The Hurricane Conspiracies Made It Clear—We’re Going Climate Delulu

In the week after Hurricane Helene dumped trillions of gallons of rain over North Carolina’s mountain towns, emergency responders hadn’t yet arrived in Calen Otto’s rural community outside of Asheville. Neither had the conspiracy theories, accusing government agencies of everything from creating the storm itself, to being on the verge of seizing people’s land.

That first week, Otto, a writer who’s lived in the region for six years, said that they and their neighbors didn’t have cell service, and the roads to town were completely blocked by fallen trees. “For a while, we were only talking person to person,” they said. Neighbors with chainsaws helped clear the road of fallen trees and made sure that people had what they needed. “We were checking on each other, saying Oh, you can get power here or water here.”

One of the first conspiracy theories that Otto saw when they returned to the internet was that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had run out of money for Helene recovery efforts because it spent it all on programs for “illegals.” The post was surprising to Otto because there’s a strong culture of mutual aid and support for marginalized groups in the area, they said, pointing to groups like BeLoved Asheville. But the post had taken on a life of its own after being amplified by conservative politicians.

“The conspiracy theories about the government causing the storm, that they controlled the clouds—that felt really ridiculous and insulting,” Otto said, particularly as they found their limited internet bandwidth littered with viral misinformation instead of information from local aid groups and government agencies.

The story continues in Atmos.