From New Dawn 150 (May-June 2015)
Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.
– Vishnu in the Bhagavad-Gita, 5th Century BCE
Art is sometimes prophetic. A case in point is the Hollywood movie, Rocketship X-M, starring Lloyd Bridges and Noah Berry, Jr. Credible by the standards of its time, this first science-fiction film of the postwar era postulated a manned expedition to Mars. When the crewmembers arrive, they find an illimitable desert of “pitchblende, immense deposits of pitchblende,” a form of crystalline uranium oxide associated with nuclear explosions.
Digging in the sand of the Red Planet, the explorers uncover a metallic, finely-crafted sculpture roughly resembling a human head. “The mind that conceived this must have been of a high order of intelligence,” the expedition leader concludes, “at least the equal of Earth’s, perhaps considerably above ours.”
In the distance are the ruins of huge, strange buildings, but they are too radioactive for investigation.
“To think that a complex, organised society existed here once.”
“Yes, and from all indications, thousands of years ago.”
“I wonder how it happened.”
“There’s always the possibility of a meteor, but then it would have created a depression, like a moon crater.”
“No, this wasn’t caused by a meteor. This is definitely blast effect coupled with intense heat… Ironic, isn’t it, the mind of Man, wherever you encounter it, Earth or Mars? The highest attainments of human intellect always diverted to self-destruction. Perhaps the entire surface of the planet is one, vast ruin like this… What a lesson here for our world: One blast, thousands of years of civilisation – wiped out.”
When Rocketship X-M was premiered in 1950, its basic premise was exclusively confined within the realm of science fiction. Long before then, astronomers deemed the Red Planet incapable of ever sustaining life of any kind, an impression apparently confirmed by numerous, robotic surveyors and landers that have explored our Martian neighbour since the first successful fly-by of Mariner IV, nearly fifty years ago. It was with more than some amazement then, that I heard Dr. John Brandenburg declare in a radio interview in April 2014 that Mars was long ago the home of a civilisation destroyed by a nuclear attack that killed off all life.
Had such a statement been made by just about anyone else, I would have turned off the radio and gone to sleep. But I knew Dr. Brandenburg as long ago as 2000, when he and I shared the speakers’ table at an alternative science conference in the American Northwest, where he spoke knowledgeably and engagingly, but not about extraterrestrial warfare.
John E. Brandenburg, Ph.D., is a plasma physicist at Orbital Technologies in the US at Madison, Wisconsin, where he works on space plasma technologies and space propulsion. He researches Microwave Electro-Thermal plasma thrusters for space propulsion. Previously, he investigated air plasmas and plasma propulsion at Florida Space Institute at America’s Kennedy Space Center.
Co-authored with Monica Rix Paxson, his book Dead Mars, Dying Earth (Crossing Press, 1999) won the Silver Medal in the Ben Franklin awards for books on science and environment. His other books include Life and Death on Mars: The New Mars Synthesis (Adventures Unlimited Press, 2011), and Beyond Einstein’s Unified Field: Gravity & Electro-Magnetism Redefined (Adventures Unlimited Press, 2011). As such, Dr. Brandenburg’s deductions from Martian geology and topography are not the fantasies of a science fiction writer, but scientific conclusions from one of the most important scholars in the world today.
His April radio interview certainly got my attention, but provoked more questions than answers. To learn them first hand from their original source, I contacted Dr. Brandenburg directly by email, and he took time out from his busy life of scientific investigation to generously share with us some of his truly mind-boggling discoveries:
FRANK JOSEPH (FJ): What first alerted you to possibilities of a nuclear attack on Mars in the ancient past?
DR. JOHN BRANDENBURG (JB): A comment by a nuclear physicist at Sandia labs, where I worked, in 1984. I mentioned the excess of Xenon 129 in Mars atmosphere to him, and he became curious, and looked at the data, and then commented flatly, “someone nuked Mars.” He then refused to discuss the matter any further. It took a long time for me to reconstruct the reasons for him saying this from the “open literature.”
FJ: What evidence exists for atomic warfare on the Red Planet?
JB: The spectrum of krypton and xenon isotopes found in the Mars atmosphere, particularly Xenon 129 and Krypton 80. Both are produced by nuclear explosions, the Xenon 129 directly from fission of Uranium 238, and thorium by high energy fusion neutrons, and the Krypton 80 by intense neutron bombardment of the soil. The Mars meteorites, which are samples of sub-surface rock from Mars, are depleted in Uranium, Thorium, and Potassium, all radioactive elements, relative to Earth rocks.
But gamma rays from the Mars surface measured by Russian and American probes show much higher levels spread over the Mars surface; radiation from two hot spots. Thus, space craft measurements of Mars atmosphere, and surface radioactivity, plus measurements of Mars meteorites, show this evidence. The fission of Uranium 238 and Thorium can only be done by fusion neutrons from a hydrogen bomb reaction, so, in my opinion, this cannot be explained naturally. Data taken by the Mars Science Laboratory’s Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) from Curiosity’s interplanetary journey to Mars shows large exposures to radiation, as confirmed and published in Science Magazine in the 31 May 2013 issue.
A thin layer of radioactive substances including uranium, thorium and radioactive potassium covers the Martian surface in a pattern radiating from a hot spot, as indicated by recent maps showing gamma rays in a radiating debris pattern. What may have been an airburst the equivalent of one million, one-megaton hydrogen bombs occurred over the northern Mare Acidalium region of Mars, where there is a heavy concentration of radioactivity. The terrible truth: Mars was actually Earth-like for most of its geologic history. Mars held a massive and evolving biosphere, but was wracked by a mysterious and astonishing nuclear catastrophe.
FJ: What was the Martians’ cultural level immediately prior to the attack?
JB: It appears, from examining several possible sites of archaeology, that it was roughly Bronze Age. But that is only an impression from orbit. We must land there and find out.
FJ: Can you identify the attacker?
JB: No. The only way to do that is to go to Mars and investigate. Possibly, the Martians knew who did this from prior contact and recorded it.
FJ: Have any ruins or cultural debris from the Martian nuclear attack been found, or do you anticipate their discovery in future explorations?
JB: We have seen, in space-probe images at several sites, what looks like archaeological ruins. I think we must dispatch astronaut teams to Mars as soon as possible to dig at the principle sites, that is the best way to maximise knowledge of what happened and when it happened.
FJ: When do you believe such an event took place?
JB: It was long ago, perhaps two hundred to three hundred million years ago. Not even dinosaurs were present then. Only long lived and stable isotopes record this event.
FJ: Is there any contemporaneous or corresponding evidence on Earth of the Martian catastrophe?
JB: It corresponds approximately to the Great Permian Extinction on Earth, the most terrible of all the mass extinctions, and whose cause is a mystery. (The Permian Period ended with the largest mass extinction in Earth’s history, during which nearly ninety per cent of marine species and seventy per cent of terrestrial species died out – FJ.)
FJ: Why would some military power want to carry out an atomic attack on Mars?
JB: It is difficult to conceive of it, but we have seen such things on Earth. I suspect they were targeting a civilisation there, we are of course aware of the “face” and pyramid in Cydonia Mensa, near the major hot spot of gamma rays on Mars in Mare Acidalium, (forming a quadrangle located in the northeastern portion of Mars’ western hemisphere, covering 300° to 360° east longitude [0° to 60° west longitude] and 30° to 65° north latitude – FJ.)
FJ: Were there any possibilities for Martian survivors – then or now (i.e., their living descendants) – of the nuclear blast?
JB: I do not think so. I believe this destroyed all advanced Martian life.
FJ: How have your scientific colleagues reacted to your statements concerning an artificial nuclear event on Mars?
JB: I have showed this to many experts in defence nuclear science. They agree with my interpretation, but cannot be quoted publicly. The reaction of my colleagues… where I presented this work was astonishment. However, none disagreed with my basic analysis.
FJ: Modern Earthly civilisation has reached the capability of putting nuclear weapons into space, and at least one of our probes has already left our solar system; is this level of technology analogous to what the Martians may have achieved and consequently provoked a preemptive strike from a worried or threatened outside power?
JB: The possible archaeology at Cydonia Mensa and Elysium on Mars looks like a primitive civilisation. So if this was a nuclear attack, it appears it was preemptive, to prevent future competition. We know the universe is dangerous to life, with asteroid impacts and supernova. Now a new danger has become apparent.
FJ: Could we Earthlings expect the same kind of intervention, given our developing space technologies?
JB: We have no choice but to become space-faring, since we have already alerted the cosmos to our presence by many radio broadcasts and nuclear tests. Becoming space-faring as quickly as possible is the only way to maximise our future safety, in my opinion.
Dr. Brandenburg’s discoveries comprise the most astounding, even alarming news we could ever hope to learn; namely, that a non-human civilisation flourished on Mars many millions of years before our species evolved on Earth – a civilisation that was utterly annihilated and all life on its world deliberately killed by some superior power with nuclear weapons.
Dr. Brandenburg presents compelling evidence that the Red Planet is more appropriately named after the Roman god of war than subsequent generations ever suspected.
John E. Brandenburg contributed the Foreword to George J. Haas‘s 2024 book The Great Architects of Mars: Evidence for the Lost Civilizations on the Red Planet. Brandenburg’s books Life and Death on Mars and Dead Mars, Dying Earth are available from online bookstores.
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