1. We have been located in a backwater part of the galactic rim.
To keep Earth inhabitants away from the rest of the universe community, our planet was stuck way out in the boondocks at the rim of a second-rate galaxy. Obviously only a higher alien intelligence could have done this, to prevent humans from leaking out everywhere and finding all the cool shit in the universe.

2. Space debris is a shield to keep us from hearing alien broadcasts.
You've heard that there are thousands of pieces of space junk orbiting Earth, posing a danger to orbiting spacecraft and creating a haze of garbage around the planet. Recently the Chinese government created infinitely more space trash by shooting one of its satellites, scattering its shattered body into orbit. What could be the possible reason for leaving all this junk in orbit, instead of cleaning it up? Obviously, our governments are using the junk as a deflection shield to prevent alien messages and craft from getting through. And this suits the aliens just fine, since they're quarantining us anyway.

3. Space-based weapons prevent aliens from wanting to bond with us.
According to Alfred Webre, a Canadian futurist and author of the recent book Exopolitics:

Star Wars and the militarization of space is part of the information war against the integration with Universe society. Star Wars is an "inside code word" for this war among the military planners. The issue is whether our space technology will be in accord with Universal principles, or controlled by a military empire. The USA will ultimately suffer ignominious defeat by Universe society should it persist as a space military power.

Well, that pretty much covers it.

4. JPL scientists who are in on the quarantine efforts helped perpetuate the myths that were reported in Wired about how we could "never achieve interstellar travel."
Why don't they want us to believe in interstellar travel? Why? These are space scientists, dammit — doesn't it strike you as odd that they are saying we shouldn't go to space?

5. NASA's launch of a suborbital rocket fails.
Today NASA launched a suborbital rocket, but had to shoot it out of the sky due to alleged "launch failure." Really? Could this actually be an effort to discourage suborbital rockets, which might break through the space debris and catch sight of the Universe society? As one blogger points out, NASA already knows about aliens. Thus, they're the perfect organization to make it seem as if there were "problems" on a rocket that was about to run into alien vessels.

6. Large Hadron Collider.
Seriously — need we say more? Any alien civilization worth its salt would know that when we start beaming subatomic particles through that giant, Swiss magnetic loop that the Terrible Events are about to begin. Stay the hell away from Earth when that happens.

7. Project Bluebook closed.
In the 1950s and 60s, the Air Force created Project Bluebook, an investigative project to figure out what all those UFOs were. Despite the fact that people continue to see UFOs every day, the project was shut down in 1969. Why? Was that the year that the government learned about the Quarantine and decided to pull the wool over our eyes?

8. Twelve missions to Mars failed en route to the planet.
Sure we have some satellites orbiting Mars now, and three robots on the surface doing measurements. But they're only in the quarantined areas. Whenever a satellite or spacecraft has tried to go near certain off-limits parts of the planet, they've mysteriously disappeared. Traces of them are never found again, even by the satellites that are supposedly photographing the planet in such minute detail that they can see this hunk of ice.

9. Global warming makes planet more comfortable for everybody.
Little-discussed fact about global warming: It will make all the least-inhabitable regions of the planet into a tropical paradise. Climate change is basically a massive, multinational conspiracy to get everyone so comfy on Earth that they never want to go to ultra-cold Mars or the even colder reaches of deep space. It's good when people believe they actually CHOSE to be quarantined, isn't it?

10. Fly Me to the Moon
This movie about flies stowing away on a moon rocket was actually a government-sponsored plot to make traveling offworld seem so awful that nobody would ever want to do it again.

In the face of such compelling evidence, you cannot deny the TRUTH. Somebody — or something — doesn't want us to leave the planet. We're being . . . quarantined!!!

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

The main character of this well-known novel can't get enough of Substance D, a psychoactive drug that's also known as Slow Death. It turns out that even his dealer works for the government and has been part of a police operation all along — and even more surprisingly, he finds Substance D grow fields at his rehab clinic. Dick never reveals the true source of the dangerous drug, but his hints on the subject are the staples of conspiracy theory fiction: evil Communists, evil aliens, evil government, or evil corporations.

The Invisibles by Grant Morrison

Drug use and conspiracy theory stories go hand-in-hand, it seems. Morrison wrote The Invisibles after an incredible hallucinogenic experience in Kathmandu — one he originally attributed to alien abduction. He later learned to just blame the drugs, and so The Invisibles became the most psychadelic comic ever, filled with swearing, bright colors, and wild characters. The protagonist of the first volume, Dane McGowan, is plucked from his life as a petty thief and sent to a corrupt juvenile detention center. After his rescue, the vast conspiracies surrounding everything in his life begin to reveal themselves, and he teams up with the eclectic Invisibles to discover more and more about the vast suffering of humanity.

Dark City, written by Alex Proyas, Lem Dobbs, and David S. Goyer

In 1998, a revolutionary sci-fi film noir hit cinema screens. It began with a man waking up at a murder scene in a city that never sees daylight, a man who's unable to remember who he is or how he got there. As he's trying to find answers, he discovers that the world is not at all what it seems, and that a group of mysterious figures called the Strangers are controlling human reality. There's a conspiracy for ya. Luckily, this man possesses the ability to change reality, or "tune," as well, and so puts up a good fight so he can escape to a better world with his wife.

The Matrix, written by Andy and Larry Wachowski

A year after Dark City's release came The Matrix, which was far more successful — the stories are similar, but there's a lot more gunplay and leather in the Wachowski brothers' version. The Matrix certainly offered us a very good reason to be paranoid: It's possible that aliens have invaded, subjugating all of humanity by convincing us that our lives are progressing as normal. The chilling reality, that humans are harvested for energy and fed with the dead matter of their own species, is one of the scariest sequences in film. Plus, the simulated reality that most humans believe is nothing more than a computer program, and the stewards of that program are stony-faced agents who have all the power. That is, until a cute computer hacker shows up to save us all.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Often thought of as a sequel to her also fabulous dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake is a scathing criticism of current society. She portrays the 21st century as a world dominated by international corporations who subjugate their employees, a world where even children watch live executions on the internet, a world where humanities and the arts are vilified in favor of fields like biotechnology and engineering. The Crakers, human-like creatures who also inhabit this world, have a mysterious origin — and at the end of the book, Atwood reveals that they were created by a giant corporation's genetic engineering experiment. In the end, the creator of the Crakers also launches a genetically engineered virus that kills almost all of the humans; it's quite a formidable cautionary tale about the dangers of corporations with too much power.

Dreadful Sanctuary by Eric Frank Russell

1948 saw the release of perhaps the first major conspiracy novel in science fiction, Russell's Dreadful Sanctuary. In his story, a secret society keeps the rest of humankind from discovering or contacting alien life. After several failed missions to space, it seems that Earth is being quarantined by the universal community; in fact, however, the secret society is simply spreading that illusion to control the population. Dreadful Sanctuary was originally serialized in Astounding Science Fiction, but Russell rewrote it to publish it as a paperback novel in 1967 — just two years before humans successfully reached the moon. Thank goodness no one's stopping us from space exploration in real life ... or are they?

Whether it's Communists, Russians, our own government, or an extraterrestrial one, fears of hidden and powerful villains will probably never end. As ridiculous as conspiracy theory stories may sound sometimes, they're necessary for a society that wants to give its average, ordinary members some level of control. After all, nobody likes totalitarianism, except perhaps totalitarian leaders.

Fact: There isn't any language in the bill covering government action to discriminate against its citizens. There are still people in this country calling for racial segregation and some of them, like Strom Thurmond and Trent Lott were in Congress until 2003! Who's to say a new breed of DNA-based eugenics supporters haven't already begun inflitrating the government?

"But the bill's been passed," you say. "Show me even ONE of these gene-racists you speak of!"

A fair challenge...

Exhibit A: Tom Coburn, Senator from Oklahoma. Last fall both the House of Representatives and Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass GINA into law but Coburn mysteriously stymied them all, blocking the bill for eight months. He claims it was to revise the bill to make it harder for people to sue companies for discrimination, but he is a medical doctor. As a doctor he should have been 100% behind the bill, so why the opposition? We may never know until it's too late...

*This is of course, tongue-in-cheek...GINA's a great bill that should be applauded, even if it does mean we'll never get to play the role of genetically-imperfect heroes in a dystopian future.

Source: Genetics and Public Policy Center, Image: Cinezik.org