Two Modern Cities Believe Aliens Protect them from Hurricanes
And they aren't the first society to claim alien protections
Hiya!
I want to have a little fun this week, so I’m going to talk about aliens — because why not? I know the topic tends to receive some eye-rolls, but I also know it’s a guilty pleasure we enjoy theorizing about. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I totally believe in aliens. Maybe not the “little green men” associated with the alien trope, but logically speaking, we’re unlikely alone in the universe.
Just ask the residents of Tampico or Madero in Mexico. They don’t just believe aliens exist; they’re adamant that aliens are already here — living in the ocean and protecting their towns from natural disasters like hurricanes. And they aren’t the only society to have claimed alien assistance.
Alien Protection?
While many people fear the idea of aliens existing, conjuring thoughts of abductions or maybe even the apocalypse, others are convinced aliens want to help us, not hurt us. This is especially true in the towns of Tampico and Madero on the Gulf Coast of Mexico, where residents claim aliens have an underwater base and have protected them from hurricanes for the last half-century.
According to an investigative article by Vice, thousands of people, including now 71-year-old Beatriz García, witnessed several flying objects in the sky on the evening of August 6, 1967. Garcia told Vice that the objects “couldn’t be planes because of how they manifested, and even the formation: [planes] don’t do that. They were slow and there were lots of them.”
The following day, a local newspaper called El Sol de Tampico published a story titled Platillos Voladores Sobre Tampico, or “Flying Saucers Over Tampico.” The article reports thousands of witnesses, along with a local airport control tower officer, who counted a total of “nine unidentified objects.”
This event has become legendary over the decades and, like Roswell, New Mexico, is now a tourist destination for UFO enthusiasts. These days, the idea is that aliens monitor Earth from a base called Amupac, which is supposedly hidden underwater a few miles from Miramar Beach.
The fact that multiple hurricanes have spontaneously avoided the towns while wreaking havoc on surrounding communities only intensifies the legends of Amupac. In 1988, meteorologists predicted Hurricane Gilbert would hit both Madero and Tampico, but instead, the storm altered course and hit the Caribbean and southern Mexico.
The same thing happened in 2005 with Hurricane Katrina, which, as I’m sure you recall, hit New Orleans instead. (Please, no hurricane jokes about my name, I’m sure I’ve heard all of them.) Then again, in October 2022 when Tropical Storm Karl diverted away from the area only to connect further south.
Of course, there are critics of the idea of underwater alien guardians, including retired meteorological harbor master Javier Francisco Álvarez, who spent years tracking weather in the region. He suggested to Vice reporters that the waters near Tamaulipas are slightly cooler in temperature compared to the warmer waters further north and south. Álvarez explains:
“As the sea water is one or two degrees colder, it manages to pull the mass of air and, consequently, causes the rejection of hurricanes. The air mass that enters through the gulf is diverted towards the coasts of the United States and towards the Isthmus of Tehuantepec [in Southern Mexico].”
While I concede that the legends of Amupac might be a bit fantastical — after all, there’s no concrete evidence of its existence (yet), nor any credible alien interactions outside of the eyewitnesses of a 50-year-old event. However, I don’t believe the explanation Álvarez provided discredits the possibility either. I’m not saying he’s wrong; on the contrary, he’s likely very correct.
But, I mean, okay, hear me out.
If Amupac exists, and if aliens really are trying to protect the area, then might it be possible that the aliens are cooling the water to curb the direction of the storms? Not only would it be a pretty ingenious way to deter a storm from a specific area, but the method would make sense, considering the supposed base is underwater.
I suppose time will tell. Perhaps a sonar scan of the area could tell us something. Regardless, the residents of Tampico and Madero aren’t the first and likely not the last society to suggest an alien influence on their culture. After all, the ancient Sumerians did too.
Sumerians
While the claims made by residents of Tampico and Madero may be the most recent reports of alien assistance, the earliest known civilization is thought to be the ancient Sumerians, who flourished between 4100 and 1750 BCE. They lived in a series of city-states throughout southern Mesopotamia, which is modern-day Iraq, and parts of Iran, Syria, Kuwait, and Turkey.
According to the World History Encyclopedia, at least 39 things in our modern civilizations can be credited to the Sumerians. For instance, it’s thought the Sumerians created the first cities and schools, the first ‘Farmer’s Almanac,’ the first love song, the first moral ideals, the first sexual symbolism, the first lullaby, the first Messiahs, and so much more. Many stories from the Bible — from Moses to Noah — have Sumerian roots, too.
Perhaps even more interesting is that while most societies would take credit for creating these life-altering concepts, the Sumerians never did. Instead, according to astrophysicist Carl Sagan and his colleague Iosif Shklovsky in their 1966 book Intelligent Life in the Universe, the Sumerians claimed aliens taught them everything.
Well, not “aliens” per se, but a Being they called Oannes who supposedly came from the waters of the Persian Gulf. Oannes was described as looking like a fish but with a man's feet under the tail and a man's head under the fish head.
Apparently, Oannes presented the early Sumerians “insight into letters, and sciences, and every kind of art. He taught them to construct houses, to found temples, to compile laws, and explained to them the principles of geometrical knowledge.”
It’s also reported that more Beings, described similarly to Oannes, stopped by occasionally to check up on the Sumerians over the years. Oannes seemed to be an individual, while the Sumerians referred to the species as the Apkallu. While the Sumerians didn’t claim Oannes or the Apkallu were aliens from space, they also never referred to them as gods either.
Perspective Shift
Granted, it’s been a couple of thousand years since the Sumerian legends of Oannes or Apkallu began — and we all know how stories change over time. So it’s likely the mythologies told today are vast exaggerations of the original events. Still, we shouldn’t quickly dismiss ancient folklore or knowledge that manages to survive for so long without disappearing into the void of time.
I mean, it may have been thousands of years since the Sumerians claimed Beings living in the waters off the coast assisting their civilizations — indeed teaching them how to become one at all — but it’s been less than a century since the residents of Tampico or Madero in Mexico had their experience. Could it be possible that the Apkallu are living in Amupac? Unlikely. But hey, we don’t know how much we don’t know.
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Very fun post today!