Cold Fusion (2011) is an unusual choice for this survey of ESDA projects, as it is a pretty small film even compared to b-movies I’ve covered in the last two blogs. Whether or not it is a sanctioned ESDA project can also be debated by reasonable people. While it does feature a handful of “names”, this is a very low-budget project. I have to wonder if it isn’t some sort of “thesis” for an aspiring ESDA writer to show their chops with. Nate Atkins wrote this, but, honestly, much of the writing is below the standard of his other work, so it is possible he was mostly a “face” for the ESDA neophyte.
(I should mention that Encyclopedia Reptilica will have a significant section dedicated to ESDA culture corps., Men in Black, and Hollywood. At least that is what T.A. Wardrope keeps telling me.)
Let’s get one nitpick out of the way. This text appears on all the web summaries of Cold Fusion: “In 1979 a UFO is spotted over Ukrainian territory in the Soviet Union. A squadron of MIG23 fighters are dispatched to intercept it.” I know there are actual aviation experts that contribute to this blog, but let me just point out that MiG-23s do not appear in the film.

This is a MiG-25 Foxbat as seen in Cold Fusion.

MiG-23 Flogger in the real world, circa 2000.
MiG-25’s do feature in the film. These planes actually makes sense since the Foxbat is a high-altitude, high-speed interceptor designed to interrupt the missions of aircraft like SR-71 or B-1B bombers. Or UAP, one can assume. So, who knows where the MiG-23 identification came from, but it could be an example of “playful” ESDA misdirection.
What about the UAP?
Anyway, the MiG-25 Foxbats do engage a flying saucer type UAP over Soviet Ukraine. They shoot it down with standard AA missiles. Of course, this is not unheard of. Still it is an interesting inclusion in light of the more recent evasive moves captured by USN pilots. The saucer crashes in Ukraine.
Storyline jumps forward to 2011, a mysterious terror attack happens in Iowa, USA. A small EMP weapon detonates at a community festival. The bomb kills “253” people, and renders tech useless for many, many miles around. (The script keeps calling out the 253 figure. The movie shows an entire town leveled, which should be the toll at least four times higher. Who am I to quibble?)
Agent Unger (Adrian Paul) arrives to investigate. Unger is the leader of GIÙ, which appears to be some sort of Black Budget agency that answers directly to the President. Things happen, other things happen. Lila Body (Sarah Brown), Unger’s best agent, investigates a Ukrainian lab suspected of making the materials in the EMP bomb.
She connects with Eketerina Demidrova (Michelle Lee), a Russian agent who has deep cover near the suspected location of the Ukrainian lab. This takes place three years before Russian began its overt fuckery with Ukraine. So, all of this is from the time when Russia and the United States were cooperating on some official level. (Different from the kind of cooperation we have now, lol.)
More stuff happens. Eketerina’s deep cover is she is an exotic dancer at the strip club near the local base, which happens to be above the underground lab. This gives her access to the security personnel at the base, so she recruits Lila to work at the club as well.
SPOILERS AND SHIT FROM HERE ON OUT
Rogue military run the underground lab. They are Soviets stationed in Ukraine who stuck around to babysit the retrieved UAP. Additionally, they have the resources to have a leading Russian scientist (in a very Goldeneye(1995) – inspired role) working on reverse-engineering the UAP. Since this is a rogue operation, they don’t have all the resources they need, so they settle on weaponizing the cold fusion material the UAP uses for fuel.
Why would they do this, you ask? The people with the EMP want to stage attacks which will draw the US and Russian into a hot war. Which will…increase funding for their UAP project? Not sure.
What is clear is that this lab is getting funding, at least partially, from a Black Budget department in the NSA. This department is led by Willis (William Hope) and their goals are also, um, vague. Plot wise, they want the GIÙ agents killed before they can interrupt the false-flag-new-world-order plot.
Things happen, things happen. The UAP and the base are destroyed. Nothing close to disclosure happens in the aftermath. Setting up a sequel to further explore the ongoing adventures of Agent Unger and the GIÙ. Kidding, kidding.
Cold Fusion: Why Should We Care?
There is a lot of things in Cold Fusion that interest a UFO film nerd such as myself. Which doesn’t really answer the question of why you should care about it. Ha hah. A perplexing part of this film, especially considering how obscure it is, is trying to figure out what is actual ESDA involvement and what is just casually cribbing from tropes the ESDA has established over the last seven decades.
So, besides asking “What is it?”, there are a couple of other items to look at closely for evidence of ESDA communications. I mean the nature of GRI and the NSA cut-out operation do at least nod toward the many tentacles that operate the levers of the UAP complex within the United States and beyond. Nothing specific, but there is a general awareness of how complicated the machinery of UAP disclosure and security are.
Perhaps, the most interesting “tell” in this film is how it focuses so strongly on Ukraine as a flashpoint for UAP/Russia/United States. Of course, three years later the first “hot” parts of this conflict would flare up. Eleven years after this film, amidst serious ExoPoli conflict, the war would get much hotter and threaten the global order as a whole. The ESDA may not be fortune tellers, but they do love to leave their breadcrumbs.
Cold Fusion and New Jersey
Interesting that there is no significant mention of the alien pilots of this UAP. Quite possible they didn’t have the budget for these effects. Remote piloted UAP? This exact theory has recently bubbled back up around the New Jersey drone technology and the Jake Barber psyop. Of course, in usual ESDA fashion, it also completely contradicts the “whistleblower” stories about NHI body recovery seen in other messaging. So it goes.
I should say that there is something weirdly specific about using small amounts of UAP fuel for miniaturized EMP weapons. This could be the nugget of information this entire project was built around. Using pieces of retrieved technology that we can understand makes total sense. The idea aligns with what we do know about UAP retrieval. Rogue UAP tech could help wage asymmetrical warfare, and not at all implausible.
I am well over my word count, so I’ll wrap this up. In summary, I don’t know if you need to see Cold Fusion, but it is worth watching as an example of a fringey sort of ESDA-adjacent media. Or don’t, by this point you know most of what there is to know about it.