Earlier this week, 49ers general manager John Lynch revealed the organization was going to look into the possibility that the electrical substation right next to Levi's Stadium and the team's practice facilities might be the cause of their injury woes. This is especially surprising because Lynch also seemed to point out that the viral conspiracy theory had already been debunked.
That's how bad things have been going in San Francisco lately. So even if it's not low-level electromagnetic fields that are causing the team's injury report to fill up week after week and season after season, we should at least treat the subject with the same seriousness that the Niners are.
So with that in mind here's how the electrical substation conspiracy was born, gained traction and briefly took over a news cycle.
The origins of the 49ers electric substation conspiracy theory
A few days after the 49ers lost to the Seattle Seahawks in Week 18, a thread was posted on X (formerly Twitter) by someone named Peter Cowan. Cowan's bio reads, "Circadian science + photobiology + biophysics | 1:1 Coaching | EMF consultant | Board Certified QBP."
On Jan. 6 he began a thread that went on for approximately 20 tweets over multiple days explaining how chronic extremely low frequency (ELF) electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure is "degrading the collagen integrity in the players tendons, ligaments, and muscle-tendon junctions." Cowan posted a video from the ground outside the team's practice field saying he had brought a gauss meter (which measures the strength of magnetic fields, obviously) and proceeded to share his findings.
I went to the 49ers' practice fields with a gaussmeter.
— Peter Cowan | Sunlight is Life (@living_energy) January 6, 2026
At 11am on a quiet Monday, well below peak load, it read 8.5+ milligauss at the far edge of the fields.
Inside the facilities (weight room, film room, recovery areas), potentially 10–25 mG, spiking higher during peak grid… pic.twitter.com/xsFnuoyatb
"At 11am on a quiet Monday, well below peak load, it read 8.5+ milligauss at the far edge of the fields.
Inside the facilities (weight room, film room, recovery areas), potentially 10–25 mG, spiking higher during peak grid demand.
Typical background exposure is 0.5-3 mG."
If you don't like the look of those figures, you're not alone.
Over the last couple weeks more than 22 million people have at least viewed the first tweet in the series. Only 730,000 have seen the post about the gauss meter, but that's still a large number of people to be concerned with milligauss levels.
Cowan has spent the ensuing days both being praised and dragged online with the Washington Post and Front Office Sports both debunking the theory.
While Cowan has been dealing with that, he was not actually the first person to discuss the theory on social media. In late October, Chase Senior, a content creator for Chat Sports who has 20,000 followers on X, floated the electrical substation theory on X in a post linked by Cowan in his thread. Senior also discussed the theory on his YouTube show.
"One theory that is interesting (if you want to get nerdy and holistic) is something Jon Feliciano brought up," Senior tweeted. "How players have joked around about their being an electrical substation that's right next to the practice field and how that has led to the Niners' injury problems."
Feliciano was the 49ers starting right guard in '23, but missed all of the '24 season with a knee injury after he was placed on injured reserve in August. He announced his retirement after the season and appeared on multiple radio shows and podcasts to discuss his and the team's injuries, but I can't find anything about him mentioning the substation on video or in print before Senior's tweet.
He did, however, field a lot of media requests after the theory went viral. About a week after Cowan's first post, Felicano posted a video on Instagram saying he wasn't going to do any interviews about it, but that it was "definitely a conversation" during the two years he was with the team.
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Now the 49ers must emphatically debunk the already debunked theory.
What if the 49ers substation conspiracy is more than a theory?
As Lynch noted, the 49ers are looking into this, so they'll probably bring in someone with a gauss meter, measure the milligausses and find out what's really going on. But, uh, what if there is something going on? What if 49ers players really are experiencing degrading collagen integrity in their tendons and ligaments and that's why they're getting injured?
They would literally have to move the stadium and practice facility. They can't stay unless there's something that could block the EMF radiation. A tall, wide, thick wall perhaps? Not ideal, but better than continued exposure and cheaper than building a new stadium and practice facility.
And that's just little picture football stuff. What would this mean for civilians who live near electrical substations? The financial and legal ramifications, not to mention the medical issues, would be ... unbelievable.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as 49ers Electrical Substation Conspiracy Theory Origins Explained.
