Réveil

Before we get started, a quick heads up: this post is about two viral, highly polarizing videos that have been linked by some to the disappearance of MH370.

I’m not here to tell you whether these videos are real or fake. My goal is to lay out how they came to light, why they got so much attention, and everything that’s unfolded around them.

The Beginning

The videos originally appeared on YouTube in May and June 2014, but they didn’t get serious attention until 2023. If you haven’t seen them yet, it’s worth watching before you read further.

Archive.org Links:

http://web.archive.org/web/20170606182854/https://youtube.com/watch?v=5Ok1A1fSzxY

https://web.archive.org/web/20140827060121/https://youtube.com/watch?v=ShapuD290K0

Both videos side by side insync:

While I have my own thoughts on whether they’re authentic, my aim here is to outline the timeline, point out the key details, and lay out the facts as clearly as possible so you can decide for yourself.

Are the videos real or fake? That’s up to you to decide.

One thing remains true, no matter where you stand on these videos: MH370 was a real flight full of real people, and if you or someone close to you was affected by this tragedy, you have my deepest sympathies.

Are the videos real or fake? That’s up to you to decide.

One thing remains true, no matter where you stand on these videos: MH370 is still missing, and families are still searching for answers. If you or someone close to you was affected by this tragedy, you have my deepest sympathies.

The 'Satellite' Video – May 19, 2014

The first video, titled “Satellite Video: Airliner and UFOs” was uploaded to a YouTube channel by the user “RegicideAnon” on May 19, 2014.

Description:

“Received – March 12, 2014, Uploaded – May 19, 2014, Source – Protected”

Keyword metadata (extracted from YouTube): “Flight 370” and “Malaysia Airlines”

The video appears to show a large airliner moving across a cloud-covered landscape from an overhead, slightly oblique vantage point. After a short while, three glowing spheres (orbs) approach the aircraft .

The orbs orbit the plane, forming a rotating pattern around it. As the orbs complete their motion, there is a bright flash, and the aircraft disappears from view. The orbs then move away, and the clip ends.

The perspective and interface elements make it look like infrared or thermal imagery from some kind of satellite or high-altitude surveillance system. The title and framing led people to assume this was literal satellite footage.

Unwrapped view (source: reddit):

The 'Drone Video – June 12, 2014

Titled “UAV-Captures Airliner and UFOs”

Uploader: RegisideAnon

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20140827060121/https://youtube.com/watch?v=ShapuD290K0

Description: “Received – June 5th, 2014, Uploaded June 12th, 2014”

“Video shows airliner being followed by 3 unidentifiable spherical objects for a short time. Then airliner and orbs vanish. This appears to be alt angle to previously submitted SAT footage:”

The second video, uploaded to the same channel by the same user, offers a different perspective of the same event. This time, the footage appears to have been 'captured' from a military drone equipped with an infrared or thermal imaging system. The sequence is similar: three orbs encircle the plane, there's a sudden flash, and the aircraft vanishes from sight.

I believe this second video is a significant reason why these clips continue to be debated today. Now, there are two separate videos, both seemingly capturing the same event from different angles, and they line up perfectly. If this is a hoax, it's not just an ordinary one. It would have taken a high level of planning and technical skill to pull off.

Why Dates Matter

Because, they're crucial to the timeline of the videos and the date MH370 disappeared.

MH370 vanished on March 8, 2014. The first video was uploaded on May 19, which is 73 days after the disappearance. That's more than enough time for someone to create a convincing CGI hoax, especially with the technology available in 2014, right? I'm not an expert in video effects, so I'll leave that judgment to you.

But then there's the YouTube description, which claims the footage was “received – March 12, 2014.” If you take RegisideAnon at their word, the video existed just 4 days after MH370 disappeared.

Of course, there's no way to confirm if that's true. The only hard evidence we have is when the video was actually posted, which was 73 days after the plane went missing. That's the timeline we have to work with.

Note: During my research for this post, I found a few Reddit comments from people who remember seeing these videos prior to May 2014. Some mentioned that before RegisideAnon uploaded them to YouTube, they might have come across the videos on a forum or another website. If anyone can dig up evidence that these videos were available online before May 2014, that would be a major breakthrough.

Who is RegisideAnon?

Although not much is known about the user: RegisideAnon – we do know that on May 22, 2014 they tweeted a link to the the videos:

“Please spread this video before it is pulled.”

Based on what is publicly available, these uploads and tweets are the only known attempts by the user RegisideAnon to share the videos. Before posting the orb clips, the channel mostly featured generic paranormal and UFO-related content. Judging by the video descriptions, RegisideAnon wasn't the source, but instead received the footage from someone else.

Video Re-uploads

When these videos were first shared in 2014, they didn't attract much attention.

Still, there were two additional re-uploads of the same footage, found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS9uL3Omg7o

https://vimeo.com/104295906

2023 – Videos Go Viral

Years had passed, and the videos were largely ignored/undiscovered. After all, MH370 had spawned countless theories already, and most people no-doubt would have dismissed these clips as unbelievable.

In January 2023, everything changed. A Reddit user stumbled across the videos again and posted them to r/UFOs and related subreddits. From there, the clips began to spread widely, and for the first time in nearly a decade, they gained serious attention.

The virality was driven by several factors:

• People realized that the two videos appeared to show the same event from two perspectives, totally insync.
• The presence of odd details, embedded numbers in the video feed, and what looked like a real military or intelligence video player HUD made it feel more “authentic” than typical UFO clips.
• The fact that MH370 remains one of the biggest aviation mysteries ever, with little debris found and no clear explanation, made people more open to weird possibilities involving the flight.

Reddit users started analyzing the footage frame by frame. People with backgrounds in video editing, satellite imagery, aviation, and software began to tear the videos apart frame by frame.

I’ve highlighted a few of the standout discoveries here, but if you want to go deeper, the threads and other related subreddits are full of much more detailed analysis.

The Details

Now let’s get into some of the most interesting findings uncovered by Reddit’s crowd of dedicated investigators.

I’ve highlighted a few of the standout discoveries here, but if you want to dig deeper, the megathreads in /r/UFOs and other related subreddits are full of much more detailed analysis.

Credit goes to the sharp-eyed folks in the Reddit and Twitter communities for tracking down all these details.

The Mouse Cursor Explained by Remote Terminal Access

One detail that stood out early was the appearance of a mouse cursor panning around the “satellite” footage.

That cursor turned into a useful clue. It suggested the videos might actually be screen recordings, capturing someone moving a pointer over a larger field of view.

As the discussion grew, people pointed out that the interface closely resembles a Citrix HDX or XenDesktop remote terminal running at 24 frames per second. This is a setup often used by government or military organizations.

What was discovered/theorized:

The video is a screen recording running at 30 FPS, capturing a remote terminal where the software itself runs at 24 FPS. Within that software, the underlying imagery updates at only about 6 FPS, while the UI elements continue to move smoothly at 24 FPS.

The details:

• The scene (plane, clouds, orbs) are updating at around 6 frames per second.
• The interface elements, like the cursor would be responsive, which is why those are seen at 24 FPS.
• The assumed screen recorder (OBS or similar) would be capturing the whole thing at 30 FPS.

All this matches how the footage actually behaves. The cursor and UI are smooth, while the background imagery is choppier and updates in discrete steps. This would suggest, it’s a screen capture of a remote terminal being captured at 30 FPS. The remote or virtual desktop itself is running at 24 FPS.

• It’s a custom video tool/software used for panning around a large wide-area motion imagery dataset.
• The base imagery view is being rendered at 6 FPS, and being upscaled in a 24 FPS environment.

If this is a hoax, the hoaxer went very deep into the weeds to reproduce highly specific quirks of remote access video workflows. That’s not impossible, but it raises the bar significantly.

Quotes taken from Reddit

A few quotes that summarize the more technical analysis from Reddit:

“To me, this is way too complex to ever have been thought of by a hoaxer. If this is fake, then whoever made it is operating on a level most of us never see.”

“The frame rate seemed to be coherent between both the Vimeo and YouTube sources, with the underlying scene at 6 FPS and the UI layer and readouts moving smoothly at the capture frame rate (24 FPS).”

“It implies either that a real screen recorder recorded playback of a 6 FPS system, or that a hoaxer created a fake scene at 6 FPS and then did a fake screen-panning compositing pass at 24 FPS on top of that.”

In short, what’s being shown appears to be:

A recorded remote terminal session, showing some kind of intelligence or military imagery system, where the underlying scene is low frame-rate but the UI is smooth.

That doesn’t automatically prove the content is real, but it makes the “simple CGI” argument much harder to maintain.

Even if it’s CGI, why add all these odd and super niche little details?

The Coordinates and Text

One of the key pieces of evidence in the “satellite” video is the on-screen coordinates readout and other text labels.

The coordinates visible in the video are: 8.834301, 93.19492. However, the plane disappeared in the southern hemisphere. If that’s the case, the coordinates would be approximately:

−8.834301, 93.19492

This puts the location just south of the Nicobar Islands, deep in the eastern Indian Ocean.

This location lines up almost exactly with the trajectory from military radar plots and the last primary radar contact for MH370. If you follow the path suggested by those radar points, it leads almost directly to these coordinates.

The on-screen text also appears to show:

• Some kind of mission/system ID?
• An asset label (originally thought to be “NROL-22” but later more plausibly linked to another designation).
• Coordinates and timecodes

In a re-upload on of the video found on Vimeo, the full text “NROL-22” becomes more clearly visible (as seen above).

The letters “NROL-22” match a real US military satellite: the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) launched on June 28, 2006, also called “USA-184.”

There are several “sister” satellites that work together with NROL-22 as part of a larger network, giving them wide coverage across the globe. Based on this, the video feed is most likely being relayed by one of these satellites:

• USA-223
• USA-229
• NROL-22
• NROL-23

Information about these classified satellites is limited, but what we do know is that they operate in the infrared spectrum, not in visible light. That means they aren’t designed to capture the kind of optical imagery you’d expect to see in a typical satellite video, like what’s apparently shown in the video. This makes it less likely that the footage is directly from one of these particular satellites.

It’s possible the satellite IDs shown in the embedded text aren’t from the actual source of the video, but instead refer to a relay satellite that's simply transmitting images/data from a different camera or data source.

The Drone Shown in the Video is an MQ-1L Predator

The drone in the second video seems to match the airframe of a MQ-1L Predator or MQ-1C Gray Eagle (or some variation of this), equipped with two expanded EO/IR payloads in what’s known as the TRICLOPS setup.

Other users pointed out that this is almost certainly a surveillance-only configuration of the Gray Eagle, outfitted with extra sensor pods, which lines up with the camera angles seen in the footage.

Another photo of an MQ-9 Reaper drone equipped with dual wing-mounted cameras, alongside an image of its command center.

The “Zap” Illuminates The Clouds

One detail people picked up on is that when the plane appears to get “zapped” or teleported, the clouds in the scene are backlit. That is, the flash seems to light up the surrounding cloud structure.

This creates a real sense of depth as some clouds are illuminated from behind, while the foreground cloud in the bottom right isn’t lit, and another is lit from the front. Both videos, if authentic, appear to have been recorded at night, evidenced by the lack of shadows or any directional lighting on the clouds.

It’s not impossible to pull off with CGI, but it would take a lot of extra effort and attention to detail to fake those subtle lighting differences. If this were a simple compositing job, you’d expect a lot of mistakes in how the light interacts with the clouds, but what you see here looks perfect.

The orb displaces the trail coming from the plane

Another frequently mentioned detail is that in the drone video, when one of the orbs passes through the contrail or exhaust behind the plane, the smoke appears to be displaced in a physically consistent way.

Rather than simply drawing an orb over the smoke, the smoke bends and reforms around it. That suggests the orb is actually interacting with the environment and not just placed on top in post-production.

Believers say this is evidence of genuine volumetric interaction that would be difficult for a casual hoaxer to reproduce.

The First Orb Appears to Punch a Hole in Clouds

In the satellite video, when the first orb arrives, it seems to punch a small “hole” in the cloud layer as it descends.

If you watch closely, you can see the cloud texture deform and thin in a small region, as the orb passes thru it.

The Clouds May Show Movement

Another argument that the footage is based on real wide-area imagery is that the clouds themselves are not static, at least some people think so.

Although the camera is panning, the clouds do seem to show subtle movement consistent with evolving weather, not just a static background.

Some observers argue that the clouds in the video appear completely static, suggesting the scene was faked with CGI using a fixed background.

However, the example below shows subtle signs that the clouds may be moving, and not just in the simple, linear way you’d expect from a basic 3D render.

If we assume the footage is genuine and taken from military surveillance running at only 6–7 frames per second, the low frame rate would also make any cloud movement difficult to detect over such a short clip.

Not Just Orbiting: The Orbs Are Spinning Too

Many viewers initially focused on the orbs rotating around the plane. Later, people noticed that the orbs also appear to be spinning around their own axes. That is, they’re not just traveling in a circular path; each orb itself seems to have rotational motion, with internal patterns or brightness flickering.

It’s a small but intricate touch that doesn't prove anything, other than if this video is a hoax, the hoaxer is very detailed.

The Cumulus Clouds Suggest the Plane Was at Low Altitude

Some people have argued that the type of clouds visible (cumulus) and the camera angle suggest the plane in the satellite video was at a lower altitude than a typical cruising 777.

Cumulus clouds typically form at lower altitudes, between about 1,000 and 5,000 feet.

You can actually spot these Cumulus type clouds in the satellite video, which suggests that the plane captured in the footage might be flying much lower than you’d expect a 777 to be, in the middle of the ocean.

This is important, because official radar data, revealed that MH370 did drop in altitude quite a bit before disappearing from radar after making a sharp turn. Some reports even mention it got as low as 12,000 feet.

Satellite Imagery of Cloud Cover on the Day

I’m no expert on clouds, but you can view historical satellite imagery from the day the plane disappeared here.

It shows real satellite images of the cloud formations at the exact coordinates seen in the video. To my untrained eye, the conditions look pretty similar in terms of cloud cover. Cumulus Clouds?

Was the plane pulled from behind?

At the moment the supposed portal opens in the video, the transition plays out over roughly nine frames. Using frame stacking, a Reddit user aligned five consecutive frames and applied the “Difference” blend mode in Photoshop to highlight subtle changes between them.

This process revealed what appears to show a inward dive of the plane, just before it disappears.

Are we seeing a real Wormhole?

Possible Turbulence?

When you zoom in on the drone footage, you can see potential turbulence rippling through the drone’s wing as it passes through the wake and contrails of the plane flying above it.

The wing subtly flexes and vibrates in response to the disturbed air, which is exactly what you’d expect from a real aircraft moving through turbulent conditions. This detail, also pointed out by a Reddit user, adds a layer of realism to the footage that would be difficult to fake convincingly with simple visual effects.

The “Thermal” Drone Video Matches MH370

As shown below, someone overlaid a photo of the actual MH370 777 with the plane from the ‘Drone’ video. The two images line up almost perfectly.

The Color FLIR in the Drone Video

If the drone or thermal footage is genuine, it may have been captured using a specialized type of military infrared imaging system.

One theory is that the color FLIR video was recorded with a Northrop Grumman LITENING targeting pod, which integrates electro-optical and infrared sensors, laser designators, and advanced FLIR technology into a single unit.

This kind of pod provides aircrews with both wide-area and zoomed-in infrared views of a target, along with real-time data sharing and targeting information to support coordination, tracking, and engageme

The Diego Garcia Connection

Diego Garcia is a small, remote atoll located in the central Indian Ocean. It is technically part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, but leased to the United States for military purposes.

Diego Garcia hosts one of the most strategically important U.S. bases outside the continental United States, supporting:

• Long-range bombers, refueling aircraft, and transport planes.
• Naval support, logistics and communications.
• Operations across the Middle East and Asia.

Very little is publicly known about the operations conducted there. Its isolation, secrecy and role in various conflicts have made it the subject of a wide range of conspiracy theories, not just those connected to MH370.

MH370 Passenger, Philip Wood

Philip Wood was a passenger on MH370 and worked as an engineer at IBM. Not long after the plane vanished, a completely black photo with no visible details surfaced on a 4chan thread in 2014.

The post that accompanied the photo read:

“I have been held hostage by unknown military personnel after my flight was hijacked (blindfolded). I work for IBM and I have managed to hide my cellphone in my ass during the hijack. I have been separated from the rest of the passengers and I am in a cell. My name is Philip Wood. I think I have been drugged as well and cannot think clearly.”

Users on 4chan extracted the image's EXIF data, which contained coordinates that matched the location of Diego Garcia.

This message, along with the image’s metadata, quickly became a focal point for online speculation.

If you’re familiar with 4chan, you already know the kind of “interesting” content that shows up there. There’s no way to confirm whether this message was real or just someone role-playing for attention, but it’s worth mentioning since it’s one of the stories that links MH370 to Diego Garcia. As always, take it with a grain of salt.

The Mysterious SOS message

A Twitter user reported receiving a bizarre voice message from an unknown number. The message sounded like a string of numbers and letters, but some listeners recognized it as the NATO phonetic alphabet.

When translated, it reportedly said: “S Danger SOS it is dire for you to evacuate be cautious they are not human 042933964230 SOS Danger SOS.”

Some people believe the numbers in the message are actually coordinates pointing to Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia Hydrophone Data collection shut down

During the search for MH370, scientists looked at hydrophone data: underwater microphones used to detect acoustic signals, including possible impacts on the ocean surface.

A sound was identified but it was reported:

“Rather than an airliner impacting the ocean surface, the sound was more likely “caused by an earthquake, underwater landslide, or volcanic eruption

Another hydrophone, located near Diego Garcia. Intriguingly, had a gap in it’s recording data.

It missed exactly the window in which a potential acoustic signal from MH370’s impact into the ocean might have been heard in the area.

This fuelled speculation that the data was deliberately withheld. However, the official explanation attributes it to technical or data-handling issues.

Empty cargo ship sent to the base

One more detail that often gets folded into the Diego Garcia theories, is due to a U.S. Navy cargo charter notice..

On March 31, 2014, just 23 days after MH370 disappeared, the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command posted a solicitation for a single dry cargo vessel to run between Singapore and Diego Garcia, using a classification code for “Transportation, Travel, and Relocation” services. In plain language, an empty cargo ship was being contracted to shuttle between a major regional port and one of the most secretive bases on Earth less than a month after the flight vanished.

An archived copy of that procurement notice can still be found here.

On its own, that document does not prove anything sinister. Remote bases live and die on logistics, and chartering a cargo vessel can absolutely be routine. But the timing, the “empty ship” aspect, and Diego Garcia as the endpoint mean it keeps getting pulled into MH370 discussions, especially by people who already suspect that something about the disappearance involved that base.

To Summarize:

There’s no solid evidence linking Diego Garcia to the disappearance of MH370.

Still, it’s notable that the US military and several other countries were running drills in the South China Sea around that time. With its strategic position, Diego Garcia would have been a logical staging point for such operations.

One thing is certain: Diego Garcia remains a highly secretive place.

Aliens or Secret US Tech?

Ever since these videos surfaced, the big debate has been: if they are real, who or what is controlling the orbs?

In a 2001 National Press Club event, an alleged Area 51 whistleblower describes something eerily similar:

“They coalesced and started rotating in a circle, and then they disappeared.”

Sounds a lot like what’s happening in these videos, doesn’t it?

People tend to split into two camps:

• It’s Non-human technology: something genuinely “other”
• It’s Human-made technology: some kind of secret, probably military program

If you set the non-human idea aside for a moment and assume the orbs are a human technology, the next obvious question is: who could build something like this, and how?

Salvatore Cezar Pais.

One of the more interesting lines of speculation comes from interviews that Ashton Forbes has had with U.S. Navy engineer and inventor Salvatore Cezar Pais.

Pais is associated with a cluster of very unusual patents filed on behalf of the U.S. Department of the Navy, such as:

• Craft using an inertial mass reduction device
• Piezoelectricity-induced High Temperature Superconductor
• High frequency gravitational wave generator
• Plasma Compression Fusion Device

Taken at face value, these patents describe things like reducing inertial mass, generating gravitational waves, creating high-temperature superconductors via extreme fields, and compressing plasma to achieve fusion. They read more like speculative physics than normal aerospace engineering, which is exactly why they have drawn so much attention.

Ashton’s theory, after several public interviews with Pais, is that the “orbs” seen in the MH370 videos could be some kind of classified implementation of the concepts in those patents. In that picture:

• A plasma compression fusion device provides a compact, incredibly powerful energy source.
• A piezoelectricity-induced high temperature superconductor creates the sort of exotic electromagnetic environment needed to manipulate inertia or spacetime.
• The result is a set of plasma “orbs” controlled and shaped by superconducting structures, rather than small metal craft flying around on their own.

In at least one interview, Pais is shown the MH370 footage directly and responds that what he is seeing appears to be based on the kind of technology described in his work. It does not prove the videos are genuine or that this technology is actually real, but it does show that the inventor himself thinks the visuals line up with the theoretical ideas in his own patents.

From here, the speculation dives into high-energy topological plasma physics. The idea is that by spinning in a precise pattern around the plane, these orbs could be generating a localized distortion in spacetime, something like a transient wormhole or a self-contained “bubble” that cuts the aircraft loose from normal space.

In that model:

• The orbs are part of the field geometry, not independent UFOs.
• The tight, synchronized rotation is the mechanism that forms the structure.
• The bright flash is the transition event where the field collapses or the plane is literally teleported through some kind of wormhole!

There is no public evidence that Pais’s patents ever resulted in an operational system. What we have instead is a chain of “if” statements: if the videos are real, if the physics is workable, if such a program exists, and if it was deployed that night.

That being said, if these patents are just science fiction and theoretical, why do the keep getting renewed by the US Department of Navy? Usually wild unproven tech patents like this just expire.

If you are trying to explain how three glowing objects could orbit and teleport 777, light up the clouds and leave no debris behind, this kind of human-made, black-budget technology is one of the few non-alien explanations that even attempts to account for what we are seeing.

Was The Plane On Fire?

At first, most people assumed the trails behind the plane were just ordinary engine contrails, as they would appear in infrared. But users quickly pointed out something unusual: a distinct heat signature that was coming not from the engines, but from the body of the plane itself.

This detail matters because it ties directly into many mainstream theories suggesting there may have been a fire on board.

Lithium Ion Batteries in the Cargo Hold

Flight MH370 was carrying lithium-ion batteries in its cargo hold. It was a large shipment and weighed approximately 221 KG.

The batteries also suspiciously, did not undergo the normal security screening.

One theory had been that the batteries may have reacted to 4.5 tonnes of a tropical fruit called mangosteens that were also on board, producing hazardous fumes or in a worst case scenario caused a short circuit and/or fire.

If a lithium-ion battery fire started in the forward cargo hold, it could:

• Produce intense heat (like what we see in the thermal video)
• Damage important avionics or wiring.
• Create smoke that disabled crew and passengers and that the fire suppression system would be venting out of the plane (smoke not contrails?)
• Radiate heat that might match what is being seen in the thermal “satellite” footage.Lithium Ion Batteries in the Cargo Hold

Is there Accurate Heat Distribution in the Thermal Video?

According to the Twitter User Ashton Forbes, what we’re seeing in the subtle thermal color differences is that we’re seeing an accurate representation of what you’d see in the thermal footage.

“A controlled lithium ion battery fire in the forward cargo bay damaging the electronics, causing the forward overflow valve to open.”

“Mystery Cargo”

There were also reports of “mystery cargo” loaded onto MH370, which stirred additional speculation.

Danica Weeks, the wife of Australian MH370 passenger Paul Weeks and mother of their two young sons, confirmed the group was troubled by 2.2 tonnes of cargo described as “radio accessories and chargers” that was mysteriously omitted from the manifest.

This mystery cargo has been linked in some theories to sensitive technology, weapons, or other high-value items that might have motivated interference or a cover-up.

Washed Up Fire Suppression Bottle

A fire suppression bottle from a Boeing 777 washed ashore in the Maldives. It was discovered floating in the ocean with barnacles and other marine growth attached, suggesting it had been in the water for some time.

The serial numbers and components were consistent with a fire suppression bottle used on 777 aircraft. Some have argued that, if this bottle came from MH370, it might indicate that the fire suppression system had been activated. Since it was found empty and floating, it’s likely the fire suppressant chemicals had already been discharged, which allowed the bottle to float and eventually reach the shore.

Debris with signs of Fire?

Some of the recovered debris appeared to have possible burn marks, charring, or signs of heat exposure.

A piece of suspected flaperon debris and other items have been examined in various reports and documentaries, with some experts noting discoloration and damage that could be consistent with a fire damage.

Billie Vincent Fire Theory

Former FAA security chief Billie Vincent has suggested that a fire on board is the most likely explanation for MH370’s disappearance.

In this theory:

• A fire (possibly involving lithium-ion batteries) breaks out.
• Crew attempts to handle the emergency but are eventually incapacitated.
• The plane continues on autopilot until fuel exhaustion.

This fits a lot of circumstantial evidence, but does not explain all aspects of the flight path or the lack of clear wreckage.

Kate Tee

Kate Tee, a British sailor who was near Indonesia when MH370 disappeared, believes she saw the plane flying low, trailing smoke, and possibly on fire before it vanished over the southern Indian Ocean.

“I noticed the outline of a plane and it looked longer than planes usually are. Also, there appeared to be black smoke streaming behind.”

She recalled seeing two other aircraft passing well above it, traveling in the opposite direction:

“They had normal navigation lights and I remember thinking that if it was a plane on fire, the other aircraft would report it.”

A reconstruction of her position at the time of the sighting places her in a location that lines up closely with both the last official primary radar contact and the approximate position inferred from the coordinates extracted from the video.

You can read Kate Tee’s full original account on her blog, Saucy Sailoress, where she shares detailed observations from that night here.

Oil Rig Worker Mike McKay

An oil rig worker named Mike McKay claimed to have observed what looked like a burning aircraft in the sky near his rig around the time MH370 went missing.

He reported seeing what appeared to be flames or a bright orange object moving in the distance.

He emailed his employer and Vietnamese authorities about what he saw. His statement was later leaked, revealing his full name, email, passport number, and the details of the company running the rig.

‘‘If it was the aeroplane I saw, then it must have been an external fire. How far would an aeroplane stay in the air after such a fire?’’

China Times Reports “Plane was about to disintegrate”

A report in the China Times cited an anonymous airline official suggesting that the plane may have been about to “disintegrate” or was in severe distress, the article mentions that a mayday call from MH370 was intercepted by the US Navy, describing the plane breaking apart and attempting an emergency landing at 2:43 a.m. local time (18:43 UTC).

It doesn’t seem like any other news outlets reported on this, and even more suspiciously, the article appears to of been pretty much scrubbed from the internet, but luckily Google cached it.

INTERFERENCE – Communications failure?

A pilot claims to have made contact with Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370 shortly before it went missing – but all he heard was interference, static and mumbling.

The man said he got in touch with the plane via his emergency frequency at the request of Vietnamese aviation authorities, who had been unable to reach it as expected.

Some have suggested this indicates one of the following:

• Intentional jamming by a third party. AWAC?
• Severe electrical failure caused by fire or damage.
• System malfunctions that rendered pilots unable to transmit distress calls.

Unidentified “blobs on military radar”

In a 2014 press conference, shortly after the plane disappeared, the Royal Malaysian Air Force Chief Rodzali Daud said that unidentified “blobs” had appeared on military radar – right before MH370 vanished. Are the “blobs” the orbs? Check out the video:

The Freescale Semiconductor Employees on Flight

Twenty of the passengers on MH370 were employees of the technology company Freescale Semiconductor.

Shortly after the disappearance, various theories emerged claiming that some of these employees were connected to sensitive defense or electronic warfare projects.

Notably, four of the passengers were listed as co-holders on a U.S. patent (US8671381B1) that later appears to assign full control to Freescale Semiconductor, Inc in 2015:

This connection has fueled one of the more persistent conspiracies suggesting that with the patent holders gone, full control of the patent defaulted to the company: Blackstone (owned by Jacob Rothschild…), which owns Freescale Semiconductor. The claim goes that with the co-holders gone, full control of the patent defaulted to the company.

There are plenty of better deep dives out there unpacking that patent and its claims in detail, but it’s one more thread in the MH370 mystery web.

It’s “Gorgon Stare”, It’s not actually Satellite Video – 2025

Jump ahead to 2025, and these videos have now been a topic of discussion for over a year among online communities.

On major UFO subreddits, threads about these clips were eventually locked or redirected, largely because of the debunks we’ll get into later in this post.

The central idea that has emerged among believers is that the “satellite video” is not actually from a satellite at all, but from a wide-area motion imagery system known as Gorgon Stare, with MQ-9 Reaper surveillance drone being the data source.

Gorgon Stare is a video capture technology developed by the U.S. military. It is an array of cameras attached to an aerial platform and is often described as a “wide-area surveillance sensor system” or WAMI.

The system uses multiple cameras and sensors mounted on drones to capture wide-area imagery, enabling analysts to track movements and study activity over extended periods, storing huge amounts of data from a network of drones/satellites etc.

The current theory is that both of these videos were recorded using drone-mounted cameras networked together and relayed through military satellites.

There is also an interesting detail about how this system has been described publicly.

Gorgon Stare and related wide-area motion imagery systems have been integrated and developed in part by Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC).

When people online began arguing that the “satellite” video was actually Gorgon Stare footage, users noticed that a public page on Sierra Nevada’s website describing this system quietly disappeared the same day…

Before:

After:

By itself, that does not prove anything. Defense contractors change and prune marketing pages all the time.

But in the context of two mystery videos that appear to show wide-area motion imagery, the timing struck a lot of people as odd.

According to online researchers, the system in question is likely Gorgon Stare Increment 2, which stitches together imagery from multiple cameras into a city-sized field of view: like a live, moving version of satellite imagery, which is exactly what we are seeing in the first video.

People have also suggested that the frame-rate behavior of the videos matches what you would expect if Gorgon Stare imagery at around 6 FPS were being piped into a 24 FPS interface and then captured using a 30 FPS screen recorder.

One quote from technical write-ups:

“An MQ-9 Reaper equipped with Gorgon Stare Increment 2 sensors can provide day/night persistent coverage of a city-sized area.”

Another note:

“Increment 2’s processor improved this to support up to 48 motion video windows, but the base image still updates at a lower frame rate. That’s why the underlying imagery looks choppy while the cursor and readouts move smoothly at the capture frame rate (24 FPS).”

So, RegicideAnon ( or David Lin?), the user who first uploaded this footage, appears to have had access (directly or indirectly) to some kind of wide-area surveillance imagery that behaves very much like official systems deployed on U.S. drones. That brings us up to where things currently stand with the footage.

“The resulting imagery had the appearance of a moving satellite image— like Google Earth, but alive”

Is U.S. Navy officer: Lieutenant Commander Edward C. Lin the Leaker?

On X, Ashton Forbes is adamant , Lin is the original source for the leaked footage.

Lin’s background, as reported in open sources and court-martial records, is what makes people look twice. He served as a naval flight officer and signals intelligence specialist in Special Projects Patrol Squadron Two (“Wizards”, VPU-2), flying on EP-3E Aries II reconnaissance aircraft. Those aircraft specialize in real-time tactical signals intelligence and full-motion video collection, which is exactly the world you would expect this kind of wide-area imagery to come from.

Supporters of the “Lin is the Leaker” (mainly just Ashton Forbes and his followers) suggest that a series of dates and details seem to line up with the MH370 timeline:

• VPU-2 is a highly secretive “special projects” squadron.
• Lin had experience with signals intelligence and live video feeds.
• His last deployment window overlaps 2014.
• He was reassigned in late March 2014.
• At one point he was said to have accidentally left flight manifests from a deployment, including search-and-rescue related codenames, in his flight suit.

Lin Sent to Prison in 2014 for Espionage

An investigation into Edward Lin reportedly began in early April 2014 which ultimately ended him up in prison for 6 years.

Lin was eventually prosecuted and pleaded guilty to mishandling classified information and failing to report foreign contacts, among a mix of other charges that were reduced or dropped. He served time in confinement and was dismissed from the Navy.

Most notable: His defense team argued that some of the “classified” information in question was effectively already available on the internet. You read that right, already available on the internet.

Set all of that next to a pair of leak-looking ISR videos that surface online with “source protected” in the description, and it is easy to see how the story builds itself. A signals officer with exactly the right kind of access, in roughly the right time frame, who later ends up in prison over mishandled classified material, makes for a very tempting narrative.

But it is important to keep the distinction clear:

• Lin’s real, documented case does not mention MH370.
• It does not mention these specific videos.
• There is no public evidence directly tying him to any leak of this footage.

Connecting Edward Lin to the MH370 videos is speculation based on circumstantial overlaps and timing, not a proven fact. I am including it here because it has become part of the online lore around these clips, not because it has been shown to be true.

Now, let’s get into the debunks.

“Debunked” — “It’s VFX” — “Cloud Photos Found”

After weeks of intense scrutiny by thousands of people on Reddit and elsewhere, a series of alleged “smoking gun” debunks began to spread.

These debunks claimed that:

• Parts of the cloud texture in the satellite video matched stock cloud photos or satellite imagery used in visual effects.
• The “zap” effect gets traced back to an old VFX asset.
• The background “clouds” in the satellite video were found to match stock images found on a stock photo website

For many, this was enough. Subreddits like r/UFOs started locking threads or steering the conversation away, and the general consensus became that the videos were “debunked.”

Things got increasingly toxic, with a handful of people still trying to analyze details while others dismissed the whole thing as an obvious hoax.

Those who still believe have now moved much of the conversation to dedicated subreddits, Discord servers and X.

As of now, the mainstream online consensus is that the videos have been “debunked”

VFX Used in “Zap” Found?

The first major debunk is related to the “Zap” effect seen when the plane disappears.

An anonymous reddit user (with a throw away account I should add) posts a link to a stock explosion effect created in 1998.

The effect in question is called “Pyromania 1” From a series called “Playing With Fire” which was found in an Archive here.

It was further noticed that the same effect was used in an old video games and movies, for example here is it being used in Diablo 1:

The Suspicious Source of the VFX “zap” asset

The Pyromania effect was uploaded to Archive.org by a user going by the name WaveRide3000.

When did WaveRide3000 start uploading vintage VFX CD-ROMs?

2014.

When did the specific Pyromania disc files get uploaded?

January 2023.

Just a total coincidence that these plane videos started trending again right around the same time, right?

So who actually created this effect?

It traces back to a boutique VFX company called VCE Inc.

Early on, someone on Reddit took a deep dive into this company and came up with some pretty interesting connections.

Here’s what the Redditor discovered:

“VCE Inc., the small VFX house behind the 1990s Pyromania library, had deep ties to the US Department of Defense and Department of Energy. Its founder, Peter Kuran, was involved in digitizing and restoring declassified nuclear test footage and consulted at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Their effects have been used in DOE materials and documentaries like Trinity and Beyond.”

Odd, right?

Another Reddit user even got in touch with Peter Kuran, the founder. Kuran initially replied and offered to help determine if the effect used in the plane videos was one of theirs. Once he realized which videos they meant… he stopped responding. Take from that what you will.

To summarize, the entire “VFX debunk” boils down to a single digital upload by a user named “WaveRider3000” who started sharing vintage VFX CD-ROMs back in 2014, and just happened to upload this particular disc/asset in early 2023, right as the plane videos started trending again.

What are the chances eh?

A side note on the username: In DC Comics, Waverider is a time-traveling superhero (Matthew Ryder), famous for navigating the timestream and seeing the future..

And if that’s not suspicious enough for you, WaveRider3000’s Archive.org profile pic? It’s Max Headroom, the same character used in the notorious 1987 TV signal hijacking.

But does it actually match?

While most people pushing the VFX “debunk” only highlight a single frame that lines up closely, another Reddit user took it a step further by overlaying the entire stock explosion effect onto the video. When you compare the full sequence, it doesn’t seem to match up perfectly, but that’s up to your interpretation.

It’s possible the hoaxer started with this stock effect and then altered it enough to create what you see in the videos. Although, If you need to heavily modify a stock effect just to get the look you want, what’s the point of using a stock effect in the first place?

Most people agree that the stock VFX effect either matches or comes extremely close. But if you actually go through the footage frame by frame, it’s clear that the effect isn’t a perfect match, there are differences throughout the different frames. When this is discussed by debunkers, they suspiciously only highlight only the one single frame that lines up best, without showing how the rest of the explosion plays out.

Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide if it truly matches. And it’s fair to ask: does the origin of this stock effect strike you as odd?

The Stock Cloud Photos Found

Of all the major debunks, the cloud photographs are probably the strongest evidence that the first “satellite” video is fake. A very bored reddit user traced the video’s background clouds to specific aerial photos hosted on textures.com. (found a needle in a Cloud Stack?). The image set in question can be seen here.

The original photographer, Jonas, later confirmed that the pictures were his. He said they were taken from a plane by him, over Japan in 2012, and he even provided the original RAW files he had archived.

The matching photos come from an album titled “Aerials0028,” which contains five images that clearly match the cloud/sky in the first satellite video. An archived snapshot of the page shows the full set series of photos here.

Although the current textures.com album listing shows a 2016 creation date, that timestamp actually reflects the company’s switch from cgtextures.com to textures.com, when all existing assets were migrated to their new domain/server. The original album creation date is 2012.

Things get stranger when looking at the site’s API metadata to find the creation date of these photos.

The subdirectory for “Aerials0028” appears to have been created in 2012, but the individual photo files inside it have “created-at” timestamps of October 2014.

This would strangely indicate that the images were taken 5 months after the first “satellite” video was uploaded to Youtube by RegisideAnon.

The images undeniably match, yet their file creation dates suggest they could have been taken after the videos were released.

How could photos created in October 2014 appear in a video uploaded five months earlier? It’s ofcourse possible the timestamps are inaccurate due to migration quirks, but the inconsistency is hard to ignore.

This is where things start drifting into speculation…

Some people believe the cloud images were deliberately planted after the plane videos emerged, pointing out that the file creation dates all postdate the release of the videos.

The theory suggests that someone with access to the original Gorgon Stare footage either pulled the cloud textures straight from the footage and uploaded them to textures.com, or created new images that match the video frame for frame. Whether that sounds believable or not is up to you. If the videos are real, you’d expect people to go to just about any length to discredit them.

At the end of the day, the big issue is that no one has ever found these specific cloud images in any online archive before 2016. If anyone manages to dig up clear evidence, timestamped and verified, that these cloud images were online before the videos appeared, that would pretty much close the book on this whole debate.

Conclusion

So where does that leave us?

Here's what it all comes down to:

I think faking something like this in 2014 must have required insider access to military-grade video standards and a precise understanding of how classified surveillance systems actually function in the real world (or how to imitate them effectively).

The footage doesn't just “look” like some generic military UI created in Adobe After Effects with a plugin.

And after researching how Gorgon Stare works as a surveillance system and from its own documentation: “The resulting imagery had the appearance of a moving satellite image, like Google Earth, but alive” – which does appear to be what we are seeing in the first “satellite video.”

I find it very hard to understand how some kind of normal hoaxer would even think to include, let alone get right or close to right even.

Then there's the weird frame-rate behavior. The cursor and UI move smoothly at around 24 frames per second, while the underlying video itself only updates at about 6 frames per second. That is exactly how secure remote desktop or terminal sessions tend to behave when you're viewing a low-FPS sensor feed inside a higher-FPS interface.

It's a very specific technical quirk to reproduce if you're just some random person making a fake, unless you've actually worked with this kind of system.

On top of that, you have the satellite angle. The location shown in the video text/timestamp/data does appear to be referencing a real military satellite: USA-229.

On top of that, although classified, that satellite is believed to function as a relay platform for drone communications, and its designation, “USA-229,” appears stamped on the footage. Again, that is not the kind of detail you usually see in a typical internet hoax. Even if it's a hoax, that's a deep level of research to do before making a fake “MH370 was abducted by aliens with orbs” video.

Then the way the videos were released also doesn't fit the usual hoax pattern. No watermark/link back to anything else, any other accounts or any attempt to gain a bunch of internet likes and attention, no YouTube monetization, no long clickbait title.

The uploader (RegicideAnon) just posted the footage, sent out a couple of tweets essentially asking people to mirror it before it got taken down, and then disappeared (or sent to prison...)?

No follow-up, no clout-chasing, no obvious payoff from what we can see.

That being said, at the same time, the main “cloud debunk” is honestly pretty damn convincing. The cloud photos do match the video background!

Then we are looking at something that has been built from very specific source material with just as much technical care as the rest of the video.

That doesn't magically turn it into a simple, low-effort hoax. It means that, if it is fake, someone went to extraordinary lengths, using real data and realistic pipelines, to construct something that behaves exactly like classified ISR footage in almost every respect.

So you end up in this uncomfortable space: on one side, a strong-looking debunk based on the Cloud Photos; on the other side, a pile of very strange, very specific details that are hard to wave away.

Even with what might be a solid debunk, I can't personally bring myself to completely dismiss these MH370 videos. Taken as a whole, they still feel less like a sloppy internet fake and more like either a leak of something real or a disturbingly good imitation of one, and if fake, for what purpose, and who?

After all this, don't forget, MH370 is still missing. The families still don't have closure. And these two clips, real or fake, don't seem to be going away anytime soon.

What do you think?

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