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Comment by Faaak | Hacker News Reader

Curious European here: what happens if you are "stronger"/more numerous than the NOAA officers ? I.e. can they rely on regular police ? Thanks

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You find out the hard way what HAARP can really do.

For real though, if there was a real problem like that the NOAA would get military backup. The American approach to an immediately urgent problem is to just hurl massive resources at it and (maybe) ask questions later.

hahaha. Loved the HAARP bit. Would make for a wonderful MIB-style movie, but with NOAA agents and their secret globe-spanning weather weapons against invading aliens.

One of the most annoying things about conspiracy theories is the lack of emotional payoff from a dramatic reveal. Maybe we should budget for $5 billion of non-fatal economic destruction annually, on condition that it be emotionally satisfying - build giant Tesla coils and have them bring down empty airliners, or derail trains full of extremely garish but glowing chemicals (that are environmentally harmless) in places where we wanted to build a new bridge anyway.

Then we can have new conspiracy theories about how real disasters are just being passed off as cool disasters and the rotating cast of supervillains are actually a puppet show from the real villains in the federal reserve.

I mean.. I just followed a seminar talk about methane emission detection from an aircraft in the US. For this you often fly in lines to cover an area fully.

The speaker finished up with a screenshot from a youtube video where an UFO enthusiast actually followed the aircraft by car and came to the airport to look at it. It didn't help that the aircraft was rented from a company that usually rents to military.

40k views on a video that claims they released radioactive insects on that flight. (It was a spectrometer onboard...) The video is gone now, and we can only speculate what the people behind it think about that. How does one deal with this in a satisfying manner?

40k views on a video about methane emission detection would be amazing! A fraction of those 40k people in the area with knowledge of the problem and the same enthusiasm could probably easily stop all these emissions as well.

(Apart from that.. if anyone wonders.. talk to us! (and please don't seem like a nutjob..) This is research paid by your taxes and on your behalf, and if you come with journalistic interest we might just open the doors and, y'know, let you have a very close look at things.)

I believe they are heavy cooperators with other agencies including e.g. state and local agencies. They were only 200 strong last I checked, and that probably includes office staff.

Indeed. In fact, failure to work with other (local) law enforcement agencies was one of the reasons the FBI had such a bad day in the 1986 Miami shootout. This is taught as a textbook example of what not to do in the military and LEO communities today.

They like to portray local vs federal in Hollywood as a trope, but in reality, inter-agency cooperation is (supposed to be) the norm.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_FBI_Miami_shootout

That is when they call on Thor for backup. And then you are screwed. Better cooperate with the NOAA from the beginning.

And yet he gets to modify the weather all the time without repercussions! Talk about a double standard.

I'm sure the nearest FBI field office would love to show them how it's done if they asked for backup.

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