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Alternative 3
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==Plot== The program begins by detailing the so-called "[[human capital flight|brain drain]]": a number of mysterious disappearances and deaths of [[physicist]]s, engineers, astronomers, and others in related fields.<ref>{{Cite news|url=http://hoaxes.org/archive/permalink/alternative3|title=Alternative 3|newspaper=Museum of Hoaxes|language=en-us|access-date=18 November 2016}}</ref> Among the strange deaths reported was that of "Professor Ballantine" of [[Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics|Jodrell Bank]]. Before his death, Ballantine had delivered a videotape to a friend in the press, but upon playback the tape appears to contain only static. The missing scientists are revealed to have been involved in a secret American-Soviet plan. Interplanetary space travel had been possible for much longer than was commonly accepted, with Bob Grodin, a fictional [[Project Apollo|Apollo]] astronaut ([[Shane Rimmer]]) claiming to have stumbled onto a mysterious lunar base during his [[moon landing|moonwalk]]. It is then revealed that, during the 1950s, scientists had secretly determined that the Earth's surface would be unable to support life for much longer, due to [[pollution]] leading to catastrophic [[climate change]]. In 1957, physicist Dr Carl Gerstein ([[Richard Marner]]) proposed three solutions. The first was the drastic reduction of the human population on Earth. The second was the construction of vast underground shelters to house government officials and a cross section of the population until the climate had stabilized, a solution reminiscent of the one proposed at the finale of ''[[Dr Strangelove]]''. The so-called Alternative 3, revealed to have been secretly undertaken, was colonization of [[Mars]] via a [[Wiktionary:way station|way station]] on the Moon.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://binnallofamerica.com/rr6.20.8.html|title=Richard's Room 101|website=binnallofamerica.com|access-date=18 November 2016}}</ref> The program ends with some detective work; acting on information from Grodin, the reporters learn that Ballantine's videotape requires a special decoding device. After locating the decoder, the video documents a joint American and Soviet landing of an unmanned probe on the [[Mars|Martian]] surface in 1962. After landing, the camera focuses on an unknown organism moving under the surface of the ground. According to a mission controller, "22nd May, 1962, we're on the planet Mars and we have life!"
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