounds — South Dakota senator who co-wrote the UAP Disclosure Act.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
On the Timeline
- Jim Westwood's MJ-12 disinformation theory (1 January 1999) — A former CIA consultant suggests the MJ-12 briefing document was a fake to fool the KGB.
- CAUS Phoenix Lights lawsuit (22 January 1999) — A civilian group sues for records on the Phoenix Lights.
See every 1999 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- AATIP / AAWSAP — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Robert Bigelow — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Harold E. Puthoff — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Keith Basterfield, "NIDS and the 'Day After' scenarios", UFOs – scientific research (Dec 2019) · ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com · archived copy
- National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024 — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Forbidden Science — the journals of Jacques Vallée (Anomaly Archives) · anomalyarchives.org · archived copy
- Forbidden Science series — Anomalist Books · anomalistbooks.com · archived copy
- National Institute for Discovery Science — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com · ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com · archived copy
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024”, “National Institute for Discovery Science”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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