Top 10 Conspiracy Theories

This com­pi­la­tion con­tains 10 of the most pop­u­lar con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that human­i­ty believes in to this day. Despite the lack of evi­dence and a lot of rebut­tals, the­o­ries con­tin­ue to be fueled by new ver­sions and con­jec­tures.

10. Electronic banking

The elec­tron­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry is con­sid­ered a vari­ant of mod­ern New World Order con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Accord­ing to some con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, vir­tu­al mon­ey — cred­it and deb­it cards — were cre­at­ed by a “secret group” that plans to dom­i­nate the world.

The plan, accord­ing to the­o­rists, is to elim­i­nate paper and mon­e­tary cur­ren­cies entire­ly, so that cit­i­zens rely sole­ly on elec­tron­ic bank­ing. Once this goal is achieved, the “secret group” will cause a world­wide pow­er out­age that will simul­ta­ne­ous­ly wipe out infor­ma­tion on all bank accounts, thus cre­at­ing chaos and pan­ic. The alleged moti­va­tion behind the con­spir­a­cy is the return of slav­ery to the mod­ern world. Bene­fac­tors change depend­ing on which the­o­ry you hold.

Inter­est­ing selec­tion on the top­ic: The great­est unsolved secrets

9 Secret Societies Control The World

If you real­ly were a mem­ber of the glob­al elite, you would already know this: the world is ruled by a few pow­er­ful and secre­tive peo­ple.

Take, for exam­ple, the Illu­mi­nati, a sect that orig­i­nat­ed in 18th-cen­tu­ry Ger­many and is alleged­ly respon­si­ble for the pyra­mid and eye sym­bol that adorns the $1 bill. They intend to start world wars to strength­en the argu­ment for a world gov­ern­ment. Or take the Freema­sons, who adver­tise their group as “the old­est and largest world­wide fra­ter­ni­ty” and boast alum­ni like George Wash­ing­ton. Some think that, despite donat­ing hefty sums to char­i­ties, they are plot­ting your doom in Mason­ic tem­ples around the world.

8. Landing on the moon

Accord­ing to con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, the moon land­ing that the world wit­nessed live on July 20, 1969 was a hoax orches­trat­ed by NASA and oth­er key orga­ni­za­tions. The­o­rists believe that the sur­face that Neil Arm­strong and Buzz Aldrin walked on was not a celes­tial body, but an arti­fi­cial sound­stage.
Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists insist that the tech­nol­o­gy of the time was not enough to accom­plish such a feat. In their view, envi­ron­men­tal obsta­cles alone — cos­mic rays, radi­a­tion belts, and the solar wind — would make trav­el impos­si­ble.

As proof of their belief, the­o­rists point to pho­tographs and videos tak­en dur­ing the mis­sion, which they claim con­tain sev­er­al odd­i­ties; includ­ing incon­sis­tent shad­ows, the same back­ground, and the absence of any vis­i­ble stars.

Why sim­u­late a land­ing? The­o­rists argue that the Unit­ed States sought not only the pres­tige of the event, but also mon­e­tary gain.

In 2008, Myth­Busters stars Adam Sav­age and Jamie Hyne­man explored sev­er­al myths sur­round­ing the moon land­ing. After con­duct­ing var­i­ous con­trolled tests with a group of sci­en­tists at a NASA train­ing facil­i­ty, they con­clud­ed that there was no con­spir­a­cy.

NASA makes lit­tle effort to rebut the claims, deem­ing them laugh­able; how­ev­er, in July 2009 they used the Lunar Recon­nais­sance Orbiter to pho­to­graph the Apol­lo 11 land­ing site, which they say shows the remains of the 1969 land­ing site. Despite efforts to debunk the myths, con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists stand by their claims.

7. Reptilians and the Elite

They are among us. Blood-drink­ing, flesh-eat­ing, shape-shift­ing extrater­res­tri­al rep­til­ian humanoids with the sole pur­pose in their cold-blood­ed heads: to enslave mankind. They are our lead­ers, our cor­po­rate exec­u­tives, our favorite Oscar-win­ning actors and Gram­my-win­ning singers, and they are respon­si­ble for the Holo­caust, the 9/11 bomb­ings and the attacks. Some Britons are sure that mem­bers of the roy­al fam­i­ly are noth­ing but rep­til­ians with crowns.

Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist and philoso­pher David Icke says that these “Annuna­ki” (rep­til­ians) have con­trolled human­i­ty since ancient times; they include Queen Eliz­a­beth, George W. Bush, Hen­ry Kissinger, Bill and Hillary Clin­ton and Bob Hope. Invad­ing the ter­ri­to­ry of oth­er con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, he even claims that lizards are behind secret soci­eties like the Freema­sons and the Illu­mi­nati. Earn­ing the dubi­ous title of “para­noid of the decade” in the late 1990s, Icke wrote sev­er­al books on the sub­ject, includ­ing his lat­est work, David Ick­e’s Guide to the Glob­al Con­spir­a­cy, while run­ning his own web­site full of mer­chan­dise and adver­tis­ing ser­vices.

6. CIA and AIDS

Ever since the Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion first report­ed on the HIV/AIDS epi­dem­ic in 1981, there have been rumors that the dead­ly virus was cre­at­ed by the CIA to exter­mi­nate homo­sex­u­als and African Amer­i­cans. Even today, the con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry has a num­ber of promi­nent pro­po­nents. South African Pres­i­dent Thabo Mbe­ki once pro­mot­ed the the­o­ry, chal­leng­ing sci­en­tif­ic claims that the virus orig­i­nat­ed in Africa and accus­ing the US gov­ern­ment of cre­at­ing the dis­ease in mil­i­tary labs.

Nobel Peace Prize-win­ning Kenyan ecol­o­gist Wan­gari Maathai has also used inter­na­tion­al atten­tion to sup­port this the­o­ry. Oth­ers insist that the gov­ern­ment delib­er­ate­ly inject­ed the virus into gay men dur­ing the 1978 hepati­tis B exper­i­ments in New York, San Fran­cis­co and Los Ange­les. Still oth­ers point to Richard Nixon, who merged the US Army’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare depart­ment with the Nation­al Can­cer Insti­tute in 1971. How­ev­er, most mem­bers of the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty believe that the virus passed from apes to humans some­time in the 1930s.

5. Holocaust revisionism

Despite over­whelm­ing evi­dence and apolo­gies from Ger­many decades ago, revi­sion­ists con­tin­ue to claim that almost 6 mil­lion Jews were not killed by the Nazis dur­ing the Holo­caust. Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad, for exam­ple, called the Holo­caust a “myth”.

Unlike Ahmadine­jad, most revi­sion­ists do not deny that Jews were interned in POW camps dur­ing World War II. Rather, they argue that the num­ber of deaths has been great­ly exag­ger­at­ed. Gas cham­bers are a par­tic­u­lar stum­bling block: Holo­caust deniers say they were pure­ly hearsay and weren’t pow­er­ful enough to kill — though evi­dence and his­to­ry sug­gest oth­er­wise. And the pho­tos of ema­ci­at­ed and dying Jews? Revi­sion­ist Edgar J. Steele says, “All these pho­tographs of skin­ny peo­ple and bod­ies piled up like fire­wood were actu­al­ly Czechs, Poles, and Ger­mans who died of typhus rag­ing in the camps.

4. Area 51 and aliens

Who gave us so many inno­va­tions that human­i­ty has today? Aliens, of course. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists believe that the remains of crashed UFO space­craft are being stored at Area 51, an Air Force base about 150 miles from Las Vegas, where gov­ern­ment sci­en­tists are recon­struct­ing high­ly advanced alien tech­nol­o­gy. This was based on var­i­ous alleged UFO sight­ings in the area and the tes­ti­mo­ny of a retired Army colonel who says he was grant­ed access to extrater­res­tri­al mate­r­i­al col­lect­ed from an alien space­craft that crashed in Roswell, New Mex­i­co. Some believe that the gov­ern­ment is look­ing into time trav­el in Area 51, also known as Groom Lake or Dream­land.

The gov­ern­ment has devel­oped advanced air­craft and weapons sys­tems at near­by Nel­lis Air Force Base, includ­ing stealth bombers and recon­nais­sance air­craft. And the gov­ern­men­t’s offi­cial posi­tion that the details of Area 51 are clas­si­fied for nation­al secu­ri­ty pur­pos­es is only seen as fur­ther evi­dence that the mil­i­tary is hid­ing aliens or alien space­ships.

Relat­ed arti­cle: His­tor­i­cal evi­dence for the exis­tence of aliens

3. September 11

While videos and pho­tos of two planes crash­ing into the World Trade Cen­ter tow­ers are known all over the world, the sheer amount of doc­u­ment­ed evi­dence has only fueled more con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

A May 2006 poll found that 42% of Amer­i­cans believed that the gov­ern­ment and the 9/11 com­mis­sion “cov­ered up or refused to inves­ti­gate impor­tant evi­dence that con­tra­dict­ed their offi­cial expla­na­tion for the 9/11 attacks.” Why did the mil­i­tary fail to inter­cept the hijacked planes? Did the gov­ern­ment issue a “fall­back” order to min­i­mize inter­fer­ence with the secret plan to demol­ish the build­ings and blame it on Islam­ic ter­ror­ists?

In 2005, Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics pub­lished an exten­sive inves­ti­ga­tion into such claims and respons­es to them. The report­ing team found that the North Amer­i­can Aero­space Defense Com­mand (NORAD) had no expe­ri­ence in train­ing fight­ers to inter­cept air­craft that had gone off-route. And while the team found no evi­dence that the gov­ern­ment planned the attacks, the lack of evi­dence has rarely stopped con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists before.

2. The assassination of John F. Kennedy

Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy was killed on Novem­ber 22, 1963, by two bul­lets while rid­ing in an open-top lim­ou­sine through Dealey Plaza in Dal­las. Lee Har­vey Oswald was charged with his mur­der, and a pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion led by Chief Jus­tice Earl War­ren found that Oswald act­ed alone. But this con­clu­sion was not approved by the pub­lic. There are count­less con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries sur­round­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy.

A 2003 ABC News poll found that 70% of Amer­i­cans believed that Kennedy’s death was the result of a wider con­spir­a­cy. Some say that the tra­jec­to­ry of the bul­lets did not coin­cide with the place where Oswald lived. Oth­ers spec­u­late that a sec­ond gun­man was involved in the shoot­ing, pos­si­bly on the grassy knoll of Dealey Plaza. Oth­ers believe in an even wider con­spir­a­cy.

Was Kennedy assas­si­nat­ed by CIA agents? KGB offi­cers? Gang­sters who were angry at Kennedy for start­ing the per­se­cu­tion of crim­i­nal gangs? Spec­u­la­tion about one of the most noto­ri­ous polit­i­cal assas­si­na­tions in his­to­ry is so pop­u­lar that most peo­ple take the rumors to heart: only 32% of those polled by ABC believe Oswald com­mit­ted the mur­der alone.

1 Bermuda Triangle

Is there a mys­te­ri­ous force that makes ships and planes dis­ap­pear into the Bermu­da Tri­an­gle, or is it just anoth­er far-fetched the­o­ry? For hun­dreds of years, peo­ple have been telling sto­ries of strange hap­pen­ings in the Bermu­da Tri­an­gle.

Also known as the Dev­il’s Tri­an­gle, the Bermu­da Tri­an­gle is locat­ed in the north­west Atlantic Ocean. It cov­ers approx­i­mate­ly 500,000 square miles of ocean with peaks in Bermu­da, Flori­da and Puer­to Rico. There is no doubt that a large num­ber of ships have gone miss­ing in the area. Accord­ing to some the­o­rists, super­nat­ur­al ele­ments are to blame. Some say alien beings are to blame, while oth­ers point to the myth­i­cal lost con­ti­nent of Atlantis. Read more about the unsolved mys­ter­ies of the ocean in a sep­a­rate arti­cle.

The US Coast Guard and oth­er experts famil­iar with the tri­an­gle do not blame super­nat­ur­al ele­ments. Instead, they point to the fact that the tri­an­gle is locat­ed in a heav­i­ly tra­versed part of the ocean. They say that the num­ber of acci­dents there is no more than in oth­er parts of the ocean. They believe any num­ber of nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na could be the cause, includ­ing trop­i­cal storms and killer waves. They also point to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pirates and mechan­i­cal fail­ures. As for com­pass issues, experts say there are no unusu­al mag­net­ic anom­alies in the area and cite the fact that all com­pass­es have nat­ur­al mag­net­ic fluc­tu­a­tions.

No mat­ter who you believe, one thing remains the same: the Bermu­da Tri­an­gle will undoubt­ed­ly con­tin­ue to be a source of mys­tery and intrigue.