This Nuclear Device Lost in the Himalayas Could Destroy India

Hello, 42, here, on February 7 of

this

year, in a remote region of the Indian Himalayas, a wall of churning water tore through a narrow mountain valley,

destroy

ing everything in its path. A new power plant was practically

destroy

ed. Two hydroelectric dams were washed away and several villagers were completely devastated, more than 200 lives were claimed by the raging waters. Floods are not that unusual in the Himalayas during the summer and monsoon months, there are literally thousands of glaciers hidden among its jagged peaks and a hot climate combined with sudden torrential rains. Rain is a recipe for flash flooding, but

this

particular disaster occurred in February, toward the end of a long, freezing winter, when liquid water isn't actually supposed to exist outside of some fast-flowing alpine rivers, so , how was that? possible official reports. have put forward a number of theories about what

could

have triggered the flood, including a glacial outburst, landslides or disturbances caused by industrial activity in the area, but locals have their own theory which, if correct,

could

have implications potentially fatal for hundreds of millions of people.

All over India you see people living in this particular valley in the Himalayas telling stories of a forgotten

nuclear

device

hidden among the nearby peaks of the Himalayas. They believe the heat emitted by this

device

is to blame for unseasonal flooding, but how exactly do the locals do it? I think such a

nuclear

device could have ended up in this remote part of the Himalayas. The CIA easily put it there or, to be precise, the CIA

lost

it there during a failed Cold War operation involving some of the world's best mountain climbers, several kilograms of plutonium. and a generous amount of improvised blackface that probably sounds as realistic and politically correct as the plot of an old Bond movie, but believe it or not, this particular CIA mission called Operation that actually took place during the Cold War and resulted in The loss of seven highly radioactive plutonium cores atop one of the world's highest mountains, where, as far as is known, they remain to this day.

The Cold War was defined by a global political climate of tension and widespread paranoia. . History was something of a golden age for espionage and international intrigue, or to put it another way, during the Cold War, anyone who was anyone was spying on almost everyone in the world. In 1965, the United States was paying special attention to a certain communist superpower. In the expected China ruled by the infamous Chairman Mao at that time China was beginning to flex its technological muscles by conducting its first nuclear weapons test in October 1964 as part of its two bombs and one satellite program, wait a minute, what?

Why does saying two bombs, one satellite make me feel a little dizzy? China's rapid progress in developing weapons of mass destruction was a concern and the United States was eager to monitor this emerging threat. One way to do this was to build a listening post to intercept telemetry signals sent between Chinese test missiles. and ground control was a promising idea, but considering the technology available at the time, the listening post would have to be located relatively close to the Chinese border and with a line of sight that was not obscured by the terrain, the curvature of the earth or anything else for that matter.

Fortunately, the Americans knew only one place. India. The Indians were more than a little nervous about their northern neighbors' new nuclear warhead punch, so they were all in favor of establishing the proposed listening station. India is also in possession of a conveniently giant. Mountain range whose peaks offered an uninterrupted view to China, the Himalayas with the Indians on board. Nanda Devi. The second highest mountain in the country was chosen as the perfect location for the listening post and an operation was organized in the US to place it there. by the way, if the name nanda devi sounds familiar to you, you might remember it from a recent video i made about the mysterious skeletons in roopkund lake, as it turns out that the devastating Himalayan flood in February this year occurred just 25 kilometers away from Lake Rubicon. the crow flies although, come to think of it, the straight line idiom doesn't really apply here there is a 7,000 meter mountain peak between the two points and crows can't really fly that high anyway when operation hack started in 1965, it soon became clear that there would be enormous challenges to overcome - for starters, there was no infrastructure of any kind near Nanda Devi, which meant that the CIA's planned listening station would have to be unstaffed and completely self-sufficient.

The biggest concern was how to power the station regularly. the batteries wouldn't have the longevity, even the really expensive ones with the bunny on and the solar panels weren't really suitable for such a demanding changing environment. There was another option, although nuclear power might sound a bit extreme, but this was a cold war. After all, plutonium had never been more fashionable, so a nuclear-powered listening device was duly built with seven plutonium cores. All that was left was to put it on top of nanda devi, but it turned out to be much easier said than done. They are known as the roof of the world for good reason, they are really big and although flying your device to the top of the mountain seemed like the obvious choice, it just wasn't possible, in addition to being obscenely tall, Nanda Devi is one of the Landing on the world's steepest mountains simply wasn't going to be an option, and that meant there was only one thing: the CIA was going to have to transport the 60-kilogram listening device to a 7,800-meter peak the old-fashioned way.

Taking it literally, Nanda Devi is surrounded on all sides by some of the highest mountains in the world, including 12 peaks of approximately 6,500 meters, which is equivalent to 17 Empire State buildings stacked on top of each other, this ring of mountains creates a kind of of natural shield. The wall around Nanda Devi is almost impenetrable. Think of it like Mordor, except the wall of mountains hides not an army of orcs and the giant eye showing all the symptoms of a nasty case of conjunctivitis, but a pristine desert called Sanctuary that is completely cut off. Isolated from the outside world, the sanctuary is so remote and the terrain around it so challenging that it took explorers almost 100 years to discover how to enter and when it was finally penetrated by two British men and their fellow free Sherpas in 1934, he declared that The journey was more challenging than reaching the north pole and having to go through all that just to reach the base of Nanda Devi, which rises another 3,000 meters above the shrine.

Climbing Nanda Devi was such a difficult task that there were not that many people on the entire planet with the necessary skills, experience and giant balls of steel required to even attempt it and, rather inconveniently, none of them worked for the CIA, so the Langley bigwigs did the only thing they could do under command. Under these circumstances, they began covertly recruiting the Alpine equivalent of the Justice League, a crack team of the most talented mountaineers of their generation, consisting of 14 men from the United States and four from India. Between them, these men had all sorts of climbing records and first ascents of the world's deadliest peaks, but as talented as they were, none of them had much experience handling plutonium, which meant that one of them Jim McCarthy, who a few years earlier had become the first climber to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated, was given a crash course in the safe handling of highly radioactive material.

Imagine Alex Honold, star of the film Free Solo, receiving nuclear training to carry out a top-secret mission for the US government in a part of the world only accessible to a god-level climber and you already know what pure madness the operation was. Incidentally, Jim McCarthy would develop testicular cancer in later life, something he believed was caused by exposure to plutonium radiation during this crazy mission, but in 1965 McCarthy, his potentially irradiated balls, and the rest of the climbers on the Justice League were en route to Nanda Devi base camp in helicopters. This particular method of transportation was chosen to give the Americans minimal exposure to the locals.

If rumors of the operation had reached Chinese ears, the listening post would have been completely useless the light-skinned members of the climbing team even went so far as to artificially darken their skin with Indian tanning lotions to try to blend in better because apparently painting yourself black is fine if you're involved in cold war espionage, a pause team was hired to transport the equipment, including the nuclear-powered listening device, to base camp and CIA representatives made up a vague story about a cache of gold. to explain the presence of a certain incongruous 60-kilogram solid lead crust hidden between the food and the crampons, it is not that the porters believed a word;

Maybe they didn't have much experience transporting solid gold, but they knew it wasn't enough. Once the team and climbers were safe at base camp, the operation was finally ready to begin, the team began their ascent in clear weather and They made excellent progress over the course of almost a month, but when they were just 600 meters from the summit a huge storm made what was already an incredibly dangerous climb virtually impossible. Conditions were so bad that the climbers had no choice but to abandon the mission and return. They kept the listening device safely in a crevice. near their camp and returned with plans to attempt the summit again when the weather changed at the beginning of the next season, but when they returned to the site of their last camp several months later, the listening device had disappeared.

The entire area had been devastated by a combination of avalanches and landslides and, despite several recovery expeditions sent to Nanda Devi to search for the device over the following years, no trace of it was ever seen again, although there were some rumors about Pakistani agents. Sneaking up the mountain during the winter and trapping the device, the most popular theory is that it was dislodged from its hiding place by natural mountain processes and absorbed by one of the colossal Nanda Devi glaciers, which takes us back to the recent flood winter that interestingly happens to have occurred in the exact same area where a certain rather toasty nuclear device went missing in the '60s, so this February's unseasonal flooding could have been caused by the missing CIA nuclear device, not really. , because although at first no one seemed very sure.

What could have created such a devastating flood in the dead of winter, satellite images have definitively shown was caused by a huge section of rock and ice breaking off the flank of Nanda Devi and crashing into the river a couple of kilometers below. That doesn't mean that several kilograms of plutonium trapped in the middle of a Himalayan glacier isn't a big deal, because this particular region of the Himalayas is home to the source of the Ganges River, the third largest river in the world and a natural resource of Incalculable value to India, considered sacred to Hindus, the Ganges is home to the most densely populated river basin of all the world's rivers, with more than 650 million people living within reach if Nanda Devi's

lost

nuclear device were ever to launch its radioactive load to the headwaters of the Ganges.

It could cause an environmental disaster on an apocalyptic scale, so while the fate of Nanda Devi's missing nuclear device remains unknown nearly 60 years after the CIA somehow managed to lose it, let's hope it stays that way. Thanks for looking, you can have your hands. In my book, stick a flag on Amazon or audible links to both in the description below, thanks.