Alternative 3 is a television programme, broadcast in the UK in 1977 as a fictional hoax, an heir to Orson Welles' radio production of The War of the Worlds. Purporting to be an investigation into Britain's contemporary "brain drain," Alternative 3 uncovered a plan to make the moon and Mars habitable in the event of a terminal environmental catastrophe on Earth.

The programme was originally meant to be broadcast on April Fools Day, 1977. While its broadcast was delayed until June by industrial action, the credits explicitly date the film to April 1st. Alternative 3 ended with credits for the actors involved in the production and featured interviews with a fictitious American astronaut. However, some conspiracy theory supporters have argued Alternative 3 is at least partly true.

As with Welles' earlier radio production, and the subsequent BBC drama Ghostwatch, Alternative 3 provoked controversy, with many viewers unprepared for its convincing presentation and deadpan tone.

The programme's environmental catastrophism comprised a mixture of global warming and then-popular warnings of an impending ice age, both of which were high in the public consciousness at the time[1]. The dark conspiracy theory appealed to an increasingly skeptical generation which was starting to take the Apollo moon landing hoax accusations more seriously.

Shortly after Alternative 3 was broadcast, Anglia Television issued a statement that the Alternative 3 episode was a hoax. Conspiracy theorists suggested that the British government forced Anglia Television to issue this statement.

Perhaps the most persuasive evidence that Alternative 3 was an utter fiction comes from Nick Austin, who was editorial director of Sphere Books when Watkins' adaptation was commissioned and published. Austin writes that the book was the "best chance I’d ever be likely to get to participate in a hoax of truly Guy Grand proportions — the best thing of its kind since Orson Welles' 'War of the Worlds' radio broadcast."

Furthermore, Austin writes that he was both delighted and disturbed by the Alternative 3 controversy, and adds that the reasons "a clever hoax, openly admitted to be such by its creators, should continue to exercise the fascination it so obviously does the best part of a generation after its first appearance is beyond my feeble powers of analysis and explanation." [2]

An article by Loy Lawhon reports that "everyone involved with the Alternative 3 documentary admits that it was fiction(.)" [3]

One unsourced account reports that the producers of Alternative 3 "announced that the entire thing had been a joke." [4]

A more detailed explanation of the hoax is featured in a study of conspiracy theory subculture and literature, Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (2003), wherein Michael Barkun devotes a few pages to Alternative 3.

Barkun writes that "Alternative 3 was clearly a hoax — and not only because it was intended for broadcast on April Fools Day. The interviews with supposed scientists, astronauts, and others were far too dramatically polished to have been spontaneous, and in any case, the episode's closing credits named the actors who took the roles of interviewees and correspondents. Though artfully produced, the show's counterfeit documentary style could scarcely have been expected to fool many. As an Anglia TV spokeseman put it, 'We felt viewers would be fairly sophisticated about it.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3

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