Over the last week or so, my Facebook feed has been clogged with "fake snow" videos and wildly absurd conspiracy theories. Let's let the brilliant Phil Plait break it down for you.

This entire chain of lunacy started a week or so ago when Atlanta got "pounded" (two inches of snow) by a winter storm. People were stranded, survival became key, and the crazies came out of the woodwork and started posting to the web.

The theory that keeps popping up in my feed breaks down like this... The contrails coming off of airplanes are really a product of the government spraying chemicals over the country. These chemically laced vapor trails (known as chemtrails) then mixed with the polar vortex to create a wicked winter storm. The winter storm dumped chemical and/or plastic snow all over the USA.

The theory is backed up by putting a lighter to the snow... It turns black, it melts like plastic, and it smells horrible. You would think it's an event that blows the government conspiracy theories wide open, but it's really just an indictment of the US public school system.

Phil Plait is a brilliant scientist, and he's going to break it down for us in the simplest terms my seven year old nephew could follow. Quite sharing bunk stories

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