Why do UFO sightings keep happening near nuclear sites?

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The Enmyoin Temple in the Fukushima prefecture of Japan is now known colloquially by a different name, said its Chief Monk, Tomonori Izumi: "The Miracle Temple."

"I don't know if it was some god or some powerful being in a UFO, but I believe that some invisible power really did come to save us," said Izumi.

On March 11 2011, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was the site of one of the worst nuclear disasters ever after an earthquake and subsequent tsunami caused its electrical grid to fail. The simultaneous disasters laid waste to much of the surrounding area, but "miraculously, the temple was untouched."

"The UFO's came after the explosion. There were so many of them. I was shocked," said the monk in the fourth episode of the VICE Studio's Netflix docuseries series Encounters: "Lights Over Fukushima."

"Radioactive energy was leaking everywhere. I believe the UFOs came to readjust the flood of radioactive energy in order to save us. That's my theory, anyway," said Izumi.

Just like after the Fukushima disaster, UFO's have been documented repeatedly around places where humans have spawned nuclear activity. There are "very clear connections" between UFO sightings and nuclear sights "going back decades," said author Dr. Jensine Andresen.

"My personal view on the basis of over 30 years of very extensive research is that there is an advanced extraterrestrial presence operating basically here on Earth and in the oceans," she said.

Andresen cited declassified U.S. government reports from agencies like the FBI and CIA about UFO sightings near nuclear sites, saying she had looked at 39 different accounts between the 1940s and 1990s.

"It goes back to the 1930s when the science and research was being done to understand fission. But then it really heats up in the 1940s, in particular, right after the detonation of the two atomic bombs in Japan in 1945. Then it is decisive, it's conclusive. You see one after another event occurring in proximity specifically to sites associated with nuclear weapons," said Andresen.

There are numerous cases, she said, listing sightings near Kirtland Air Force Base, Sandia National Laboratories, and other places "where nuclear weapons were stored."

Another well-known case took place at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in March of 1967. Robert Salas, who worked as a missile launch officer controlling ten nuclear tipped missiles at the time, alleged one day after he received reports from other officers of strange UFO sightings, his missiles were shut down and became "unlaunchable." He later learned that ten weapons at another nearby site were also shut down "under similar circumstances, very similar circumstances where UFOs were sighted over the launch facilities." More recently, Salas said that he had briefed the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a unit tasked with resolving credible UFO sightings, on the event.

Andresen said one of the clearest examples of these sorts of activities around nuclear facilities was the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine.

"There was a lot of UFO activity reported there also. At the height of the fire in Chernobyl, the reading was 3000 milliroentgens, which is a unit of ionizing radiation. And right at the height of the fire, many people observed a UFO come, stayed for 3 minutes, shown a light right at Unit 4 and departed," she said. "They took another reading and it had apparently dropped to 800. Just in a few minutes. That seems like a very conscious attempt to remediate the danger caused by the malfunction there."

Like the Chief Monk of the Miracle Temple, Andresen also believes that these extraterrestrial beings are trying to help us avoid our own self destruction via nuclear catastrophes.

"I think this is an intelligence that recognizes the depth of human creativity and wants to preserve it. I think this intelligence cares about us. I think this intelligence does not want us to go extinct. That's what I think is really being communicated," she said. "'We're right here with you. Just open your hearts. Open your minds. We'd like to help you. And, you know, let's get to know one another.' I think that's really what the message is."