Make a very very big baloon of plastic with aluminum foil such that it looks, from a very great distance, like a massive alien craft. Equip it with a gun, a standard sized shotgun type device should be quite sufficient. The gun will need an aiming radar and a way to keep a person in the firing loop.

Now secretly launch your balloon by faking the explosion of a private experimental spacecraft. When the baloon is very far away, broadcast a message from it to the effect of "We're going to destroy the earth in 10 years unless you massively disarm all your militaries and all your warlords."

Use the shotgun to destroy or disable any investigative device that might get close enough for a look.
-- Voice, Sep 03 2008

...only without the shotgun http://www.apra.org...ritish_UFO_Hoax.htm
[coprocephalous, Sep 03 2008]

Alllllrighty then.
-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Sep 03 2008


investigators may be surprised to find that the aliens are armed with no.4 buckshot. Not likely to demilitarize in the face of alien invaders no matter how convincing. (-)
-- WcW, Sep 03 2008


I was hoping for a different plan for a fake. Something more inisidious. Preferably involving that toothy green baby from V.
-- bungston, Sep 03 2008


If it looks like a massive alien craft, people will get their spectrometers out. At that point it won't take them long to realise that it's actually just plastic and foil.
-- Wrongfellow, Sep 03 2008


The impressive Death Ray effect will be rather spoilt when the shotgun goes off!
-- gnomethang, Sep 04 2008


[Boysparks], that would be Vrillon of the Ashtar Galactic Command, wouldn't it? I remember that and at the time it convinced a number of my peers, though we were only ten at the time. English accent? Well, clearly they were using methods of elocution thousands of years in advance of our own.
-- nineteenthly, Sep 04 2008


//Now secretly launch your balloon by faking the explosion of a private experimental spacecraft.//

If you already have a spacecraft, what do you need the balloon for? And how does the fake explosion launch the balloon?
-- ldischler, Sep 04 2008


The launcher has to hide the launching. The baloon is launched in a seperate craft that pretends to be large piece of debris.
-- Voice, Sep 05 2008


19thly, why aren't you fortyfirstly then?
-- po, Sep 05 2008


Good point, [po].
Firstly, i don't think Giordano Bruno got that far.
Secondly, i think i was actually zerothly for a couple of days after the Crash, but [jutta] thought it was too confusing. I only joined the HB as [nineteenthly] just before the horrendous cyberspace kablooie.
Thirdly, i'd have to change my name every year.
Fourthly, being a man, i don't age emotionally beyond my teens regardless of my chronological age.
Fifthly, it's actually the mid-'eighties and rumours to the contrary have been grossly exaggerated. All the years after 'eighty-four are made up and today's date is really the eight thousand six hundred and forty-ninth of December nineteen eighty-four. Which would make me seventeenthly, i suppose.
Sixthly, i use the Martian calendar to calculate my age, which makes me twenty-firstly.
-- nineteenthly, Sep 05 2008



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