I just finished reading Bill Bryson’s “A Sunburned Country” about his love affair with Australia. I’d really love to go see it sometime, next time my butt is up to a 24-hour trip. Bryson’s one of my favorite writers, as funny as he is observant, so I’m not quite sure how to take his description of an incident he used to illustrate the vastness of the Outback.
He mentioned that there was a huge explosion on 28 May 1993, registering on seismographs around the world, very near a location where the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult had a facility of some sort - Banjawara Station, W.A. You remember them, I’m sure, from the nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Anyway, it seems they are known to have had some uranium and to have hired nuke experts from the ex-USSR.
There’s been enough time for a responsible site study by now, but all I can find on the trusty WWW is on, shall we say, low-credibility sites. So I ask any of you diggers that frequent this board: Has this incident ever been proven to be anything in particular? Did Oz really get nuked, or is this whole story a pile of dingo kidneys?
It is a remote possibility. It is known that Aum Shinrikyo had some physicists in the cult leadership, and they attempted to buy nuclear materials in Russia. It is suspected that they are continuing these efforts. If you want the details, go read the book “The Cult at the End of the World.”
I’ve been following the Aum Shinrikyo story in the Japanese press for years (I am fairly fluent in Japanese) and it really is an incredible story. IMHO, Aum Shinrikyo is the most dangerous group on earth. They had tens of millions of dollars and with a fanatically evil leader bent on mass destruction. They could still do it again quite easily.
I don’t think I believe Aum Shinrikyo got ahold of enough material to make a bomb. But I do know that anyone who had a critical mass of bomb grade material, and wanted to make a bomb, has succeeded.
Still, this seems like a meteorite event. I used to work at USGS and they had these events appear on the seismographs fairly often, but without ground reports, they could never track them down accurately. From the reports, Aum would have had to have some sort of missile, I really doubt that this was possible.
Maybe the biggest strike against the Shinriko theory can be summed up thusly:
“A crazed cult nuked Australia and nobody noticed?”
Simply implausible, given CNN’s global reach. If anyone launches on anyone else these days, the whole world will be getting up-to-the-minute reports beginning the second the fireball hits the ground. We, the J. Random Schlubs of America, knew that Pakistan was testing very soon after they had done so. Any nukes launched in anger will make front-page news in every region with a front page to put news on. I think that Aum Shinriko is a dangerous cult, possibly the most dangerous (maybe in a tie with cults like the Taliban or other Islamic militants), but nobody could do something as big as launch a nuke in anger and avoid press coverage.
plus… why australia of all places? If they really wanted to cause mass destruction… australia would be the worst place to do it… the fallout wouldnt be as devastating on other countries nearby (because other than new zealand, there really arent any)… and a vast majority of Australia’s population lives in something like 2% of the country (apparently not where the explosion was). Plus… they wouldnt really hurt a koala bear, would they??
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By gosh, by golly, by jingo, is this the esteemed Caractacus of Hot Copper (et al) fame? How you be Sir?
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** Banjawarn explosion **
Those who claimed the explosion was a meteor have generally been reminded by the nuclear explosion supporters that no impact crater has been found. Rather odd that, I would have thought a 1-2 kilotonne bomb might have left one as well, and also there is a absence of radioactive material.
The site is about 50 miles from the Bronzewing gold mine who keep a reasonable seimic record of the area.
Certainly these was an explosion of some sort, I did’t find any definitive answer to what it was.
The link is to one a series of articles on the event which may be just one of those low-credibility sites ElvisL1ves alluded to.
NUCLEAR BOMB SCENARIO
The eyewitness observations of the Banjawarn explosion of 28 May 1993 resemble a description of a night-time nuclear blast. Calculations utilising the seismic signals received around WA suggested that the energies involved in the explosion were at least 1-2 kilotonnes of TNT equivalent, i.e., similar to a small nuclear bomb. Following mid-1995 press reports that linked the Aum to attempts to procure nuclear weapons, I decided that this possibility was serious enough to alert the US Senate inquiry and the Australian authorities. However, a lack of radioactive dust particles in Australian collectors for that month, as well as intelligence information and other considerations, soon led me to discount the nuclear bomb theory. However, the US Senate is still researching this possibility
Well yes woolly it am indeed I… or at least it seems to be… but how did we end up like this? What happened to HC? Where is Burra’? What does it all mean?