Large Mushroom Cloud Detected Over North Korea


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This is a bit off topic but cignus's link brought back a memory...

MOAB's smaller predecessor, the daisy cutter, was used in Kuwait during the 1991 war, also produced a mushroom shaped cloud, and sparked rumors of nuclear weapons use.
We were on the Kuwait border conducting ELINT ops when they dropped the first daisy cutter.

At night if you looked up at the sky to the south it was covered with aircraft navigation lights blinking on and off, as soon as they were directly overhead (the border) the lights would wink off and to the north only stars were visible.

At the northern horizon you would see continous flashes as aircraft after aircraft delivered their payload. When the daisy cutter was dropped, the entire horizon was lit by a massive flash of light.

At that same moment over one of the radio nets we were monitoring a distinctly British voice cursed & then exclaimed..."The Yanks have done it! They've gone and bloody nuked 'em!!"...The voice was from a member of a British SAS team that was forward deployed behind the Iraqi front lines as a reconnaissance asset. The SAS team had no idea that the DCs were going to be dropped that night.

I can remember finding the situation extremely humorous at the time...

Sorry for the musings...we now return to our regular programming...
 


Brother Shatterstone said:
Nope, that would be something else... Something "horrible wrong" would be the nuke going when they where playing with their new toy...

I'd think that, were I in the vicinity of an ammo dump explosion, I'd think something had gone horribly wrong before getting vaporized. :)

Seriously, were there a nuclear explosion, it more than likely would have been announced as such by now, since there are undoubtedly satellites keeping an eye on the peninsula, as well as seismographic evidence.

Brad
 

If it was under ground what would the chances be of something going wrong and taking out the ceiling falling in, enough ceiling might set of the seismograph and somemore explosives...
 



Hand of Evil said:
It also left a 2-mile crater, so whatever it was, it was impressive.

I've seen that "2-mile crater" reported, but the big news services are not publishing pictures. Ought to take purely verbal reports with a grain of salt.

The current official story seems to be that it was demolition for a new hydroelectric power plant. If it had been a nuke, by now someone would have detected the radiation in the atmosphere, I suspect. So, perhaps it was demolition. Perhaps it was an ammo dump accident...
 

cignus_pfaccari said:
I'd think that, were I in the vicinity of an ammo dump explosion, I'd think something had gone horribly wrong before getting vaporized. :)
Having seen footage of an ammunition plant exploding and of several fireworks factories going up, I'd say it is quite reasonable to assume that this explosion is conventional in nature.

Umbran said:
I've seen that "2-mile crater" reported, but the big news services are not publishing pictures. Ought to take purely verbal reports with a grain of salt.
Amen.

So, perhaps it was demolition. Perhaps it was an ammo dump accident...
I'm putting my money on the latter. It is too large a detonation to be used safely, even on large scale construction.
 
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