(08-18-2023, 09:57 PM)Schmoe Wrote:(08-18-2023, 08:25 PM)Snarl Wrote:(08-18-2023, 03:49 PM)Schmoe Wrote:(08-18-2023, 02:37 PM)Snarl Wrote:(08-18-2023, 01:59 PM)727Sky Wrote: Yep I have heard that story a couple of times these last few months. Weird story especially if completely true.
A plumber ... a firefighter: I just don't know.
Between '86 and '90, I was exposed to some pretty high level sciency weapons stuff under the SDI. I was (as he said) fully read-on. I was just a security guy, but my key access was the same. It opened every door in every facility I traveled to. That, in and of itself, would freak people the fuck out.
What freaked me out were two accidents. The first one I saw the aftermath. They had something like a laser beam. It punched a hole. From what I was able to see ... the hole didn't end. What boggled the mind was that whatever punched the hole left no debris behind.
The other thing that surprised me about that job was 'how incredibly fast' things could happen. That laser beam thingy completely disappeared from one day to the next. And, I mean everything. I also saw an entire building get stood up over a four-day weekend. It went up so fast no one even questioned whether they'd ever seen it before. It was like they self-believed they'd never just paid it any mind in the past. That one event made me really start paying attention to my own personal observations of things.
Pretty cool about that laser. But you said "something like a laser beam." So you only saw the aftermath, and not the apparatus itself? Bummer. And this was the late 80s? And yet they said they don't have the capability to strap those things to fighter jets yet. Maybe that is the case. How much power can you realistically get from something small enough to be on a jet? Warships, on the other hand...or a giant jet, like a C130 maybe.
Well, I'll tell you a little about that. One of the first things we had to deal with was our facility security clearance. To get there the SPO and I traveled ... see what we could get the gist of that was working and copy what looked good for ourselves. One of the places we visited was the National Ignition Facility. That's the place they're trying to use lasers to start a fusion reaction. Their laser (end-to-end) wouldn't fit on an airplane ... not with all the junk it took to get it fired up.
Anyway, the one our guys were working on had maybe a 10th of all that. I'm not a scientist and it wasn't my job to pry around or get in people's way. I have no idea if the thing was a laser or Capt Kirk's phaser. I just saw it a couple of times ... before it was gone. Boss told me to go out there one day and make sure everything was all cleaned up.
Here's the good part: for some reason I saw the wall where the obvious business end that thing had been pointed. Someone had patched the drywall and it was fresh. The next room was most likely associated and it was empty too. But, that wall had entry and exit wounds that were patched. I wanted to see. And I walked down the corridor quite a ways further down. Sure enough ...
So, I went to the end of the building. Like most army buildings, it was made of your common red brick. Harder to patch than drywall and no one had even bothered. Didn't look to me like the brick had been burned through and there was no brick debris on the ground (doesn't meant someone didn't clean it up). Just a nice clean hole. Looked like it was supposed to be there it was so clean. Walked in a line to the perimeter fence and it had sheared a link out of that too. Walked out to the treeline and there were holes straight through. We're talking a couple hundred years at least.
They're lucky that thing didn't kill anyone.
Holy shit. Like an industrial lightsaber or something. It's interesting how clean everything was that it went through, including the brick, leaving no debris. I know this is a long time ago, but did you look at the inside of the hole of the brick wall, was is shiny, or just look like clean, drilled brick?
Looked really good and shined my flashlight into the hole even. It was neither burned nor vitrified. Just a real clean hole ... like the brick was made that way. Bet it's still that way to this day.
Often regret not walking back deeper into the treeline, but I was in civilian clothes and all I could think was, "Don't wreck those Bostonians. If you walk back there you'll shred your pants. Ain't nobody but you gonna pay for that."