Helpful hints for the regular guy if faced with a radioactive and toxic spy satellite.

I realized last night that with all of the senior officials of our government being out of the country for the satellite shootdown, and the quiet approach by FEMA, that someone needs to give the average American some advice on what to do if this thing comes down in their back yard. Now, I’m no rocket scientist, health care professional or NSA spook, so take these bits of advice with a grain of salt.

What you should do if the satellite falls in your back yard:

Run like a scalded dog.
Run very far away.
Run very fast.
Don’t look back.
Screaming at the top of your lungs is optional.
Run so fast that the soles of your shoes begin to smolder.

What you should not do if the satellite falls in your back yard:

Don’t poke around the debris field with a stick.
Put visions of YouTube fame out of your head.
Don’t put pieces of the wreckage in your mouth, even if they do look like Charms Blow Pops.
Don’t call your cousin to come over to take pictures.
Don’t let your hounds sniff around the wreckage.
Don’t say, “Lookie what I found, fellers.” when the Army arrives.
Don’t tell your kids that Santa finally made it to your street and he left a jungle gym out back.
Don’t think about how much money you are going to make at the recycler.
Don’t call NASA or the NSA, cover the mouthpiece of the phone with a handkerchief and say, “I’ve got something you lost…fer a million, billion, jillion dollars I’ll give it back to ya.”
Don’t call 911 and tell the dispatcher that you’ve got a crashed UFO in your yard.
Don’t blame it on Osama.
Don’t sit in front of the TV watching the Fox news report coming from a helicopter camera and tell your wife, “Damn if that don’t look a lot like our place.”

Wow. The sky really is falling!

If you’ve followed this blog for a given length of time you know that I love analogies. The more absurd the analogy the better and every time I turn around the Government gives me more material for new analogies. This Thursday the Navy is going to try to shoot down one of the NRO’s spy satellites. This is a satellite the spy agency at first told us is nothing to worry about, even though it’s loaded with about 1000 pounds of highly toxic fuel and, if that weren’t enough, somewhere between three quarters of a pound to almost a pound and a half of plutonium. So, now the Navy gets to “test” it’s new missile defense shield system on this bus sized beast.

Folks, Imagine you are sitting in your apartment and there is a knock at the door. You open the door and there is your neighbor with smiles for you and a slightly sheepish look on his face. “Hey, I hate to bother you but I just wanted to let you know that if you see a snake in your apartment you should get away from it and come see me.” You ask your neighbor why and he says, “I’m a snake collector and one of them…well…sort of got out and I can’t find him in my apartment, so I’m afraid he’s going to show up unannounced in someone’s apartment. He wouldn’t have slithered away outdoors since it’s winter and too cold.” Your neighbor leaves with the reminder, “DON’T go near the snake if you see it, just come get me. Okay?”

Away your neighbor runs and you are flipped out over the snake news. A few days later he knocks at your door again wearing snake boots, heavy protective clothing, carrying a shotgun with bandolier strapped across his chest and a pack of insane and fierce ferrets in a box. “I have a plan for getting the snake. Can I come in for a bit?” Now your neighbor tells you he needs to kill the snake because it’s just too dangerous to allow a surprise appearance. “Look, I hate to tell you this but it’s a deadly black Mamba that got out. He last ate a few weeks before he turned up missing and I think he’s hungry, pissed and aggressive. I need to set the ferrets loose and dig around for this thing and kill it.” You ask if it’s safe to be in your apartment and your neighbor tells you, “Um…yeah…sure. Just sit down and do what you normally do at home. Oh, and if the snake slithers out in front of you I need you to yell for me immediately.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what our government is up to these days. There is a highly toxic bus soaring out of control over our heads, which also houses the latest and greatest electronic spy secrets the NRO can lift into outer space. Something has spooked (no pun intended) the spooks so badly that they have let the cat out of the bag with other alphabet agencies and the danger posed by this is so great that the Navy is going to shoot it down.

Let’s be honest, the government doesn’t really care if toxic substances poison 100% of the world’s population. Even recent history shows that they lied their asses off about the levels of toxicity in the World Trade Center debris and dust clouds. Before that we have above ground atomic bomb tests, the spraying of biological pathogens on the city of San Francisco and we still have a massive arsenal of chemical and biological weapons sitting in bunkers, still not destroyed. The government isn’t worried a bit about people dying if this thing crash lands smack in the middle of Times Square or even on an elementary school in Somewhere, USA. To paraphrase Stalin, one dead person is a tragedy, a million dead bodies is a logistics challenge.

So why are they all hot to trot at shooting this thing down? Is it the equipment onboard that has them shaking like crazy? Are they afraid the thing will wind up in the middle of China, spilling secrets willy-nilly like a missing Los Alamos hard drive? This would still be a lousy “real world” test of the missile shield defense system since the parameters of the test would be uncontrollable.

I have to wonder if there are not other secrets onboard this craft that the government does not want the world to know about? I have to assume that the NRO’s satellites have a defensive system onboard with several sub-systems and ancillary systems supporting the mission. A “gun” system would of course be needed to disable or destroy anything that is trying to destroy the satellite. I doubt it’s a real gun with ammunition that packs a high kinetic kill capability, due to the weight issues of carrying a magazine of high-density slugs. An energy-based weapon would be more in line with I assume it would have and it also makes me think there may be more plutonium onboard than first mentioned. I’d say the pound and a half, while quoted as the high end, is actually on the low end.

I assume it would have an electronics package for target assessment, target assignment and weapons tracking. This would be a big loss to the spy agencies if it fell into foreign hands, as it would give them the blueprint for jamming the defense systems. I also assume it is carrying the most recent mods for the actual surveillance payload. The imaging system is perhaps far beyond what any of us can imagine and there have been hints before that the newest generation of these satellites can see through dense material. In other words, it can see through walls and roofs. I have always assumed they have advanced these systems to a point where they can actually pick up sound as well.

Let’s keep an eye on this one, it could be interesting and even if the Government says all was a success and the satellite was shot down and is now sitting in harmless chunks on the bottom of the Pacific, I’d still be suspicious of what has actually occurred. Consider a news story that just came to light yesterday with the Dallas DA’s office announcing the release of 15 boxes of secret info about the Kennedy assassination. In the more than 40, and approaching 50 years since that stockpile has been sitting in a vault, every Dallas DA had decided to keep those documents and their existence, a secret. If the Dallas DA’s office can keep a secret squirrel stash of over a dozen boxes of evidence after the millions of man hours, maybe even billions, spent by researchers and enthusiasts to study the Kennedy Assassination, we have to automatically assume the Feds know far more than they are letting on. We can apply this same knowledge to our current governmental agencies and personnel.

Keep looking to the skies…keep looking.