Vince Houghton - Nuking the Moon - And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board

And guess what? They found out something significant from these basic experiments. The critical depth of the charges mattered, and it mattered a lot.

Now you might be thinking (again), “Well, yeah. Of course depth matters. No one would think you could just blast off a charge at any depth and get a tidal wave. This seems like common sense. Who would assume otherwise?”

Well, the British, for one.

They had conducted their own experiments on this subject earlier, but at a much greater critical depth. When it didn’t produce a large wave, they closed up shop. Now the New Zealand/American team had shown that the British gave up prematurely. A shallow critical depth could produce much greater wave amplitudes.

And this discovery, when combined with part two of the experiment—multiple explosive charges—had the New Zealand/U.S. crew excited. Multiple charges, spaced strategically and “suitably located to conform with geometrical patterns,” were found to deliver “superior results.” Bigger waves! And those “geometrical patterns” allowed them to push some of the wave effects in a particular direction (like at a target), further magnifying the force of the wave (at least a little).

So far so good. But it was now time for the next phase of the testing. No more baby explosives in controlled environments. The Project Seal scientists theorized that charges of TNT totaling 2,000 tons, divided into ten equal amounts and “suitably disposed,” could produce wave amplitudes of the order of thirty to forty feet. It was time for a true, scaled-up, operational experiment. This was scheduled to take place at Taronui Bay, North Auckland, between the Bay of Islands and Whangaroa (not to be confused with the team’s phase one location, Whangaparaoa).

This was the moment of truth. The chance to make history. To control the magnificent forces of nature. To command the forces of nature. They knew the theory. They’d done the preliminary experimentation. The world was their oyster, and they were going to blow the living crap out of it. Nothing could stand in their way.

Of course, that’s not true. There were no happy endings for these poor scientists. For a number of reasons, Project Seal was canceled prior to the commencement of this testing. For one, the COMSOPAC, Admiral Bill Halsey, was no longer the COMSOPAC. In May 1944, he was promoted to commanding officer of the newly formed Third Fleet, which would smack around the Japanese navy throughout the remainder of the war. This was great for Halsey, but a major problem for the experimental team. With the loss of the highest-ranking proponent of the Seal program, the joint New Zealand/U.S. project lost some serious clout. Once they lost their top cover, it was easy for others in senior leadership, who were less enamored with a pie-in-the-sky project that was costing significant funds and diverting significant material and intellectual resources from the broader war effort, to put the kibosh on any further testing. Besides, the U.S. Navy leadership—at least those at the highest levels—knew about something the Seal team members did not. Something that had a much better chance to end the war quickly. Remember when I mentioned those laboratories in New Mexico? Yeah, that.

AND THEN WHAT?

Although Project Seal was scrapped, scientists on both sides of the Pacific kept the concept in the back of their minds as the atomic age came calling (across the Atlantic too—the British were now back in the tsunami game). On July 25, 1946, the United States tested an atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Unlike other atomic bomb tests, this one was detonated underwater, allowing for a direct analysis of Seal team forecasts. No, even an atomic bomb didn’t produce a tsunami, but the promise of potential future applications was enough to keep the idea floating around military circles in Washington, London, and Wellington well into the late 1950s, when some of the nuclear testing during Operation Hardtack I (in 1958) was specifically designed to see how much water could be displaced by a new generation of American weapons (thermonuclear weapons, also known as hydrogen bombs).

The answer: not enough. The “Umbrella” and “Wahoo” nuclear tests showed that detonations in both shallow and deep water (Umbrella, shallow; Wahoo, deep) do blast massive amounts of water into the air (you can find the videos online—it’s kinda cool…), yet neither test produced anything even remotely resembling a tsunami. The water went up. The water went down. Some nearby ships were affected (and it would have truly sucked to be on them). But no tidal waves.

But even this hasn’t stopped some people from thinking a man-made tsunami is a possibility, even today. By now, we should know better. Clearly we don’t.

In 2006, an Egyptian weekly reported that a combination of secret American and Israeli undersea nuclear testing in the Indian Ocean caused the earthquake that triggered the 2004 tsunami. Then, in 2015, an Israeli military tabloid published an article warning that Iran, if allowed to develop a nuclear weapons capability, could detonate a bomb in the Mediterranean and wipe out all of Israel with a massive tsunami.

Yes, both of these articles were from fringe publications, where conspiracy theories thrive and nonsense ideas are celebrated. The nuttier the better.

But what is the excuse, then, when in 2018, media around the world—traditional, respected, non-whack-job media—went completely off the rails covering the “story” of Russian Federation president Vladimir Putin’s announcement of an entirely new class of weapons designed to shatter the global balance of power?

Let’s start by taking a look at what Putin said to his country’s leadership:

We have embarked on the development of the next generation of missiles. For example, the Defense Ministry and enterprises of the missile and aerospace industry are in the active phase of testing a new missile system with a heavy intercontinental missile. We called it Sarmat.

Sarmat will be equipped with a broad range of powerful nuclear warheads, including hypersonic, and the most modern means of evading missile defence. The high degree of protection of missile launchers and significant energy capabilities the system offers will make it possible to use it in any conditions.

He then spoke about Russia’s new, super-duper cruise missiles:

But we did not stop at that. We started to develop new types of strategic arms that do not use ballistic trajectories at all when moving toward a target and, therefore, missile defence systems are useless against them, absolutely pointless.

One of them is a small-scale heavy-duty nuclear energy unit that can be installed in a missile like our latest X-101 air-launched missile or the American Tomahawk missile—a similar type but with a range dozens of times longer, dozens, basically an unlimited range. It is a low-flying stealth missile carrying a nuclear warhead, with almost an unlimited range, unpredictable trajectory and ability to bypass interception boundaries. It is invincible against all existing and prospective missile defence and counter-air defence systems. I will repeat this several times today.

Oh crap. It can fly forever, and it’s invincible ?!

Scary stuff, but I’m sure the United States is working on something similar. We probably already have one…

“As you no doubt understand, no other country has developed anything like this. There will be something similar one day, but by that time our guys will have come up with something even better.”

Damn it, Putin. You’re always one step ahead!

But there’s more:

We are well aware that a number of other countries are developing advanced weapons with new physical properties. We have every reason to believe that we are one step ahead there as well—at any rate, in the most essential areas. We have achieved significant progress in laser weapons. It is not just a concept or a plan any more. It is not even in the early production stages. Since last year, our troops have been armed with laser weapons.