The Vela Incident

[Crazy Gringo]

During my latest roaming through vast expanse that is the Internet I found this while looking into gamma bursts.

Link: The Vela Incident

It could be a pretty interesting background for a fanfic. A prequel to X-COM Defense/Enemy Unknown maybe.

Or it just one of those 'strange events' that seem to defy any reasonable explanation like the Tunguska event.

Any thoughts are welcome if you do or do not buy into that Israel-South Africa connection.

[FullAuto]

Perhaps we Brits shouldn't have sold those Israelis all that nuclear material....

 

[Kernel]

Perhaps we Brits shouldn't have sold those Israelis all that nuclear material....

 

 

Please... everybody knows it was the American's that gave the Israelis the material to build the bomb. Haven't you watched The Sum of all Fears?

[FullAuto]

Unfortunately, yes, I have. I wish I hadn't.

[Accounting Troll]

I was given to understand that the Tunguska Event was a meteor impact. There were a couple of other similar incidents over the last century. A meteor impacted the planet in the region of the Arabian Penninsula called the Rub Al Khali, which translates into English as the Empty Quarter; as the name suggests, it is sparsely populated and nobody was hurt, although some sand was turned into obsidian.

 

In or around the 1960s, the USA narrowly avoided a similar fate when a meteor skipped off Earths atmosphere in a fashion similar to skipping a stone across a pond.

 

A couple of other things to think about about:

 

The cult called Aum Shinrikyo that was responsible for the poison gas attack in Tokyo last decade owned a large tract of wilderness in Australia. It has been alleged in the early 1990s that they detonated a nuclear device there, presumably in the hope of conducting some nuclear terrorism.

 

At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets already had 170 nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba that the CIA knew nothing about. Not that it mattered because there was no reliable way of intercepting nuclear missiles launched from the Soviet Union.

 

The USA had several mishaps with its nuclear weapons testing programme, which it tried to cover up. The Castle Bravo incident is best known; its victims included the crew of a Japanese fishing boat ironically called the Lucky Dragon. One of the Nebraska underground explosions turned out to be a bit more powerful than the scientists anticipated; the topsoil was blown off and radioactive dust ended up falling across the USA and Canada.

 

Britain's independant nuclear testing programme was a massive bluff. In the 1950s, paranoia about the Soviets meant that the USA refused to share its data on nuclear testing with ANYBODY, even its closest allies. Britain got hold of the US data by kidding the Americans into thinking that we didn't need it because we were just as capable of blowing up the world as they were.

 

When Ronald Regan was US president, he nearly started a nuclear war by joking that he had passed legislation outlawing the Soviet Union and the bombing was about to begin. He was unaware that his microphone was live and his words were being broadcast to the world.

 

Norway nearly started a nuclear war in 1995. They informed foreign powers that they were about to conduct a conventional missile test, but news failed to filter through to the Russian military.

[FullAuto]

At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets already had 170 nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba that the CIA knew nothing about. Not that it mattered because there was no reliable way of intercepting nuclear missiles launched from the Soviet Union.

 

It wasn't interception the Americans were concerned with, but flight time. Missiles from Cuba could hit the US very quickly, compared to missiles from the USSR. The whole Cuban Missile Crisis was precipitated by the US, though, as they sited nukes in Turkey.

[Kernel]

Did you also know that Khrushchev had agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba without having the US remove it's missiles from Turkey. He was about to send a message to Kennedy to state the fact but before he could, Kennedy sent a message to him telling him that the US would remove the missiles from Turkey. Apparently Khrushchev was very supprised at the new deal from Kennedy and decided to annouce his acceptance of the deal live over Moscow Radio.