*Disclaimer: Don't believe everything you read.

I will be covering stories of many conspiracy theories in my articles section. There are many reasons why I chose to do so.
1. Because conspiracy theories are entertaining.
2. Because they give good ideas for writing.
3. Because it's interesting to analyze them. For instance, I like to ask myself what lead to a theory being formulated and believed. Often there is a thread of truth somewhere in the tangled mess, although not always.
4. Sometimes a conspiracy theory is actually true. We may never be able to know for certain when that is the case, but it's a good mental exercise to try and figure it out.

Please remember to take everything with plenty of salt and good humor, and if you find you are getting a little too paranoid, head over to my links page and treat yourself to something silly and light.

The rundown:

People have been spotting some suspicious looking lines in the sky. At first they look no different from an ordinary jet contrail, but instead of a single line that may get thicker but generally disapates, a Chemtrail will spread out and become a cloud. Chemtrails are often seen making grid or criss-cross patterns in the sky. People report find a sticky substance on their lawn, cars, and home after chemtrails have been spotted overhead, and many report a mysterious onset of illness that is difficult to recover from.

Fact and Fiction:

Chemtrails do exist. I have even spotted them myself in different cities in different states, although I have not encountered the "sticky substance." One probable theory regarding these chemtrails is cloud seeding.

Cloud seeding is in essence, any artificial process intended to affect the precipitation process in clouds. There are many techniques used. For more detailed information on this, and for some great pictures visit the webpage of North American Weather Consultants, Inc. and take a look at the photo of an aircraft outfitted with silver iodine flares, one technique used in cloud seeding.

The following is taken from an article at CNN.com.

"The council, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, said in a recent report that while clouds across the globe have been seeded for 60 years to increase rainfall and reduce hail, there is no convincing evidence it works."

There is in fact a record of the United States government "crop dusting" a harmful chemical, but only in Columbia as part of the "War on Drugs." Here is an Excert from an article on a Webpage called Drug Policy Alliance.

"Under this plan, the United States has provided Colombia with extra helicopters and crop-dusting planes to spray coca with toxic herbicides."

But it's important to point out that the United States government doesn't have any reason to kill people's crops in places like Oklahoma. If they thought someone had a large drug plantation, they could simply arrest the person. On webpages that promote what I call the evil-government view point, the authorities are accused of distributing a mass-inhaled vaccination, or some kind of sinister biological experiment. I find these explanations to be very unlikely. First of all there are plenty of people willing to test questionable vaccinations these days. Also inhalable vaccines cost roughly three times as much as injections. Try multiplying that by however many dosages you'd need to cover half a city with enough of the substance so that every person would inhale enough of it to be effective. It would cost too much money to be feasible. The "evil government" would be better off slipping the mystery vaccine into every flu shot and then creating a flu panic. Now, that would be using your evil cranium!

Conclusion:

This theory is an interesting one, because it starts out based on concrete physical evidence. It is possible that this cloud seeding could be causing illness for some people. That is a testable hypothesis and if someone were to approach authorites with it in a calm and reasonable manner, some studies might be done to find out.