In the olden days, humans blamed disasters on supernatural forces, or accepted them as God’s wrath. Then came the Age of Science, and a significant number of people came to know that disasters were caused by forces of nature that could be studied and predicted to a large extent.
But we humans aren’t really satisfied with that. So, forged by a need to indict forces beyond our control and also our pride in logical thinking, conspiracy theories have been one of the 20th century’s immortal gifts to mankind.
The most credible lies, as rogue spy Jason Bourne said, are those that come laced with some verifiable facts. Add a passable semblance of logic, present correlation as causation, and a grand conspiracy theory is born—which spreads like