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Project Nimbus: Cloud Movies & PSYOPS Deception

Sorry, the clip below is not evidence of the mythical Wild Hunt, although its potential is equally eerie: The video demonstrates the capacity to project moving images on a cloud, by way of a laser system installed on a small airplane.

“Project Nimbus is the exploration of digital and analogue techniques to project moving images onto clouds from the ground, sea level and aircraft including planes, paragliders and hot air balloons.”

Project Nimbus is the brain-child of designer Dave Lynch and Dr. Mike Nix, a chemist from the University of Leeds. Lynch came up with the idea while he was completing his master’s degree, after he stumbled upon a paper titled Nonlethal Weapons: Terms and References, edited by Robert J. Bunker in 1997. The paper is a wide compendium of many different technologies, some of them from a theoretical level and others already in use by several governments, intended to incapacitate personnel or materiel without causing permanent or terminal damage, especially for riot control situations.

One of those technologies would be the projection of an ‘ancient god’ over an enemy city, once their public communications had been seized, as a Psyop operation of a massive scale.

Both the RT article I first read about this, and the New Scientist post it references, go on to describe how Lynch became inspired by Bunker’s paper and spent 3 years unsuccessfully experimenting, until he got funded in 2012 by the AND festival and the arts incubator Octopus Collective. Lynch and Nix based their projecting technology on Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering exploration with moving images in the 19th century; using a 2.5W 532 nm laser as a light source with hemispherical lenses transforming the laser beam and creating the shape of the image, they decided to project the vision of a galloping horse over the city of Nottingham as an homage to Muybridge.

Everybody reading these articles –or visiting Project Nimbus’ website– would probably be left with the impression this technology is only meant for artistic or recreational purposes. However, neither RT nor New Scientist give much thought to the idea of weaponizing images projected in the sky, which was why Bunker mentioned them in his paper.

[Fun fact: John B. Alexander, a name you should know well if you’re interested in UFOs and the Military psychic program, is credited by Bunker as one of the paper’s contributors. Alexander is, among many other things, an expert in non-lethal weapons; his name is also at the top of the contributors’ list]

RT mistakenly stated that aerial imagery had been used against the Vietnamese, but after reading Bunker’s paper I found no reference of it. In fact I hardly found any description of these Psyops holograms at all –the document is more of a glossary of concepts, rarely extending beyond 5 lines to describe each weapon system listed. What we do know is the CIA did research the possibility of projecting an image of Jesus onto the clouded skies of Havana –from a Navy submarine– as a way to undermine Castro’s communist regime, and possibly trigger an uprising in Cuba, by deceiving the Catholic faithful into believe it was the Second Coming and the fall of Castro was ordained from on high.

This, BTW, is not the first time a ‘higher power’ has directly criticized Communism, but that’s a story for another day…

Obviously, this operation was never carried out, possibly due to the enormous technical problems involving its feasibility; something Lynch and Nix learned the hard way with their Project Nimbus, given how they spent hours searching for the “right type of cloud” for their laser projection.

A question arises almost inevitably, though: If a galloping horse can be ‘painted’ in a cloud, why not a flying disc? This is the idea behind the controversial Project Blue Beam conspiracy theory, which posits how the powers that be will seek to fake an alien invasion in order to convince the citizens of the world to relinquish their liberties in order to instaurate a Police State as the New World Order.

Project Blue Beam as an idea has many flaws IMO; the biggest one being how you don’t really need to pull off such an elaborate plan to establish a Police State –you just give consumers affordable smart phones, and Voilá!. That said, it’s always important to be mindful of how intelligence agencies have *always* tried to exploit the UFO phenomenon –and the will to believe it inspires among some people– for their own advantage. Mark Pilkington’s Mirage Men is a great example of this, and although he didn’t really look into Project Blue Beam per se, one has to admit how faking a UFO sighting as part of a Psyop campaign is not outside the realm of possibility.

As Forteans we always have to be on the alert and, contrary to popular opinion, make sure to look at a gift horse in the mouth –even if it’s flying above our heads.
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