ONE NIGHT IN THE LIFE OF D.B. COOPER
You stand inside the opened aft stairs of a Boeing 727. The plane beneath your feet races at 200 miles per hour. You stare into a vacuous night sky that defines pitch black.
The wind outside the aircraft plummets the temperature to below freezing. The weight of the ten thousand $20 bills strapped to your body bogs you down like proverbial cement shoes. The bomb in your briefcase may as well be a severed, human head.
The parachute on your back? You're not certain if it works, because the person who packed it wants you dead. You've smoked enough Raleigh filter-tipped coffin nails in the past two hours to keep the tobacco industry in business until 1975. It's 1971. Your gut is full of cheap bourbon. What do you do?
If you're D.B. Cooper, the only answer to that question is, "Jump!"
The evening sky was anything but calm that night when a wiry man, garbed in business attire and prescription sunglasses, took his seat aboard Northwest Orient Airlines flight 305 at Portland International Airport in Oregon. A meager $18.52 had gotten him this far. He had paid for his E-ticket thrill ride in cash.
It wasn't long after the plane's departure that same man calmly handed "Flo" Schaffner, the nearest flight attendant, a note. Used to the attention from male passengers, Florence assumed the average looking traveler was bequeathing her another phone number for the circular file. She pocketed the scrap of paper that quietly fed her ego.
Leaning in, the man proceeded to elucidate, "Miss, you'd better look at that note. I have a bomb."
Opening his briefcase enough so the terrified stewardess could view a pair of maroon cylinders, cables and a battery, the man — whose name appeared as "Dan Cooper" on the passenger list — drove his point home with sledgehammer force, "No funny stuff." The traveler — in his mid-40s and somewhere near six feet tall — demanded $200,000 in used $20 bills, and two sets of parachutes.
As the plane lurched into the mouth of a hungry tempest, the remainder of the commuters white knuckled their way through the meteorological predicament, unaware a hijacking was taking place.
"This was a desperate act...something you would expect from somebody who had nothing to lose," asserted Ralph Himmelsbach — retired FBI agent who devoted more than two decades hunting Dan Cooper, later dubbed "D.B." by an ill-informed journalist.
Prior to landing at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, pilot William Scott contacted authorities, who echoed the hijacker's stipulations to the FBI.
Both the aircraft’s crew, and those on the ground, complied with Cooper's demands. In an act of expeditious thinking, FBI agents amassed a ransom comprised entirely of bills printed in 1969, all containing serial numbers starting with the letter "L," and all issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Amazingly, officials were able to photograph each and every note, thereby retaining records of the individual serial numbers on the currency.
As the cash and parachutes were loaded onto the plane, D.B. Cooper allowed his fellow passengers, as well as stewardess Florence Schaffner, to evacuate the aircraft. Three people total — pilot William Scott, the flight's first officer and one attendant — stayed on board with their hijacker.
On the ground, puzzled FBI officials pondered Cooper’s motives for requesting extra parachutes. Did he have an accomplice on board? Was he planning the pilot, first officer and attendant jettison the aircraft with him?
Once the plane was refueled, and D.B.'s demands were met, the hijacker ordered the jet become airborne, this time en route to Reno, Nevada. Cooper demanded Scott fly at no more than 200 miles per hour, at an abnormally low altitude of 10,000 feet. When the aircraft was securely aloft, D.B. sent the remaining flight attendant to the cockpit, leaving himself alone in the cabin.
At approximately 8:13 PM, over southwestern Washington state, the crew observed an emergency light flashing, signifying the aft stairs of the plane had suddenly been opened. Shortly, thereafter, a change in air pressure was noted. Moments later, the crew collectively felt the aircraft jolt, as if someone had vacated the jumbo jet. At this point, weather conditions were so unforgiving, a pair of F-106 fighters pursuing the airliner had been unable to witness Cooper's daring escape.
What would compel a middle aged man, clad in nothing more than flimsy business garb and loafers, to jump from an altitude of 10,000 feet into a driving rainstorm, over uncharted wilderness?
"If the cold didn't kill him," asserted Ralph Himmelsbach, "if he withstood the powerful turbulence, Cooper was still parachuting into a dense forest at night, at the onset of winter, with no food or survival gear."
Was D.B. Cooper insane, or one of the single greatest criminals in recorded history? The fact the hijacker's remains have yet to be recovered may point to the latter. Not only have authorities failed to uncover Cooper’s body, but the parachute, briefcase, money-bag and most of the ransom D.B. had on him when he jumped, are still missing. Nobody, outside of perhaps Cooper himself, is certain where he landed. In fact, the only physical reminder of this mysterious figure was the hijacker’s mother of pearl tie clip, which officials discovered on board the Boeing 727, following the incident.
Subsequent to an unsuccessful ground search over the area where authorities felt D.B. may have come to rest, it was concluded Cooper had either been killed during his free-fall, or sometime after landing. Even so, no physical proof verifies either conclusion.
But the story of D.B. Cooper doesn't end there.
Late 1978. A placard containing directions for the correct procedure of lowering the aft stairs of a Boeing 727 is discovered near D.B. Cooper's theorized drop zone.
February 10, 1980. Whilst on a picnic with his family, eight year old Brian Ingram discovers $5,800 in deteriorating $20 bills, along the shoreline of the Columbia River. Authorities authenticating the serial numbers on the cash determined they matched those of the legal tender D.B. had on him when leaping from the aircraft. To date, this is the only portion of the stolen money recovered.
For many, D.B. Cooper has become a folk hero, having committed the perfect crime. After all, at that particular time, he was the only hijacker of a domes-tic plane to escape capture.
The FBI's official search for Cooper, dubbed Norjak, is open to this day. Local eateries, taverns and towns in southwestern Washington state continue to celebrate an annual event known as D.B. Cooper Days, in which the memory of a legend is honored, and mass quantities of alcohol are consumed.
Sources:
Online Sources:
D.B. Cooper:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._B._Cooper
Online Movies:
The Skyjacker That Got Away:
A DAY WE WERE MINUTES FROM NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION
Technically, aren't we mere minutes from nuclear annihilation at any given moment? Moreover, why does this fail to infuriate us? How come the fact that governments dangle our lives over the precipice of decimation every single second, isn't a bone of contention the size of a Tyrannosaurus rex femur?
The title of this chapter became a much more imminent reality on January 25, 1995. Oddly enough, most of us still aren't aware of it.
The U.S. and Russia nearly ended humankind on the aforementioned day. We're talkin' eradication of you, your family, and everyone on the planet.
If you're reading this chapter, there's a strong chance you were entertaining cognitive thoughts on January 25, 1995. On that date, perhaps you found yourself:
A) driving a car.
B) driving a stolen car.
C) trapped in the Grotto at the Playboy Mansion.
For your sake, I hope you were immersed in letter C, as it was quite nearly the last act of your life.
In order to study the aurora borealis, Norway and the U.S. had jointly launched a harmless Black Brant XII rocket. Although Russia was informed of this exercise, for whatever reason, the message wasn’t received via proper channels. As such, somewhere near dawn, the Kremlin believed they were under an unprovoked nuclear attack. President Boris Yeltsin was rallied from slumber and given the sobering news.
Out comes the Russian version of the Nuclear Football, the suitcase containing launch authorization for every warhead owned by the largest country in the world. To be precise, three black attaches — known as Cheget — were opened that morning. One was presided over by Yeltsin, while the other two were handled by Minister of Defense Pavel Grachev and Chief of the General Staff Mikhail Kolesnikov.
Whether or not to discharge thousands of nukes isn't a decision that should fall upon the shoulders of somnolent men. Moreover, these dudes had 10 minutes to reach their resolution. This is how long it took American missiles launched from submarines in the Barents Sea to impact Russian soil.
Moments prior to dispatch, radar operators observed the missile in question heading toward the ocean, and the heightened state of emergency was cancelled. The end of humanity, as well as every living thing on Earth, except for cockroaches and insurance sales-men, was avoided.
Makes a person wonder if this type of scenario has played out more than once. Well, it has, but those stories will have to wait for subsequent volumes.
One question before I determine what's at the bottom of this bottle of bourbon. Doesn't the concept of commencing a counterattack in response to a nuclear first strike seem ludicrous? Say Russia fires their missiles initially. Resultant of this act, perhaps half of humanity will die. Wouldn't it be far more advantageous for the U.S. to not launch a retaliatory strike, and thereby save half our species?
Sources:
Books:
Kick, Russ. (2003). 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know. The Disinformation Company Ltd. ISBN: 0971394288
Online Sources:
Norwegian Rocket Incident:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_rocket_incident
THE FATHER OF THE U.S. SPACE PROGRAM WAS A NAZI
After the closing of World War II, approximately 1,600 German scientists, engineers and trained specialists — many categorized Nazi war criminals — were clandestinely granted immunity by the United States government. These individuals were given lucrative careers within U.S. developmental sectors, via a directive known as Operation Paperclip.
The aforementioned program was a post-WWII mad dash to capture the most promising Nazi minds, before British and Soviet intelligence could do the same.
"How come we've never heard of this?" you question.
How many sonless mothers in middle America would be screaming for the President’s head, if they knew men responsible for their children's deaths were being granted freedom?
Wernher von Braun. Name ring a bell? It should if you were hangin' around during the Space Race of the '50s and '60s. Ol' Wern was one of those Nazi scientists secretly snagged.
Recall how the U.S. scrambled to accomplish off-planet records, but the "Ruskies" kept beatin' 'em to the punch? Sputnik in '57; Sputnik 2 with doomed-to-die Laika the dog; Yuri Gagarin in Vostok 1; the first woman in space; the first mission employing pressurized space suits.
The Soviets always seemed one step ahead. That is, until Wernher and his crew hit the scene. Whilst working for the Third Reich, von Braun invented the V-2 rocket — another precursor to Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. And I thought my resume was impressive with the whole 42 words per minute thing.
The V-2 was responsible for killing roughly 6,000 innocent civilians in World War II, as well as approximately 12,000 concentration camp prisoners used as slave labor in its mass production. While toiling for the United States, Wernher and his team also created the Saturn V rockets that carried U.S. Apollo astronauts to the Moon.
Von Braun's nefarious origins, like those of all German scientists freed from execution, were kept secret by the U.S. government. Although Wernher claimed to have been opposed to the cruel treatment of inmates at the rocket-making facilities, numerous war camp prisoners testified the scientist had a direct hand in their torture.
French former captive Guy Morand declared:
"Without even listening to my explanations, [von Braun] ordered the Meister to have me given 25 strokes...Then, judging that the strokes weren't sufficiently hard, he ordered I be flogged more vigorously…von Braun made me translate that I deserved much more, that in fact I deserved to be hanged...I would say his cruelty, of which I was personally a victim, is an eloquent testimony to his Nazi fanaticism."
Prisoner Robert Cazzabone professed von Braun observed, without protest, as numerous internees were manacled and hanged from hoists about the V-2 factories. Many of these inmates wouldn't live to see the end of the war.
Wernher von Braun was technical director of the Peenemunde V-2 Production Plant. He also played an integral role at the Mittelwerk rocket-making factory beneath the city of Nordhausen. At both locations, concentration camp prisoners were forced into labor under horrific conditions.
Upwards of 10 captives per day were hanged to death at Peenemunde for the most minor infractions. Since more individuals died as a result of the V-2's construction, than during its deployment as a weapon, it's difficult to believe von Braun had no knowledge of the suffering occurring in his own facilities.
Following the war, Wernher — a prior SS officer — not only became a naturalized citizen of the U.S., but also Director of Nasa. Von Braun — an individual with no less than 18,000 deaths on his head — ended up acting in educational films for Walt Disney. It's a small world, after all.
Criminals doomed to war trials, and subsequent execution, were spared when Operation Paperclip rolled into Germany. Because many of these men were SS members, they were automatically disqualified from possessing international visas. This once insurmountable roadblock became a mere speed bump for a U.S. government hellbent on using the greatest scientific minds to further its own military dominance.
Most of the men scooped up by Operation Paperclip were squirreled away at White Sands Proving Ground, New Mexico; Fort Bliss, Texas; and Huntsville, Alabama. These enemies, mere months prior, were now shaping the U.S. military infrastructure.
Although Operation Paperclip seems a huge slap in the face to those Allies who died in World War II, it wasn't the only Top Secret program of its kind. The United States also deployed Operation Alsos, an attempt to wrangle Nazi scientists on the forefront of nuclear technology. TICOM, a clandestine American effort to secure Axis cryptography virtuosos, was also commenced.
When this type of illicit behavior is undertaken, it's difficult to discern the good guys from the bad. How can a government justify allowing malefactors, responsible for killing millions, to simply go free? Moreover, how many folks realized, as they marveled at Apollo 11 reaching the Moon, that a handful of Nazi war criminals was one of the reasons it got there?
Sources:
Books:
Birnes, William J. (2004). The UFO Magazine UFO Encyclopedia: The Most Comprehensive Single-Volume UFO Reference in Print. Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. ISBN: 0743466748
Piccard, George. (1999). Liquid Conspiracy (Mind Control and Conspiracy Series). Adventures Unlimited Press. ISBN: 0932813577
Online Sources:
Operation Paperclip:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip
THE NUCLEAR BOMB IN YOUR BACKYARD
Folks livin' in either Faro or Goldsboro, North Carolina, can take the above title literally.
Think the U.S. has never been under nuclear attack?
Think again.
The year was 1961. The Cuban Missile Crisis was 20 months from exploding into an international incident. Vigilant regarding a potential Soviet strike, America failed to protect its shores against its own worst enemy — itself.
Operation Chrome Dome kept B-52s — equipped with live thermonuclear weapons — flying above the Continental U.S. on a constant basis. These bombers made unsuspecting Americans vulnerable to accidental nuclear attack by their own military, 365 days a year.
Perpetually sustaining a plane in the air will, in time, wear that aircraft down. On January 24, 1961, a B-52 en route to Seymour Johnson Air Force Base — adjacent Goldsboro, North Carolina — experienced such a scenario. Sometime after midnight, fire broke out in the plane's fuselage, when metal exhaustion sparked seepage in one of the bomber's fuel tanks. Three of the crew perished in their attempts to escape before the plane combusted.
Separating from the aircraft, a pair of Mark 39 thermonuclear explosives hurtled toward the ground. Although both devices came equipped with parachutes, only one of these safety apparatuses deployed. Consequently, one of the two bombs plummeted into a muddy field, after reaching a velocity close to the speed of sound.
Five of six safeguard mechanisms deactivated on the first of the two bombs, leaving a single trigger to prevent detonation. The second munition plunged headlong into the marshy earth, creating an impact crater five feet deep and 10 feet wide.
The military retrieved the former device, and rummaged for the latter — which was beneath swampy soil — perhaps moments from exploding. Excavations for the lost munition were carried out in secret, as the government alerted the media they were hunting for a missing seat from the plane crash. Since the search cost taxpayers half a million dollars, that must have been one really comfortable chair!
The first portions of the bomb were uncovered eight feet below the surface. More remnants were dredged from 12 and 15 feet. At close to 20 feet, chunks of the detonators and arming triggers were unearthed. When the military finally abandoned their efforts to uncover crucial elements of the device — including its plutonium core — the hole in the ground was 50 feet deep and 200 feet in diameter.
The pit was refilled in attempts to conceal what horror still awaits beneath. The owner of the land was allowed to replant crops he had cultivated prior to the crash, but was prohibited from ever digging in the location’s general proximity. Although detonation of the device is no longer an issue, irradiation will be a concern for longer than it takes Dick Van Patten to be determined People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive.
In our bonus round, see if you can guess which country on the planet the United States has nuked most. If you concluded "itself," you're correct, and win a free, lifetime supply of radioactive fallout.
One thousand twenty-one nuclear detonations at the Nevada Test Site, alone, and we still credulously believe the exponential increase in cancers is predominantly hereditary.
Sources:
Books:
Kick, Russ. (2003). 50 Things You're Not Supposed To Know. The Disinformation Company Ltd. ISBN: 0971394288
Online Movies:
Trials of Flight: A Special Addition: Lost Bombs:
Online Sources:
Broken Arrow: Goldsboro, NC:
Goldsboro, North Carolina:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldsboro,_North_Carolina
Mark 39 nuclear bomb:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W39
Nevada Test Site:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_National_Security_Site
Operation Chrome Dome:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chrome_Dome
IT CAME FROM THE SKY
While people enslaved themselves with the strips of cotton and linen they called “money,” the asteroid hurtled toward Earth. Unaware, the volitional vassals prayed their pointless jobs would hasten by. This was how they chose to spend their trivial existences. Ironically, their final moments of life would almost invariably consist of begging for more time.
To the asteroid, none of this mattered. It was a hunk of errant space debris on a collision course with a celestial body in the middle of nowhere. It was neither compassionate, nor sentient. It was simply part of a vast Universe that cared nothing for man-made contrivances like money, politics or religion.
Half a decade ago, it had been well within the ability of these humans to divert the asteroid, via technology. They had chosen to be imprisoned by implements of their own design, as opposed to addressing fixable problems. As the plunging rock breached the Earth's ionosphere, people developed ulcers over their mortgages. As the impending doom cleared the planet's stratosphere, more than one billion individuals where on the verge of starving to death.
Insipid television shows were hungrily devoured. Wars were waged and people clung to their fallacious deities, even though these same gods had allowed nearly half their families to die of cancer caused by nuclear weapons testing.
The Chicxulub asteroid that purportedly eradicated the dinosaurs was roughly six miles in diameter. The celestial body streaking toward Earth on this day in 2002 was nowhere near that size. Still, at 30 feet across, it would lay waste to more than 100,000 humans in the blink of an eye.
Interacting with the gases encircling the planet, the asteroid began to heat up. Where the prodigious projectile struck would be anybody's guess.
Roughly a dozen individuals, worldwide, were tasked with keeping vigil for incoming space debris. This was due to a lack of funding, which was tied to the useless and destructive nature of the monetary system.
As the asteroid ignited, a paltry amount of monitoring mechanisms scanned the sky for biotic rubble. Since this machinery was so meager, objects less than a kilometer in diameter were rarely ever detected. Even if they were, nobody had bankrolled subsidies for a mitigation program to prevent the type of collision that was about to occur.
The asteroid — now a flaming mass of annihilation — hurtled toward Earth, and not a single human was so much as aware.
The previous scenario may sound like a chapter from an apocalyptic novel, but it describes an actual event in 2002. Fortunately for the inhabitants of Earth, the asteroid in question exploded in the sky somewhere above the Mediterranean Sea. This detonation — due to intense contact with atmospheric gases — generated 26 kilotons of devastating force.
The Little Boy atomic device — dropped on Hiroshima, Japan — detonated with 13 to 18 kilotons of lethality. Fat Man — deployed over Nagasaki — yielded a 21 kiloton blast.
What's become known as the 2002 Eastern Mediterranean Event was more powerful than either.
Even more disquieting, for the reasons stated above, not a sole human knew this errant asteroid was Earthbound, until it exploded in the atmosphere. Only then were scientists able to detect the projectile's latent presence.
Had this biotic rubble detonated over a populated land mass, the destruction would have been colossal.
India and Pakistan — both possessing nuclear arsenals — were on the verge of war. These two countries are equipped with ineffectual early warning technology. As a result, should the asteroid in question have exploded over either nation, it could have easily been mistaken for a thermonuclear onslaught.
In this case, a nuclear counterattack would have occurred. The result may have been the beginning of World War III. The ensuing confusion could have terminated in other nuclear capable countries deploying their stockpiles.
Even so, nations continue to make military spending their highest priority. To any rational species trapped in a cosmic shooting gallery, the top concern should be an escape plan from the celestial body upon which they find themselves incarcerated. If humanity were suddenly faced with having to fend off a sizable asteroid, pandemic or supervolcano eruption, we'd be doomed. We have no place to run. In addition, we only have ourselves to blame, since we engage in in-significant ideologies — like money, politics and religion — that waste time we should be spending on formulating a solution.
Obviously, the author is not an advocate of the monetary system, politics or religion. He realizes to entertain such archaic, and pernicious ideologies is to court disaster.
As a species, we’ve been bequeathed ample warning. In light of our technological capabilities, to lay the foundation for our own demise is lunacy.
Sources:
Online Sources:
2002 MN:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_MN
Asteroid's Near-Miss with Earth:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2444-asteroids-near-miss-with-earth/
Fat Man:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_Man
Little Boy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
Military Perspectives on Near-Earth Object (NEO) Threat:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=8834
Near-Earth object:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-Earth_object#2002_Eastern_Mediterranean_event
The preceding blog was written by Hugh Mungus. Feel free to contact the author directly here on Steemit, or via his personal E-mail address: longlivenuno@aol.com