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Nukes of Hazard, an article in The New Yorker issue of September 30^th by Louis Menand, about Eric Schlosser’s book, “Command and Control” tells readers of all the possible nuclear accidents that the world barely escaped.

Many during the Cold War, some as recent as this year.

The article gave me a new appreciation of President Truman whom I’ve excoriated over the years, and the piece clarifies the personality of Curtis LeMay who figures in the Goldwater episode wherein Senator Goldwater was told by LeMay not to ever ask him about the Blue Room at Wright-Patterson Airfield.

But the Menand review of the Schlosser book provides an clear example of how little we know about events that could impact us, government agencies concealing, from us, essential, often do-or-die information.

This is true of the Roswell incident and also points to how little information is actually contained in UFO reports, some as heady and overworked as the Betty/Barney Hill “abduction.”

We, as outsiders to events, never get the whole picture of events we find intriguing or important.

Roswell has been scrounged to the point of banality, but the incident still contains elements unknown even to UFO cognoscenti. (The supposed “slides rumor” tells us that.)

The Mantell incident has been “researched” by Kevin Randle and explained pretty much, but not to the point that makes it dismissible to some UFO mavens; a Skyhook balloon being the thing sighted by Captain Mantell, but not really pinned own as the “object” floating in the area at the time Mantell’s plane took its nosedive.

Officer Zamora’s  Socorro UFO sighting, seen as a hoax by some (Anthony Bragalia) or a misperception of a Moon test-craft (us) or as a bona fide visit from extraterrestrial outsiders by other (Rudiak, Stanford, et al.) is still fraught with missing ingredients that could finally explain the episode: What was the nature of the insignia seen by Officer Zamora? Who else saw what he saw? Where are the alleged hoaxers? What happened to the supposed Hughes/ Raven test-craft that was said to be accidentally downed in Socorro in  April 1964?

The Rendlesham event is still considered unresolved, as militaries have co-opted the sighting with obfuscation and deceit, while participants befoul the “sighting” with discursive and divisive accounts.

You can cite a few UFO sightings, in the lore, that you find wanting, of more information or more detail, but which is not available or forthcoming: Kecksburg, for instance or the Maury Island incident(s).

Even the iconic Kenneth Arnold sighting is missing key information: Arnold’s mind-set during his sighting, what food or drink had he ingested before his flight near the Cascades, et cetera.

No, we don not have, at our disposal, much information about anything: near nuclear accidents, or UFO detritus that might dispose of the mystery,.

That’s how it is…..and we have to live with it…..or do we?