POWELL RIVER, B.C. – Studies have been done, but the discussion on extra-terrestrial life will never end.
Powell River’s deputy fire chief, Rocky Swanson, is out to discover the meaning behind unexplained phenomenon.
He’s one of the hosts of UFO Radio Canada, alongside his brother Kailyn.
“The concept was, my brother and I as kids, would love to have these kinds of conversations around the campfire,” Swanson said.
“We’ve never seen anything (i.e. UFO sightings), we have no experience like that to talk about but we always found the conversation fascinating. We felt like the UFO subject has sort of been hijacked by the ‘lunatic fringe’ and we decided that maybe we could have a more serious conversation about, and hypothesize the what-ifs.”
Swanson said him and his brother stick to the “nuts and bolts” and discuss the possibility that at least one unexplained event in history was real.
He explained that they had talked about starting a show for years.
“In December of 2016, there was a report released by the Pentagon about an organization called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. It is a very high-level program within the Pentagon to study this exact topic,” he said.
“They said that there was a number of cases that they had investigated where the extra-terrestrial hypothesis was in fact the working, running hypothesis. They had argued away all the prosaic, standard answers and felt that this granted a more serious look.”
Swanson added that there are four organizations right now within the Pentagon looking into the aspects of UFO phenomena.
“There really is money being spent on this because there have been very ‘off’ instances that the standard scientific answers of the day aren’t able to properly address,” he said.
UFO Radio Canada is currently available on YouTube and iTunes.
Swanson also runs a Facebook discussion page called The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Discussion Cell”, which he said includes about 270 different people from around the world, including scientists, researchers, authors and military intelligence personnel.
“We’re not a big show (UFO Radio Canada), we’re not doing this for money. It is simply to have that fireside story conversation with friends,” Swanson said.
He noted that right now, episodes have solely included him and his brother, but plans are in the works to bring in “well known guests” to the show, although he could not disclose who they would be bringing on to the program.
“It’s just two regular guys with full-time jobs that do this as a hobby, so it takes time to put this kind of thing together,” he said.
“What I would say to people is be very wary of information you find on the internet. You can wade through months and months of web pages and come up with the crazier stuff, but there is real, solid scientific organizations with real scientists looking at this issue right now where they are running multiple hypotheses and in some cases, it has been exceptionally fascinating and exciting to listen to what they have come up with.”
Swanson said the main message is that there has been incidents in the past that have occurred that are not easily explained, and they’re worth talking about.
“The United States Air Force ran a program called Project Blue Book for 21 years and at the end of that, they had 701 cases out of thousands, and those 701 have remained unexplained,” he said.
“When we say unexplained, we don’t mean well maybe it was a meteorite or maybe it was an airplane. We mean those hypotheses have been ruled out and if someone was to look into these incidents, it is startling; we’re not talking about a light in the sky. We’re talking about unknown crafts of unknown origin and unknown make flying exceptionally close to military and commercially airlines and if anything, it’s a flight hazard.”
Swanson said he realizes how silly it could all sound, but he said they’re trying to have a serious conversation about the what ifs.
“I know it always brings with it the X-Files music and the laughing when you mention the subject to people. But some of the people I’ve spoken with … I’ve spoken with Edgar Mitchell, the sixth man to walk on the moon, and that was a fascinating experience to listen to a guy like that talk about intelligence circles that he’d been involved with,” he added.
“I’m not alluding to grand conspiracies, but there’s a guy that’s a scientist in his own right that believed very strongly that some of these things, there was a reality to it. It’s not a bunch of ‘whack-a-doodle’ people out in the woods that we’re discussing this with. It’s very serious, sober-minded, clear of thought people.”
You can find out more about UFO Radio Canada through the show’s website, Facebook page, as well as listen at its YouTube channel.
EDITORS NOTE: Swanson’s hosting of the show does not intersect with his duties as deputy fire chief.
