It’s supposed to be a new Russian doomsday weapon, able to strike anyone… anywhere… at any time.
Instead, its only victimized the people who made it!
Russia is working desperately to cover up what appears to be a major nuclear disaster at its infamous Nenoksa Missile Test Site, apparently caused by a botched tests of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s infamous new nuclear missile.
The Burevestnik missile is supposed to be powered by its own miniature nuclear reactor, allowing it to remain in flight for longer periods so it can fly further.
It’s a nuke with its own nuke – and one, or both, appear to have detonated during a test.
Experts believe it may be the biggest disaster in the region since Chernobyl, but no one can confirm it. Much like that 1986 meltdown in Ukraine, officials have been working overtime to hide the damage and lie to the world about what really happened.
Here’s what we know: the blast on Aug. 8 killed at least 7 people, and tripped radiation sensors throughout the region.
That activated Phase One of the coverup as Moscow shut down multiple sensors that shared data with outside monitors, claiming it’s no one’s business but theirs.
From what was shared, we know radiation levels skyrocketed throughout the region.
The city of Severodvinsk – just 25 miles from the blast zone and with a population of 183,000, about the same as Providence, Rhode Island – had radiation levels of up to 16 times normal.
Putin himself this week flat-out lied, claiming there was “no threat and no rise in radiation level.”
We know it’s a lie because victims suffering from radiation poisoning were sent to local hospitals, according to details in the normally tight-lipped world of Russian media.
But it leaked… because those hospitals were livid.
“No one – neither hospital directors, nor Health Ministry officials, nor regional officials or the governor – notified staff that the patients were radioactive,” a surgeon told The Moscow Times. “The hospital workers had their suspicions, but nobody told them to protect themselves.”
As a result, doctors and other staff were also exposed to radiation and had to be airlifted to a hospital in Moscow.
Another doctor told the newspaper the staff at the hospital is “furious.”
In another case, a village was evacuated… and also apparently lied to even as they were chased out of their homes.
“They said that there were no changes in the radiation background and there was nothing to worry about,” an unnamed resident told the Washington Post. “And that everything is fine both in our village and there.”
Next, the cover-up could enter a dangerous new phase.
When Putin announced the Burevestnik last year, he called it his “vengeance weapon.” It’s supposed to be part of a new high-tech arsenal that sounds like something from a James Bond movie, and includes a torpedo he claimed could trigger tsunamis against coastal cities.
But the botched test may have exposed that entire program as hollow bluster.
Experts already had their doubts about the missile given that the only footage released by Moscow was doctored. And others say some of the tech in the supposed missiles not only doesn’t exist… but quite possibly can’t exist, either.
“I’ve generally been of the belief that this attempt at developing an unlimited-range nuclear-powered cruise missile is folly,’’ Ankit Panda, a nuclear expert at the Federation of American Scientists, told the New York Times.
Panda said the U.S. has already tried to make this tech work but “quickly discovered the limitations and risks, and abandoned it with good reason.”
One expert told CNN that even if they were able to create such a missile, it would have to “belch out radioactive plumes” to stay aloft.
But Putin won’t want the world to know of the failure – so he could be expected to step up his development so he has something he can show off. And that could lead to another and potentially even bigger disaster down the road.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert, and is the author of “America’s Final Warning.”