When UFO Incidents stunned the American Military, Press and Public - Will the Mystery finally be Solved?

Sixty-six years ago, in July of 1952, the greatest government documented cluster of UFO sightings in our history took place in and around our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. and the country was in a near panic.

This was just five years after the infamous Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash, also officially reported by the government, only to have a cover up begin within twenty-four hours.  These two are among very few documented UFO cases by the government before the veil of secrecy dropped down on the events.

To put things in even sharper perspective, the world was on edge since two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945 ending World War II.  Former allies the US and Soviet Union turned their threats and guns on each other and these two superpowers were intent on nuclear dominance.

The nation of Israel was formed in 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated the same year.  A year later NATO was formed to protect the west from the growing might of the Soviet Union.  By 1950 the Korean War started, a proxy war for the two superpowers that lasted three years.

Before the end of 1952 the world would witness the first thermonuclear bomb, the USA hydrogen bomb, moving us one step closer to a doomsday weapon.

As for aliens, our attention first turned to the possibility of alien beings, not with the shocking crash of the UFO in Roswell, but a decade earlier when a young actor named Orson Welles gave a live radio broadcast of the War of the Worlds involving a Martian landing in New Jersey.  Millions of Americans panicked.

PBS Overview

Orson Welles radio broadcast “War of the Worlds” 1938

Ironically, the even more terrifying science fiction thriller, the movie War of the Worlds, based on Welles previous work, was released a year after the Washington, DC UFO swarm in 1953.

War of the Worlds Movie clips 1953

Why the sudden interest in major UFO activity over the years?  Stay tuned, the Truth is Out There and it is about to Come Here!

THE 1952 WASHINGTON, D.C., UFO INCIDENT, EXPLAINED

Gaia staff

THE GREAT 1952 WASHINGTON, D.C., UFO INCIDENT

It was around 11:40 p.m. on Saturday night, July 19, 1952. Air traffic controller Edward Nugent was at his radar screen at Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., when he saw seven unusual blips on the screen. No known aircraft were in the area and there was no explanation for the presence of the objects. Nugent called his superior, Harry Barnes, to come and look. Together, they watched the mysterious objects dart across the sky. They even checked to make sure the radar was working properly.

Nugent and his boss checked with the control tower and learned that both controllers in the tower had also seen the blips. They called nearby Andrews Air Force Base, where controllers also saw strange objects on their radar screens.

Two of the objects clearly hovered over the White House, with another one over the Capitol. Controllers at both airports began tracking the objects, which they estimated to be traveling at about 130 mph when they suddenly disappeared from the radar screen. Then appeared again, zipping all around the sky. One made a 90-degree turn and another one suddenly went in reverse, both maneuvers that American airplanes could not make at the time.

An airline captain, S.C. Pierman, was waiting on the tarmac in the cockpit of his DC-4 at National Airport for authorization to take off. While waiting, he saw six objects moving about the sky. Over a 14-minute time period, Pierman would see the objects and then they would disappear, reappearing moments later. He was talking to controller Barnes this entire time. Every time Pierman reported a sighting, a blip appeared on Barnes’s radar screen. At 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, July 20, the objects disappeared entirely.

Were these really unidentified flying objects (UFOs)? Did they come back again on another day for a second look? What was the significance of the 1952 UFO sightings and how did the sightings become known as the Great UFO Flap of 1952?

THE OBJECTS RETURN ON JULY 26, 1952

At around 8:15 p.m. one week later, a stewardess and a captain were on an inbound flight into Washington National Airport. They observed strange lights above their plane. At the same time, an officer at Andrews Air Force Base also observed the objects. Other pilots in the air at the time saw them, too. Similar to the occurrence from the week before, the “encore performance” of the UFOs ended around dawn on Sunday morning. The objects disappeared from sight and off of the airport radar.

NEWS HEADLINES AND UFO PUBLICITY

After the UFO Washington, D.C. incident of July 19, 1952, the headlines from The Washington Post's Monday edition declared, “'Saucer Outruns Jet, Pilot Reveals.” The article stated that the Air Defense Command sent a jet pilot up “to investigate the objects,” but was unable to overtake the moving glowing lights.

According to The Washington Post, the UFOs hovered only 1,700 feet above the White House lawn. An Air Force spokesperson said that their organization took steps to properly investigate the event, but the newspaper found the investigation veiled in secrecy. An unidentified traffic controller said the radar signals ruled out the possibility that the objects were due to weather conditions. He noted that they looked like an "aircraft in flight" on the radar screen.

The government created Project Blue Book to scientifically investigate all reported UFO sightings and relevant data to determine if they posed a threat to national security, which they terminated in January 1970. During its time in existence, from 1952 to 1970, it investigated 12,618 UFO reports. It found most of the occurrences coincided with natural phenomena. Only a handful remained unexplained.

As luck would have it, Air Force Captain, Edward J. Ruppelt, supervisor of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, was in Washington, D.C. He learned of the UFO incident from reading the newspaper and discussed the situation with Captain Roy James, a radar specialist. James thought unusual weather conditions could have been responsible for objects appearing to show on radar.

OFFICIAL AIR FORCE EXPLANATION

On July 29, 1952, Air Force Major Generals John Samford, Director of Intelligence, and Roger Ramsey, Director of Operations held the largest press conference of any since the end of World War II. The official explanation of the July UFO sightings was that:

• The objects were “misidentified aerial phenomena,” which could mean they were stars or meteors
• The blips on the radar were due to temperature inversions Samford also said that the since the radar blips were not caused by any solid material, there was no threat to national security. He explained that when a weather inversion occurs, lights that are really on the ground may look like they are in the air and this caused the radar to misreport ground objects being in the sky.

The explanation was not well-received. Ruppelt, from Project Blue Book, noted that during the months of June, July and August in Washington D.C. “hardly a night passed” where there wasn’t a temperature inversion and there were not routine UFO sightings on the radar. All air traffic controller involved stated that even if the weather could cause a blip on the radar, it would be as a straight line and would not appear as lights.

In 1969, a scientific report released by the Air Force concluded that a temperature inversion strong enough to create the effect attributed to it by General Samford could not possibly occur in the Earth’s atmosphere. Even so, more than 50 years later, most people still accept the temperature inversion explanation.

THE ROBERTSON PANEL

The CIA commissioned the Robertson Panel in January 1953, in response to the number of UFO sightings from the year prior. The CIA encouraged Project Blue Book to be more active in debunking sightings than investigating them. There was also a huge public relations push to decrease the public’s interest in UFOs.

1952: A BUSY YEAR FOR UFOS

1952 is still one of the most active times in modern history for UFOs. Not only were there reports in Washington, D.C. during that time, but all over the world. In the first six months of 1952, there were about 300 unexplained UFO sightings, four times the number during the same time period of 1951. By the end of July, there were about 400 reports — more than there had been in any other year in history.

For UFO enthusiasts, 1952 remains an important year in history. To delve deeper into the mysterious events of 1952, be sure to watch the Dark Alliance episode of Deep Space.

Uploaded by Lied2Bad on Oct 3, 2010

American History not Taught in School....
E.T been around Since Ancient Civilization this

UFO MASS SIGHTING

The 1952 Washington D.C. UFO incident, also known as the Washington flap or the Washington National Airport Sightings, was a series of unidentified flying object reports from July 12 to July 29, 1952, over Washington D.C.

The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19--20 and July 26--27.

Longtime ufologist Richard H. Hall, who served as the assistant director of NICAP and as the director of the Fund for UFO Research, writes:[1] "The summer 1952 UFO sighting wave was one of the largest of all time, and arguably the most significant of all time in terms of the credible reports and hardcore scientific data obtained."

At 11:40 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, 1952, Edward Nugent, an air-traffic controller at Washington National Airport, spotted seven objects on his radar. The objects were located 15 miles south-southwest of the city; no known aircraft were in the area and the objects were not following any established flight paths. Nugent's superior, Harry Barnes, a senior air-traffic controller at the airport, watched the objects on Nugent's radarscope. He later wrote: "We knew immediately that a very strange situation existed . . . their movements were completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft" (Clark, p. 653).

Barnes had two controllers check Nugent's radar; they found that it was working normally. Barnes then called National Airport's other radar center; the controller there, Howard Cocklin, told Barnes that he also had the objects on his radarscope. Furthermore, Cocklin said that by looking out of the control tower window he could see one of the objects: "a bright orange light. I can't tell what's behind it" (Clark, 653).

At this point, other objects appeared in all sectors of the radarscope; when they moved over the White House and the United States Capitol, Barnes called Andrews Air Force Base, located 10 miles from National Airport. Although Andrews reported that they had no unusual objects on their radar, an airman soon called the base's control tower to report the sighting of a strange object. Airman William Brady, who was in the tower, then saw an "object which appeared to be like an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail . . . [it was] unlike anything I had ever seen before." As Brady tried to alert the other personnel in the tower, the strange object "took off at an unbelievable speed" and vanished in "a split second". He then observed a second, similar object, but it also disappeared before anyone else in the tower could see it (Clark, 654). At 12:30 a.m. on July 20, another person in the National Airport control tower reported seeing "an orange disk about 3,000 feet altitude". On one of the airport's runways, S.C. Pierman, a Capital Airlines pilot, was waiting in the cockpit of his DC-4 for permission to take off. After spotting what he believed to be a meteor, he was told that the control tower's radar had picked up unknown objects closing in on his position. Pierman observed six objects — "white, tailless, fast-moving lights" — over a 14-minute period (Clark, 655). Pierman was in radio contact with Barnes during his sighting, and Barnes later related that "each sighting coincided with a pip we could see near his plane. When he reported that the light streaked off at a high speed, it disappeared on our scope."

At Andrews AFB, meanwhile, the control tower personnel were tracking on radar what some thought to be unknown objects, but others suspected, and in one instance were able to prove, were simply stars and meteors. However, Staff Sgt. Charles Davenport observed an orange-red light to the south; the light "would appear to stand still, then make an abrupt change in direction and altitude . . . this happened several times" (Clark, 655). At one point both radar centers at National Airport and the radar at Andrews AFB were tracking an object hovering over a radio beacon. The object vanished in all three radar centers at the same time (Ruppelt, p. 160). At 3 a.m., shortly before two jet fighters from Newcastle AFB in Delaware arrived over Washington, all of the objects vanished from the radar at National Airport. However, when the jets ran low on fuel and left, the objects returned, which convinced Barnes that "the UFOs were monitoring radio traffic and behaving accordingly" (Clark, 656). The objects were last detected by radar at 5:30 a.m. Around sunrise, E.W. Chambers, a civilian radio engineer in Washington's suburbs, observed "five huge disks circling in a loose formation.

They tilted upward and left on a steep ascent."

Read more: http://theedgeofreality.proboards.com/thread/1109/washington-ufo-flap-july-1952#ixzz57dEzIQWb

   

When UFO Incidents stunned the American Public - Will the Mystery finally be Solved?

.

Sixty-six years ago, in July of 1952, the greatest government documented cluster of UFO sightings in our history took place in and around our nation's capital, Washington, D.C. and the country was in a near panic.

This was just five years after the infamous Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash, also officially reported by the government, only to have a cover up begin within twenty-four hours.  These two are among very few documented UFO cases by the government before the veil of secrecy dropped down on the events.

To put things in even sharper perspective, the world was on edge since two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945 ending World War II.  Former allies the US and Soviet Union turned their threats and guns on each other and these two superpowers were intent on nuclear dominance.

The nation of Israel was formed in 1948, Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated the same year.  A year later NATO was formed to protect the west from the growing might of the Soviet Union.  By 1950 the Korean War started, a proxy war for the two superpowers that lasted three years.

Before the end of 1952 the world would witness the first thermonuclear bomb, the USA hydrogen bomb, moving us one step closer to a doomsday weapon.

As for aliens, our attention first turned to the possibility of alien beings, not with the shocking crash of the UFO in Roswell, but a decade earlier when a young actor named Orson Welles gave a live radio broadcast of the War of the Worlds involving a Martian landing in New Jersey.  Millions of Americans panicked.

PBS Overview

Orson Welles radio broadcast “War of the Worlds” 1938

Ironically, the even more terrifying science fiction thriller, the movie War of the Worlds, based on Welles previous work, was released a year after the Washington, DC UFO swarm in 1953.

War of the Worlds Movie clips 1953

Why the sudden interest in major UFO activity over the years?  Stay tuned, the Truth is Out There and it is about to Come Here!

THE 1952 WASHINGTON, D.C., UFO INCIDENT, EXPLAINED

Gaia staff

THE GREAT 1952 WASHINGTON, D.C., UFO INCIDENT

It was around 11:40 p.m. on Saturday night, July 19, 1952. Air traffic controller Edward Nugent was at his radar screen at Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., when he saw seven unusual blips on the screen. No known aircraft were in the area and there was no explanation for the presence of the objects. Nugent called his superior, Harry Barnes, to come and look. Together, they watched the mysterious objects dart across the sky. They even checked to make sure the radar was working properly.

Nugent and his boss checked with the control tower and learned that both controllers in the tower had also seen the blips. They called nearby Andrews Air Force Base, where controllers also saw strange objects on their radar screens.

Two of the objects clearly hovered over the White House, with another one over the Capitol. Controllers at both airports began tracking the objects, which they estimated to be traveling at about 130 mph when they suddenly disappeared from the radar screen. Then appeared again, zipping all around the sky. One made a 90-degree turn and another one suddenly went in reverse, both maneuvers that American airplanes could not make at the time.

An airline captain, S.C. Pierman, was waiting on the tarmac in the cockpit of his DC-4 at National Airport for authorization to take off. While waiting, he saw six objects moving about the sky. Over a 14-minute time period, Pierman would see the objects and then they would disappear, reappearing moments later. He was talking to controller Barnes this entire time. Every time Pierman reported a sighting, a blip appeared on Barnes’s radar screen. At 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, July 20, the objects disappeared entirely.

Were these really unidentified flying objects (UFOs)? Did they come back again on another day for a second look? What was the significance of the 1952 UFO sightings and how did the sightings become known as the Great UFO Flap of 1952?

THE OBJECTS RETURN ON JULY 26, 1952

At around 8:15 p.m. one week later, a stewardess and a captain were on an inbound flight into Washington National Airport. They observed strange lights above their plane. At the same time, an officer at Andrews Air Force Base also observed the objects. Other pilots in the air at the time saw them, too. Similar to the occurrence from the week before, the “encore performance” of the UFOs ended around dawn on Sunday morning. The objects disappeared from sight and off of the airport radar.

NEWS HEADLINES AND UFO PUBLICITY

After the UFO Washington, D.C. incident of July 19, 1952, the headlines from The Washington Post's Monday edition declared, “'Saucer Outruns Jet, Pilot Reveals.” The article stated that the Air Defense Command sent a jet pilot up “to investigate the objects,” but was unable to overtake the moving glowing lights.

According to The Washington Post, the UFOs hovered only 1,700 feet above the White House lawn. An Air Force spokesperson said that their organization took steps to properly investigate the event, but the newspaper found the investigation veiled in secrecy. An unidentified traffic controller said the radar signals ruled out the possibility that the objects were due to weather conditions. He noted that they looked like an "aircraft in flight" on the radar screen.

The government created Project Blue Book to scientifically investigate all reported UFO sightings and relevant data to determine if they posed a threat to national security, which they terminated in January 1970. During its time in existence, from 1952 to 1970, it investigated 12,618 UFO reports. It found most of the occurrences coincided with natural phenomena. Only a handful remained unexplained.

As luck would have it, Air Force Captain, Edward J. Ruppelt, supervisor of the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, was in Washington, D.C. He learned of the UFO incident from reading the newspaper and discussed the situation with Captain Roy James, a radar specialist. James thought unusual weather conditions could have been responsible for objects appearing to show on radar.

OFFICIAL AIR FORCE EXPLANATION

On July 29, 1952, Air Force Major Generals John Samford, Director of Intelligence, and Roger Ramsey, Director of Operations held the largest press conference of any since the end of World War II. The official explanation of the July UFO sightings was that:

• The objects were “misidentified aerial phenomena,” which could mean they were stars or meteors
• The blips on the radar were due to temperature inversions Samford also said that the since the radar blips were not caused by any solid material, there was no threat to national security. He explained that when a weather inversion occurs, lights that are really on the ground may look like they are in the air and this caused the radar to misreport ground objects being in the sky.

The explanation was not well-received. Ruppelt, from Project Blue Book, noted that during the months of June, July and August in Washington D.C. “hardly a night passed” where there wasn’t a temperature inversion and there were not routine UFO sightings on the radar. All air traffic controller involved stated that even if the weather could cause a blip on the radar, it would be as a straight line and would not appear as lights.

In 1969, a scientific report released by the Air Force concluded that a temperature inversion strong enough to create the effect attributed to it by General Samford could not possibly occur in the Earth’s atmosphere. Even so, more than 50 years later, most people still accept the temperature inversion explanation.

THE ROBERTSON PANEL

The CIA commissioned the Robertson Panel in January 1953, in response to the number of UFO sightings from the year prior. The CIA encouraged Project Blue Book to be more active in debunking sightings than investigating them. There was also a huge public relations push to decrease the public’s interest in UFOs.

1952: A BUSY YEAR FOR UFOS

1952 is still one of the most active times in modern history for UFOs. Not only were there reports in Washington, D.C. during that time, but all over the world. In the first six months of 1952, there were about 300 unexplained UFO sightings, four times the number during the same time period of 1951. By the end of July, there were about 400 reports — more than there had been in any other year in history.

For UFO enthusiasts, 1952 remains an important year in history. To delve deeper into the mysterious events of 1952, be sure to watch the Dark Alliance episode of Deep Space.

Uploaded by Lied2Bad on Oct 3, 2010

American History not Taught in School....
E.T been around Since Ancient Civilization this

UFO MASS SIGHTING

The 1952 Washington D.C. UFO incident, also known as the Washington flap or the Washington National Airport Sightings, was a series of unidentified flying object reports from July 12 to July 29, 1952, over Washington D.C.

The most publicized sightings took place on consecutive weekends, July 19--20 and July 26--27.

Longtime ufologist Richard H. Hall, who served as the assistant director of NICAP and as the director of the Fund for UFO Research, writes:[1] "The summer 1952 UFO sighting wave was one of the largest of all time, and arguably the most significant of all time in terms of the credible reports and hardcore scientific data obtained."

At 11:40 p.m. on Saturday, July 19, 1952, Edward Nugent, an air-traffic controller at Washington National Airport, spotted seven objects on his radar. The objects were located 15 miles south-southwest of the city; no known aircraft were in the area and the objects were not following any established flight paths. Nugent's superior, Harry Barnes, a senior air-traffic controller at the airport, watched the objects on Nugent's radarscope. He later wrote: "We knew immediately that a very strange situation existed . . . their movements were completely radical compared to those of ordinary aircraft" (Clark, p. 653).

Barnes had two controllers check Nugent's radar; they found that it was working normally. Barnes then called National Airport's other radar center; the controller there, Howard Cocklin, told Barnes that he also had the objects on his radarscope. Furthermore, Cocklin said that by looking out of the control tower window he could see one of the objects: "a bright orange light. I can't tell what's behind it" (Clark, 653).

At this point, other objects appeared in all sectors of the radarscope; when they moved over the White House and the United States Capitol, Barnes called Andrews Air Force Base, located 10 miles from National Airport. Although Andrews reported that they had no unusual objects on their radar, an airman soon called the base's control tower to report the sighting of a strange object. Airman William Brady, who was in the tower, then saw an "object which appeared to be like an orange ball of fire, trailing a tail . . . [it was] unlike anything I had ever seen before." As Brady tried to alert the other personnel in the tower, the strange object "took off at an unbelievable speed" and vanished in "a split second". He then observed a second, similar object, but it also disappeared before anyone else in the tower could see it (Clark, 654). At 12:30 a.m. on July 20, another person in the National Airport control tower reported seeing "an orange disk about 3,000 feet altitude". On one of the airport's runways, S.C. Pierman, a Capital Airlines pilot, was waiting in the cockpit of his DC-4 for permission to take off. After spotting what he believed to be a meteor, he was told that the control tower's radar had picked up unknown objects closing in on his position. Pierman observed six objects — "white, tailless, fast-moving lights" — over a 14-minute period (Clark, 655). Pierman was in radio contact with Barnes during his sighting, and Barnes later related that "each sighting coincided with a pip we could see near his plane. When he reported that the light streaked off at a high speed, it disappeared on our scope."

At Andrews AFB, meanwhile, the control tower personnel were tracking on radar what some thought to be unknown objects, but others suspected, and in one instance were able to prove, were simply stars and meteors. However, Staff Sgt. Charles Davenport observed an orange-red light to the south; the light "would appear to stand still, then make an abrupt change in direction and altitude . . . this happened several times" (Clark, 655). At one point both radar centers at National Airport and the radar at Andrews AFB were tracking an object hovering over a radio beacon. The object vanished in all three radar centers at the same time (Ruppelt, p. 160). At 3 a.m., shortly before two jet fighters from Newcastle AFB in Delaware arrived over Washington, all of the objects vanished from the radar at National Airport. However, when the jets ran low on fuel and left, the objects returned, which convinced Barnes that "the UFOs were monitoring radio traffic and behaving accordingly" (Clark, 656). The objects were last detected by radar at 5:30 a.m. Around sunrise, E.W. Chambers, a civilian radio engineer in Washington's suburbs, observed "five huge disks circling in a loose formation.

They tilted upward and left on a steep ascent."

Read more: http://theedgeofreality.proboards.com/thread/1109/washington-ufo-flap-july-1952#ixzz57dEzIQWb

   

What You Need to Know About North Korea’s Hydrogen Bomb and EMP Capabilities

.

Posted by Daisy Luther

Date: September 11, 2017

Last weekend, North Korea conducted their most powerful nuclear test ever, with what was believed to be a hydrogen bomb in the northern part of their country. The explosion was so massive that it triggered a man-made earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale. If North Korean sources are to be believed, the bomb tested was a powerful 100 kiloton weapon.

But that’s not all. To take the massive threat to an entirely different level, the North Korean state news also warned that a powerful hydrogen bomb could be detonated at a high altitude to create an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) capable of taking out parts of the American power grid. (PS: They have two satellites orbiting over the United States that could potentially carry out such an attack.)

Knowledge is power, so let’s break down this information with some explanations.

What is a hydrogen bomb?

A hydrogen bomb has some similarities to an atom bomb, but works using an opposite chemical reaction and is far more powerful. Both hydrogen bombs and atomic bombs are nuclear in nature, so after the initial blast, there would be deadly radioactive fallout and environmental issues.

An atom bomb is what was used by the United States against the Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan during World War 2.

Nuclear fission produces the atomic bomb, a weapon of mass destruction that uses power released by the splitting of atomic nuclei.

When a single free neutron strikes the nucleus of an atom of radioactive material like uranium or plutonium, it knocks two or three more neutrons free. Energy is released when those neutrons split off from the nucleus, and the newly released neutrons strike other uranium or plutonium nuclei, splitting them in the same way, releasing more energy and more neutrons. This chain reaction spreads almost instantaneously. (source)

To give you an idea of the power of an atomic bomb, Hiroshima was hit with the power of 15,000 tons of TNT, while Nagasaki was blasted with the destructive power of 21,000 tons of TNT.

A hydrogen bomb works differently.

Nuclear fusion is a reaction that releases atomic energy by the union of light nuclei at high temperatures to form heavier atoms. Hydrogen bombs, which use nuclear fusion, have higher destructive power and greater efficiencies than atomic bombs.

Due to the high temperatures required to initiate a nuclear fusion reaction, the process is often referred to as a thermonuclear explosion. This is typically done with the isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) which fuse together to form Helium atoms. This led to the term “hydrogen bomb” to describe the deuterium-tritium fusion bomb. (source)

Hydrogen bombs (H-bombs) have been used before.

The first hydrogen bomb was exploded on November 1, 1952 at the small island Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands. Its destructive power was several megatons of TNT. The blast, timed at 19:15 GMT, produced a light brighter than 1,000 suns and a heat wave felt 50 kilometres away. The Soviet Union detonated a hydrogen bomb in the megaton range in August of 1953. The US exploded a 15 megaton hydrogen bomb on March 1, 1954. It had a fireball of 4.8 km in diameter and created a huge mushroom-shaped cloud. (source)

An h-bomb is expected to be 700 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima, during which more than 150,000 people died. But they didn’t die all at once. Many of them suffered terrible, lingering deaths of agony. Here is the breakdown of this from a UCLA report.

• Very large numbers of person were crushed in their homes and in the buildings in which they were working. Their skeletons could be seen in the debris and ashes for almost 1,500 meters from the center of the blast, particularly in the downwind directions.

• Large numbers of the population walked for considerable distances after the detonation before they collapsed and died.Large numbers developed vomiting and bloody and watery diarrhea (vomitus and bloody feces were found on the floor in many of the aid stations), associated with extreme weakness. They died in the first and second weeks after the bombs were dropped.

• During this same period, deaths from internal injuries and from burns were common. Either the heat from the fires or infrared radiation from the detonations caused many burns, particularly on bare skin or under dark clothing.

• After a lull without peak mortality from any special causes, deaths began to occur from purpura, which was often associated with epilation, anemia, and a yellowish coloration of the skin. The so-called bone marrow syndrome, manifested by a low white blood cell count and almost complete absence of the platelets necessary to prevent bleeding, was probably at its maximum between the fourth and sixth weeks after the bombs were dropped. (source)

Now, multiply the above by 700 times and you’ll have a good idea of the horrifying affects of a hydrogen bomb. If it were to strike a major population area in the United States, the death toll would be astounding.

This video shows a comparison of actual atomic and hydrogen bombs.

How large of an area would be affected by a hydrogen bomb?

According to the website National Terror Alert, created by the DHS, these are the distances at which the destruction would occur, using the Hiroshima bomb as a point of reference.

1 Megaton Surface Blast: Pressure Damage

The fission bomb detonated over Hiroshima had an explosive blast equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT. A 1 megaton hydrogen bomb, hypothetically detonated on the earth’s surface, has about 80 times the blast power of that 1945 explosion.

Radius of destructive circle: 1.7 miles
12 pounds per square inch

At the center lies a crater 200 feet deep and 1000 feet in diameter. The rim of this crater is 1,000 feet wide and is composed of highly radioactive soil and debris. Nothing recognizable remains within about 3,200 feet (0.6 miles) from the center, except, perhaps, the remains of some buildings’ foundations. At 1.7 miles, only some of the strongest buildings — those made of reinforced, poured concrete — are still standing. Ninety-eight percent of the population in this area are dead.

Radius: 2.7 miles
5 psi

Virtually everything is destroyed between the 12 and 5 psi rings. The walls of typical multi-story buildings, including apartment buildings, have been completely blown out. The bare, structural skeletons of more and more buildings rise above the debris as you approach the 5 psi ring. Single-family residences within this this area have been completely blown away — only their foundations remain. Fifty percent of the population between the 12 and 5 psi rings are dead. Forty percent are injured.

Radius: 4.7 miles
2 psi

Any single-family residences that have not been completely destroyed are heavily damaged. The windows of office buildings have been blown away, as have some of their walls. The contents of these buildings’ upper floors, including the people who were working there, are scattered on the street. A substantial amount of debris clutters the entire area. Five percent of the population between the 5 and 2 psi rings are dead. Forty-five percent are injured.

Radius: 7.4 miles
1 psi

Residences are moderately damaged. Commercial buildings have sustained minimal damage. Twenty-five percent of the population between the 2 and 1 psi rings have been injured, mainly by flying glass and debris. Many others have been injured from thermal radiation — the heat generated by the blast. The remaining seventy-five percent are unhurt. (source)

But it isn’t just the initial blast you’d have to be concerned about. The radioactive fallout would affect many more people further away from the blast during the first week.

1 Megaton Surface Blast: Fallout

One of the effects of nuclear weapons detonated on or near the earth’s surface is the resulting radioactive fallout. Immediately after the detonation, a great deal of earth and debris, made radioactive by the blast, is carried high into the atmosphere, forming a mushroom cloud. The material drifts downwind and gradually falls back to earth, contaminating thousands of square miles. This page describes the fallout pattern over a seven-day period.

Assumptions
Wind speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: due east
Time frame: 7 days

3,000 Rem*
Distance: 30 miles
Much more than a lethal dose of radiation. Death can occur within hours of exposure. About 10 years will need to pass before levels of radioactivity in this area drop low enough to be considered safe, by U.S. peacetime standards.

900 Rem
Distance: 90 miles
A lethal dose of radiation. Death occurs from two to fourteen days.

300 Rem
Distance: 160 miles
Causes extensive internal damage, including harm to nerve cells and the cells that line the digestive tract, and results in a loss of white blood cells. Temporary hair loss is another result.

90 Rem
Distance: 250 miles
Causes a temporary decrease in white blood cells, although there are no immediate harmful effects. Two to three years will need to pass before radioactivity levels in this area drop low enough to be considered safe, by U.S. peacetime standards.

*Rem: Stands for “roentgen equivalent man.” This is a measurement used to quantify the amount of radiation that will produce certain biological effects. (source)

So, as you can see, a hydrogen bomb puts the destruction at a whole different level from the nuclear warheads that people expected where Kim Jong Un’s most devastating weapons. And sadly, this isn’t the only risk.

Could an H-bomb detonated at high altitude take down the American power grid?

Something that could potentially be even more deadly during the long-term is a hydrogen bomb that is detonated at high altitude, which would cause an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that could devastate the electrical grid across a wide geographical swath.

And this weekend, Kim Jong Un directly threatened the United States with such an attack.

The news Sunday morning that North Korea had launched what appeared to be its sixth nuclear test and most powerful one to date is troubling enough.

But a statement from the rogue regime took things to a whole new level. The North said it had tested an H-bomb that was “a multi-functional thermonuclear nuke with great destructive power which can be detonated at high altitudes for super-powerful EMP (electromagnetic pulse) attack according to strategic goals.” (source)

In such an event, part of the United States could lose power indefinitely. Our infrastructure and devices would not be repairable. Everything would require replacement, which could take several years.

NOTE: For an excellent, non-sensational resource, I recommend anything written by Dr. Arthur T. Bradley, a NASA scientist and recurring speaker over at Preppers University. He has written numerous books and articles about the threat of an EMP. His book, Disaster Preparedness for EMP Attacks and Solar Storms, is a must read for anyone concerned about the possibility of this type of attack. In it, he dispels many rumor and myths about such an event and replaces them with facts based on his research with NASA.

It’s important to note that North Korea does have satellites that would be capable of an atmospheric detonation that would cause an electromagnetic pulse. In fact, two of the were over our country as recently as last month. At the time, Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the Congressional Task Force on National and Homeland Security and chief of staff of the Congressional EMP Commission, warned:

“The EMP Commission has officially been warning about those satellites especially now that the (intelligence) community admits that North Korea can miniaturize warheads,” Pry stated. “Our argument all along has been that they could make weapons small enough to put on those satellites that pass over the United States on the optimum trajectory for an EMP attack on North America.”

“And they would obviously be a basis for a surprise EMP attack if North Korea wants to commit aggression against South Korea. Or to blackmail us if we were going to intervene to deliver on our security guarantees for Japan, South Korea or the Pacific.”

Pry said the satellites are orbiting at the “optimum height for putting an EMP field over all 48 contiguous United States.”

Pry warned that deploying satellites for the purpose of an EMP option against the U.S. “is exactly the kind of thing that he (North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) would do.  It would make strategic sense to do it. We do know that Kim Jong Un is a risk-taker.”

Pry surmised that the North Koreans may be utilizing the satellites for an attack plan pioneered by the Soviets during the Cold War to attack the U.S. with an EMP as part of a larger surprise assault aimed at crippling the U.S. military.

Unlike the Soviet plan, Pry opined, the North Koreans may be seeking to use an EMP attack to target “our electrical grid and our civilian critical infrastructure. And they only need one weapon to do that.” (source)

Zero Hedge reported on this worst-case scenario event:

However, it would probably lead to an unknown number of indirect deaths as hospitals and essential infrastructure lose power.

“The idea of an EMP attack is to detonate a nuclear weapon tens or hundreds of miles above the earth with the aim of knocking out power in much of the U.S. Unlike the U.S. atomic bombs dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, such a weapon wouldn’t directly destroy buildings or kill people. Instead, electromagnetic waves from the nuclear explosion would generate pulses to overwhelm the electric grid and electronic devices in the same way a lightning surge can destroy equipment.”

In the worst possible scenario, regional power grids could be offline for months, potentially costing many deaths as people would eventually start running out of necessities like food and medicine. Lawmakers and the US military have been aware of the EMP threat for many years, according to WSJ. IN a 2008 report commissioned by Congress, the authors warned that an EMP attack would lead to “widespread and long-lasting disruption and damage to the critical infrastructures that underpin the fabric of US society.”

In a report published last month, the Hill noted that the North could choose to carry out an EMP attack on Japan or South Korea as a more politically acceptable act of aggression. Such an attack could help the North accomplish its three most-important political goals, the Hill said.

“North Korea has nuclear-armed missiles and satellites potentially capable of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. EMP is considered by many the most politically acceptable use of a nuclear weapon, because the high-altitude detonation (above 30 kilometers) produces no blast, thermal, or radioactive fallout effects harmful to people.

EMP itself is harmless to people, destroying only electronics. But by destroying electric grids and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures, the indirect effects of EMP can kill far more people in the long-run than nuclear blasting a city. In this scenario, North Korea makes an EMP attack on Japan and South Korea to achieve its three most important foreign policy goals: reunification with South Korea, revenge upon Japan for World War II, and recognition of North Korea as a world power.” (source)

However, Anthony Furey, the author of Pulse Attack: The Real Story Behind The Secret Weapon That Can Destroy North America, believes that North Korea would not start out an attack like this on Guam, South Korea, or Japan, due to the ferocious response from the US military, but would strike the United States directly.

Conventional wisdom tells us that North Korea would be incredibly reticent to live up to its threats of launching a missile strike, nuclear or otherwise, on South Korea, Guam, Japan or elsewhere because the retaliation from the United States would be immediate and ferocious, effectively destroying the country and killing all of its leadership.

However, if Kim Jong Un’s first strike is a successful EMP attack against North America, this would largely shut down the ability of the U.S. to respond. While some elements of U.S. military infrastructure have been hardened for resilience against an EMP strike, there is no standardization across the board. Plus, civilian infrastructure is hardly protected, if at all. The United States and Canada would be in the dark and sitting ducks.

A handful of national security experts and legislators in the U.S. have attempted to sound the alarm about this troubling vulnerability but have largely been unsuccessful in getting regulations in place. The utilities industry claims it’s not its problem, but that of the military’s, something experts firmly dispute. (source)

Of course, a miscalculation by North Korea could lead to a ground strike instead of an atmospheric one, leading back to the first scenario we discussed. Really, with things so volatile, you should be preparing for all possible scenarios:

• Nuclear Preparedness Intensive interviews
• How to Prepare for a Nuclear Strike
• Getting Prepared for a Disaster (This includes an hour-long interview with Dr. Bradley, the EMP expert mentioned above)
• How to Use Potassium Iodide in a Nuclear Emergency (Free PDF)
• Getting Prepared for a Long-Term Scenario

Is the United States discussing a military response?

General James Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, has suggested that a military response could be imminent.

“Our commitment among the allies are ironclad,” Mattis said. “Any threat to the United States or its territories, including Guam, or our allies will be met with a massive military response, a response both effective and overwhelming.”

Mattis called on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to “take heed” of the UN Security Council’s unanimous position against North Korea’s nuclear program and again stressed the US military’s position.

“We are not looking to the total annihilation of a country, namely North Korea, but as I said, we have many options to do so,” Mattis said. (source)

The problem with military action, though, is that both Russia and China have said that if the United States strikes first, they will retaliate. This, of course, would result in a potential global conflict with the world’s superpowers coming head to head.

Don’t be distracted while the United States digs itself out from under the devastation of Hurricane Harvey and holds its breath watching the uncertain path of Hurricane Irma. As devastating as those storms are and could be, we may have even more dire things to worry about.

Do you have knowledge about nuclear weapons?

My research comes from a variety of experts cited on the internet, but it’s purely theoretical for me. Do you have more information?

Please weigh in below in the comments section. Your information is very welcome. Please let us know where your knowledge comes from. (Do you/did you work in this field? Do you have a military background? A scientific background?)  We’d love to hear from you.

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