After being on active duty, I was IRR and got activated/attached to a reserve unit and sent to Germany right at the kick-off of Desert Shield. We were on a train-up cycle but since the Iraqis packed it in early, our unit was tasked with pulling guard duty around Frankfurt.
As boredom took over, a few of us started to make up this elaborate conspiracy theory driven story about how the whole Gulf War was a cover to fight an invasion of alien pod people.
Those odd shaped water towers by the housing areas in Frankfurt?
Docking stations for alien ships bringing more pods.
The First Sgt. got sick,hospitalized and returned to CONUS.
It's because he was exposed to one of the pods and was about to "turn."
Why were a bunch of Infantry guys attached to an MP brigade and sent to Germany?
The pod people were using the activities in Iraq and Kuwait as a diversion and were about to strike Europe.
The oil well fires?
A result of the death rays used by the pod people.
It went on and on.
I knew things had gotten out of hand when one night on CQ , I overheard a couple of Captains from battalion S2 taking to each other about hearing rumors of troops talking about pod people.
I made some kind of wise-ass comment like "I thought that all information regarding the pod people was classified." or something like that. The two Captains thought that was funny, laughed and left the CP.
About a week later, no one was laughing (at least out loud) when the battalion SGM held a formation and unequivocally informed us that there were not, never had been, nor would there ever be any pod people.
And that any further mention of the pod people would result in some loving attention personally administered by the SGM.