The Vela Incident: Greatest Nuclear Mystery Ever

this video is made possible by curiosity stream watch any of their more than 2000 documentaries for free by visiting curiosity stream comm slash real life lore in the very early morning hours of the 22nd of September 1979 something weird happened in the waters of the South Indian Oceans that has puzzled experts ever since an American satellite orbiting above known as Vale ax hotel 6911 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 was the explosions seem 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 Crozet Islands owned by France and the Prince Edward Island zone 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 veil of satellite the United States and NATO began investigating who may have conducted the secret and mysterious tests the US Air Force flew no less than 25 sorties over the area over the next few weeks to collect atmospheric samples the UN 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 was 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 valence identity 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 micrometeoroid had struck the veil of satellites and caused 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 u.s. sorties over the area failed to produce any evidence of nuclear fallout and a us-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 prove 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 UN Security Council adjusted their position to 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 valus satellite system together had successfully detected 41 previous atmosphere nuclear tests across the world after all and further the uruk-hai bow Observatory in Puerto Rico was able to detect an ionosphere Kannamma ly traveling from the epicenter of the supposed detonation site while an American study failed to come up with any radioactive fallout that would have been produced by such an explosion an Australian study did scientists at the Los Alamos Observatory also voiced their belief that the sensors aboard the Vale a satellite that detected the anomaly were not malfunctioning while several other scientists have come forward claiming that the Carter Administration panels finding of a natural occurrence was politically motivated there are journalists who claim that every successive US administration since then has deliberately covered up the truth of what the Bayla incident actually was 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 vaillar incident was and who was actually responsible for secretly detonating a nuclear bomb back in nine 1879 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 1940s 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 faraway 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 UN 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 were speculated to have cooperated together on their nuclear weapons research Israel won in nooks 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 develop 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 to any nuclear tests conducted on the 22nd of September 1979 and neither for that matter has Israel the u.s. 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 a former South African naval commander convicted of spying for the Soviets has claimed that the Valen incident was indeed a top-secret joint South African and Israeli nuclear test conducted at a time and a place where they believed 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 a lot of questions still remain unsolved about the Bayla 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 vaillar incident and other mysteries so interesting the fact that you don't know all of the answers and the possibility that one day you might so if you're like me and you love learning everything you can about strange unsolved mysteries in the world you can learn a lot more from the comfort of your phone or your PC in your own home by checking out curiosity stream next curiosity stream is the first streaming service that exclusively streams documentaries and educational videos so if you like watching poorly made educational videos on this channel you'll love professionally made ones over there that I love like David Attenborough's light on earth film or the Enigma man a story about one of the stone Age's greatest mysteries curiosity stream was created by the founders of the Discovery Channel and is available worldwide on the web Android iOS and tons of other platforms they have documentaries and content spanning science nature history technology society and lifestyles so 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Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 2,253,370

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, vela incident, the vela incident, vela satellite, nuclear mystery, unsolved, unsolved mysteries

Id: HwLF785weFU

Length: 8min 9sec (489 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 31 2019