Remember the VELA flash, forty years ago? it WAS a nuclear test. But by whom?

[bob10]

Israel, with South African help, is the thinking.




The Vela Flash: Forty Years Ago | National Security Archive (https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/nuclear-vault/2019-09-22/vela-flash-forty-years-ago)

[bob10]

Why worry?


Even though AFTAC found no traces of fallout, analysis (https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/dc.html'doc=3227324-41-Intelligence-Coordination-to-Zbigniew)
of thyroid glands of sheep slaughtered in Australia in October 1979 showed "abnormally high levels" of Iodine 131, a "short-lived isotope that occurs as the result of a nuclear event."