Project Faultless video

Project faultless video on youtube

The quality is poor and most of the shots are so tight you don't know what you are looking at. However, this is the only video I ever saw of the one megaton explosion done at Area 58 (Central Nevada Test Site). I did a search on the DOE website and I don't see the original film listed there, but will phone them to see if it can be bought. I detest music scores added to nuclear explosions, as if the explosion itself isn't exciting enough. Typically the DOE film is very raw, occasionally with no sound. You can view the videos for free at the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas.

Project Faultless photographs

reply to post by gariac

Hi gariac & all.

Take a look there:
The Nuclear Weapon Archive
nuclearweaponarchive.org...

Good thing most of testing is over.
And now? with the remaining silos ?

Blue skies.

reply to post by C-JEAN


That website doesn't have a google search, but I did an advanced search for Faultless and the CNTA. Nothing found.

It does have an extremely brief notation on Project 57 (Area 13), which is the nuclear test closest to Area 51.

Project 57

I suspect the Project Faultless video is on one of the movies made Peter Kuran, but he made a few movies on the same theme.

The DOE reading room, located in the Atomic Testing Museum, probably has the answers. However the skill level of the staff dropped remarkably when they moved it from North Las Vegas to the museum in Vegas. Now you have to work a bit to find someone with knowledge. Kind of like dealing with tech support at a call center, where the first people you reach just read off scripts, while eventually you get to people with facts in their head.

Pics from my trip there in October, 2010.
I am a little baffled about the "Petroleum Impacted Soil" signs and markers.
The bunker with the two windows, from what I have seen of nuke videos, I think is a camera emplacement.
And I couldn't help myself, opening and taking a picture of what was in the big red shiny box - a test well, with downhole sensors, and cables coming up to monitoring equipment.
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/b1d082fba930.jpg[/atsimg]
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reply to post by FosterVS


I think you are the only person to photograph the bunker with windows. Does it really look like it dates back to the original nuclear test? How far is it from ground zero?

Originally posted by gariac
reply to post by FosterVS

 

I think you are the only person to photograph the bunker with windows. Does it really look like it dates back to the original nuclear test? How far is it from ground zero?

Somewhere I have a shot from the back, that might give an indication of distance from the ground zero hole. Will look tomorrow, cause I cannot remember how far away it was. It does look quite old, so I do think it was from the original test.

reply to post by FosterVS


How big is it? Maybe it shows up on google earth. I don't see anything on the clean up maps except for the "holes", but a bunker is the kind of thing they would just ignore.

I've pondered the "petroleum impacted soil" signs. My guess was they put some oil in the hole to lubricate the drill bit, but I asked one of the former NTS workers when I took the tour and he said that wasn't the case, but he had no idea about the signs.

The government doesn't like people getting trapped in bunkers. The lawsuits are just a pain. So usually they remove the door or weld it shut. I've seen some that are roach motels, so I always make sure I can get out before I get in a bunker. [Usually in Nevada it is the old mines that are a hazard.]

Thought it was a picture from the back, guess it wasn't. Does look quite old, rusty metal, so maybe from that period, who knows (found this in a document - "Several concrete pads and metal poles that were part of the original operation are located in the vicinity of SGZ").

Trying for the life of me to remember where exactly it was, can't remember, but messed around with pan and zoom in GE, trying to fit the location to the mountains in the background, think it is here, about 1000ft from ground zero:
38°37'59.20"N, 116°12'46.45"W

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/60bd5ce0e857.jpg[/atsimg]

EDITED TO ADD: re the Petroleum Impacted Soil
Been reading some documents about the cleanup of this site, in which they refer to a "Burn Area", and "total petroleum hydrocarbons in the diesel/motor oil range" - I had this vision of them dousing some noxious or even radioactive stuff in their "Burn Area" with diesel fuel, and lighting it up...

Also - the "pipe"/casing that the device was lowered 3275+ ft. down into, shown in the pictures, with the plaque. Apparently the top of that was at ground level before the blast - that is how much that entire area dropped!

I seen that bunker and the area,in a nuclear bomb movie. A looong time ago. But i also have to assume most testing is in desert areas and the bunkers are built on the same guide lines.

reply to post by FosterVS


In the above ground test days, they observed from a "block house." Now I assume for a deep underground test, they could use a metal shack. I really don't see how I missed the shack since it is only 1000ft from ground zero.

I think what I need to do for the next visit is bring a printout from Google Earth. There is so much you don't notice from ground level.

Funny how there is so little information publicly available on the site prior to the test. Obviously such documents exist. If you can believe the press, Faultless was a Livermore project. [DOE tests are either Livermore or Los Alamos. There is/was an intentional competition set up rather than consolidate the research to one lab.]

Ditto on the top of the pipe being ground level. When I first visited the site, I got the feeling that I was situated in a "wave". That is, it seems like there are rings around ground zero and the land was frozen in a shock wave. However, the reports indicate you are just seeing the faults.

There is an expression that goes "the desert doesn't heal." The idea is once the desert is distrubed, the growth is never like what was there before the disturbance. That is why you can find wagon wheel tracks in Death Valley. Crash sites look "disturbed" after decades. The faults around Project Faultless are disturbed land that hasn't healed.

Regarding crash sites, sometimes the USAF dumps fertilizer and tries to restore the ground. The F16 crash site on the dry lake near Rachel is an example where they plowed over the area and attempted to restore the habitat. You can find the tire tracks from the salvage vehicle, but I never found any parts on the ground. Conversely, the recent F15 crash site near the Cedar Ranch Road has plenty of debris. Maybe they only clean up the crashes when the BLM makes them do so.

" The F16 crash site on the dry lake near Rachel " I would like to check that out...im a big fan of aircraft crash sites.

reply to post by whipsandchainsamerica


Normally I don't publish sites of anything since the stuff tends to disappear when the location is on the internet. However, this site is really cleaned up. Looking at Google Earth, it would be
37°49'50.07"N 115°41'51.55"W
My logs have it about 700ft to the north east of that location, but that was before I had a GPS with WAAS. Then again, Google Earth is often off a bit.

You can see the soil is disturbed. I don't have a metal detector, but I suspect it would come in handy if you want to find anything.
F15 crash

Note that you can often look at Google Earth and see evidence of a crash site IF you happen to know exactly where it is located, but the converse is rarely true. That is, there is plenty of areas in the desert on Google Earth that have been disturbed over the years, but they aren't all crash sites. Usually there is a road to the crash site on Google Earth that is not on the topo map, but then again many mine roads aren't on the topo map. When you file a FOIA to get the crash report, it generally has a range and bearing from a VOR, and often it is way off the mark.

I don't know if you saw my other link to the Jeremiah Weed crash.
Jeremiah Weed crash

Incidentally, the people at the Little Aleinn are confused about the Jeremiah Weed crash, though they know the story. and have a bottle of Jeremiah Weed on hand. They tell the patrons that their bar is the one in the story. Since the crash is close to Tikaboo, no way was it the Little Aleinn.

Originally posted by gariac
I think what I need to do for the next visit is bring a printout from Google Earth. There is so much you don't notice from ground level.

Thanks for dredging up how pissed off I was on that trip
I had carefully created an "offline cache" for GE, to go on my netbook. And when I got down there, for some reason it was buggered up. Including all the annotations I had on it, trails I wanted to explore, etc. And I noticed a lot of stuff on GE around Faultless, that if I had known was there would have checked out.

My next dream trip includes a motorhome, with a trailer behind it for my quad and dirtbike. The motorhome will have a viewing platform built on the top, radio gear, etc.

reply to post by FosterVS


There are a couple of ways to view satellite imagery without internet access. [ I love how all these wizards think we should live in the "cloud". Clearly these clowns have never been to anywhere remote.] One is "expertgps". It can upload the old black and white satellite imagery from the USGS, which I assume is royalty or copyright free. I've had this program for years, but I'm not sure I would buy it today since the google or bing imagery is so much better. The other program is the "oziexplorer". Both programs can calibrate satellite imagery or maps for that matter, provided you know the coordinates of two well spaced out spots on the map or image. The oziexplorer demo version can do that for free. You need to save the imagery from Google Earth or Bing and perhaps do a conversion to tif or bmp from the GE jpg.

ExpertGPS has a free clone called USAphotomaps. The trouble is USAphotomaps was really really buggy. ExpertGPS is old enough that it actually works. You need to insure your file system is NTFS since it is possible to have too many files in one directory for FAT32 if you download a large area. Windows really chokes if you have a lot of little files. When I ship this data around between drives, I use linux partition cloning software.

Ozi demo

expertgps

If you are going to actually buy software, ExpertGPS is the better of the two since it does everything Ozi does for a bit less money, plus downloads both USGS maps and imagery.

As an aside, if you want computerized maps for free, this link indicates how to install Garmin mapsource and then use open source (USGS) maps that have been converted to a format for mapsource. I already bought the 24k topo from Garmin prior to these opensource maps. This trick can save you a hundred dollars

mapsource

Having a quad would be nice. For one thing, you don't beat the crap out of your SUV. [I really don't suggest people drive off road in cars due to the lack of off-road tires and skid plates. Most of these dirt roads will not dent a skid plate, but you often read about damage to oil pans and such from rocks.] With a quad, you get close with the SUV then do the final few miles in the quad. When I did the Jeremiah Weed hike, I parked about three miles away to avoid the rough road. Generally a good idea on a solo trip.

As you know, a lot of the little known trails (Bald Mountain gates, Bombing Range 61 gates, etc.) I wouldn't even take my 4WD SUV in there. I can't really afford to replace wrecked tires. I had a Chinese made 250cc dirtbike last trip, and a quad - if it wasn't so g.d. cold, I would have done a lot more exploring. Never again in either March or October - too damn cold.

Took my dirtbike to here (37°32'54.40"N, 115°48'12.56"W) last trip, near the back gate. Was interesting trip in, maybe a jeep might make it, but not your standard SUV. Cammo dudes showed up when I got back out to the main road, they drove right beside me where I parked, even returned the nod I gave them. They didn't look too happy though, and parked a few hundred feet away and watched me load my bike back on my trailer and leave.

I have used an offline GE cache many times, used GE Voyager to create it. And turn on the GPS function, which works great with my Microsoft Streets and Trips USB GPS, which plugs right in my netbook. It's nice to have GE when you are down there, it's even nicer to have your position show up in the GE map. Plus I had a Garmin GPS with a handlebar mount on my bike.

petroleum impacted soil

Thanks to a tip from FosterVS, I foiund some text describing the nature of the "petroleum impacted soil." It is at the bottom of the page in the link.