This Nuclear Device Lost in the Himalayas Could Destroy India

hey 42 here on the 7th of february this year in a remote region of the indian himalayas a wall of churning water ripped through a narrow mountain valley obliterating everything in its path a brand new power plant was all but destroyed two hydroelectric dams were washed away and several villagers were utterly devastated more than 200 lives were taken by the raging water flooding isn't all that unusual in the himalayas during the summer and monsoon months there are literally thousands of glaciers tucked away amongst its jagged peaks and warm weather combined with sudden torrential rain is a recipe for flash floods but this particular disaster happened in february towards the end of a long freezing winter when liquid water isn't really supposed to be a thing outside of a few fast-flowing alpine rivers so how was that possible official reports put forward a number of theories about what might have triggered the flood including a glacial outburst rogue landslides or disturbances caused by industrial activity in the area but locals have a theory of their own one that if correct could have potentially deadly implications for hundreds of millions of people across india you see the people who live in this particular valley in the himalayas tell stories of a forgotten nuclear device hidden amongst the nearby himalayan peaks they believe heat given off by this device is to blame for the unseasonal flooding but how exactly do the locals think such a nuclear device could possibly have ended up in this remote part of the himalayas easy the cia put it there or to be precise the cia lost it there during a botched cold war operation involving some of the world's best mountain climbers several kilograms of plutonium and a liberal amount of improvised blackface now that probably sounds about as realistic and politically correct as the plot from an old bond film but believe it or not this particular cia mission called operation hat really did take place during the cold war resulting in the loss of seven highly radioactive plutonium cores at the top of one of the world's tallest mountains where so far as anyone knows they remain to this day the cold war was defined by a global political climate of tension and widespread paranoia perhaps unsurprisingly such ubiquitous distrust made this period of history something of a golden era for international espionage and intrigue or to put it another way during the cold war anyone who was anyone was spying on almost everyone in 1965 the united states was paying particularly close attention to a certain communist superpower in waiting china ruled by the infamous chairman mao at the time china was beginning to flex its technological muscles conducting its first nuclear weapons test in october of 1964 as part of its two bombs one satellite program hold on a minute why does saying two bombs one satellite make me feel slightly queasy weird china's rapid progress in the development of weapons of mass destruction was a worry and the united states was keen to keep an eye on this emerging threat one way to do this was to build a listening post to intercept telemetry signals being sent between chinese test missiles and ground control it was a promising idea but considering the available technology at the time the listening post would need to be placed relatively close to the chinese border and with a line of sight not obscured by terrain the curvature of the earth or anything else for that matter luckily the americans knew just a place india the indians were themselves more than a little bit nervous about their northern neighbours newfound ponchon for nuclear warheads and so they were all for establishing the proposed listening station india also happens to be in possession of a conveniently giant mountain range whose peaks offered an uninterrupted view well into china the himalayas with the indians on board nanda devi the country's second tallest mountain was chosen as the perfect location for the listening post and over in the u.s operation hat was formed in order to put it there by the way if the name nanda devi rings a bell you might be remembering it from a recent video i did on the mysterious skeletons in roopkund lake as it turns out the devastating himalayan flood in february of this year occurred just 25 kilometers from rubicon lake as the crow flies although thinking about it the idiom as the crow flies doesn't really apply here there's a 7 000 meter mountain peak between the two points and crows can't actually fly that high anyway as operation hack got underway in 1965 it soon became clear there were going to be some enormous challenges to overcome for starters there was no infrastructure of any kind near nanda devi which meant the cia's planned listening station would have to be unmanned and entirely self-sufficient the biggest concern was how to power the station regular batteries wouldn't have the longevity even those really expensive ones with the bunny on and solar panels weren't really suitable for such a demanding changeable environment there was one other option though nuclear power that might sound kind of extreme but this was a cold war after all plutonium had never been more fashionable so a nuclear-powered listening device complete with seven plutonium cores was duly built all that was left was to put it on top of nanda devi but that turned out to be a lot easier said than done the himalayas are known as the roof of the world for good reason they're really bloody big and whilst flying their device to the top of the mountain seemed the obvious choice it simply wasn't possible as well as being obscenely tall nanda devi is one of the steepest mountains on earth landing on it just wasn't going to be an option and that meant there was only one thing for it the cia were going to have to carry the 60 kilogram listening device up to 7 800 meter peak the old-fashioned way by literally carrying it nanda devi is surrounded on all sides by some of the world's tallest mountains including 12 peaks of 6500 meters or so that's the equivalent of 17 empire state buildings piled on top of each other this ring of mountains creates a kind of natural shield wall around nanda devi that's all but impenetrable think of it like mordor except the wall of mountains doesn't hide an army of orcs and the giant eye showing all the symptoms of a nasty case of conjunctivitis but a pristine wilderness called the sanctuary that's entirely cut off from the outside world the sanctuary is so remote and the terrain around it is so challenging that it took explorers almost 100 years to figure out how to get inside and when it was finally breached by two british men and their free sherpa companions in 1934 they declared the journey to be more challenging than reaching the north pole and you have to go through all of that just to get to the base of nanda devi which rises another 3 000 metres above the sanctuary climbing nanda devi was a task so difficult that there weren't all that many people on the entire planet with the necessary skills experience and giant steel balls required to even attempt it and inconveniently enough none of them happened to work for the cia so the bigwigs at langley did the only thing they could do under the circumstances they started covertly recruiting the alpine equivalent of the justice league a crack team of the most gifted mountaineers of their generation made up of 14 men from the us and four from india between them these men boasted all sorts of climbing records and first ascents of the world's deadliest peaks but as talented as they were none of them had all that much experience dealing with plutonium which meant one of their number jim mccarthy who had a few years earlier become the first climber ever to be featured on the front 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 being given nuclear training in order to carry out a top-secret mission for the american government in a part of the world only accessible to a god level climber and you've pretty much got your head around the sheer craziness that was operation hat incidentally jim mccarthy would go on to develop testicular cancer in later life something he believed was caused by exposure to the plutonium radiation during this mad mission but back in 1965 mccarthy his potentially irradiated balls and the rest of the justice league of climbers were on the way to nanda devi's base camp in helicopters this particular method of transport was chosen so as to give the americans he would stand out like a sore form in 1960s india minimum exposure to the locals if rumors of the operation had reached chinese ears the listening post would have been completely worthless the light-skinned members of the climbing team even went so far as to artificially darken their skin with indian tanning lotions to try and better blend in because apparently blackface is okay if you're engaged in cold war espionage a team of pauses was hired to lug the equipment including the nuclear-powered listening device up to base camp and a vague story about a stash of gold was concocted by cia representatives to explain the presence of a certain incongruous 60 kilogram solid lead bark stashed away amongst the food and crampons not that the porters believed a word of it they may not have had a huge amount of experience porting solid gold but they knew it didn't give off continuous intense waves of heat for weeks on end once the equipment and the climbers were safely at base camp operation hat was finally ready to begin the team began their ascent in clear weather and made excellent progress over the course of almost a month but when they were just 600 meters from the summit a huge storm rolled in making what was already an incredibly dangerous climb virtually impossible the conditions were so bad the climbers had no option but to abandon the mission and turn back they tupped the listening device securely away in a crevice near their camp and made their way back down with plans to attempt the summit again when the weather turned at the beginning of the following season but when they made it back to the site of their final camp several months later the listening device was gone in fact the entire area had been swept away 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 whilst there were a few rumors of agents from pakistan sneaking up the mountain over the winter and nabbing the device the most popular theory is that it was dislodged from its hiding place by natural processes of the mountain and absorbed into one of nanda devi's colossal glaciers which brings us back to the recent winter flooding that oddly enough just so happens to have occurred in the exact same area that a certain rather toasty nuclear device went missing in the 60s so could the unseasonal floods this february have been caused by the cia's lost nuclear device actually no because whilst at first nobody seemed quite sure what could have created such a devastating flood in the middle of winter satellite imagery has since proven definitively that it was caused by a huge section of rock and ice breaking away from nanda devi's flank and crashing into the river a couple of kilometers below but that doesn't mean several kilograms of plutonium stuck 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 river ganges the world's third largest river and a natural resource of incalculable value to india considered sacred to hindus the ganges supports the most heavily populated river basin of any river in the world with over 650 million people living within its reach if the lost nuclear device of nanda devi was ever to blow its radioactive load into the headwaters of the ganges it could cause an environmental disaster on an apocalyptic scale so whilst the fate of the lost nuclear device of nanda devi remains unknown almost 60 years after the cia somehow managed to lose it let's just hope it stays that way thanks for watching you can get your hands on my book stick a flag in it over on amazon or on audible links to both in the description below thank you

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 2,144,856

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Id: p21mGfEnymw

Length: 15min 39sec (939 seconds)

Published: Mon May 03 2021