How Many Co-Conspirators Can You Have Before Your Secret Leaks?
26th January 2016
When you see a superhero or a supervillain heading deep into their super-high-tech super-secret lair, do you ever wonder how the heck they keep that secret?
Did they build this massive thing on their own? Did they get their architecture, engineering, and interior design degrees while they went through that training/backstory montage? No, of course not. They had henchpeople build it for them, outsourcing the complicated stuff to people who knew more about constructing an island fortress than they do. There’s only one problem with that plan. Letting more people in on a secret virtually ensures that it won’t stay secret for long.
Unless you’re the government, of course, and can put people in jail for talking. And even then you might wind up with a Hillary Clinton.
In order to figure out the average length of time before someone blows a conspiracy’s cover, Grimes looked at three well-documented conspiracies. One, the reprehensible Tuskegee syphilis experiment lasted for a long time, nearly 25 years. The other two, the FBI forensics scandal and the NSA’s PRISM program took less time to come to light. (Each was uncovered in about six years.)
NOTE: THESE ARE ALL GOVERNMENT CONSPIRACIES.