Radiation levels in New York City have risen, fueling conspiracy theories that the drones terrorizing the Northeast are searching for a missing nuclear warhead.
The emissions, clocked by GQ Electronics’ Geiger Counter World Map, were detected Wednesday near the Bronx and Upper West Side.
The application shows a radiation value of 1048 counts per minute (CPM), i.e. how many particles have been detected, in the Bronx: higher than normal background radiation.
The average person is typically exposed to background radiation of about 5 to 60 CPM, although the CPM varies depending on the sensor equipment, according NASA.
And on the Upper West Side, the app value was a still-high 175 CPM.
Now a lawyer and long-time critic of China claims the spikes are an indication that the mysterious drones in the Northeast could be a covert attempt by the US government to identify “an implanted nuclear weapon” hidden somewhere in the city by America’s enemies.
“This is not just wild speculation,” lawyer and author Gordon G. Chang told reporters on Monday.
“For more than a decade,” Chang explained, “US officials have been concerned about the North Koreans taking apart a (nuclear) device, smuggling the parts into the United States and reassembling them at the location of their choice.’
A publicly accessible tool – GQ Electronics’ Geiger Counter World Map – has uncovered two spots in New York City that saw a spike in radioactive particle emissions (in numbers per minute) this week. Some linked the radiation events to the spate of mysterious drone sightings in the region
“If you’re talking about radiation, this could clearly be one of the things that the drones are doing,” Chang told me Forbes Newsroom‘and that would explain why they are above residential areas, because the device could be planted in one of those places’
Crucially, more current reports from the Geiger counter world map do not show the radiation peaks at this time.
The Environmental Protection Agency notes that radiation emission values such as CPM do not always correspond to absorption by the human body and that even weather changes, such as rain, can reduce risk, making CPM a challenging tool to assess actual risk.
Citizens, law enforcement and government officials have all put forward theories about who or what is behind this recent wave of drone reports – from mass hysteria to foreign espionage, to space aliens, to the testing of a top secret military aircraft.
While Chang’s story echoes rumors that New Jersey’s mysterious drones were US government aircraft equipped with them High purity Germanium (HPGe) radiation detectors During the hunt for an atomic bomb, the story came under serious criticism.
For starters, it goes against the official positions of the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the FAA, and the Pentagon, all of which say the drones “do not currently pose a threat to national security or public safety.”
Some former Pentagon officials and military vets have also reported that their own current government sources have denied these “nuclear weapons hunting” claims.
“They assured me that’s not the case,” Navy veteran and former fighter pilot Lt. Ryan Graves told podcaster Joe Rogan in a recent episode.
“There is currently no ‘loose nuclear bomb’ or any other type of weapon of mass destruction that these objects – whatever they are – are pursuing,” Lt. Graves said.
The Navy veteran told Rogan that his sources were part of the team that would normally spring into action to deal with a looming nuclear threat to the domestic United States, adding that swarms of aerial drone technology are a bad system would be for this job.
Some former Pentagon officials and military vets – including former senior Pentagon security official Chris Mellon and retired US Navy Lt. Ryan Graves (pictured) – have reported that their own current government sources are calling this “nuke hunt” have denied claims.
“Having hundreds of drones trying to identify these is not necessarily the best way,” Lt. Graves explained. ‘Gamma radiation is usually well shielded in weapons.’
“And at high altitude – or even at moderate altitude, as we see these drones – it would be quite difficult to detect them (gamma rays),” he continued, echoing the comments of nuclear emergency experts from the Ministry of Energy.
“The Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration Nuclear Emergency Support Team does not use drones for nuclear/radiological detection missions,” a department spokesperson said. ABC News.
DOE’s Nuclear Emergency Support Team, the spokesperson added, “is not currently conducting air operations in that region.”
Former senior Pentagon security official Chris Mellon, no stranger to stories of mysterious UFOs in the skies, confirmed these claims: post on X.com“My own conversations with federal officials also echo this.”
The FBI and other agencies are investigating the alleged drones, but a Department of Homeland Security representative said Wednesday, December 11, “We no longer have any information about where these drones are coming from, where they’re coming from, where they’re coming from. they land’
“At this point we really need the president of the United States to actually address the American people,” lawyer and longtime critic of China Gordon Chang (above) told business publication Forbes. “Tell us what the federal government knows and what it doesn’t know.”
Stories linking the still-unexplained drone sightings to loose radioactive material gained traction Tuesday, as Belleville Mayor Michael Melham went public with news of a very real, damaged shipment of a medical device.
“There is currently an alert going out that radioactive material went missing in New Jersey on December 2,” Mayor Melham said. Fox 5 New York. ‘There was a shipment. It has arrived at its destination. The container was damaged and it was empty.”
But the damaged device, which was shipped from the Nazha Cancer Center in Newfield, New Jersey, was labeled “non-urgent” by authorities.
The ‘Event Notification Report’ issued by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission‘s Operations Center found on December 13, 2024 that the device was “highly unlikely to cause permanent harm to persons.”
The medical device in question, a model HEGL-0132 from Eckert & Ziegler, contains only trace amounts of the radioactive isotope Germanium-68.
But regardless of the drones’ purpose, Chang emphasized to Forbes that the U.S. government’s vague security assurances were insufficient, a point echoed by Mellon, Lt. Graves and others.
“At this point, we really need the president of the United States to actually turn to the American people,” Chang told the business publication, “and tell us what the federal government knows and what it doesn’t know.”