The day the sky burned.

On the planet multiple nuclear tests were carried out around the planet, among the atmospheric, terrestrial, underground and underwater tests were used to study ways in which nuclear explosions affected their environment, suborbital tests were used to test the hypothesis of a scientist named James van Allen who predicted the existence of radiation rings around the earth produced by its magnetic field.

These rings conduct radiation from the Sun and from space and direct it towards the poles, protecting us from all that radiation in the process, that is, we discover that without the earth's magnetic field we would not be here and that it does so by means of rings in the shape of a Dona, what we know as Van Allen rings but the United States, was not doing it just for science, obviously she was also doing it to find out if nuclear explosions in space could be used as a weapon to disable enemy radio communications or some effect Unforeseen, spoiler they found it.

When they carried out these tests, the whole world was outraged from their enemies, the Soviets, and even in neutral countries. People demonstrated in the United States embassies demanding that they stop the high-altitude tests precisely because they did not know how they could affect globally, nobody knew. what kind of damage they could produce and this led to the signing of a treaty that stopped nuclear tests of all kinds, which was very good but did not last, two years later the soviet union would resume its nuclear tests with the largest of all explosions the Czar bomb.

What the other powers understood as a green light to carry out theirs, by 1962 bombs were thundering like there was no tomorrow and the United States decided to carry out high-altitude tests again, but this time higher and with bigger bombs just because! It was called Operation STARFISH or fishbowl and it was a series of tests and many failed attempts that occurred between June and November 1962, all this on Johnston Island in the middle of the Pacific.

With these new tests they wanted to see if they could give it a military application, they discovered that high-altitude thermonuclear explosions create radiation arcs driven by the earth's magnetic field in the same way as with the Van Allen rings and that depending on the place and the altitude where they were detonated could be used to disrupt radio communications and in the process shower a target at the end of the Arc with radiation tens of thousands of kilometers away.

In the case of the tests over Johnston Atoll, the other end of that arc, the so-called southern conjugation region would be the Samoan Islands more than 3,000 kilometers away, where they had prepared detection instruments to measure the effects of the tests, the The first test called Bluegill in honor of a little fish carried a relatively small bomb, only 200 kilotons although that is equivalent to 13 bombs like the ones dropped on Hiroshima, mounted on a Thor rocket it was launched but when it lost its signal in the radar system who is in charge of seeing where the missile is going, they had to destroy it before exploding for fear that it would do so where it should not.

The second test called Starfish or starfish had a much more powerful bomb of 1400 kilotons equivalent to 90 bombs like the one in Hiroshima and it would be detonated at the highest altitude of the entire fishbowl operation 400 kilometers of altitude is more or less the altitude in which which is currently orbiting the international space station but again something valuable and after a minute of being launched the motor rocket stopped when it had barely reached 10 km altitude and started to break apart again they had to destroy it to prevent it from falling in a bad place

A third attempt was made on July 9 at 11 p.m. local time, the Thor rocket was launched with a 1,400 kiloton bomb that would reach a maximum altitude of 1,100 km and then descend to an altitude of 400 km where it was detonated in 13 minutes. after launch 30 kilometers southwest of Johnston Atoll, here it was seen as a bright but short white flash high in the sky and in just one second a large red circle spread out to cover everything above 40 degrees above the Horizon.

Some lines of yellow light grew from the point of detonation to the north and south and the glow of the red disk began to dim until it disappeared two minutes later, all this happened in silence because at 400 kilometers high there is no air that can propagating the pressure waves and therefore the sound, 7 minutes later all that was left was the dim yellow glow in the shape of an arc that described the new radiation belt that the explosion had made in our magnetic field that's when they realized that they got out of hand.

The electrons emitted during the explosion were still trapped in the arc and were still detectable five years later in Honolulu 1,400 kilometers away the electromagnetic pulse produced by radiation from the explosion blew out more than 300 street lamps and electrical appliances knocked out communication from The Island Kawaii with the rest of the islands of the archipelago and interrupted high-frequency radio transmissions for two days, meanwhile the event was used by the hotels that held parties on the roofs to admire the atomic rainbow.

The havoc not only occurred on the ground, the immense explosion and the radiation flux that drove through space through the earth's electromagnetic field destroyed the satellites that crossed its path, ironically several of them were American.

Operation Fishbowl would make it clear that nuclear weapons in space had the ability to immobilize a country, cutting off its communications and overloading its electrical grid, and that was at a time when there were only a few satellites in orbit and electrical appliances had no power. components as delicate as the miniaturized circuits we use today for everything from our phones, computers and servers to our communication satellites one of these little jokes today would not return to the Stone Age.

It also revealed to us that space exploration was going to be more difficult than we thought, because to access space you first have to go through the Van Allen belts, where astronauts on a trip to the moon receive enormous amounts of radiation, confirming that our planet is a very cozy security bubble in the hostile environment of space where basically everything is a threat, radiation, micro meteorites and now our own space junk.

Obviously, after this blunder, the United States did what it always does. No, this is very dangerous, nobody else should do it! After they did it and together with the rest of the powers they agreed not to carry out nuclear tests again. high altitude.

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