In the book version of Alternative 3, Gerstein is quoted thus:
‘Alternative 2, in my view, was even crazier than Alternative 1. I recognise, of course, that there is enough atmosphere locked in the soil to support life but … no, this was the most unrealistic of all the alternatives.
‘There is good reason to believe that this world was once more civilised and far more scientifically advanced than it is today. Our really distant ancestors, living millennia before what we call Prehistoric Man, had progressed far beyond our present state of knowledge.
‘Then, it is argued, there was some cataclysmic disaster — maybe one comparable with that facing us now — and these highly sophisticated people built completely new civilisations deep beneath the surface of the earth …
‘There is evidence, quite considerable evidence, to suggest that there were once whole cities — linked by an elaborate complex of tunnels — far below the surface. Remains of them have been found under many parts of the world. Under South America … China … Russia … oh, all over the place. And in this subterranean world, so it is said, there is a green luminescence which replaces the sun as a source of energy — and which makes it possible for crops to be grown …
‘Maybe there’s some historical truth in the Biblical story of the great Flood. Maybe the disaster which drove them there in the first place was followed by the Flood — and they were all trapped and drowned down there. Maybe that’s how their civilisations ended …
‘And it could follow that the people we think of as prehistoric Men were merely the descendants of a handful of survivors — the real children of Noah, if you accept the Bible version — who had to start from scratch in a world which had been utterly devastated. Is that why they took so naturally — instinctively, if you like — to living in caves? Then the agonisingly slow process of rebuilding the world started all over again until now we find ourselves in a similar position …’ (59)
Thus, Alternative 2 called for the evacuation of the world’s elites (the rest would have to take their chances on the surface) into these abandoned cities. However, this alternative was also discarded, since the heat from the greenhouse effect would eventually permeate down through the Earth’s crust, making life equally impossible for those living underground.
The only option left was Alternative 3, which called for the evacuation (of the elites, once again) from Earth to Mars. Gerstein reiterated the theory that the Red Planet was once inhabited, and that its atmosphere might still be locked away in the soil. He added that in 1959 a Russian rocket had exploded on the launch pad, killing a large number of people and devastating the surrounding area. The implication was that the rocket had been carrying a nuclear device whose detonation would have unlocked the atmosphere on Mars and transformed it into a habitable planet once again. Gerstein went on to suggest that another rocket might have been sent to Mars, and that this mission might have been successful.
The Alternative 3 programme also contained some footage of an alleged top secret unmanned mission to Mars, undertaken by the United States and the Soviet Union in 1962. The film showed the rocky landscape of Mars, seen from the approaching probe, accompanied by Russian and American voices. Near the end of the footage, an American voice said: ‘That’s it! We got it … we got it! Boy, if they ever take the wraps off this thing, it’s going to be the biggest date in history! May 22, 1962. We’re on the planet Mars — and we have air!’ The presenter of the programme, Tim Brinton, commented that there must have been a very good reason why the true conditions on Mars were kept from the public, and why the mission had been jointly undertaken by the US and the USSR. The implication was of an ultra-secret interplanetary project which, Brinton claimed, could well be Gerstein’s Alternative 3. (60)
By way of corroborative ‘evidence’, the makers of Alternative 3 pointed to the large numbers of people who go missing throughout the world each year, suggesting that many are actually being abducted by the Alternative 3 controllers and transformed, through surgical and chemical means, into mindless slave labourers who are then transported as ‘Batch Consignments’ to the colony on Mars. These hapless victims are referred to as ‘superfluous people’ by the controllers, who see their barbaric treatment as perfectly acceptable.
The controllers were also interested in recruiting scientists and academics from a wide range of disciplines. These personnel were called ‘Designated Movers’, and apparently accounted for the so-called ‘brain drain’ of the 1960s and 1970s whereby many scientists left Britain, ostensibly to take up better-paid posts overseas. (It was claimed that an investigation of the brain drain had been the original impetus behind the Science Report programme.) The entire operation was headquartered in Geneva and was also controlled, in typical James Bond fashion, by a fleet of nuclear submarines stationed underneath the North Polar ice cap. Here the controllers ensured the conspiracy’s continued secrecy by arranging ‘hot jobs’ (remote-controlled spontaneous human combustion) for those investigators who got too close to the truth.
The ingenious makers of Alternative 3 also brought in the NASA Moon flights as more evidence of the conspiracy. The reader may be aware that the Apollo programme is a firm favourite of conspiratologists, some of whom maintain that NASA is hiding the discovery of derelict alien cities on the Moon, while others claim that all of the Moon landings were actually hoaxed, with the astronauts bouncing around a sound stage somewhere in Nevada or California. In Alternative 3, it was suggested that the Apollo astronauts did not stumble upon a derelict alien city but a fully functioning man-made way station for flights en route to the Martian colony. The following transcript of a conversation between Mission Control in Houston, Texas and an astronaut named Bob Grodin was presented in the book:
MISSION CONTROL: Could you take a look out over that flat area there? Do you see anything beyond?
GRODIN: There’s a kind of a ridge with a pretty spectacular … oh, my God! What is that there? That’s all I want to know! What the hell is that?
MISSION CONTROL: Roger. Interesting. Go Tango … immediately … go Tango …
GRODIN: There’s a kind of a light now …
MISSION CONTROL (hurriedly): Roger. We’ve got it, we’ve marked it. Lose a little communication, huh? Bravo Tango … Bravo Tango … select Jezebel, Jezebel…
GRODIN: Yeah … yeah … but this is unbelievable … recorder off … (61)
Another transcript, this time between astronauts Scott and Irwin and Mission Control during their Moonwalk in August 1971, runs thus:
SCOTT: Arrowhead really runs east to west.
MISSION CONTROL: Roger, we copy.
IRWIN: Tracks here as we go down slope.
MISSION CONTROL: Just follow the tracks, huh?
IRWIN: Right … we’re (garble) … we know that’s a fairly good run. We’re bearing 320, hitting range for 413 … I can’t get over those lineations, that layering on Mount Hadley.
SCOTT: I can’t either. That’s really spectacular.
IRWIN: They sure look beautiful.
SCOTT: Talk about organization!
IRWIN: That’s the most organized structure I’ve ever seen!
SCOTT: It’s (garble) … so uniform in width …
IRWIN: Nothing we’ve seen before this has shown such uniform thickness from the top of the tracks to the bottom. (62)
The book version of Alternative 3 also contains an episode described by an inside source calling himself ‘Trojan’. The events occurred in a base inside the crater Archimedes, which lies on the western border of the Mare Imbrium. The Archimedes Base is allegedly a large transit camp beneath a hermetically sealed transparent dome. Here one of the Designated Movers, a marine biologist named Matt Anderson, secretly visited a segregated area where the Batch Consignments of slaves were housed. In this slave village, Anderson encountered a childhood friend. Having yet to undergo the psychological conditioning that enabled the Designated Movers to accept the concept of slavery, Anderson was appalled and decided to escape with as many slaves as possible and expose the horror of Alternative 3.
Teaming up with a NASA-trained aerospace technician named Cowers, Anderson managed to get 84 slaves aboard a Moon ship and headed for one of the gigantic airlocks in the dome. However, a technician in the main
