Report: Russian sailors killed during submarine accident prevented ‘planetary catastrophe’
Russia media accusing officials of Chernobyl-like cover-up
There are more details being revealed about the Russian submarine fire in Arctic waters that killed 14 of its crew, including several of the country’s top naval officials.
Reports from their funeral indicate officials praised their actions, which resulted in staving off a planet-wide disaster.
The 14 sailors who died when a fire erupted aboard a top-secret Russian nuclear submarine last week prevented a “planetary catastrophe,” a top naval officer said at their funeral, according to local outlets.
The sailors died of smoke inhalation July 1 as they worked to stop the flames from spreading in the deep-water research submarine surveying the seafloor near the Arctic, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
“With their lives, [the 14 sailors] saved their comrades, saved the ship and averted a catastrophe of planetary scale,” Sergei Pavlov, an aide to the Russian navy’s commander, was quoted by local outlet Fontanka as saying at the private funeral on Saturday.
Whatever happened, data collected from surrounding nations do not show an increase in radiation levels.
Russian authorities had previously refused to say whether the country’s worst naval incident in more than a decade involved a nuclear-powered vessel. They have also refused to say what type of craft was involved, with the Kremlin calling the information “absolutely classified.” Neighboring Norway contacted Russia for more details though it said it hadn’t detected any increased radiation levels.
Russia media is boldly making comparisons to the handling of this incident with the infamous and deadly Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Some Russian media criticized what they said was a lack of transparency, and drew parallels with the dearth of official information during the meltdown of a Soviet nuclear reactor in Chernobyl in 1986.
“Absolutely nothing is known at the moment – who, what… I don’t understand one thing: why did a day go by and only then did they make the statement about the deceased?” said Yevgeny Buntman, an anchor for the Ekho Moskvy radio station.
“Why don’t we know their names? Is this normal?”
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they wont say anything about it because it is not a research vessel. It is a cable sniffer sent down to plant listening devices on the trans Atlantic cables. They have been doing that crap for years. Heck we do it from the air with EP-3E ARIES II SigInt planes.
Likely tapping listening devices into the cables and planting bombs on a remote on top of the cables.
Bombs I get, but tapping the lines? Wouldn’t that require splicing every strand of fiber? That seems impossible. Any fiber telecom engineers here?
Past underwater cable tapping did not require piercing the cover.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
As far as fiber optics are concerned I have no idea if one can intercept data without being directly tied into the fiber itself.
Tapping a fiber optic cable would be very difficult, even more difficult to do so without detection. Wire cables can be tapped with either capacitive or electromagnetic coupling, and would not necessarily require physically tapping or penetrating the cable.
Since there are many cables bundled together, it would be very difficult to extract data of just one channel.
Destroying a cable would be easy once they found it.
Could have been a nuclear mining vessel, designed to deposit nukes in the shallow oceans along enemy shores.
The cable cutter/sniffer stuff could easily be a cover story.
These journalists are delusional. Take them to the infirmary.
Better yet, put them in the infantry.
“planetary catastrophe”, from a small piss ant submarine nuclear reactor??? 520 nuclear weapons have bee “lit off” in the atmosphere and between 1961-62, the US and USSR detonated a total of 545 megatons in the atmosphere. The US Pacific Ocean US nuclear tests that were great to watch on TV in the early 50s were extremely “dirty” and the earth survived.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2I66dHbSRA
Yea, that was exactly my reaction. A nuclear reactor, even fully melting down and losing containment, under water at huge depth, is not a planetary catastrophe. A bad deal, particularly for those on the sub? Yea, it’s a bad deal. But not a planetary catastrophe. Worst case, elevated radiation levels in the water nearby. But water is a great radiation absorber and the ocean is huge in terms of its capacity to disperse the contaminent. As you rightly point out, fallout from all the past open-air testing and Chernobyl itself was far more of an issue. Hell, not just the Pacific testing; we used to shoot those things off in Nevada.
no you don’t get it – they stopped Gojira!!!
As they say in the wastewater industry: The Solution to Pollution is Dilution.
Yes, I was thinking the same thing.
Russia and the former Soviet bloc are notorious for cutting corners on safety and general incompetence.
JusticeDelivered, You got that right!!! I spent 21 weeks in Russia. It’s little better than a slum and 70% of the men are alcoholics.
Russia also did a great job of finding babes, turning them into intelligence gathering prostitutes.
All designs created by the left have fatal flaws.
We should let them do healthcare…
.
.
,
Well, if you wish to kill people.
The Hunt For Pink July
“prevented a “planetary catastrophe,”
Put a borscht in it, Vladimir. That hyperbole already sailed when Obama slowed the ocean’s rise and healed the planet.
RIP, Sailors.
The boat in the picture is not a nuclear sub. I’m not saying something didn’t happen to a Russian nuke. But that’s not a picture of it. It’s a Kilo.
It matters.
This is allegedly the Losharik:
http://www.hisutton.com/images/Losharik_2200.jpg
http://militaryhonors.sid-hill.us/mem/jones.htm
When I visit Pearl Harbor I always make it a point to visit the submarine chapel on Ford Island. When I stop by Sandy Eggo I make it a point to visit the Taffy 3 memorials. This doesn’t mean I’m special. I just like to remind myself how much I have to live up to.
One thing to note. Even if the reactor on the sub went as bonkers as possible, melted down, molten fuel, etc… it would be a teeny-tiny fraction of the expected damage from any kind of WWIII Cold Submarine War where dozens if not hundreds of nuclear-powered vessels would have been sunk all over the ocean.
Can we stop with the talk about reactors? There is no reactor on that boat. There are diesel motors. There are battery powered electric engines.
OK?
The boat in the picture. Maybe the Russkies did lose a nuke. Not like that hasn’t happened before. Boys and girls, I give you the Kursk. But that’s not what we see in the pic. It’s a stock photo of a generic Russian sub. And it’s not a nuke.
We’re dealing with reporters here. People who couldn’t find their *** with both hands. One of my favorite news articles was about a mountain lion stalking a school in Kali.
It was accompanied by a pic of an African lion. At least it wasn’t a fully mained male. It was a lioness.
The “Planetary disaster” crap is nothing but Soviet propaganda to make the rest of the world grateful that there brave and heroic men save all of us from something terrible. The men died trying to save the ship, not the Earth! Russia is like reading a 1950’s comic book. Their crap is so juvenile that it is hard not to laugh out right when they put it out.
One more comment about Russian government. There is a good Russian film about an ice breaker that gets trapped in the ice around the Arctic but the bureaucrats back home don’t want to make any decision because they will have to admit failure. So their final solution is to ignore the ship and its crew and let them all die so that none of the party officials will get the blame. Nothing has changed!
Who were special were the Sailors and Airmen on whose shoulders I and you, even if you don’t know it, stand on.
Submarines when leaving port would offload their bells. Because the last thing you want on a sub is noise.
The submarines that remain on eternal patrol patrol in the Pacific left their bells at the sub base chapel. 52 didn’t return to retrieve their bells. It’s bitter sweet to report that after a hiatus of just over ten years the chapel resumed religious services in 2015. And now the Argonaut’s bell rings again on Sundays.
Taffy 3? If you don’t already know you wouldn’t believe me. You wouldn’t believe a word of it.
Somebody on a different comment thread speculated that the boat in the catastrophe was an Alpha.
I am 99.999 percent certain the Ruskies don’t sail in Alphas any more. But given they still fly TU-95/TU-142 Bears (like I have room to talk; We’re still flying B-52s.
But if they do, they look like this.
https://www.google.com/search?q=russian+alpha+nuclear+sub&client=firefox-b-1-d&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwisxJyB3KvjAhVOHc0KHW9_BBgQ_AUIECgB&biw=889&bih=507#imgrc=r7fuPvR4XtHqIM:
The boat in the picture is not an Alpha. It’s a Kilo. You can take that to the bank.
Yup, yer right. My bad in the other thread.
Hunt For Red October:
“Ambassador Andrei Lysenko: There is another matter… one I’m reluctant to…
Dr. Jeffrey Pelt: Please.
Ambassador Andrei Lysenko: One of our submarines, an Alfa, was last reported in the area of the Grand Banks. We have not heard from her for some time.
Dr. Jeffrey Pelt: Andrei… you’ve lost another submarine?”
F-22s are now intercepting Russian Bears near Alaska.
I suppose that’s progress.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dc/Tupolev_Tu-95_%286906568850%29.jpg
Don’t get me wrong. The Bear is not to be despised. When they would overfly the carriers back in the ’90s we had jets that weren’t fast enough to intercept them.
Cough, cough, S-3 Vikings. Cough, cough.
Those big counter rotating turboprop propelled, equipped engines make for a plane that will haul some serious tail.
In a previous life, I intercepted a few in an Eagle way up in the Norwegian Sea. The vibration from those props is amazing. It was rattling my teeth in my cockpit still 500 feet away.
I’m glad you piped up. One of my many defects is that sometimes I may come across like I defended the country all by my lonesome.
Not that I’m ashamed of my service. I was a Navy Intelligence Officer. Lifer. And I have nothing but the utmost respect for aviators like you.
At 57 I now need a walker to get around. Twelve years ago I was playing Rugby. I probably should have cut that out a decade earlier. But we all make mistakes, and I’m willing to pay the price.
I wish I had another twenty years in me to serve. I would come back as a Navy dog handler.
https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=97241
You can actually get paid to be with a dog. I did not know this when I joined.
I did not know this was an option in the Navy. I knew you could do this if you joined the police. I knew there were military working dogs. I just didn’t know you could be a dog handler in the Navy. And at the time I wanted a job by the beach.
But then my admiral crossed the T of a typhoon and now I don’t want anything to do with oceans.
There are nine nuclear submarines that have sunk and are sitting on the ocean floor.
Two are American and seven are Russian. Those are the ones we know about. Who knows what else is on the bottom of the ocean in terms of nuclear reactors.
A possible tenth one would not be a planetary catastrophe.
The ocean is a particularly good heat sink. Especially at deep depth. The pressure and the cold do a far better job of containing things than if those reactors were on the surface.
I would be flattering myself. And I might be tempted to flatter myself and by into this white supremacy business.
But I can’t for several reasons. Number one is I’m of Italian decent. I’m within a heartbeat of the KKK not thinking of us as white.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_14,_1891_New_Orleans_lynchings
Number two, which is also an artifact of me being of Italian decent, I’m Catholic. Christian. I realize that many Protestants don’t think of Catholics as Christian. “Whore of Babylon” and all that. Which I think goes a long way to the Klan wanting to put us down like dogs.
That which does not kill us makes us stronger, as the saying goes.
So the first thing that goes through my head when I get into a conflict is that my enemy is also created in God’s image. The last thing will, if I live right, be a knife or a bullet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKNcOmNpjNI
“Surfing Vladivostok. ”
Searching for this video would not occur to a normal human being. I bet no one even knew it existed.
Total BS. Not even Chernobyl was a “planetary catastrophe”, and it was a far larger reactor than the one on this sub. And the sub takes it reactor with it to the bottom of the ocean.
Vladimir Putin was visiting a primary school and he visits one of the classes. They are in the middle of a discussion related to words and their meanings. The teacher asks the President if he would like to lead the discussion of the word “tragedy.”
So the illustrious leader asks the class for an example of a tragedy. One little boy stands up and offers: “If my best friend who lives on a Farm, is playing in the field and a runaway tractor comes along and knocks him dead, that would be a tragedy.”
“No,” says Vladimir Putin, “that would be an accident.”
A little girl raises her hand: “If a school bus carrying 50 children drove over a cliff, killing everyone inside, that would be a tragedy.”
“I’m afraid not,” explains the exalted leader. “That’s what we would call a great loss.”
The room goes silent. No other children volunteer. President Putin searches the room. “Isn’t there someone here who can give me an example of a tragedy?”
Finally at the back of the room, little Johnny raises his hand. In a quiet voice he says: “If A spy sub you were on was damaged by capitalist weapons and you were killed that would be a tragedy.”
“Fantastic!” exclaims President
Vladimir Putin “That’s right. And can you tell me why that would be a tragedy?”
“Well,” says the boy, “because it sure as h*** wouldn’t be a great loss and it probably wouldn’t be an accident either.”
“Why don’t we know their names? Is this normal?”
Their names and ranks were already released. Curiously, they were all captains.
https://blackchristiannews.com/2019/07/russia-releases-names-photos-of-14-sailors-killed-in-submarine-fire-says-vessels-nuclear-reactor-wasnt-damaged/
Something very fishy was going on.
The only planetary disaster I can think of is if the sub had a supercollider on board and could create an artificial black hole that swallows the entire solar system.
I sure hope they don’t have that.
“Taffy 3? If you don’t already know you wouldn’t believe me. You wouldn’t believe a word of it.”
There is a book about this, ‘The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy’s Finest Hour ‘
This is a very readable and fascinating book.
Hornfischer wrote the book about the Navy at Guadacanl; Neptune’s Inferno.