Have you ever created something with your friends that seemed completely harmless but ended up having a bigger impact in the world than you expected?

In today’s story, some college kids get together to create something they learned about in high school, a “solar balloon.”

It was fun for them, but it wasn’t so fun for a town in New Jersey!

Let’s find out what happened.

8 years ago I caused a UFO panic

One college summer break 8 years ago my friends and I were bored.

We remembered a demonstration from a high school science class of a “Solar Balloon”.

This was just a really thin black plastic bag you’d fill with air, seal, and then set out in the sun. The sun would heat the air in the black bag and the bag would become buoyant and float.

We had the idea to find the cheapest/thinnest black plastic trash bags available and combine a bunch of them to make a huge balloon.

They got to work.

We spent a few days driving around to Walmarts and dollar stores trying different brands to find the thinnest possible plastic bag and thinnest tape which would work the best.

Finally we took a number of them, cut off the bottom ends, and taped them together into a huge balloon which we filled up with a leaf blower and then tied the end.

After sitting out in the sun for a half hour or so we had done it!

We had to mess around with how the tape was sealing the bags to use as little of it as possible as the weight of the tape added up and made the balloon harder to float.

It didn’t end the way they’d expected.

Shortly after this the balloon got away from us

This was dissapointing, but we made another one and got funny looks from cars driving by and were entertained for a bit.

Shortly after that this new balloon met it’s demise smacking into a tree and getting popped.

Oh well, mission success.

The balloon made it further than they realized.

A few years later I happened across this news article.

The balloon that got away had apparently blown a town over and caused a big UFO panic.

People were calling 911, the police, and local radio stations about it.

Our boredom unintentionally created a UFO panic in central NJ.

I moved out of the area but when I get together with my friend we always bring this up and have a good laugh.

Wow! Talk about an unintended consequence. It’s especially funny because they didn’t find out until years later.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

There may be another unintended consequence.

This is definitely true.

This is one of those people.

The person who wrote the news article actually commented on this confession!

What a crazy story!

If you thought that was an interesting story, check this one out about a man who created a points system for his inheritance, and a family friend ends up getting almost all of it.