How Much Time Do We Have before Catastrophic Disclosure Occurs?
Matthew Szydagis
Limina · 2025
A UAlbany physicist runs Poisson-distributed Monte Carlo simulations of smartphone capture probability to estimate when a civilian-documented NHI craft crash would constitute uncontrollable 'catastrophic disclosure,' finding a central expectation of 2038–2049 depending on starting assumptions.
Brief
Matthew Szydagis models three variables. Earth population density (skew-Gaussian PDF), smartphone ownership penetration (asymptotic S-curve), and assumed annual NHI craft crash rate, using 10^5 Poisson Monte Carlo trials per scenario across 18 total cases (3 crash rates × 3 population scenarios × 2 simulation start years). Three crash rate benchmarks anchor the analysis: 1/century (Roswell alone, per Randle), 10/century (Grusch whistleblower claims at face value), and 100/century (upper bound from Randle's catalog). Under central assumptions and a 2008 simulation start, the mean year of catastrophic disclosure is 2038 ± 24; with 2024 as the Bayesian prior start, it shifts to 2049 ± 23. The pre-2024 absence of documented captures is used as a falsification tool, ruling out the 1 crash/year scenario at the smallest capture radius (75 m) at nearly 5σ.
Metadata
- Category
- Hub & Overview
- Venue
- Limina
- Type
- Peer-reviewed
- Year
- 2025
- Authors
- Matthew Szydagis
- Access
- Open access
- Length
- 1.7 M
- Programs
- Sol Foundation, UAPx, Galileo Project
- Instruments
- smartphone cameras (civilian witness capture, modeled), mass spectrometry (referenced for material confirmation), neutron activation analysis (referenced for material confirmation)
- Data sources
- UN population projections (Raftery et al. 2014), Cohen & Small 1998 hypsographic demography dataset, Randle UFO crash catalogs (1995, 2010), Ericsson Mobility Report smartphone penetration data (Jejdling 2024), Sui et al. 2021 smartphone ownership dataset
- Tags
- UAP-disclosure, probabilistic-modeling, NHI, Monte-Carlo, statistical-analysis, SETI, technosignature
Key points
- Central simulation yields a mean catastrophic disclosure year of 2038 ± 24 (2008 simulation start) or 2049 ± 23 (2024 Bayesian prior start) at 10 crashes/century and the 0.150 km Powell Radius.p.5
- Three crash-rate benchmarks: 1/century (Roswell-only, Randle's conservative read), 10/century (Grusch claims taken at face value), 100/century (ceiling from Randle's 118-entry catalog, labeled least realistic).p.4
- Absence of pre-2024 smartphone-captured NHI crash evidence rules out the 1 crash/year + 75 m radius scenario at nearly 5σ (simulated mean disclosure 2011.4 ± 2.8).p.5
- Under default assumptions, cumulative probability of catastrophic disclosure is 14–42% by 2027 and 39–59% by 2036.p.6
- The majority of tested scenarios yield a 50% cumulative probability of catastrophic disclosure by 2050 AD; the modal year never exceeds 2068 in any scenario due to eventual global population stabilization.p.5
- Land constitutes 29.2% of Earth's surface; the middle benchmark of 0.1 crashes/year on land implies >0.3/year globally, with >0.2/year over water, implying, under a 1-million-year visitation window, over 200,000 defunct vehicles on ocean and lake floors.p.6
- The Powell Radius of 0.150 km (~500 ft) is used as the default witness capture radius; three radii (75 m, 150 m, 300 m) constitute the low/medium/high sensitivity scenarios and represent the dominant source of scenario spread.p.3
- The same Poisson framework can set progressively tighter upper limits on NHI crash rates as years pass without irrevocable public evidence, providing a falsifiability mechanism for UAP crash claims.p.7
Verbatim
“the mean expected year being 2040 ± 20 under the default assumptions”
p.1“the predictions are 2038 ± 24 (2008 sim start) and 2049 ± 23 (2024 start) for the year of the initial but "incontrovertible" evidence being shared on the internet, assuming survival of strict checks of AI fakery”
p.5“the majority of the tested cases resulted in a 50% cumulative probability of catastrophic disclosure by 2050 AD”
p.5“the chances (black curves) are 14–42% by 2027 and 39–59% by 2036”
p.6“If NHI are real then the correct question to ask is not IF disclosure can be forced, but WHEN.”
p.6
Most interesting
- At the middle crash rate (10/century on land) and a 1-million-year visitation window, the model implies over 200,000 defunct non-human vehicles sitting on ocean, lake, and river floors, a figure the author cites as motivating deep-water search programs such as Loeb et al. 2024.
- Smartphone ownership is modeled as an S-curve on a log scale; the data show a visible inflection point attributable to the 2007 iPhone launch, after which competing manufacturers accelerated penetration. The conservative model caps ownership at a fixed 54% of the global population.
- The population density PDF peaks at ~10 persons/km² with a mean of 30–60/km² depending on year; the model draws from this distribution per simulated crash location rather than using a global average, avoiding the Antarctica-vs.-Manhattan flattening problem.
- The C++ simulation code (catDisc.cpp) is released with the paper on arXiv (2410.12738), an unusual degree of computational transparency for UAP-adjacent research and a direct invitation to readers to rerun with alternative assumptions.
- The methodology is explicitly adapted from wildlife camera-trap statistics (Loonam et al. 2021), treating NHI crash events as rare Poisson processes mathematically identical to photographing low-density elusive animals.
- The paper notes that in 1947 Roswell and 1965 Kecksburg, neither texting nor camera-phones existed, framing those alleged events as inherently underdocumentable under any crash-rate assumption and thus immune to falsification by this framework.