Spy stories And authentic paws weather will be many, and we are sure that we do not know a good number of them. However, few can approach what happened in one of the most famous and majestic mountains on our planet. There a peculiar excursion took place several decades. Everything that could go wrong, went worse. In fact, Plutonium is still there.
For those who do not know what we are talking about, NANDA DEVI It is the Second High Mountain in India and the twentieth third in the world, with a height of 7,816 meters. It is not just any peak, since it has a deep cultural and spiritual meaning, especially in the Uttarakhand region, where it is considered sacred. The area surrounding Nanda Devi has been recognized for its unique biodiversity as a World Heritage by UNESCO. The park protects a variety of species and is an example of the wealth of Himalayas.
In addition to its natural and cultural importance, the enclave has been a symbol of adventure and mountaineering. Since his first ascent in 1936, it is a challenge for mountaineers around the world. On the other hand, its ecological fragility has restricted the region to protect its environment. This last point, as we will see next, was not always the case. Hopefully nature is not vindictive …
The first nuclear test
Not far from the mountain, in October 1964, the First nuclear test in China In the immediate vicinity of Lap Nur Lake, a region that bordered the Kuruk-Tagh mountains. This test was followed by several tens and put on the US on alert. The CIA investigated how far the Chinese were advancing.
Two years before, China had defeated India’s army and those first evidence were an example of power and strength. The American agency concluded that they were staying behind in the nuclear race in a delicate context such as the cold war. And not only USA, India felt inferior after its border defeat. The alliance between the two countries soon arrived.
What did they do? In an era where there was no satellite espionage technology like the current one, both nations signed A secret pact to combine efforts and spy on Asians. As? Literally, sending secret agents to the field “battle”. In other words, sending spies to the confines of the world, to some of the most imposing mountains on the planet where Chinese nuclear tests were being carried out.
If the idea seems somewhat movie, it is because it is. The proposal of both nations consisted of using some of the mountains of India from which to see what they were doing from the Chinese side. It may seem naif, or even innocent, that the espionage agencies of both countries watched with good guy watch another nation thousands of kilometers for the simple fact of being in one of the “peaks” of the planet, but history shows that it was so, and In 1965 the “Master” plan was given green light.
The CIA begins to search and recruit the spies that would bring the plan to fruition. One of them was Robert SchallerMedicine student in Seattle to which a proposal worthy of a Hollywood film is sent. They needed A doctor in Himalayas With experience in electronics and mountaineering, a combination of requirements that took them to the student, the first on the list that was filled.
When the team had formed, intense training in a secret enclave began for months. Together with Schaller there were a large number of celebrities who were going to become citizen spies like him. For example, the famous Yosemite climber, Tom Frost, or the one who was going to be the captain of the expedition and famous mountaineer for the expeditions to Everest, Mohan Singh Kohli. Others were not so well known, but they were elites, researchers or teachers whose knowledge in nuclear technology put them at the service of the secret alliance between the US and India.
We are not talking about normal training, of course. After the first tests the level was raised for several months with jumps from a helicopter, or demolishing objectives with explosivesthey even managed Experimental Atomic Energy Hardware that had been developed exclusively for the mission. Last and not least, the team had to prepare for the ascent crawling next to the mission material by the Alaska cliffs.
A year after the first Chinese nuclear test, this team of intrepid citizens turned to spies is ready. All are found in the sanctuary, a kind of natural strength of the summits that surround the Nanda Devi, the final objective. A detail nothing trivial: until then, only six people had managed to make a summit in the peak, and of those six, only three had managed to go down alive.
Be that as it may, the plan continued with an unexpected partner. It had not been revealed until then, but the team had to ascend with an extremely heavy surveillance package, a monitoring system that required atomic energy to work. We talk about An artifact containing a 19C Snap generator which converted the heat of the plutonium into electricity, which subsequently allowed monitoring possible nuclear activity (in this case, of China).
Climbing with plutonium
If up a mountain with the right material is a complicated activity, with an atomic artifact of extremely heavy motorization was a matter of faith. In addition, we talk about types that came from very different fields, many very poorly prepared for such a physical mission, no matter how much they were training for months.
Therefore, during the day the artifact made their lives impossible and advanced up the ramps as turtles. However, at night the thing changed, and The device was able to provide extra heat to spies. And, inside the generator, there was enough plutonium to feed the surveillance system for more than a thousand years, which for practical purposes would mean that both USA and India could monitor the Chinese for centuries.
During a short space of time, the mission seemed to go well. In fact, they arrived in the High Camp area, just A few hundred meters from the peak of Nanda Devi. What happened? The first ones who saw him come were the accompanying sherpas: a great snowstone was approaching and they had to postpone the mission and flee from the area as soon as possible. The team head concluded that they would return to the area when spring arrived. He also ordered that the surveillance package had to stay in the mountain to expedite the descent.
They saw no other way to get rid of the inclement weather. They tied the artifact to the mountain hillside, next to some rocks. The team assured the antenna, two sets of transceiver and the nuclear generator on the rocks. Then, they started in a hurry before the announced ventisca arrived.
What happened when spring arrived may be imagining it. The spy team returned to the High Camp area but, to its surprise, The plutonium device was not there. Among the possibilities, it was thought that the stone cornice could collapse from the slope of the mountain through an avalanche, from where presumably The generator would have been embedded and its seven plutonium bars in the depths of the ice of the glaciers.
The group did not know what to do. A nuclear “fuel” could be buried in front of its noses, but it was impossible to know where exactly. Worse, they thought, the Chinese could even get the artifact in an end as calamitous as unexpected by all.
He chose to close his mouth. For years, the CIA sent dozens of climbers with Geiger counters next to a fleet of helicopters equipped to comb the fields and ice ramps waiting to detect any trace of the lost system. For its part, the recruited spy equipment was intended for a plan B: climbing a neighboring mountain and installing (without success) a similar system of explosion observation and monitoring of possible missiles. When they finished the failed mission, they joined the search work to locate the lost plutonium, but never found it.
All the documents and photographs that those intrepid citizens converted to spies during the missions took They were confiscated by the CIAwho decided that The mission “had never existed”. In fact, this story would not be writing if it were not for what happened in 2005, when the head of the original expedition, Captain Kohli, published his book Spies in the Himalayas: Secret Missions and Pearlous Climbuncovering, now, the secret mission.
As for the nuclear artifact, there is still, somewhere in the Himalayas. After the publication of the book, researchers assured that the water samples of the sanctuary that flow into the Ganges river They showed clear and worrying indications of Plutonium-239an isotope that, unfortunately for the CIA and its bizarre mission, does not happen naturally.
This fact gives an idea of the story that was lived in the 60s. Maybe ever, or perhaps in a few years, decades or centuries, whoever is on the planet perceives a shy sign from one of the spikes of the earth. It would not be good news, the nuclear generator would be waking up from his icy grave warning us of how shortly we did things 60 years ago.
Image | Jaiambey, Pickpik, Michael Scalet
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*An earlier version of this article was published in August 2024
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