Where have all the insects gone?

The pulsations pollute the Earth beneath our feet, surround us in the air through which we fly, course through the oceans in which we swim, flow through our veins and our meridians, and enter us through our leaves and our roots. The planetary transformer that used to gentle the solar wind now agitates, inflames.

The lake pictured above is the United Kingdom’s largest. Located in Northern Ireland, Lough Neagh swarms so densely with flies every spring and summer that residents shut their windows against the living smoke. Clothes left out on a line are covered with them. So is any windshield on a vehicle traveling around the lough’s 90-mile shoreline. Until 2023.

Last year, unbelievably, no flies were to be seen. Windshields and hanging clothes were bare of them. None flew into open windows. Other species that used to eat them were gone as well -- ducks, frogs, fish, eels, and predatory insects. Fly larvae were not there to keep the lake bottom clean. Little was alive in the lough except an overgrowth of algae.

“Has the ecosystem of the UK’s largest lake collapsed?” asked The Guardian in a February 19, 2024 article. Has the ecosystem of the entire Earth collapsed? we ask, for the same is happening all over, according to reports I have been receiving for a year from almost everywhere on every continent.

56 Years of Global Vandalism

On June 13, 1968, the United States completed its launch of the world’s first constellation of military satellites. Twenty-eight of them, more than twice as many satellites as were in orbit around the Earth until then, were lofted to an altitude of 18,000 feet, in the heart of the outer Van Allen radiation belt. The “Hong Kong” flu pandemic began two weeks later and lasted for almost two years.

For the next three decades, the skies slowly filled up with hundreds of satellites, mostly for military purposes. Then in the late 1990s, cell phones became popular.

On May 17, 1998, a company named Iridium completed its launch of a fleet of 66 satellites into the ionosphere, at an altitude of only 485 miles, and began testing them. They were going to provide cell phone service to the general public from anywhere on earth. Each satellite aimed 48 separate beams at the earth’s surface, thus dividing the planet into 3,168 cells. Reports of insomnia came from throughout the world.

Iridium’s satellites began commercial service on September 23, 1998. The effect was devastating. I contacted 57 people in my network in 6 countries, plus two nurses, one physician, and a support group for patients. 86% of the people I interviewed, and the majority of patients and support group members, became ill on Wednesday, September 23 exactly, with headaches, dizziness, nausea, insomnia, nosebleeds, heart palpitations, asthma attacks, ringing in the ears, etc. One person said it felt like a knife went through the back of her head early Wednesday morning. Another had stabbing pains in the chest. Some, including me, were so sick we weren’t sure we were going to live. We were all acutely ill for up to three weeks. I suddenly lost my sense of smell on September 23, and did not recover it for six years. Mortality statistics from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control revealed a 4% to 5% rise in the national death rate beginning the last week in September and lasting two weeks. Some people reported a reddish sky the night of September 23.

In early December 1998, I again received telephone calls from far and wide asking me what had changed. Orbcomm, providing data service to industries, had gone commercial on November 30 with 28 satellites orbiting 500 miles up.

On July 25, 1999, another company, Globalstar, achieved worldwide cell phone coverage with 32 satellites, 876 miles up, and began testing. I again received calls from people who were certain the earth felt different again.

On February 28, 2000, Globalstar completed its constellation of 48 satellites and went commercial. Nausea, headaches, leg pain, and respiratory problems were widespread, both among people who called themselves electrically sensitive and people who did not. The effects were felt starting on Friday, February 25, the previous business day.

Iridium, which had gone bankrupt in August 1999, resumed full commercial cell phone service worldwide on March 30, 2001 after signing a contract with the U.S. military. The night of March 30 was accompanied by an even more intense and widespread red sky than the one that had accompanied its initial launch of service two and a half years previously. A red aurora was seen in the northern hemisphere as far south as Mexico, as well as in the southern hemisphere. There was a catastrophic loss of Kentucky race horse foals in late April and early May, and since mares abort several weeks to a month after a viral infection or other triggering event, this put the triggering event at about the end of March. Similar foaling problems were reported at the same time from Ohio, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Maryland, Texas, northern Michigan, and Peru. Breeders also reported both newborn and older horses with unusual eye problems, and adult horses with pericarditis.

On June 5, 2001, Iridium added data to its voice service, including connection to the Internet. Hoarseness was a prominent complaint of many who contacted me during the next few weeks.

For the next two decades, Iridium and Globalstar were the only providers of satellite phones. Enter SpaceX in 2019.

In November 2019, SpaceX began regular launchings of 60 satellites at a time into even lower orbit, only 326 to 350 miles up, and I began to receive reports from people around the world of headaches, dizziness, insomnia, exhaustion, skin problems, feelings of oppression, and heart problems. Almost 200 people in my network reported heart palpitations, heart arrhythmias, or heart attacks.

In March 2021, the density of signals polluting the ionosphere increased significantly. SpaceX, which had already launched more than 1,000 Starlink satellites and was testing them on a limited number of customers, launched 60 satellites on March 4, 60 more on March 11, 60 more on March 14, and 60 more on March 24. A competitor, OneWeb, also launched 36 satellites on the night of March 24. More satellites were launched into space in that month and on that day than ever before. And on March 24, SpaceX dramatically increased the speed of its satellite internet connections to over 400 Mbps.

On March 24, 2021, a threshold was passed, and the deterioration of life on Earth accelerated tremendously. Some people reported not feeling well beginning on March 4 or March 11, but 1,000 people in 50 countries emailed or called me on or after March 24 confirming my own awareness that something terrible was happening to our planet. The reports came from people in New York City, Paris and London, and from people living in remote locations miles from the nearest cell tower. They came from people who used no wireless technology at all, and from people who had smart meters on their homes and 5G antennas outside who emailed me from their cell phones. They came from people young and old. It did not matter, they all had similar experiences. Everybody, whether they were previously ill or not, became suddenly and profoundly sicker on March 24 or March 25, depending on the time zone in which they lived, and most slept little or not at all the night of March 24.

People reported that not only they, but also their spouse, children, parents, neighbours, friends, coworkers, clients, and everyone else they knew were sick, exhausted and irritable on March 24 or 25 and had trouble sleeping. Some reported that their pets or farm animals were sick at the same time -- cats, dogs, chickens, goats, cows.

The details were consistent. They could not sleep for one, two, three or more nights, beginning March 24 or 25. Some took melatonin or other sleeping aids and still could not sleep. They had pain and itching, either all over or in specific parts of their body, commonly their feet and legs. They had headaches. They had muscle spasms. They were weak and exhausted and could hardly stand or walk, and some tripped or fell. They had skin rashes. They were dizzy and nauseous, and had stomach aches and diarrhea. The ringing in their ears was suddenly more intense. Their eyes were red, or inflamed, or their vision suddenly worsened. They had heart palpitations, rapid or irregular heartbeat, or suddenly high or very low blood pressure. A few had nosebleeds, or coughed up blood, or their eyes popped a blood vessel. They were anxious, depressed or suicidal, and irritable.

Since then, SpaceX has been launching rockets carrying dozens of satellites at a time on a weekly or biweekly basis, filling the heavens with luminous objects that interfere with astronomy, spewing chemicals that are destroying our planet’s protective ozone layer, filling the upper layers of the atmosphere with water vapour that should not be there and that is increasing the current in the global electric circuit and the violence of thunderstorms, and cluttering up space with satellites that are nothing but solar arrays and computers that are continually failing, wearing out, and having to be replaced, and which are de-orbited to burn up in the lower atmosphere, filling it with metals and toxic chemicals for everyone to breathe -- and altering the electromagnetic environment of the Earth that had not changed in three billion years and that life below depends on for its vitality and survival.

Last Thursday morning, from Boca Chica, Texas, SpaceX successfully launched its Starship -- the largest rocket ever built, the one it wants to ferry men and women to Mars with -- into space for the first time. And on Friday it launched yet another 23 Starlink satellites to bring its total polluting the ionosphere up to more than 6,000, now not only for internet communication with rooftop dishes but for direct communication with handheld cell phones. The 6,000 satellites are also now communicating directly with one another, wrapping the Earth with pulsating lasers carrying 42 million gigabytes of data every single day.

Everyone I know has had trouble sleeping and been suffering since last Wednesday, the night Starship launched.

Since March 24, 2021, not only has human health deteriorated, but the biodiversity of the Earth, everywhere, has plummeted. People have not so much noticed the decline of the larger wildlife like wolves, bears, lions and tigers, which were already scarce, but they are shocked by the total disappearance of the smallest animals that were only recently so common you couldn’t open your windows without them flying in. They are shocked by the disappearance of all the frogs that used to swim in their ponds, the birds that used to nest in their trees, the worms that used to slither on the ground, the insects that used to fly through their windows and cover their clothes hanging on the line. My newsletters of March 29, June 21, September 20, October 17, and November 28, 2023 carried major stories about this from various parts of the world. My newsletters of December 5 and December 26, 2023, and January 9 and February 6, 2024 quoted from individuals all over the world who have emailed or called me, and I have a huge backlog of more such reports that you can read when I publish them in the future.

If we want to have a planet to live on, not only for our children but for ourselves, the radiation has to stop. Not only do the cell towers have to come down that are so ugly to look at, but also the cell phones that we hold in our hands and have become so dependent on, and the satellites that are squeezing all the life that remains out from under them. We are running out of time.

Arthur Firstenberg

President, Cellular Phone Task Force

Author, The Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life

P.O. Box 6216 Santa Fe, NM 87502 USA

arthur@cellphonetaskforce.org