WFLA News Channel 8/Sony PicturesThese days, it’s unwise to do pretty much anything without insurance, because shit happens.
Good news then, for the 1.9 million people who have clicked ‘attending’ on the recent viral sensation ‘Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us‘, as one company is offering insurance against alien abduction.
The Saint Lawrence Agency in Altamonte Springs, Florida, which is owned by Mike St. Lawrence, is currently offering limited or comprehensive alien abduction insurance. The company also reportedly offers reincarnation insurance, asteroid insurance, and even insurance for anyone who storms Area 51 but doesn’t make it out alive.
WikipediaAccording to the company, an alien abduction insurance policy – for example, if you’re beamed aboard a UFO without your prior consent – can be bought for a one-time fee $24.95, which includes a paper copy of your policy. If, however, you’re happy with a digital copy, that can be purchased for a discounted $19.95.
Each policy is good for life, apparently, and is worth $10 million in coverage, which is said to include outpatient psychiatric care, ‘sarcasm coverage’ for disbelieving family members, and double identity coverage.
St. Lawrence says he’s already sold around 6,000 policies since he first started offering them back in 1987. While interest in the policy has spiked since the recent viral Facebook event, St. Lawrence says they are only intended for people with a sense of humour.
He told Fox 35 Orlando:
There’s a readjustment period if you’ve gone through something like this.
I don’t want to try to rip somebody off. The people that come to me, if I think they don’t understand the terms and conditions, that this is tongue and cheek, I won’t sell it to them.
PixabayHe has, of course, been contacted by people who claim to have genuinely been abducted, or any extra-terrestrial experiences, such as a husband and wife who both said they’d had an alien encounter they’d not revealed to anyone else.
As Mike explained:
Their 9-year-old son and daughter, I don’t remember how old she was, were both starting to say that they were having some kind of experience like that, and that’s not funny.
Mike said he suggested to them the policy wouldn’t be right for them, however, as it was intended to be humourous.
PixabayWhile you might think, given the terms, St. Lawrence’s policy would never pay out, there has actually been one instance. One policy holder made a claim saying an implant which came out of their body was not made of an earthly substance. An MIT professor agreed, and as such St. Lawrence agreed to pay out a dollar a year.
Which goes to show – you’ve got to read that small print. According to the policies, any successful claims are paid out in equal instalments of $1 per year for 10 or 20 million years.
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.