By this point, most of our regular readers are likely already aware of the pending report to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee from the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or UFOs). It’s expected to be delivered by June 25th and should, if the Pentagon complies with the Senate’s instructions, provide a current assessment of what our military and the federal government either know or suspect about the unidentified vehicles that have been flitting around our restricted airspace for quite some time now. The idea that the unclassified version of the report will contain astounding, earth-shattering information isn’t held by many serious observers, and some have suggested that the report may not be delivered at all. But by this point, three former Directors of National Intelligence have given public interviews declaring their belief that the report will indeed arrive and that the military is likely to say that whatever those things are, they’re not ours and they don’t believe that we think it’s the Russians or the Chinese either.

So what then? It’s now within the realm of plausibility that our own government is about to announce to the nation and the world that there are actual UFOs traversing our airspace and we don’t know who or what built them or where they came from. This could leave a lot of people who have previously been either skeptical about the entire subject or completely unaware of it with many questions. Some may be experiencing anxiety or even fear. People who delve deeply into the topic of ufology tend to jokingly refer to such people as “the normies.” Where will they go for answers and what should the people who have been following these stories tell them? That’s the question that Carolyn Brouillard is trying to answer this week at Medium. How should we have a discussion about UAP disclosure with our friends and family who may not have seen this coming?

OK, let’s get it out of our system. On the count of three, let’s all say it out loud: I TOLD YOU SO. Enjoy that moment of gloating because we still have work to do. In what may be the boldest disclosure yet on the UFO question, the people in our lives may suddenly be looking to us to help them make sense of what they just learned…

Some of what we might want to say to people in our lives who are new to this may depend on the nature of the revelations. For the purpose of what follows, let’s consider the scenario that the government comes out and echoes what Ratcliffe, Brennan, and many, many others before them have already said.

Basically, we have observed things in our skies that demonstrate capabilities and characteristics not originating from human technology. These objects appear to be under intelligent control, suggesting that other forms of life are visiting Earth. These sightings are documented going back decades, with the possibility of a much longer history. If everyone heard that message, what might we say to calm nerves and invite open discussion?

I’m fairly sure that Carolyn was (mostly) kidding about shouting “I told you so” to everyone. While it’s tempting to be sure, it likely wouldn’t be very productive. The author goes on to point out some very simple talking points that might be reassuring to concerned friends and family members if any sort of general disclosure has taken place. First, they can be reminded that this isn’t “new” news. We’ve known about this for years. It just took the government a long time to talk about it with the public in a serious fashion.

Next, and perhaps more importantly, it would be good to point out that we are just as safe as we were the day before the disclosure. If there’s any threat to humanity from these bizarre, inexplicable craft, they certainly haven’t acted on it in any significant fashion to our knowledge. Being afraid of them, while perhaps understandable, is essentially just a case of being afraid of the unknown. If whoever made them planned on attacking us, be they from an adversarial nation or somewhere in the skies, they could have done it long before now.

And finally, we could look upon this sort of potential disclosure not as a threat, but as a moment of great opportunity. As Carolyn put it, “This is the beginning of a great adventure in discovery.” If all of the nations of the world work together on solving this riddle (assuming that our governments don’t already know one hell of a lot more about it than we suspect), a revelation such as this could open our eyes to the vast possibilities the universe holds and offer a chance to reevaluate our place in it.

I don’t know anyone who seriously believes that this report, if we get it, is going to come out and say, “Yeah, we’ve had a fleet of crashed UFOs and alien bodies stored at Area 51 since the fifties. We were going to tell you about it but we just never seemed to get around to it. Our bad.” (Though I certainly know some people who think that’s the case.) But what if the UAP Task Force comes out and just says, yes, these things are real and we don’t know what they are. Here is our best guess at present. That’s something, isn’t it? And it might turn out to be something amazing.

I’ll just close by making another pitch for you to consider signing up for The Big Phone Home on April 24th. Those of us involved in the project are hoping to get as many people as possible to call and/or write to their congressional representatives on the same day, asking them if they will publicly support the public release of the UAP Task Force report. If they hear from enough people, it could make a difference and it would only take a few moments of your time.