You've had all the lockdown 'virtual pubs' with your mates that you can handle. You've binged Netflix's Tiger King. Your plan to better yourself while Saving Lives has already hit the skids. You can't watch soaps every night. And you've given up that plan to "get quarantine thin". So the chances are that you've now started on the conspiracy theories.
With all this lovely enforced time at home (I am not taking the piss), it's no surprise that some folks are delving in to new territories of entertainment/paranoia, namely conspiracy theories.
For a newbie - welcome, friend - all this talk of microchipping, eugenics, martial law, New World Order, enforced vaccinations and Biblical warnings of the End Times might seem a bit overwhelming. Which is why I have decided to break down some of the main conspiracies that are swirling around the internet right now.
For the handful of readers who aren't my friend in IRL, you might wonder what makes me such an authority in this area!
Well, I have been 'researching' conspiracies for more than 20 years. I used to go to 'secret meetings' in dingy pubs to talk about what REALLY happened on 9/11 with strange paranoid men; I've been to see David Icke 'live in concert'; I befriended a Flat Earther on Twitter; I genuinely believed we were all going to die on December 21 2012 [maybe we did]; people have stopped me in the street and given me messages 'from the Crop Circles'; and my first point of call whenever there's a major news story are the forums of Above Top Secret and God Like Productions.
TL;DR - I'm a space cadet and I have been for a loooooong time.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes I think what I am reading/hearing/seeing is utter tripe, but sometimes, I think 'god they're fucking right we are fucking doomed!'
Now it's time for you to make your own mind up. Tell us what you think, or if we have missed anything by getting in touch @sinisterisles on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Bill Gates
The Microsoft billionaire's name keeps popping up when people discuss coronavirus, but why?
He's best known as a benign boffin, but the software whizz has a new passion in his old age - and it lies within the 'health of the world'.
For more than ten years he has been giving high profile speeches about how the Earth cannot cope with billions more people - we need 'population control' in order to survive and thrive on our planet.
He and wife Melinda, who set up The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to power their global philanthropy, think that people only have large families as parents know that it is highly likely that not all of their kids will make it to adulthood.
To stabilise birth rates, they claim "education and vaccinations" are imperative, especially in developing nations and poor communities in Africa and Asia.
But conspiracists believe that the vaccinations are in fact designed to render people infertile, or to kill them.
Coronavirus
We all know what the coronavirus is, it's more than a flu, it's a virus that can mutate in to a killer pneumonia that humanity simply isn't ready for, biologically or societally.
We have previously looked at some of the main conspiracies here, but there are a few explanations for 'what it really is' doing the rounds that I will summarise here.
Biological weapon - Covid 19 was designed to kill - but by who and why? Some claim it 'escaped' from a mysterious lab in the city of Wuhan by accident. Others claim it was designed to kill old people and take a chunk out of China's ageing population, hence why so many old people in Italy died, too. However, now we know that people of all generations have lost their life to the silent killer, the target might not be so specific.
Bill Gates invented it - Bill Gates now has the perfect reason for an enforced vaccination programme. People are terrified of having the 'rona, people will clamour for a jab to make sure that they and their families will ever get it. But what's *really* in the jab?
Attack against the West - After the US imposed strict trade sanctions on China, they retalliated by releasing a virus that has destabilised the Western economy. With reports that Russia has been releasing a powerful disinformation (i.e. fake news) campaign about the virus using social media bots and planted articles, could this be a joint effort by the Communist allies?
Released by the US to create international hatred towards China - Hundreds of US athletes were in Wuhan for the Military World Games in October 2019, mere weeks before the start of the pandemic.
On March 11, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian retweeted a video of Robert Redfield, the director for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention talking about the virus, along with a status many saw as being inflammatory.
He wrote: "CDC was caught on the spot. When did patient zero begin in US? How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe us an explanation!"
Radiation sickness from 5G technology - It seems that whenever there is a new technology rolled out across the globe, we get sick (e.g. 4G coincided with SARS).
At the moment, some people (including David Icke) are convinced that the futuristic mobile data service is designed to put humans in to an 'AI prison', or will be used to control society in ways we can't imagine... yet.
But before we reach that stage, some people claim the world is suffering from radiation pneumonitisis, an inflammation of the lung caused by radiation therapy to the chest.
It most commonly develops 1 to 3 months after cancer treatment is over, and has symptoms which sound very similar to covid-19. According to medical journal Pulmonary Adviser, these differ "widely among patients, ranging from asymptomatic to severe respiratory failure and death." Sound familiar?
Mark of the Beast
Now this is a goodie, and where Christianity and conspiracy overlap. Everyone knows that 666 is the 'number of the beast', as explained in the final and devastating book of the Bible, Revelations.
Modern day conspiracists believe that the mark will not be a triple six, but rather a scar left from the implantation of a microchip, or the chip itself.
And if the PTB (Powers That Be) insist everyone is injected with a coronavirus vaccine, wouldn't it be the perfect time to chip them at the same time?
This was a previously lesser known conspiracy but it was thrust in to the mainstream by none other than Blue star/Celebrity Big Brother loverat Lee Ryan. He has since deleted his posts, one of which showed an x-ray of a hand with a microchip, and the caption: "This is the mark of the beast – 666 – this will be the next step of governments world wide.
"Sorry to post this s**t but it’s true. I just wanna spread the word so people know the truth of what’s coming…"
Ru Paul's Drag Race star Sharon Needles also jumped on to the Satanic conspiracy train. She shared a picture of her doing some number crunching around the virus that added up to... 666.
Martial law
This is every prepper and survivalist's dream come true... as it means they can finally lock themselves in their bunker and tuck in to some of that powdered food that Alex Jones flogs on InfoWars (see a review of it below!).
Martial law is when the usual rules are thrown out the window and the Army start running things. And all bets are OFF.
In the UK, we've had reason to expect that this could happen. Boris Johnson announced there are 20,000 troops ready to take to the streets to control panic buying at supermarkets.
But also, British soldiers have done an amazing job transforming the drab conference hull the ExCel Centre in to the new NHS Nightingale field hospital ready to treat 4,000 infected Brits... and they're poised to transport the bodies of those who don't make it to a a new pop-up morgue the size of two football pitches a few miles up the road.
Microchipping
For DECADES people have feared being microchipped by their Government. You could say that 'if you're not a criminal you have nothing to worry about', but what would you do if that microchip ended up having more control and influence over your life than you thought?
The technology exists. RFID implants are as big as a grain of rice and work similarly to a radio. Already some people with alzheimer's and other life-threatening health conditions have ones that give doctors immediate updates about their conditions.
The first one was implanted in a scientist in 1998, but since then futurephiles in Sweden have had them implanted willingly at 'cyborg parties', and some posh members clubs give them to VIPs so that they never have to queue, and the can order food and drinks with one swipe of their hand - and their bank is debited instantly.
But it's not just good for rich clubbers. The chips could be used for everything from tracking your whereabouts - say goodbye to pulling a sickie from work - to controlling what service you could access, from healthcare to your own money. It could be used by employers to see if you're at work hungover, or by police needing to arrest someone for a crime, you could be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The latest scare about microchipping involves a real odd throuple: Bill Gates, David Icke and Lee Ryan from Blue (see above).
Bill Gates was forced to deny that he had proposed a 'digital certificate' be given to everyone who had had a new coronavirus jab after he claims he was misquoted in a Reddit AMA.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation told Reuters: “The reference to ‘digital certificates’ relates to efforts to create an open source digital platform with the goal of expanding access to safe, home-based testing.”
Meanwhile, David Icke believes that by 2030 human consciousness will be "an afterthought" and people will be mere vessels of other people's will thanks to their addiction to AI.
Predictive Programming
This ties in with the theory that the Illuminati control the media and use it as a way to control, shape and deflect attention of society.
Conspiracists argue that one of the main uses of film, TV and pop culture in general, is to put ideas in to people's heads so that when they happen in reality they are met with less resistance and things that are negative or harmful to people can be established as the new norm with no questioning. This is called 'predictive programming'.
Everything from technology to disasters to 9/11 seem to have been 'predicted' by films that were made or written decades before they were invented or occurred. Strange coincidence, or part of a larger plot to put ideas in people's heads?
There are three main examples of predictive programming with the coronavirus pandemic.
Dean Koontz - The horror author's 1981 novel The Eyes of Darkness appears to predict the outbreak.
Needless to say, the internet was SHOOK, and theories began swirling about the true meaning of this apparently prophetic extract about a Chinese scientist who brought a biological weapon called "Wuhan-400" to the United States.
"To understand that," Dombey said, "you have to go back twenty months. It was around then that a Chinese scientist named Li Chen defected to the United States, carrying a diskette record of China's most important and dangerous new biological weapon in a decade. They call the stuff 'Wuhan-400' because it was developed at their RDNA labs outside the city of Wuhan, and it was the four-hundredth viable strain of man-made microorganisms created at that research center."
The theory was promptly lampooned when it was revealed that the book's weapon was smuggled from Russia and called Gorki-400 in the 1981 print, but renamed Wuhan-400 in 1989 to make it more current.
But perhaps the Illuminati changed it on purpose?
Contagion - No one remembered this film from nearly a decade ago, until people realised that the plot was very similar to real life right now.
In summary: American gets infected with unknown virus in China, flies home, infects people, there's a mad panic as no one knows what to do, and 26 million people end up dead across the world.
Sylvia Browne - The psychic's 2008 book with the cheerful title, End of Days: Predictions and Prophecies About the End of the World, went viral after being tweeted about by Kim Kardashian.
She shared an extract sent to her by her sister Kourtney that read: “In around 2020, a severe pneumonia-like illness will spread throughout the globe, attacking the lungs and bronchial tubes and resisting all known treatments."
Pandemic: How To Stop An Outbreak - this came out on Netflix just as the coronavirus pandemic kicked off. Weird coincidence, or planted ready to be seen by a captivated - and captive - audience?
The Simpsons - “Marge in Chains” (1993) sees the 'Osaka flu' travel to Springfield after a Japanese factory worker coughs spores in to a box being shipped over to the yellow family.
J
Uri Geller
The Israeli spoonbender has lots of theories, from covid-19 being leaked en route to Iran by Chinese scientists (who flew via Milan, random), to this latest idea the virus is powered by 'nano technology'...
Vaccinations
A global pandemic is a perfect excuse to get people ASKING to be vaccinated - and that has already happened.
While the idea of a quick jab to protect you from falling ill in the future might seem like a pleasant and quick solution, critics say you never know what is really in the syringe, the side effects, and if there's also a tiny microchip in there...
Wuhan
It will be forever known as the location of a disgusting 'wet blood market' selling live koalas and wolf pups waiting to be butchered (or cooked alive) to order, and the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak.
We know that the central Chinese city was quarantined, and that Chinese authorities declared 4,200 people died from covid 19 - a figure that is believed to be grossly underestimated ten fold. Insiders claim there are a backlog of bodies still waiting to be incinerated, and locals have disputed the seemingly low mortality rate.
Dr. Li Wenliang, described as a 'whistleblower' after he tried to warn the world of the virus, is reported to have died from the disease, but even his death provokes unanswered questions.
That is not the only area of mystery hanging over the previously unheard of city.
It is host to China's only 'Level 4' lab (that we know of), which deals with only the most high risk and dangerous airborne pathogens, and is, according to some conspiracists, where this particular virus was developed and escaped from.
The Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences was built in 2015, and was a new addition to the existing laboratory complex that dates from 1956. This is the highest level of biosafety lab, and deals with virus and diseases for which there are no known cures - e.g. bubonic plague, smallpox, viral haemorrhagic fevers, and contagious syndromes unique to animals and livestock.
One of the viruses they were investigating was a coronavirus carried by bats - one which scientists later claimed was 96% identical to the strain causing havoc across the globe.
To give you an idea of how intense the conditions are for scientists working in biosafety level 4 laboratories, they need to be wearing a pressure suit that is cleaned with chemicals before and after entry, or they do their delicate and dangerous work while wearing special gloves poking in to a sealed chamber behind unbreakable glass. Everyone who comes and goes must be recorded, and enters through a series of airlocks.
