“Unraveling the Mysteries: How Fire, Ice, and Plutonium Could Redefine Our Understanding of the Universe”
At the same time, however, the DUPI report concluded that, just as American and Danish experts had long maintained, no large, intact bomb components had survived the crash and sunk to the bottom of North Star Bay, famously declaring that:
“There is no bomb, there was no bomb and the Americans were not looking for a bomb. No nuclear weapons have been left on the bottom of the sea in Thule, nor was any secondary left.”
Rather, the Star III submersible deployed in August 1968 was only searching for the “spark plug” – a cylindrical rod of uranium at the centre of the bomb’s secondary capsule which helps initiate the fusion reaction.
But what of the greatest potential legacy of the Thule Crash: its environmental impact? Samples taken over the intervening six decades have revealed measurably increased levels of plutonium as far as 20 kilometres from the impact site, while the bodies of marine animals such as mussels, fish, birds, and seals have exhibited plutonium concentrations as high as 3000x normal levels. However, according to current models, even these elevated levels likely pose little threat to the environment – and to learn more about the horrifying way we discovered how much plutonium is too much, please check out our previous video That Time US Scientists Injected Plutonium Into People Without Their Knowledge.
But the human cost of the Thule Crash may be far greater – though more difficult to measure. While official records claim that every measure was taken to limit exposure to toxic and radioactive contaminants, many personnel who participated in the cleanup remember differently, with Jeffrey Carswell recalling:
