Stream dot com slash real life Lower In the very early morning hours of the 22nd of September 1979 something weird happened in the waters of the South Indian Ocean that has puzzled experts ever since American satellite orbiting above known as Villa Hotel 69 11, detected a bright double flash of light below that seemed to be indicative of a nuclear explosion.

Whenever a nuclear bomb is detonated, there is an initial extremely intense but brief burst of light, followed by a longer and less intense light afterwards.

This is a key signature for differentiating a nuclear explosion from any other kind of man made or natural phenomenon.

But the weird part waas.

The explosion seemed to be located in one of the most remote parts of the planet, somewhere around here in the Indian Ocean, between Africa and Antarctica and between the crows, a islands owned by France and the Prince Edward Island's owned by South Africa.

Further, a typhoon was active around that area at the time, which seemed to suggest that whoever did detonate a nuclear bomb there was trying to keep it a secret from the rest of the world.

Almost immediately, upon detection by the Vela satellite, the United States and NATO began investigating who may have conducted the secret and mysterious test.

The U.

S Air Force flew no less than 25 sorties over the area over the next few weeks to collect atmospheric samples.

The U.

N.

Security Council concluded that the event was very likely of nuclear origin, while meanwhile, in the United States, the Carter administration convene a panel of scientists and experts to determine what the event actually Waas and if it was nuclear, who was to blame for it.

However, after going through the data, this panel curiously came to the conclusion that the Vela incident, as it was getting to be known, was most likely caused by a natural event.

The report has been declassified since so you can check it out for yourself.

But they theorized that perhaps a micro meteoroid had struck the Vela satellite and cause it to only appear to detect a double flash in the Indian Ocean instead.

Largely this was because the panel failed to discover any corroborating evidence for a nuclear detonation.

They pointed out that the ratio of intensities between the first and the second flashes of the supposed explosion didn't match up with the ratio of actual nuclear explosions that had been measured accurately.

The US sorties over the area failed to produce any evidence of nuclear fallout, and a U.

S led team studying wind patterns failed to detect any levels of radiation down on the surface.

Thus, the Carter administration ruled that while they couldn't entirely proved that it wasn't a nuclear explosion, they considered it much more likely than a natural phenomenon was to blame.

And soon around that time, the U.

N Security Council adjusted their position, two inconclusive on whether or not a secret nuclear test had actually been conducted.

There was, of course, significant evidence to suggest, though the nuclear test actually did take place, the Vela satellite system together had successfully detected 41 previous atmospheric nuclear tests across the world after all, and further, the archive OH Observatory in Puerto Rico was able to detect an ionosphere.

IQ anomaly traveling from the epicenter of the supposed detonation site while in American study failed to come up with any radioactive fallout that would have been produced by such an explosion on Australian Studied did scientists that the Los Alamos observatory also voiced their belief that the sensors aboard the veil a satellite that detected the anomaly were not malfunctioning, while several other scientists have come forward claiming that the Carter administration panel's finding of a natural occurrence was politically motivated.

There are journalists who claim that every successive US administrations since then has deliberately covered up the truth of what the Vela incident actually Waas, while several modern studies conducted as recently as 2016 and 2018 attribute the cause to definitely being a nuclear bomb detonation.

So if it's true, why hasn't the United States or anybody else had just come out and said definitively What the valid incident Waas and who was actually responsible for secretly detonating a nuclear bomb back in 1979?

The answer is maybe because, well, the answer would be awkward.

Based on the geography of where the test took place, most researchers seem to believe that it was a nuclear test conducted by apartheid era South Africa or Israel or both of their governments cooperating together.

Israel is widely believed to have a nuclear weapons program that began in the late 19 forties, but it's extremely murky territory.

Israel has, after all, never confirmed nor denied the existence of their nuclear weapons.

And it's never been known when, where or even if Israel has actually tested any of their potential nukes.

Cooperating with South Africa and testing a nuclear bomb in a far away corner of the world would make sense for such a secretive program.

But what would have been in it for South Africa?

Well, at the time, South Africa was embroiled in a war against Angola and communist Cuba who were receiving supplies from the Soviet Union due to South Africa's apartheid racial discrimination policies.

Their government was shunned by much of the rest of the world, and a U.

N arms embargo had recently been passed against them.

It was hard for the apartheid regime to find friends in the world, but they found friends in the Israelis who are speculated to have cooperated together on their nuclear weapons research.

Israel one in nukes as a deterrent against their Arab neighbors, while South Africa wanted them as a deterrent against Communists in Angola.

In Cuba, South Africa did in fact developed six functioning atomic bombs.

But after the fall of apartheid, they made that fact publicly disclosed and dismantled all of them.

However, the modern South African nation has still never admitted toe any nuclear test conducted on the 22nd of September 1979.

And neither, for that matter, has Israel.

The US may have known about this test for decades, but has avoided publicly sharing this information because it would politically complicate relations with both South Africa and or Israel, both ostensibly allies of the United States.

Building evidence over the years has been particularly damning, though.

Ah, former South African naval commander convicted of spying for the Soviets has claimed that the veil incident was indeed a top secret joint South African and Israeli nuclear test conducted at a time and a place where they believe that they wouldn't get caught by anybody.

So maybe they did get caught.

Or maybe it was actually just something weird and natural that happened instead.

Ah, lot of questions still remain unsolved about the Vela incident, and we may never learn the truth behind what actually happened that day.

But in a way, that's kind of what makes the Vela incident and other mystery so interesting.

The fact that you don't know all of the answers and the possibility that one day you might.

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