THE SCHOOL OF PRANK TECHNOLOGY

Mr. Thomas Jones graduated from NM Tech with a degree in Physics. For a period of time in the 1980s and 1990s, Tom led a closed group of Techie pranksters called "Stealth Beta Force." The groups "memorial site" can be viewed at www.spril.com/StealthForceBeta/ or simply Google keywords Stealth Force Beta. His site is an extraordinary read. The complexity and technical sophistication of the pranks he and his team accomplished is nothing short of astonishing. The organization had rules, code names and a "magician's code" of secrecy. Its an illusion, but never own up to it- and never tell how it is done, that is how they worked.

Jones time at NM Tech was years removed from the Socorro event. But he is considered even today by the NM Tech Public Information Office to be the foremost expert on the history and breadth of NM Tech pranking. We gain needed insight into that unusual and special world by listening to Jones.

We learn from him that such hoaxing at NM Tech was a pastime from the school's very inception up through his time at the school. Jones indicates that today such physical pranking has given way to "digital pranking." Though such grand physical pranks are rarer on campus now, the spirit of the prank remains in digital form. The "glory years" of such physical pranks ran from the 1960s through the early 1990s. There is a certain "comraderie through the generations" when it comes to such Techie pranking. There is silent homage given by pranksters today at the school to the illustrious who walked those same prankster steps at NM Tech before them. Like a geek "Skull and Bones" society, these Techies made tight, secret circles.

Tom said to me that -given his intimate understanding of the school and his inside knowledge of the institution of pranking there- "I think it is highly likely that Tech students hoaxed the Socorro UFO incident." Tom adds cryptically, "and there was institutional memory of the Socorro UFO hoaxers at NM Tech."

We can all learn from Tom's instructive ideas on how this all even have happened: "If you haven't lived in the environment of a top-tier science school, it may be very difficult to understand the culture. You get used to weird things happening all of the time. Students built long-range water cannons, explode bombs made of butane and model rocket engines, build collosal armor-piercing toys, and handle radioactive rocks- just because its interesting. And thats only the tip of the iceberg." He says, "Many pranks are deliberately configured to appear that they were done by others- rival schools or space aliens." Retaliation is often a motive, he explained. Zamora was intensely disliked by students at the school at the time.

He adds that NM was a strange and wonderous place "for a kid from Maryland." Even the landscape itself lent itself to thinking about the surface of other celestial bodies. Space pranks were a natural at a place like Tech, he says. Tom says that the school is very small, very protective of its own and that "outsiders" simply cannot ever understand the intense techno-geek culture that would lead to such a prank as the Socorro UFO. They cannot appreciate the psychology of these closed circles of "brilliant and bored kids" who loved to fool the foolish.

Speaking more specifically of Socorro, Tom says that one of the things that frustrates him is that people have the idea that the area is flat and featureless, leaving no possibility for escape of the hoaxsters. But Tom says that the area is in fact filled with arroyos, rolling and rocky hillettes, and large brush and shrub. He told of a pastime at Tech- playing "hide and seek" in the maze of such arroyos outside town. Staying out of view of others out there was easy, he says.

Tom also explained certain elements of the Socorro UFO mystery that can be accounted for by campus-based activities:

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