
This month, California has been gripped by three devastating wildfires: Northern Californiaâs Camp Fire, which recently became the deadliest in the stateâs history, and, in Southern California, the Woolsey and Hill Fires. An emerging, deeply weird conspiracy theory holds that those fires arenât caused by wind patterns, brutally dry conditions, the worsening effects of climate change, or possible downed power lines, but by a sinister scheme directed by nefarious elements within the government.
The claim, being taken up by an increasing number of people in QAnon circles, is that the fires are caused by âdirected energy weaponsââthat is, government-directed lasers bent on destroying homes, property, and lives. And if recent history is any judge, thereâs a chance the countryâs biggest conspiracy-peddlers, up to and including the one who lives in the White House, will take up the cause.
Directed energy weapons, or DEWs, have an interesting place in conspiratorial circles. DEWs are, to begin with, a real technology, but one still in its infancy: a report produced for Congress describes that term as an umbrella to refer to technologies âthat produce concentrated electromagnetic energy and atomic or subatomic particles.â The consensus is that there are a number of logistical issues to work out before that the U.S. government will be able to build a laser system that would actually be workable on a battlefield, but that the Department of Defense and private contractors are eager to leverage laser power towards killing people and/or destroying enemy missiles, aircrafts, or satellites.
If you ask people in the deep end of the conspiracy theory pool, though, DEWs are here already. Thereâs a small body of people who believe themselves to be âtargeted individualsââstalked, harassed, and attacked by the government or other shadowy groupsâand at least some of them believe those attacks are being carried out by DEWs. Now, through a strange confluence of forces, the paranoia over DEWs is making its way into the discussion about natural disasters. What weâre seeing is a convergence of longstanding American fears about government mind control and manipulation of the weather merging with climate change skepticism, as climate science becomes ever-more-politicized.
Like many conspiracy theories, itâs not entirely possible to trace where the DEW theories came from. As best I can tell, one of the earliest promoters of that claim was a flat-earth YouTuber going by the name ODD Reality (real name Matt Procella), who started talking about DEWs during the devastating wildfires that raged across California in October 2017.
âYouâll notice here that stores and restaurants are wiped out, while other things are still in perfect shape,â Procella intones, over still images of fire damage, some of them sourced, he says, from a Serbian conspiracy site (and some of which appear to be computer-generated). âOther buildings are fine, trees are untouched, but specific structures are just devastated. You gotta ask yourself, whatâs up with that ... Is this the result of direct energy weapons? Ranged weapons that inflict damage on a target by emitting highly-focused energy? The answer is most likely yes.â
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Thereâs actually a fair amount of research to explain why some structures are destroyed and some are spared during a wildfire that has nothing to do with laser weapons. But the broader point Procella is trying to make is about intent: Someone is deliberately destroying certain buildings. That point, though, gets a little mushy. He speculates that âall these thingsâ are a âdistraction from the Vegas incident,â by which he means the mass shooting in Las Vegas that month that killed 58 people.
Elsewhere, the question of why the government would spend its time pointing lasers at peopleâs houses and Burger Kings has been made somewhat clearer. The left-leaning March Against Monsanto site, which often engages in conspiracy theorizing about GMOs, ran a speculative article about DEWs, reasoning that they could be just another form of government manipulation.
People who believe in chemtrails are also concerned about DEWs, and have a more fully fleshed-out explanation for what theyâre meant to do. (âChemtrailsâ are harmless condensation trails left by aircrafts, but since the late 1990s, a conspiratorial community has been raising concerns that theyâre actually toxic, potentially mind-controlling chemicals.) On one chemtrail-oriented site, Chemtrail Planet, an unnamed author speculates that last yearâs fires were part of a joint plan by FEMA and the United Nations to institute more centralized global control, what they called âAgenda 30.â The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is actually a resolution passed in 2015 by the General Assembly, promising to do a host of things to make the world better by 2030, including âtaking urgent action on climate change.â Like every UN action, conspiracy theorists claim itâs mean to institute a centralized one-world government, and like always, that is not true.
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Thereâs also evidence that DEWs are becoming part of the cosmology of the QAnon crowd, a remarkably pliant group who have proven that theyâre able to incorporate just about anything into their belief system. (QAnon, for the uninitiated, is the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is secretly doing a really good job, and is this close to uncovering and disarming various evil forces working against him within the government.) The hashtag #DEW has begun to show up in QAnon-oriented Twitter conversations, with several much-retweeted Tweets imploring Trump to take action.
Yet another version of the DEWs story claims that the wildfires were directed in such a way to destroy structures in order to make way for a high-speed rail system, part of a Democrat plot. Thatâs right: the government is destroying vast swaths of trees, houses and infrastructure to force people to ride the train. That tweeted idea is also tagged with several QAnon-related hashtags.
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Inevitably, the conspiracy theory is migrating to bigger and bigger accounts. On Thursday, a far-right internet personality and QAnon booster named Mike Tokes, who has 170,000 Twitter followers, aggressively took up the cause, using the same line of argument: some homes burned, others didnât, thus lasers must be at work.
The DEW theory is inextricably tied to skepticism about the very idea of climate change, a sense that global warming is just the cover explanation for the various sinister plots at work against us. Itâs also, of course, tied to longstanding conspiracy theories about the government controlling the weather, such as the idea that the government already has a weather control tool called HAARP, which it also uses for âelectromagnetic warfare.â (HAARP is actually a much less exciting research program that studies the uppermost levels of our atmosphere and was years run by the Air Force and University of Alaska Fairbanks. Since 2015, UAF has run it alone, albeit on Air Force land, and has produced a very patient FAQ explaining that HAARP does not exert mind control over people.)
Weather and climate conspiracists are, though, not a big group of people, says John Cook, a research assistant professor at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University who also runs a site called Skeptical Science that outlines the shoddy science and arguments behind global warming skepticism.
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âClimate change conspiracy theories may seem more popular but theyâre still very marginal,â Cook told Earther. âThe proportion of the US public who are dismissive about climate change is about nine percent. You donât want to overstate their importance because that can have a negative effect.â
That said, there may well be a broader swath of the public that is open to conspiracy theories and denialism, if not hardcore about them. For instance, a survey on chemtrails from last year that found up to 30 percent of people polled thought they may be âsomewhat realâ. And recent polls show most U.S. Republicans still believe global warming concerns are exaggerated, and that the partisan divide on the issue is growing.
Climate change skepticism and other, more out-there forms of conspiracy theorizing about the weather have a few things in common, Cook said. âThere is a similarity in that itâs trying to make sense of disturbing events by imaging these patterns.â
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But thereâs also an important distinction. âClimate conspiracy theories tend to be an attempt to explain why thereâs a scientific consensus on climate change,â usually by invoking a vast conspiracy among the worldâs climate scientists. âWhereas space laser wildfires areâkind ofââ
Cook paused for a moment, politely.
âTheyâre an isolated single event thing,â he finished. âAs opposed to a more systematic, holistic explanation of the whole climate.â
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Social media, particularly Twitter, has inarguably helped the spread of conspiracy theories about the climate, Cook said. He and his colleagues have studied how to âinoculateâ people against misinformation (and even made a handy video about it), but he admits itâs an uphill battle.
âItâs difficult,â he said. âConspiracy theories are the hardest thing to counter. Theyâre so nihilistic, and any attempt to rebut them is seen as more evidence of the conspiracy theory. But the general rule is the way to counter the myth is to replace it with a stickier fact.â
One issue, Cook said, is that conspiracy theories can cause people to shut down and stop looking for whatâs true: âThereâs a danger that theyâll disengage and just stop believing in facts.â
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And the facts are plenty terrifying on their own: These fires have already been hellaciously destructive, the deadliest in a century or more, with at least 63 people dead in the Camp Fire alone, three more killed in the Woolsey fire, more than 600 missing, thousands of acres burned, homes destroyed and lives devastated. The president is already engaged in smears and misinformation, bizarrely claiming that âforest managementâ was to blame for fires that didnât even originate in forests. Though the causes of the fires are still under investigation, thereâs evidence that a downed PG&E power line could have potentially sparked the Camp Fire. Thereâs evidence that public policy and regulation simply arenât working, given that PG&E electrical equipment was found responsible for 17 of 21 wildfires in Northern California last fall, and that climate change is only making the situation worse. And thereâs deep inequality at work, given that working-class communities like Paradise are all but destroyed, while wealthier areas are able to hire their own firefighters to battle the blazes.Â

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And if those facts arenât deemed worthy of engagementâif people instead retreat into fantasy and rumor and innuendoâthereâs the fact that the next fire isnât far away. Itâs simply waiting for its spark.
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