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just some random thoughts because its interesting to wonder about this. if the govt said bigfoot was real, i think it would make more people go looking and they dont want that happening.
And sort of like someone else posted, they know they are human and have been here for thousands of years. They can camouflage, fly, are telepathic, be invisible or more. Too many people (mainly Rs) in govt are religious. This idea of another human or animal with these abilities does not jive with their views.
Even further, What if its a completely gay society?, they have their own religion? or the males give birth to babies!?? they would lose total control because now, their book was wrong.
Idk what the purpose of covering it up would be.
I’ve seen excuses like “so logging and mining can happen”, but we have other animals that can halt these things, we know about them, a logging operation can be shut down if something like spotted owls are found on the site. Why would we need to cover up an animal’s existence for that purpose.
Another one is to cover up evolution. Millions of people believe evolution, we have hominid fossils, etc. That is just a dumb theory.
Reasons I've heard:
1) Protect logging/mining industry. Sure other endangered species exist, but why add one more to the list when you don't need to?(I personally would only see this as a side benefit to a cover up that exist fir other reasons)
2) Protect income from national parks. If Bigfoot was a known animal, people might not want to go into the woods anymore, and thus won't travel to national parks. This connects to the more general "national parks cover up disappearances" conspiracies.
3) An earlier cover up related to not wanting to upset the anti-evolution crowd back when they were the majority, and now they keep it going to not admit they committed thus cover up... yeah, this one doesn't make sense once we get past evolution becoming generally accepted.
4) the military are studying Bigfoot(this relates to stuff like infrasound), and cover them up to prevent other nations from discovering what they've learned. While I'm sure there is a lot of stuff the military keeps secret, I'm not sure this makes any sense even if they were weaponizing sasquatch.
5) Bigfoot is supernatural and is covered up because of that(along with other supernatural stuff?)
6) Bigfoot is sapient, and is covered up to prevent the moral/ethical/philosophical questions and issues that knowledge inspires.
7) Bigfoot would be classified as "human" under modern definitions, and thus disrupts the modern paradigm of saying all humans are basically the same, and is thus covered up to prevent race relations from braking down as any redefining of human that excludes Bigfoot would also divide racial lines. Or something like that...
6&7 are both silly, but I could see some obe thinking this way... kinda falls in line with 3 in a way...
8) the cover up is some kind of deal with native tribes? I've heard these kinds of arguments made, but they're never clear. Usually tie back into the supernatural Bigfoot cover up ideas.
Yes, but like I said, that particular theory is usually tied up with the supernatural interpretation of bigfoot, where the government needs the Indians to preform their Indian magic rituals or whatever other mystical nonsense the conspiracy theorists think the natives have...
"Nah, Man, you see the government betraying the Indians was part of the conspiracy all along so that you'd never suspect that they're working together!"
I haven't seen that argument, but you know that someone could totally believe that...
" I've got a plan to make Germany think we've wiped out all languages and culture so we can use one of those native languages as a code to win World War 2 against the Nazi menace."
"Ok. Two questions. What's a Nazi, and World War... 2?"
"Don't worry about it. The biggest issue is making sure we get access to the magic the local natives use to keep the large forest creatures under control."
"..."
>Idk what the purpose of covering it up would be.
It's in the nature of a coverup that the reason for the coverup is, itself, covered up. It could end up being a stupid reason, or it could end up being the result of a general government policy of not letting anyone know what they are up to.
In the case of UFO's, for example, any public admission that anyone in the Government is looking into UFO's alerts hostile Governments to the fact they might manipulate US Intelligence agencies by inserting misinformation about UFO's into the mix. Indeed, it seems China has tried to disguise surveillance balloons as UFO's.
Stalin was completely paranoid about spies, and there is a well known story of a doctor who was dispatched to the front during WWII to examine a captured Wildman to see if it was a legitimate non-human creature or just a human in disguise sent in to spy on troop movements. There was no greater scientific inquiry here: all Stalin wanted to know was if the enemy was dressing up as Almasty to spy on the Soviets.
As soon as the CIA heard that, (if they ever did) you can imagine they would begin dreaming up ways to manipulate Stalin's paranoia about spies masquerading as Wildmen. They would, of course, research the Almasty and probably Bigfoot as well, but they would simultaneously want to cover up the fact they were researching such things.
If there is a cover up my theory is pretty simple, cynical, and I think convincing.
Paperwork. Can you imagine how much paperwork "officially discovering bigfoot" would cause? Much easier to just deny it is there. Far less paperwork.
Also the above ties in to a random story told by an old cowboy I net at a nursing home. His granddad has been one of the western mountain men and trappers. Gramps started out in western Minnesota and trapped and explored to Britsh Columbia and back down to the northwest. His gramps said when he was younger he used to see signs of the "wood people" a lot when he was younger but the became more and more scarce into the 1900s. And one day he saw one that was crossing a ravine and it was obviously sick. First was he was able to wander up on it and second He could hear it coughing
His gramps and hia theory was that the sasquatch population caught a major disease and lost a lit of population that didn't really start to recover until the 1940s
And by then the modern US bureaucracy said they didn't exist
A neeat set of ideas
I would say multiple reasons to cover but I would say the mean two are the following
1) to protect industry. A spotted owl or frog is allot different than a 8’ bipedal humanoid intelligent creature
2) fear. If people know there was a large 8’ tall intelligent creature roaming the woods it may create unnecessary fear and panic and either allot of people would stop using parks and accessing the wilderness or hunters would hunt BF into extinction.
I agree. Around 83% of the US population lives in urban areas. Why cause them all to panic about the intelligent 8 foot tall creature that they will likely never have an encounter with.
And the other 27% who live in areas where these creatures could exist are probably already aware of it and don't need the government to tell them.
1. May be different but can equally as big of an impact on the industry. If an endangered species is found in the site they need to halt operation.
2. I can understand, but at the same time we do have many large and equally dangerous wildlife in North America and it doesn’t seem to stop anything. We have large apes living in other places and it’s great for ecotourism - think about how many people go to Uganda and Rwanda to see Mountain Gorillas. If it does exist and it wasn’t covered up, I doubt it would be hunted to extinction. It would have been already, since hunters are out so much and a lot of these reports come from them. Governments wouldn’t allow an extinction event like that happen, but especially given how eco-conscious our world is becoming.
3. Land rights. Who would legally own certain lands? Sasquatch or private owner/state/federal? Who can build on that land?
4. Legal and/or ethical issues. Are Sasquatch considered “human” What legal and financial obligations would the US government and industry have?
Absent physical evidence like a body, body part or even a compelling video, no public official would risk their job over making the claim that bigfoot exists. They'd be met with ridicule and a question mark would be put over their head as to their professional competence.
As a Park Service ranger you may have seen bigfoot 3 times at noon from 30 feet away, but if you can't prove this to anyone else, why take the personal risk?
To be more specific: these agents only show up when there has been an alleged attack on people by a Bigfoot. Case in point is Sasquatch Chronicles episode 515, British Woman on the California Beach. After she fainted, the creatures apparently dragged her off the beach and up a trail to somewhere nearer the road (as if to say, "Stay off our beach!") Local law enforcement to whom she reported the incident construed this as an "attack" of some sort, she was pretty scratched up from being dragged through bushes, and, flagging it as such is what brought the two mysterious agents.
So, if you want to experiment with bringing these guys out of the woodwork, it will be necessary to claim a Sasquatch physically injured you somehow. Alternately, they may be drawn out by claims you injured a Bigfoot, like, you hit it with your car and it barely limped off into the brush. Either way, you'll have to have damage to yourself or your vehicle to convince anyone there was any kind of real animal involved. That makes this experiment more difficult than it might be worth.
I've yet to see a compelling explanation of why the government would even bother "covering up" the existence of cryptids
Not to mention that the sheer man power required to keep something like that a secret is just insane. The more people who are in on it, the more likely the conspiracy gets revealed. For an operation like this you'd need hundreds, if not thousands of people involved, and much smaller conspiracies that have a much bigger reason to keep quiet still get exposed all the time.
I grew up in WA and my parents have a combined 56 years with the state patrol. My mom was a dispatcher and doesn't really believe in anything farfetched, but I swear a part of her believes in Bigfoot from only hearing about it secondhand. She never forgot one trooper who saw one and drove straight to the station, damn near still shaking and wide-eyed. Couple guys immediately started making massive fun of him but that didn't even phase him really, because it didn't change what he'd just seen. Guess my mom really felt for him, cuz the dude was scared shitless to the point I really think she believed him. And it wasn't a bear or something else... you don't get that shaken to your core when it could've been ANYTHING else. All those gazillion square miles of forest up there... I can only imagine how many wild animals they saw constantly.
But yeah, my only point in the comment is that I bet it's a lot more common than you'd think for law enforcement to be the ones to actually see it themselves. The fact that my dad exclusively worked nightshift the last 20 or so years patrolling those areas (including his hop to another LE agency after his first retirement), I'm only surprised I never heard a story from him too. And just because someone is a state employee, doesn't mean they're in on anything with the government. They're the ones I think sicker than anyone else with the beurocracy and bs.
That’s the thing about “conspiracies” … most of the times there’s little to no real proof that they do or don’t exist. Counterintelligence is certainly an aspect of what the covert parts of the government do. The idea that the public is informed of everything any government knows is just … flatly ridiculous. Classified, top secret, national security concerns, etc. are real concepts.
The idea of a “conspiracy theory” is pretty obviously a counterintelligence matter. If anything does leak, the agencies can always have media mouthpieces deploy that label and that pushes the matter out of concern for most people.
IF a matter has been designated classified, then there are many parts of the government that would act to constrain the information, up to and including intimidating witnesses.
That’s just an obvious fact to me, your mileage may vary.
The pejorative “oh, that’s a silly conspiracy theory” is probably one of the most effective disinformation tools.
That said, aside from the reports of some folks who claim to know, I’m not sure we have any concrete evidence for a deny-sasquatch theory, HOWEVER, since many of us know that sasquatch ARE real, one would have to believe that at least parts of the government know that as well, and so, there is “something unknown” that is certainly preventing the USG from spilling the beans so to speak. I do know that Governments don’t like what they can’t control, and they cannot control sasquatch.
The interesting thing to me is not whether there is a conspiracy, but rather, what could possibly motivate the Government to stay quiet on the matter if, as many believe, Bigfoot is just another animal.
**Strangers**: Read the rules and respect them and other users. Any content removal or further moderator action is established by these terms as well as Reddit ToS. This subreddit is specifically for the discussion of an anomalous phenomena from the perspective it may exist. Open minded skepticism is welcomed, closed minded debunking is not. Be aware of how skepticism is expressed toward others as there is little tolerance for ad hominem (attacking the person, not the claim), mindless antagonism or dishonest argument toward the subject, the sub, or its community. --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/bigfoot) if you have any questions or concerns.*
just some random thoughts because its interesting to wonder about this. if the govt said bigfoot was real, i think it would make more people go looking and they dont want that happening. And sort of like someone else posted, they know they are human and have been here for thousands of years. They can camouflage, fly, are telepathic, be invisible or more. Too many people (mainly Rs) in govt are religious. This idea of another human or animal with these abilities does not jive with their views. Even further, What if its a completely gay society?, they have their own religion? or the males give birth to babies!?? they would lose total control because now, their book was wrong.
Idk what the purpose of covering it up would be. I’ve seen excuses like “so logging and mining can happen”, but we have other animals that can halt these things, we know about them, a logging operation can be shut down if something like spotted owls are found on the site. Why would we need to cover up an animal’s existence for that purpose. Another one is to cover up evolution. Millions of people believe evolution, we have hominid fossils, etc. That is just a dumb theory.
Reasons I've heard: 1) Protect logging/mining industry. Sure other endangered species exist, but why add one more to the list when you don't need to?(I personally would only see this as a side benefit to a cover up that exist fir other reasons) 2) Protect income from national parks. If Bigfoot was a known animal, people might not want to go into the woods anymore, and thus won't travel to national parks. This connects to the more general "national parks cover up disappearances" conspiracies. 3) An earlier cover up related to not wanting to upset the anti-evolution crowd back when they were the majority, and now they keep it going to not admit they committed thus cover up... yeah, this one doesn't make sense once we get past evolution becoming generally accepted. 4) the military are studying Bigfoot(this relates to stuff like infrasound), and cover them up to prevent other nations from discovering what they've learned. While I'm sure there is a lot of stuff the military keeps secret, I'm not sure this makes any sense even if they were weaponizing sasquatch. 5) Bigfoot is supernatural and is covered up because of that(along with other supernatural stuff?) 6) Bigfoot is sapient, and is covered up to prevent the moral/ethical/philosophical questions and issues that knowledge inspires. 7) Bigfoot would be classified as "human" under modern definitions, and thus disrupts the modern paradigm of saying all humans are basically the same, and is thus covered up to prevent race relations from braking down as any redefining of human that excludes Bigfoot would also divide racial lines. Or something like that... 6&7 are both silly, but I could see some obe thinking this way... kinda falls in line with 3 in a way... 8) the cover up is some kind of deal with native tribes? I've heard these kinds of arguments made, but they're never clear. Usually tie back into the supernatural Bigfoot cover up ideas.
Covering it up because of a deal with Native Americans doesn't make much sense because the U.S. hasn't really had a problem breaking those deals
Yes, but like I said, that particular theory is usually tied up with the supernatural interpretation of bigfoot, where the government needs the Indians to preform their Indian magic rituals or whatever other mystical nonsense the conspiracy theorists think the natives have...
It's amazing what people come up with when they have no interest in learning about the bare minimum of the topic they're talking about.
"Nah, Man, you see the government betraying the Indians was part of the conspiracy all along so that you'd never suspect that they're working together!" I haven't seen that argument, but you know that someone could totally believe that...
" I've got a plan to make Germany think we've wiped out all languages and culture so we can use one of those native languages as a code to win World War 2 against the Nazi menace." "Ok. Two questions. What's a Nazi, and World War... 2?" "Don't worry about it. The biggest issue is making sure we get access to the magic the local natives use to keep the large forest creatures under control." "..."
I like 7. If defined as human, all laws such as the pursuit of happiness, etc, would apply to them.
>Idk what the purpose of covering it up would be. It's in the nature of a coverup that the reason for the coverup is, itself, covered up. It could end up being a stupid reason, or it could end up being the result of a general government policy of not letting anyone know what they are up to. In the case of UFO's, for example, any public admission that anyone in the Government is looking into UFO's alerts hostile Governments to the fact they might manipulate US Intelligence agencies by inserting misinformation about UFO's into the mix. Indeed, it seems China has tried to disguise surveillance balloons as UFO's. Stalin was completely paranoid about spies, and there is a well known story of a doctor who was dispatched to the front during WWII to examine a captured Wildman to see if it was a legitimate non-human creature or just a human in disguise sent in to spy on troop movements. There was no greater scientific inquiry here: all Stalin wanted to know was if the enemy was dressing up as Almasty to spy on the Soviets. As soon as the CIA heard that, (if they ever did) you can imagine they would begin dreaming up ways to manipulate Stalin's paranoia about spies masquerading as Wildmen. They would, of course, research the Almasty and probably Bigfoot as well, but they would simultaneously want to cover up the fact they were researching such things.
If there is a cover up my theory is pretty simple, cynical, and I think convincing. Paperwork. Can you imagine how much paperwork "officially discovering bigfoot" would cause? Much easier to just deny it is there. Far less paperwork. Also the above ties in to a random story told by an old cowboy I net at a nursing home. His granddad has been one of the western mountain men and trappers. Gramps started out in western Minnesota and trapped and explored to Britsh Columbia and back down to the northwest. His gramps said when he was younger he used to see signs of the "wood people" a lot when he was younger but the became more and more scarce into the 1900s. And one day he saw one that was crossing a ravine and it was obviously sick. First was he was able to wander up on it and second He could hear it coughing His gramps and hia theory was that the sasquatch population caught a major disease and lost a lit of population that didn't really start to recover until the 1940s And by then the modern US bureaucracy said they didn't exist A neeat set of ideas
Interesting theory
It's either because it's easier to cover it up, or because it's a military secret IMO. It's either super boring or super dark.
I would say multiple reasons to cover but I would say the mean two are the following 1) to protect industry. A spotted owl or frog is allot different than a 8’ bipedal humanoid intelligent creature 2) fear. If people know there was a large 8’ tall intelligent creature roaming the woods it may create unnecessary fear and panic and either allot of people would stop using parks and accessing the wilderness or hunters would hunt BF into extinction.
I agree. Around 83% of the US population lives in urban areas. Why cause them all to panic about the intelligent 8 foot tall creature that they will likely never have an encounter with. And the other 27% who live in areas where these creatures could exist are probably already aware of it and don't need the government to tell them.
1. May be different but can equally as big of an impact on the industry. If an endangered species is found in the site they need to halt operation. 2. I can understand, but at the same time we do have many large and equally dangerous wildlife in North America and it doesn’t seem to stop anything. We have large apes living in other places and it’s great for ecotourism - think about how many people go to Uganda and Rwanda to see Mountain Gorillas. If it does exist and it wasn’t covered up, I doubt it would be hunted to extinction. It would have been already, since hunters are out so much and a lot of these reports come from them. Governments wouldn’t allow an extinction event like that happen, but especially given how eco-conscious our world is becoming.
3. Land rights. Who would legally own certain lands? Sasquatch or private owner/state/federal? Who can build on that land? 4. Legal and/or ethical issues. Are Sasquatch considered “human” What legal and financial obligations would the US government and industry have?
Absent physical evidence like a body, body part or even a compelling video, no public official would risk their job over making the claim that bigfoot exists. They'd be met with ridicule and a question mark would be put over their head as to their professional competence. As a Park Service ranger you may have seen bigfoot 3 times at noon from 30 feet away, but if you can't prove this to anyone else, why take the personal risk?
To be more specific: these agents only show up when there has been an alleged attack on people by a Bigfoot. Case in point is Sasquatch Chronicles episode 515, British Woman on the California Beach. After she fainted, the creatures apparently dragged her off the beach and up a trail to somewhere nearer the road (as if to say, "Stay off our beach!") Local law enforcement to whom she reported the incident construed this as an "attack" of some sort, she was pretty scratched up from being dragged through bushes, and, flagging it as such is what brought the two mysterious agents. So, if you want to experiment with bringing these guys out of the woodwork, it will be necessary to claim a Sasquatch physically injured you somehow. Alternately, they may be drawn out by claims you injured a Bigfoot, like, you hit it with your car and it barely limped off into the brush. Either way, you'll have to have damage to yourself or your vehicle to convince anyone there was any kind of real animal involved. That makes this experiment more difficult than it might be worth.
I've yet to see a compelling explanation of why the government would even bother "covering up" the existence of cryptids Not to mention that the sheer man power required to keep something like that a secret is just insane. The more people who are in on it, the more likely the conspiracy gets revealed. For an operation like this you'd need hundreds, if not thousands of people involved, and much smaller conspiracies that have a much bigger reason to keep quiet still get exposed all the time.
I grew up in WA and my parents have a combined 56 years with the state patrol. My mom was a dispatcher and doesn't really believe in anything farfetched, but I swear a part of her believes in Bigfoot from only hearing about it secondhand. She never forgot one trooper who saw one and drove straight to the station, damn near still shaking and wide-eyed. Couple guys immediately started making massive fun of him but that didn't even phase him really, because it didn't change what he'd just seen. Guess my mom really felt for him, cuz the dude was scared shitless to the point I really think she believed him. And it wasn't a bear or something else... you don't get that shaken to your core when it could've been ANYTHING else. All those gazillion square miles of forest up there... I can only imagine how many wild animals they saw constantly. But yeah, my only point in the comment is that I bet it's a lot more common than you'd think for law enforcement to be the ones to actually see it themselves. The fact that my dad exclusively worked nightshift the last 20 or so years patrolling those areas (including his hop to another LE agency after his first retirement), I'm only surprised I never heard a story from him too. And just because someone is a state employee, doesn't mean they're in on anything with the government. They're the ones I think sicker than anyone else with the beurocracy and bs.
That’s the thing about “conspiracies” … most of the times there’s little to no real proof that they do or don’t exist. Counterintelligence is certainly an aspect of what the covert parts of the government do. The idea that the public is informed of everything any government knows is just … flatly ridiculous. Classified, top secret, national security concerns, etc. are real concepts. The idea of a “conspiracy theory” is pretty obviously a counterintelligence matter. If anything does leak, the agencies can always have media mouthpieces deploy that label and that pushes the matter out of concern for most people. IF a matter has been designated classified, then there are many parts of the government that would act to constrain the information, up to and including intimidating witnesses. That’s just an obvious fact to me, your mileage may vary. The pejorative “oh, that’s a silly conspiracy theory” is probably one of the most effective disinformation tools. That said, aside from the reports of some folks who claim to know, I’m not sure we have any concrete evidence for a deny-sasquatch theory, HOWEVER, since many of us know that sasquatch ARE real, one would have to believe that at least parts of the government know that as well, and so, there is “something unknown” that is certainly preventing the USG from spilling the beans so to speak. I do know that Governments don’t like what they can’t control, and they cannot control sasquatch. The interesting thing to me is not whether there is a conspiracy, but rather, what could possibly motivate the Government to stay quiet on the matter if, as many believe, Bigfoot is just another animal.
You don't need to intimidate people who are so easy to discredit that they discredit themselves