Attacked by a Helicopter in Switzerland!

I mean, I felt attacked. That’s the same thing, right?

Yesterday morning I woke up and decided to go explore the… I want to say.. town? It might be a village but it’s 100% not a city. Cities have things like night clubs and baseball franchises and Ascona has neither.

But what it does have is an abundance of nature and water and mountains. So I looked on the map and saw there was a bridge close by. And it went over water. So I walked in that direction to check it out (the photos I posted yesterday are from there.)

While I was on the bridge enjoying the nature I heard what sounded like a helicopter approaching and sure enough it was a helicopter. I captured this video. 

All joking aside about this being a black-ops spy chopper (it totally was) about 40 minutes later I was walking along the same river and there was a woman (maybe mid-60s) walking her dogs so I (of course) started chatting with her (first about her dogs and then other stuff). 

[I need to make a quick aside about men interacting with women who are walking alone in nature. Way back in April of 2024, someone on twitter asked “Walking alone in the woods would you rather encounter a bear or a man?” And the VAST majority of women were on Team Bear while a lot of LOUD men were on… let’s be charitable and say Team Confused.*

The short version is that bears are predictable and men are not. So if one out of a thousand men is dangerous it makes it perfectly understandable for women to be… let’s say “cautious” around any man in an isolated setting.

With this in mind, yesterday there were other people within earshot and I was dressed like a tourist so I didn’t feel this was a bear-type situation. Also we were approaching on a path so we were going to have to pass each other regardless.]

So we’re chatting about random things and I asked her what the deal with the helicopter was. Figured a local might know if anything was going on. I thought her response of “there’s a global war happening right now” was a generic observation (the Swiss version of “the whole world is going to Hell.”) But no. It was not generic. It was actually very, very specific.

You see, according to this woman there’s a global cabal of elites who are killing our leaders (and replacing them with… actors I guess.) She listed the top three countries involved (two of which I (silently) agreed are kind of awful) but the third one was Switzerland. I wanted to say “This fucking place? The Prince Edward Island of Europe?” But saying this would have extended the amount of time I would have to be near this person. A person whose mind had clearly taken a break from reality.

She then proceeded to give me her phone number (she didn’t have her phone with her – and for this I gave her total respect. So many of these I’m-being-spied-on types willingly carry around their own personal surveillance rectangle – so ditching hers is actually a very sane thing to do.) Her phone number was so I could send her the video of the chopper and she also suggested a YouTube channel for me to check out.

But hands down the best part of this whole interaction was when she was explaining to me how “They’re spying on us” and I was like (in my mind) “Come on lady” and then no joke – 90 seconds later the black ops helicopter returned.

We watched it pass and then she just nodded and said “See.”

So I can’t really discount her completely. Maybe there’s a Hot Fuzz situation happening here (the pretty surface is hiding a dark, action-packed secret) but I think in reality Switzerland is nice and clean and they probably have the same amount of not-in-plain-sight badness as any other western democracy. And that badness is likely just boring old capitalism.

To finish I would like to be clear that I’m not trying to make fun of this woman. I found the whole interaction bizarre, a bit sad, and (when the chopper returned) hilarious. I don’t know her situation but she’s clearly got some pieces missing. Lots of seniors are lonely and social media sites like YouTube make their money off of engaging users with content that is like fast food: delicious, but if it’s all you consume it’s going to make you sick.

Stay safe out there everyone. 

*in reality the loud men were on Teams Angry and Hostile. And probably the funniest part of this whole Bear discourse is that there was this one guy from Team Hostile who was like “Hey! It’s not funny! My mom was attacked by a bear!” and then his mom joined the convo and announced that she was firmly on Team Bear. Sorry dude. Your attempt to reduce the hilarity actually increased it. By a lot.