The “First” Nuclear Bomb
In the morning on July 16, 1945, at a remote location somewhere deep in the desolate New Mexico desert, the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated. This was the Trinity Test, the culmination of the infamous ‘Manhattan Project’ started by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1942 with a goal of weaponizing nuclear energy.
The test effectively ended the race between the United States, Germany, and the Soviet Union to develop just such an unstoppable weapon, a race ran in hidden laboratories and isolated locales across the world since the 1930s, the culmination of the life’s work of some of the greatest minds on earth. A few weeks later, it would effectively end World War II when nuclear bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki with horrifying consequences.
For all those who bore witness to the Trinity Test, it was an extraordinary, life-changing sight to behold, a 40,000-foot high mushroom cloud billowing up to the heavens. In the detonation zone, the bomb left a 300-foot crater five feet deep in the earth. Much to the surprise of scientists and onlookers, inside of the crater, the rough New Mexico sand had been turned into a smooth sheet of shimmering green glass. This meant the bomb had produced temperatures of over 3000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is needed to melt silica sand into glass. Members of the project team, believing this radioactive glass to be a unique, brand-new material found nowhere else on earth, took the opportunity to name it ‘Trinitite,’ after the Trinity Test.
Except, what if they had it wrong? What if Trinitite wasn’t a unique material found nowhere else on earth?
Shortly after the test, one scientist had a moment of déjà vu while examining the Trinitite glass. From the recesses of his mind came a memory long since suppressed of something similar he had seen decades earlier in the African desert decades earlier. But wait, he quickly calculated, if an atomic bomb had created Trinitite in the New Mexico desert, then what he’d seen in Africa must have been created by something thousands of times more powerful.
Trinitite – Nuclear Desert Glass
In 1932, Patrick Clayton and a team from the Egyptian Geological Survey were driving through the dunes of the Great Sand Sea, close to the Saad Plateau in Egypt. As they drove, Clayton began to notice a curious noise emanating from under the vehicle, some sort of crunching sound from the tires entirely inconsistent with the usual noise made driving on sand. Stopping to examine the situation, Clayton discovered that he and his team were driving on great sheets of greenish glass buried just under the sand; the crunching noise originating as the weight of the vehicle cracked and broke the glass into chunks beneath them. Clayton and his team were puzzled – what could have caused this unusual phenomenon? A decade before the start of the Manhattan Project, they could not envision the type of force required to turn an ocean of sand into glass.
The dunes of Egypt, however, are far from the only place on earth where this so-called desert glass has been found.
In southern Iraq, a layer of glass was discovered deep in the earth during an excavation, under the Babylonian, Sumerian, and Neolithic strata, that is, in the geologic era right before cavemen. Similar glass has also been found in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and along the ancient Silk Road in China, at a site which has become known as the ‘Chinese Roswell,’ as well as in Israel, where a quarter-inch thick deposit of this glass was found spanning several hundred square feet in 1952.
Most unbelievably, a monumental deposit of this desert glass covering an unbelievable 2500 square miles, has been discovered in Libya. Or, perhaps rediscovered would be a better way to put it, since the glass appears to have been known about by the ancients. Egyptians used it in jewelry, most famously in the pectoral of Pharaoh Tutankhamun – ‘King Tut,’ as he is nicknamed – while paleolithic-era humans used it in tools some 10,000 years ago.
So, what is this strange desert glass, rediscovered by accident in New Mexico but existing all over the world, and what could have caused it?
Evidence of Ancient Nuclear Wars
At first, scientists offered meteors as an explanation. Except, while a meteor strike may be able to melt sand into glass, it leaves fragments of iron and other minerals not found in the pure glass of Libya or elsewhere. Further, meteor glass generally takes the form of beads rather than smooth, expansive sheets. And of course, a meteor leaves a crater, and craters were not detected, even using satellite imagery, at places this desert glass was discovered. It warrants mention that while the Trinity Test did, in fact, leave a crater, future uses of nuclear bombs did not, as scientists discovered that detonation above ground maximized the devastation of the weapon. There were no craters left at Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
Some have suggested that lightning strikes might be to blame for the desert glass, but again, while it may melt sand, glass formed by lightning takes the form of a strike burrowing into the ground, like branches of coral.
So, if not meteors or lightning strikes, then what? What could have caused these great formations of glass otherwise only seen at a modern nuclear test site? The director of the Trinity Test, the theoretical physicist Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, may have offered an indirect answer to this question. Seven years after New Mexico, Oppenheimer was asked by one of his students if the Trinity Test was, in fact, the first atomic bomb test ever conducted. To this, he offered the cryptic reply, “Yes, in modern times.”
What did Oppenheimer mean by this statement? Was he suggesting that nuclear power had been harnessed, and nuclear weapons utilized, sometime in the past?
In the early 1970s, France was searching for uranium in Gabon, West Africa, one of their former colonies, to fuel their nuclear powerplants back home. They did manage to discover a number of uranium deposits, arranged curiously in a straight, tidy row. As if this apparent coincidence wasn’t strange enough, French scientists received a real shock when they removed some of this uranium and sent it for testing.
See, uranium found in the earth’s crust, in the moon, even in meteors, has a very specific level of uranium-235 content – 0.72%. Unlike the more predominant uranium-238, uranium-235 can sustain a fission chain reaction, that is, it can be used for nuclear power, as well as nuclear weapons. Yet, the uranium the French had pulled out of the ground in Gabon had significantly less uranium-235 than 0.72%. In fact, it had the makeup not of raw uranium, but of used uranium. It even contained other elements, not naturally occurring, at levels which aligned with the spent fuel of nuclear power plants. It was almost as if someone in the distant past had been using these uranium deposits, arranged neatly in a row as they were.
But if so, then who, and for what?
Weapons of the Gods
The answer to this question perhaps lies to the east, in India, and what is now the country of Pakistan. In 1927, ruins were unearthed during a geological excavation in Mohenjo Daro, Pakistan, which stunned excavators and experts alike. Starting at an apparent epicenter and extending outwards for 50 yards, the ruins had been fused and crystallized. In effect, the ruins had been turned to glass around an epicenter, which seemed to indicate a blast. More bizarrely, 44 human skeletons were found lying in the street, many holding hands as if they had suddenly been struck down by some unexpected catastrophe like the Mount Vesuvius volcano eruption in Italy, except, in an area devoid of volcanic activity. Upon examination, scientists wondered why these skeletons, many thousands of years old, had not decayed. When they were tested, the bones showed radiation levels many times higher than could be expected. At least one of the skeletons was recorded as having 50 times the radiation level it should have had. One scientist by the name of William Sturm concluded that:
“The melting of bricks at Mohenjo Daro could not have been caused by a normal fire,”
while Antonio Castellani, a space engineer in Rome, suggested,
“It’s possible that what happened at Mohenjo Daro was not a natural phenomenon”.
But these types of apparently unnatural phenomena have been found across the Indian subcontinent. For example, in Jodhpur, on the edge of the Thar Desert in India, a three-square-mile radioactive zone was discovered during excavation for a housing project. Underground was a layer of radioactive dust consistent with what is found in areas after a nuclear detonation.
Sometimes evidence does not make sense, and for the experts, Mohenjo-Daro and Jodhpur seemed to be evidence which suggested the use of nuclear weapons many thousands of years or more before the Manhattan Project. Is it possible this is what Oppenheimer was referring to when he asserted the Trinity Test was the first nuclear bomb in modern times?
It is interesting to note that upon creating his bomb, Oppenheimer infamously said,
“Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
This was a quote he took from the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Indian text Oppenheimer was intimately familiar with, having learned the Sanskrit language specifically so he could read it in its original language.
Bhagavad Gita
Consider that within the Bhagavad Gita, there are numerous accounts of magical superweapons wielded by gods which sound, frankly, a whole lot like modern nuclear bombs. One such weapon caused
“crowds of warriors with steeds and elephant and weapons to be carried away as if they were dry leaves of trees,”
while another created
“an incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as 10,000 suns,”
which sounds eerily similar to the mushroom clouds produced by nuclear bombs. Perhaps the most powerful weapon was known as the ‘brahmastra,’
“a single projectile charged with all the power in the universe. It was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death which reduced to ashes an entire race. There was neither a counter-attack nor a defense that could stop it.”
Some have suggested these accounts are not all that dissimilar to biblical accounts of Sodom and Gomorrah. As the Bible says in the Book of Genesis,
“Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens. Thus, he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, destroying all those living in the cities—and also the vegetation in the land.”
Going further, consider the description in the Bhagavad Gita of the long-term effects where these types of weapons were used.
“Hair and nails fell out; pottery broke without any apparent cause, and the birds turned white. After a few hours, all foodstuffs were infected. Any target hit by the brahmastra would be utterly destroyed; land would become barren and lifeless, rainfall would cease, and infertility in humans and animals would follow for eons of time.”
In many ways, this resembles the long-term effects of radiation felt by humans and the environment after the use of nuclear weapons. Incidentally, the inhabitants of Jodhpur, where radioactive dust similar to what is found in a nuclear blast site was discovered, have long been plagued with higher incidences of cancer, birth defects, and other health complications.
What if these ancient stories for the Bhagavad Gita are not allegorical myths, but rather historical accounts of events which actually took place. Could humans have discovered the secrets of nuclear power way back in the distant past, as Oppenheimer appeared to allude to, before literally blowing themselves back to the Stone Age? Or perhaps it is something deeper, more nefarious. Perhaps these weapons were not being used by humans but on humans. Maybe those recorded in the texts as ‘gods’ were not gods at all, but aliens.
Ancient Nuclear War on Mars
Dr. John Brandenburg is neither a conspiracy theorist nor a kook. He is a plasma physicist with a Ph.D. from the University of California Davis, a consultant to the tall foreheads at companies like Morningstar Applied Physics LLC and Orbital Technologies Inc. on such heavy topics as space missile defense and directed energy weapons. He is a credentialed man who has held positions of sway within high-minded, futuristic organizations.
This is why it created such a stir when Brandenburg appeared on Fox News in 2011 and proclaimed that Mars had been the site of nuclear explosions. In his own words,
“The Martian surface is covered with a thin layer of radioactive substances including uranium, thorium, and radioactive potassium. A nuclear explosion could have sent debris all around the planet. Maps of gamma rays on Mars show a big red spot that seems like a radiating debris pattern. On the opposite side of the planet, there is another red spot.”
For those inclined to search for natural reasons this could be the case, Brandenburg added succinctly,
“This massive nuclear explosion on Mars seems to defy natural explanation.”
As if this incredible proclamation wasn’t enough, Brandenburg has since taken his work further, coming to a mind-blowing conclusion which he has recently presented in the Journal of Cosmology, at a research presentation for the American Physical Society, and in a new book entitled Death on Mars: The Discovery of a Planetary Nuclear Massacre. In short, Brandenburg believes that it was not just random nuclear explosions that took place on Mars, but specifically the conscious use of nuclear weapons. He asserts that what could be seen resulting from “two large anomalous nuclear explosions on Mars in the past” was consistent with the effects of nuclear bombs, a “planetary nuclear massacre,” as it were.
But who could have used these weapons to produce such a massacre? Brandenburg offers a terrifying and ominous explanation, proclaiming that what can be seen on Mars is “an example of civilization wiped out by a nuclear attack from space.” He expands on this theoretical horror, colloquially explaining in his book:
“It is possible the Fermi Paradox means that our interstellar neighborhood contains forces hostile to young, noisy, civilizations such as ourselves. Such hostile forces could range from things as alien as AI (Artificial Intelligence) ‘with a grudge’ against flesh and blood, as in the movie Terminator, all the way to things as sadly familiar to us as a mindless humanoid bureaucrat like Governor Tarkin in Star Wars, eager to destroy planet Alderann as an example to other worlds.”
Combine Dr. Brandenburg’s proclamations with the wisdom of J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the question becomes whether Mars might not have been the only place these aliens “hostile to young, noisy civilizations” appeared. Perhaps they, in fact, appeared in India and elsewhere, occurrences recorded by ancient civilizations in places like the Bhagavad Gita, turning their terrible alien power on human beings and blasting them back to the Stone Age, leaving smooth oceans of desert glass and radioactive ruins in their wake.
More importantly, if this has happened before, what’s to say it can’t, or won’t, happen again?