Is this one of the biggest coverups of the 20th century?

Middle earth and Australia really copped it with millitary experiments by our colonial masters and their BFF's of the time.
I just love this one that the Shire got lumped with.
Military archives show NZ and US conducted secret tsunami bomb tests
www.abc.net.au...

I am of a generation who remembers the great concern of a coming ice age.

It was all over the news, that the earth was cycling into an ice age that would creep down to the southern USA.

There was great concern.

Perhaps, only perhaps, this test has something with trying to prevent what was then thought to be a coming ice age.

Maybe the scientists decided to try and stop the coming ice age, I don't remember.

But the constant haranguing about a coming ice age
when I was young
has led me to see the constant haranguing about global warming
to be as much of a hoax
and misreading of global science as the coming ice age was.
Add to that the ozone depletion scare of the public for years,
getting rid of the best refrigerants humans ever had,
has given me a deep distrust of any "climate science" that tries to scare the population through constant fear mongering.

not much here either..

a reply to: grandmakdw

hmmm, now that you mention it, my uncle mentioned about trying to stop an ice age. I thought it was an irrelevant part to the story because only he mentioned it.

The conclusions I am leaning toward so far are;

- There was never a natural copper layer and that's why I can never find it when I search it as being part of the earth's atmosphere
-The USA may have indeed caried out a copper needle experiment and created a man made layer, which is what these men are perhaps referring to
- The red flash reported across the sky is consistent with reports given in a couple of nuclear tests
- Red is not the colour of burning copper - it burns with a blue or green flame.
-Upper atmosphere nuclear tests definitely altered our skies and their composition. The lasting effects have been extremely hushed up.

I've tried researching newspapers online, but frustratingly the archives only go up until 1945 at this point. It will take a visit to a library where old papers are archived and accessible to find anything.

a reply to: Metallicus

my thoughts exactly. some mad scientist s### for sure.

'gee, wonder what'd happen if we detonate some
nukes in the sky?'
'dunno... let's do it!'

- go science!

a reply to: markosity1973

Project West Ford is what launched the copper antennas into orbit. They were placed into an orbit over 2,000 miles up, at a very high inclination. Well out of the scope of any nuclear atmospheric test.

The purpose of the test was to create an artificial ionosphere for the purpose of communications. In the 50s/60s the main methods for military communications were undersea cables and bouncing signals around the Earth via the natural ionosphere. There were fears that the undersea cables would be cut by the Soviets, and the ionosphere is too unpredictable for reliable communication. The scientists hoped that through the creation of an artificial ionosphere a more reliable back up method of communication would be available had the undersea cables been cut.

While the test did work with some success, it was chastised by scientists around the globe. The advent of the modern communications satellite also led to the project's demise.


It was also believed that due to light pressure, the antennas would deorbit naturally in only a few years, though to this day there are still clumps in orbit. They are being tracked by NASA to this day.

a reply to: markosity1973

I applaud your tenacity in doing library research.

Too much of what is online is distorted and even fictionalized.

Going as close to original sources as possible will help you get the truth you are seeking.
Once you get close enough and know who was involved and where and when,
well enough time has passed
and a freedom of information request
for actual documents related to the tests
may end up giving you the truth.

Yes, the fear of a coming ice age may be the key to unlock what you are looking for.

I'll go all conspiracy here and do a wild conjecture leap:
Maybe in trying to stop the ice age
they accidentally started global warming
and to cover it all up
blamed humans on earth
rather than acknowledge the truth of nuclear detonations in the atmosphere as the primary cause.

a reply to: cmdrkeenkid

Thankyou for that lead. It seems more and more likely that copper has very little to nothing at all to do with nuclear blasts.

I have found that nuclear testing may have depleted the ozone layer though.... Maybe it is of absolutely no coincedence that the southern hemisphere copped a huge hole when the northern hemisphere suffered very little given that there was a large number of tests done in the south pacific....

The thermal pulse also is responsible for warming the atmospheric nitrogen close to the bomb, and causing the creation of atmospheric NOx smog components. This, as part of the mushroom cloud, is shot into the stratosphere where it is responsible for dissociating ozone there, in exactly the same way as combustion NOx compounds do. The amount created depends on the yield of the explosion and the blast's environment. Studies done on the total effect of nuclear blasts on the ozone layer have been at least tentatively exonerating after initial discouraging findings.[21]

The wikipedia article mentions that citation 21 (the one that says they have partially exonerated the ozone depletion being from nuclear testing) is behind a paywall. i.e. There is no easy way to prove this claim (for free anyway)

There might be something to the global warming component of this story after all.

While not directly related to the OP thread, this vid below shows the number, the nations and the approx locations of all the nuclear blasts between 1945 and 1998. It's extremely sobering indeed

a reply to: markosity1973

The majority of atmospheric tests (including all Soviet/Russian and Chinese tests) took place north of the equator. The majority of tests have taken place not just in the Northern Hemisphere, but also underground.

Atmospheric Nuclear Tests in the Southern Hemisphere:
Maiden Island - UK, 3 tests
Australia - UK, 9 tests
French Polynesia - France, 46 tests
South Atlantic - US, 3 tests

Here is an image for visualization.

But that kind of puts a pin in your theory too.

a reply to: cmdrkeenkid

Actually, it looks like the truth is stranger than the original story in itself. I am now convinced that the story is an urban legend perpetuated by vague and mixed memories.

The Copper layer was an experiment to improve satellite communications, it was never blown up - it fell back to earth naturally.

The red flash seen across the sky was real and was a nuclear test, but not related.

But most interestingly, the Nukes really did change our global climate, but not in the way the story tells. This New Scientiest article from 1981 shows that Russian scientists (in the cold war era) were so concerned about the effects of atmospheric nuclear tests, they shared information with the USA. The results?

Testing blew a hole in the Ozone layer - Thanks mad scientists from the bottom of every New Zealanders hearts for the rampant skin cancer problem - and it also caused a dip in global temperatures. This would be the ice age another member mentioned that scientists were worried about. It was entirely manmade.

So nope, the story is bunk, but the truth is well almost the opposite of the story I have been told. We should all still be very concerned at the lingering effects of these tests however. The more research I do, the more apparent it becomes that they have screwed up something that cannot be repaired.

originally posted by: korkythecat
a reply to: markosity1973

Well as far as I know, copper ions won't migrate in air, but are soluble in water.

don't know if that helps!?

just sayin..

If they're soluble in water, wouldn't they have dispersed naturally and fairly quickly?

Seems pointless to use a handful of nukes and the risks that go along with that, when moisture in the atmosphere would have done the job naturally.

Maybe the 'copper ions' story is a red herring in itself...perhaps they realised at some point in the near future, mankind would figure out that this ionic layer could be used in some fashion to generate enormous electrical energies..maybe using tethered high altitude balloons or something, and of course couldn't be metered (that thinking has certainly happened before).

Or maybe the crazies were running a fun experiment to see if they could ignite the atmosphere with a clutch of nukes.

I was about to say the same thing. How f*cked up the government is detonating nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. I couldn't even imagine what they were thinking. Leads me to believe that, indeed, we are run by a bunch of spoiled idiotic brats from whatever fraternity they come from, Skull and Bones, Freemasons, Fabian Society, what have you.