Big Bang

Yes, I Know That Is Ambiguous
What, you expected BOOJUM! to be all incisive and definitive and proscriptive and ivive and come out with something utterly unarguable?
     If so, you are reading the wrong blog.  In the wrong tent.  In the wrong desert.  On the wrong planet.

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away ....

     Okay, there's a couple of facets to this scrivel.  Yes, to that question on your lips, we shall be getting back to the Israeli nuclear weapons program*, just not yet - so that is one iteration of "Big Bang".
     Anyway, what I wanted to focus on here, with trembling hands, a touch of drool on the lips and incredibly dilated pupils, was A Great Big Rocket.  Art?

Hello Mister Freud

     This monster is NASA's Space Launch System, which is intended to herald in their world dictatorship and Satan intention to put South Canadians on the Moon by 2024.  It is due to undergo a series of tests at the utterly awesome Stennis Space Centre - 

!

     We could probably manage a whole week's worth of posts just dealing with how they created that structure <spaces out for a minute in architectural awe> - er yeah.
     Anyway, there you have it.  The SLS is 24,000 tons of explosive awesome, that nobody involved wants to see getting frisky, or otherwise there would be a -

Yesssssssssss

     So, when this puppy launches, there will be a very Big Bang.
     Right, since I am typing this at work, there will now be a pause as I go brew a pot of tea and toast some bread.

     Back again!  And once again the womenfolk all like my teapot.  If only I could bottle it's charms.  Motley - shall we watch "Paving Flags Of Our Fathers" again?
Meanwhile, Just Off The Kerguelen Islands ...
I first heard mention of this incredibly remote archipelago in a "Biggles" adventure novel.  It is a French possession and has a small population of scientists who study things like birds and lichens.
     Back in 1979, it also came into the possession of some radioactive fallout.
     Zoinks! said the world.  What's been happening here?
     Well, a South Canadian Vela satellite recorded what appeared to be the double flash from a nuclear test on 22nd September 1979.  Art?

A Vela before release into the wild

     The area it took place in was nearest to South Africa, whom various investigators regarded with intense suspicion.  Were they testing nukes in secret?
     Nope.  The consensus now is that it was the Israelis, who had been secretly co-operating with the South Africans and were allowed to set off their Big Bang Bomb for test purposes, reciprocating by giving Pretoria all sorts of goodies in terms of nuclear technology information.  The South Africans themselves didn't manage to assemble a nuclear warhead until well after the Vela-observed flashes.  Interesting, nicht wahr?

The location

     Technically, it was a very small detonation, suspicions being that either it was a nuclear artillery munition (that is, a shell, which will have a low yield by design) or a neutron warhead (where it's the enhanced radiation that is the business, rather than blast).  Israel, of course, keeps mum about it, as their policy is neither to confirm or deny that they have a bucketload of nukes**.  It does go to show that they have a sophisticated and very well-developed nuclear weapons program.  Which rather makes the Norks look like fumbling bafoons; fifty years and not a fusion warhead yet.
     Gee, ain't nooklar weapons interesting!

Destination ?

     Motley, I suspect we might be losing our audience.  Quickly, change the subject!

Mighty Moe Berg
Here's one out of left field HA HA HA!  Do you see what I did there?  I cunningly used a baseball term to describe a baseball player!
     What do you mean, who?  Art!  Picture!

Moe out of uniform

     He was a baseball player in the Thirties and into the Forties, which was an odd occupation for someone who was a law graduate and could speak umpteen languages.  People universally regarded him as the brainiest man in baseball.

Moe in uniform

     Come wartime in South Canada, he got recruited by the Office of Strategic Services, being sent to South America to do various spy-ish things before ending up in Europe, debriefing Italian physicists and persuading them to go work for their generous Uncle Samuel.  He was also present in Zurich when the major Teuton scientist Heisenberg gave a lecture about atomic physics; Moe had to make a considered judgement about how close the Teutons were to a functional atomic bomb.  He calculated not very at all, which was both accurate and fortunate for Heisenberg, as MB had orders to kill him if a Nazi bomb was a likely possibility.

Werner, unaware how close he came.

     There, I bet you didn't ever expect BOOJUM! to cover baseball, did you***?

     Hmmm, the clock ticks on.

Life Reflecting Art
No, not our resident coal-munching Neanderthal, "Art" as crafted by clever and/or gifted human beings.  If you recall AND YOU'D BETTER then you will know Conrad has been reading a couple of novels that feature dread pandemics, namely "Pandemic" and "The Stand".  In P the disease is deliberately created and released, because the plot demands it.  In TS the disease escapes accidentally (we never learn how), and sneaky Uncle Samuel deliberately spreads it globally in order to kill off the opposition, once he realises there's no cure or stopping it.  Art? (yes our coal-munching Neanderthal this time).

The BBC's image and below, the caption -

     Mystery Chinese virus: How worried should we be?

      There's a saying by that chap The Doctor (back when he was a chap): Time will tell.
     But remember "World War Z"?  That's right.  This is how the Zombie Apocalypse begins.

Finally -
We appear to have covered two of the things that pervade BOOJUM! - atom bombs and zombies.  That only leaves us to cover TANK, so -

The Renault F17

     We of this Sceptred Isle like to bang on about how we invented the tank, but it took the French to come up with the practical design that is with us even today, especially if you analyse it via topology.



Close enough

     And with that, we are done!


* Apologies to both Shin Beth and Sayeret Matkal.
**  It's an open secret.  Thank you Mordechai Vanunu.
***  We like to mix it up <dabs>