Our friends at The Speculist posted about a Soviet doomsday machine yesterday. This got me thinking about other rumored Russian plots. Serving as Peace Corps Volunteers in the Republic of Georgia, Laura and I were able to collect some interesting Soviet conspiracy theories from the front lines. Here are some of our favorites:

• The Russians can control the weather and in Soviet times, they always ensured a sunny day for propaganda events like parades.

• Putin hates Georgia because he has a bad relationship with his mother, who lives in Georgia (supposedly).

• Avian flu is actually a bogus media story thought up by the Russians to cause Georgians to kill their chickens and starve. (In 2006 the Georgian government recommended that all chickens be killed because of the Avian flu deaths in neighboring Turkey. The villagers were not happy.)

• Russia has an earthquake machine. From time to time they still send small quakes to Georgia just to remind them who’s boss.

Funny as these claims might seem to us, many Georgians take them completely seriously and they’re not the only ones. According to this article, Nikola Tesla was working on an earthquake device that could have fallen into Soviet hands. That article may not look particularly trustworthy, but even the popular TV show Mythbusters, took the earthquake machine seriously enough to investigate. Sure enough, their research showed that Tesla was working on such a device. After trying Tesla’s methods, Mythbusters was unable to produce strong results and deemed the earthquake machine myth, “busted”. Just because the Mythbusters staff couldn’t produce results from Tesla’s work, doesn’t mean the top scientists of the Soviet Union wouldn’t have been able to.

If there’s a grain of truth to a story that sounds as crazy as the earthquake machine, what about other conspiracy theories or regional folklore? It was very easy for us Americans, armed with the internet and college degrees, to dismiss the Georgian villagers’ stories as paranoid nonsense. The truth is, we may never know what kinds of shenanigans the American government is up to, let alone Russia. It’s important to always ask questions and do your own research. Serious inquiry into these sorts of things is what separates village legend from a New York Times whistle blower cover story. Pick your favorite conspiracy theory and dig a little deeper. You never know what you’ll discover.