Short: The Vela Incident

where nobody can hear you scream. Don't remind me, don't remind me. So okay, you guys remember the Cold War that they it lasted like twenty years, a little longer than that. It was about twenty years to site. Actually, this is interesting. Historians are like very hotly debate how

long it lasted. Yeah, well, I mean that definitely there was there was a really cold, cold part of it, and then there it was like ninety five up to like the seventies, and then there was detents and then and then things kind of went downhill again with Afghanistan and stuff. But then finally sort of economies are kind of like through in the towel in nine when the

Soviet Union fell. Hopefully I got that date right. So one of the things that happened, and in this thing, the Cold War, in the middle of it, really was that in nineteen sixty three there was a signing of what is officially called the Treaty Banning Nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and underwater, which is more often referred to as the Partial Test Band Treaty, which, as you can understand, you would call it something shorter. Obviously.

It all that stuff, the thing about testing weapons in the atmosphere and outer space, testament outer space. Will you fry a lot of satellites with the MP so it really is a practical good thing to do. Basically, it said that no nation could test detonate nuclear weapons except for underground. Got it pretty straight up? Yeah, pretty much.

In order to help enforce this, because the world's police is, of course the United States America to America, the USA built a number of satellites as part of Project Vela. They called it the Vela Hotel. Part of the project that was the satellites building, and there were four satellites I think in all um you mean you mean four models, four models, so yeah, sorry, not just four of them. Yeah, that makes sense, right, Actually, they put a bunch of

these things up, they did. They put a whole mess of them up, VELA five, A and B and then velass A and B. So basically they built these things. The pictures are pretty cool. They built these things together, and they would launch them together, these models, um, and then they would detach in space and kind of float away from the sea. They were kind of a tetrahedron kind of yeah, and it's really interesting. Yeah, and then they deployed for solar panels and yeah, it was all

fular panels pretty much. They built the originally to have like an eighteen month's shelf life, and you know, they lasted a lot longer, way longer than that. Yeah, because that's back when they built things to actually last. They still do for space. But well, yeah, I was just saying, my DVD player is not that he's not getting launched into space, so it might actually the way it's acting speaking,

I got stick that things will last. We've got a space probe that's approaching Pluto, now, keeping your eye on that a little bit. Yeah, I got a problems. Next in July, it's going to be swinging by Pluto. Now that thing's been out there for years and it's still tooting along. So keep your eyes open for our next episode on Pluto Probe. It's Plu to a planet, is it?

We'll find out anyways, The VLA Hotel satellites monitored for X rays, neutrons, and gamma rays, and over the twenty six year lifespan of the VLA Hotel project, they correctly identified dozens of nuclear detonations, which is a lot, especially since there was like a treaty against it. Nobody was supposed to be doing it. Well, let's be honest. Treaties are there to keep the people who want to follow the rules in line. It's kind of like the locks

on your car. You really shouldn't have to lock your car door, but you do because some people break the rules and get into your car to take things that aren't there. People break the rules, that's why they're there for. Treaties are treatise are you know? They're only followed the extent that people think it's in their interests to follow them. All. The test ban treatise has actually been mostly successful. Yeah,

let's talk about September of nineteen nine. Okay, okay, great, one of the Vale Hotel satellites detected what's called a double flash in uh three thousand mile radius around the print Prince Edward Islands off the coast of Antarctica. Hey, guess what island by the way island in that? Yeah. Yeah, So obviously with the Aliens coming back from their ship. Well, and I think you need to clarify because a three thousand mile radius, that to some people is going to

sound like this satellite sucks. But that's because we're used to very accurate GPS satellites and things like that. Today it wasn't. I mean, we got to remember this was in seventy nine, built in this the late seven or early seventies, It wasn't a super accurate thing. They're also monitoring huge swaths. It wasn't you know. It was kind of one of those this is my patch and something happened in my patch. Come check it out. So what would happen in this situation is Air Force jets would

be deplus woid. They had sensors on them to pick up the kind of particle materials and things like that that they would fall out, Yeah exactly. That's that's how inaccurate they were, and that was to verify the area that it might have been. Yeah, and another reason they are so inaccurate is is that there their their orbit was really high. They were like or but there were seventy three miles up, which is a third of the way of the Moon. So the Earth at that point

it's kind of pretty small, kind of small. Yeah, their focused cone of viewing is a huge, huge area. Yeah. The interesting thing about this particular satellite too, is this satellite was actually kind of officially retired. Yeah, and we'll get to that actually, Yeah, Yeah, it's a relevant point,

it is. It absolutely is. So the just for people who don't know, a double flash is caused because there's the initial fireball that happens after a nuclear detonation and then there's the shock wave after it, and it's those two light anomalies caused the double flash. So there's the first like really fast one and then a slower burn one. Yeah, if you've ever watched the or any of the films of nuclear nukes going off, you'll see the one. To its fair if you've ever seen an image of it,

it's it's clear way, it's super distinct. But in case you haven't there, I'm sure there are people in this world who haven't. They are lacking. According to the d i A, nothing was found when the jets deployed to go, say hey, let's sense all this fallout and figure out

who might be responsible for this sort of thing. The official line is that it actually wasn't a nuclear detonation, that it was something else entirely, and there are some good explanations, yeah, there, there absolutely are, But I do want to quickly point out we're going to go into theories in a second, but before we do that, I want to say that even though the official line is nope, nope,

nothing nothing to see here. If nothing happened here, there was an official list compiled of who could have been responsible for the detonation, and I mean it was. It was submitted into the official report about this. It was like, this definitely wasn't a detonation, but if it was, this is who might have done it. To be fair, the reason the list was assembled is because when they initially detected the flash, they presumed that it was a nuclear device that had gone off. So the first course of

action is who could have done it. It wasn't until later after the committees were assembled and all the other theories were put out there. So that's just so people know why this list was assembled. Trumping on my fun alright, stop stop, stop theories. Yeah, let's do it. Let's do it. Let's assume it's an actual nuclear detonation, right, and it wasn't. And it wasn't the chupa. He didn't do it. Yeah, who could have done it? That's a good question. So

here's the list. Israel South Africa and Israeli South African Effort or Alliance, which according to a reporter who I couldn't never find the name of. I'm sure it exists somewhere, But according to this reporter, the Israeli South African Joint Force did employ two ships with a whole lot of quote Israeli military men and nuclear experts unquote on it to kind of the Prince Albert Island area pretty close

to around the time that this flash double flash was detected. Well, I know, back in those days, there was a lot of military cooperation between Israel and South Africa, that's true. The this theory would further go that the US would also try to help cover up and Israeli test like this to kind of help cover the international profile of kind of a controversial alliance between the US and Israel.

Why is it? Why is it? Okay, So I got I understand the Israeli South African alliance because they're both they're kind of the bad kids on the block. They've got all kinds of sanctions against them, so of course they team up. But how do the Americans play into that? Well, there Israel is our ally, yeah, and that's where they've been their allies forever. Yeah, it was, But but but Jimmy

Carter at the time was pushing non proliferation efforts. Okay, Okay, that's where I got the you know that we're going to work together because everybody else hates us idea. Yeah, but yeah, the but yeah, I think that that's one of the theories out there, and I'm not getting ahead of it, is that that would have forced us to take a position on Israel developing nuclear weapons, even though we knew they had been doing so for quite some time.

But technically we're not, We're going to approve that kind of activity. So that would have you know, it's better to just pretend like this didn't even exist, because that would have put potentially put us at odds with our ally got it okay and too, I guess to piggyback

on that a little bit. In two thousand and ten, it was reported that apparently on February twenty seven, President Jimmy Carter wrote in his diary, because apparently that's the thing we have access to, quote, we have a growing belief among our scientists that the Israelis did, in fact conduct a nuclear test explosion in the ocean near the southern end of Africa. This is alleged. I couldn't I only read this in one place. I couldn't verify it,

but it's interesting if it's true. Um So that's some backing up proof about the Well I will put out. The one thing about South Africa is that when the South African government switched over after you know, anti apartheid and all that, all their stuff came out and it wasn't until three months after this that they were at nuclear capability according to their official documentation. I understand it's

your official documentation. Yeah, but also if it was an alliance, wouldn't if it was well, yeah, but but one of your one, your second bullet point was South Africa. So I'm just I'm putting that out there for that because it just caught up with me generally believed that, Yeah, they didn't quite that weren't quite at that point, but of course they would want to, they would want to participate in this, they'd want to see missionary of learning opportunities.

So there's gotta be more. I'm sure there's more suspects here. Of course there are. Of course, one is obvious. I'm not even going to go into the reasons why it could have been is the Soviet Union. I feel like that's pretty clear. India apparently did have their own nuclear testing program at that point. They cod named it Smiling Buddha. It seems very at odds. Yeah, I personally doubt this so long because I think if the Indians were going to touch off a test, they would do it in Pakistan. Yeah,

I agree, but they do. They do apparently have a pretty documented history of conducting unauthorized trials of nuclear explosions, and so it's possible it could have been them. I don't know why they would have done it so far away, but sure, I guess why not Pakistan, because of course we would say Pakistan did it, but I'm just going

to reverse my India theory there. Yeah, yeah, I think that's fair France because the Prince Edward Islands, many of them are owned by France, so it could have been done on French soil, which France did their own nuclear tests, but they always did it off their own soil on some of these, you know, out in the ocean. Yeah, so that that does make sense, I guess kind of. Yeah. Yeah, and then they usually did theirs in this in the Pacific, right,

they did South Pacific. Yeah, but I mean it stands the reason if they're going to go one place, why not go to another because that's super far away. Why go so far away if you can do it in your other place. I don't have any answer to that. Killed a ton of sea life over the South. Seals they're awful. Baby seals are the worst. I wonder. I wonder after they conducted some of those ocean tests, like out in the Pacific and stuff, how many you know, how many miles of dead animals were floating up to

the surface. Yeah, that's depressing. I don't want to think about it. Yeah, let's just say lots. Yeah, the shock wave that was how many miles it would go. Yeah. Um. And then the last one that I have on the list, which isn't on the official list, is it could have been US. The US would have been the good old USA. That seems like something that we kind of would have done and they covered it up. Well yeah, but I mean, in that case, why report the satellite findings at all?

I think that it was a joint coalition of it wasn't. It wasn't the military that was in control, in control, sorry, that was monitoring what was coming down from the satellites. It was a group of scientists who were reporting to the military. But if the scientists said, oh, hey, by the way, military, here's public record that says that we saw this thing happen. Better deploy, they would be like, well, all right, I guess we'll go out there. And then you tell your guys in the jet, hey, I don't

care what you pick up. Nothing happened. You know. I'm not saying it's a good theory. I'm just saying it's as reasonable as many of the other country theories out there. For me, Okay, well, can I just do one thing about the possibility of the USA? Sure? Is you said, well, we sent the jets out to test for fallout. One of the weird things about the path that they took is they weren't at the right l of Asian or altitude excuse me, to be within the air currents that

should have been carrying any of that fallout. They should have been much lower and instead, evidently, according to the stuff I've read, they were actually higher than they should have been. So you know, they're going with the wind instead of against it, so therefore they wouldn't be picking up any of that fallout, that seems. But yeah, they sounded like a lot of planes out there though that they didn't all fly in the same direction. I understand that.

But but you know, if you put them all at the same altitude and there's a prevailing wind in one direction, or you know, a downward I don't know. I didn't go too far into it. I just remember seeing stuff about we were totally at the wrong altitude. Fair could be So next theory is that it was space debrie or meteorite like a micro media, right, Yeah, obviously if a meteor rte bigger than your time I hit that thing,

it would just blow to piece. It would blow Yeah, it would blow the satellites pieces, but if something smaller than that would break up. Probably, and this is actually the official evaluation of the Office of Science Technology, it was that a small piece of space debris or a small meteor I hit the satellite, which caused particles to fly past the sensors, which caused Fawlty readings that looked like the double flash. Okay, I can, I can see that. Okay.

For me, this answer is a little too convenient, you know, I like the answers that are a little more conspiratorial or out there. I mean, there's a bunch of stuff flying around space, right, I mean a bunch of stuff lying around space. And that thing had been in space for what nine years? More than that, I think, I think it had been in for ten. Maybe I thought it was lost. It's nine seventy, but I could be

wrong more than more than five. Right, somewhere around ten years after that that amount of time, it's very likely scenerally, you're gonna get hit by something, some tiny little piece of debris. It seems like, yeah, and I guess that was the thing. I couldn't find any other reports and again, and I could have missed it I will always allow for that, But I didn't find any other reports of a reading like this coming from space debris hitting one

of these lots and lots of satellites that were up there. Yeah, we had lots of these things up there. You would think that more than one would get pinned by a piece of joke. Yeah, we'll talk about this actually when you talk about the storm. But the flash was allegedly verified by a couple of different sources, the double flash. But you know, the US Air Force jets that were sent to pick up chemical traces to you know, pick

up the fallout. They they didn't find any anomalies. But again it was the US jets that were sent in foil habrid um. The thing that piggybacks on this, I guess is, as we were talking about, this satellite was pretty dang far past its shelf life. It was Vela Hotel six nine one one, and it was apparently at least two years over its design lifetime. Yeah. What's interesting about about this particular model of the satellite is the original design lifetime of it was eighteen months, and then

they extended it out. They extended it to seven years, So it's it should have ended in nineteen seventy seven. And that's an interesting thing about it is apparently there was the impression out there that the that it was actually retired no longer working. Yeah, it seems that that's well, it wasn't entirely working though, that wasn't working totally working. Yeah, it was documented to have a faulty e MP sensor electric micanogic pulse sensor, and uh, it did develop a

fault in its recording memory, which quote cleared itself. It took two years to clear itself. Yeah, but it cleared itself in March of nineteen seventy two. Pretty clever little machine. Pretty smart. Here's the great thing about having a computer floating in space is you can just tinker with it and tinker with it and eventually maybe get it to work. If that happens to your computer in the house, you get bad and thrown away and go get a new one.

I could never imagine going, well, I haven't been able to save anything for two years, but hey, I keep using it. Yeah, so that I mean, it's possible that the reason that it thought that this was a double flash, even if it was just space debris hitting it, was because it was faulty, and that the rest of them hadn't been as faulty for whatever reason, so they wouldn't have read m you know, some space debris as this double flash. Again, I don't, I don't know. It seems weird.

And again there's the stories that it's that other things picked this flash up, which leads us to another theory, which is that there was some huge freak storm and that it was they call it a super lightning bolt, which seems apparently says things happen. I guess something, I I guess it does happen. Yeah, it seems like it would have had to have been giant. Do you remember the Skycowakes episode and we talked about the Bell Island incident briefly, Yeah, and that was supposedly a super lightning

bolds situation. It's been equated to have to be essentially the same thing would have happened, which is odd because they're kind of they're in the same decade. To have two of those happened, odd since those are kind of one in a gazillion strikes, the lightning super lightning strikes today, it just happened like where just instead of getting a bunch of lightning bolts like zig and zagging out of the sky. Everything ever, the clouds all just charge all

at once. It's like a lightning ball, right, I to be honest with you, it's been long enough that I've done the reading on how it happened that because we go through so much research that I don't remember exactly what it is. But it is a perfect chain of events, because lightning is when you've got that a perfect alignment from the cloud to Earth for that electricity to pass pass through. In this case instead of a single line, it's basically it's a cable. Is the only way that

I can think to describe it. And that's off memory, and I that's not exactly right. Yeah, so that's a theory. I guess it would explain why there was no but it seems like the jets are generally deployed quick enough. There would have been some mention of well it was kind of stormy down there or something three thousand mile radius though I don't know. Aren't that fast? That's true? Yeah, And then of course our final theory is aliens. Yeah,

what were they doing? They were getting their lifeboat, yeah, yeah, and then they knew did to cover up their footprint. Yeah, yeah, they didn't, or they're dropping it off. I can't remember exactly how to be honest, I don't remember exactly. I think the lifeboat was discovered and like the mid sixties. Yeah, okay, so they're picking it. They were wiping out the evidence trying to or they were angry. They came back and

they were like, where's our boat here? Yeah? Anyways, any other theories you guys have, No, I'm kind of thinking it was, um the Israeli South African joint efforts myself, but and then obviously we we chose not to acknowledge that. I really just think the satellite was hosed because I don't know that it ever did any reports after that. I couldn't find anything that said that it ever sent any reports after that, which makes me think, since I know it's I think it was, it's e m P

sensor was down, it was already falling apart. I think that it just had a short circuit. Well it's possible, but you know, if it but it continued on in service for a little bit a little bit more than that, you would think that if it was all all jiggy and stuff and all jankie you think there would have been more of these, And remember I mentioned that it

was the satellite was officially retired sort of kind of. Yeah, that's one of the things is that the Israelis and South Africans obviously would be aware of these things and where they are in orbit any given time, and wanting to conceal their tests, they chose to touch off the bomb at a time when this at satellite, which was of course not functioning supposedly was was the one satellite

passing over head. Well, and yeah, I mean we can we can go down that rabbit hole, and we can go down the rabbit hole of there's um, you know, there's the Soviet spy who says that he knows that it was all true and and something along the lines of what you're saying is happening, but we don't know. Yeah, and I'm not faulting the Israelis for for testing nuclear weapons. We live in a rough neighborhood, so but but yeah, that's still my favorite theory. I'm with Joe. Actually that's

my favorite theory too. So there you go, all right, all jeez, okay, solve that. Yeah, solved it in record time. Links are on our website Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. Facebook is a thing, you know. Just search Thinking Sideways. You can join the group like the page. Lots of people there. Yep. Find us on Twitter thinking sideways. Uh. Send us an email Thinking Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. We'll see you next time. I guess. Alright, Bye guys, Bye bye everybody,