LAKE LURE, North Carolina — The public marina in this small rural town is now just a graveyard of boats, piled into a heap of debris in a beige lake polluted with silt.
Dirt and dust blanket almost everything nearly a month after Hurricane Helene dug its mud-colored path of destruction. The storm’s heavy rains and strong winds bore the unmistakable fingerprints of climate change, which is fueling more intense weather, according to researchers.
But among some locals, climate change seems less likely than another explanation they have encountered online: space lasers.
“They were shooting beams on either side of the storm to contain it and direct it,” said Nancy M., a 72-year-old who said she moved to the area eight years ago after retiring from the Fish and Wildlife Service. She took a break from organizing donations on a recent day to explain the (false) conspiracy theory using an empty Kirkland’s diaper box.
