On the menu today: A follow up to yesterday’s deep dive into the possible explanation for drone sitings over New Jersey, walking through a rumor that is terrifying but not particularly plausible.
The Rogue-Bomb Theory
The hottest theory about why there are so many reported sightings of drones and lights in the sky over New Jersey is that there’s something radioactive and dangerous on the loose somewhere in that area, and the drones are part of a government effort to find it.
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John Ferguson is the CEO of Saxon Aerospace in Wichita, Kan.; You can find his company’s website here. He floated the “searching for radiation” theory in a TikTok video that has been viewed more than 1.5 million times, which you can watch on X here:
I’m a manufacturer of unmanned aircraft, military grade unmanned aircraft. . . . There’s all of these mysterious drones going on off the East Coast, and as a professional, as a subject matter expert, I wanted to give you my opinion on what I think could be going on with these drones. I don’t particularly believe that these have a nefarious intent, I could be wrong. But I wanna give you the truth, and what I believe. It’s my own opinion, and I have not bounced this off of anybody, so if you think it’s bulls***, whatever, that’s cool. I don’t want to spread misinformation, as we know there’s a lot of that going around. . . .
Back in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan had dismantled the nuclear program, and there were, with Russia, there were countless nuclear missiles that were disarmed and disposed of. Well, there were over 80, I believe, over 80 nuclear warheads that were in Ukraine that came up missing. Okay? We don’t know where they are, maybe somebody does, but nobody really knows where these are, I speak to some pretty high-level government officials on this stuff, and it seems as though that is the case.
Allow me to call a time out and clear up the timeline. According a summary from Daryl G. Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association:
At the time of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine held the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, including an estimated 1,900 strategic warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and 44 strategic bombers. By 1996, Ukraine had returned all of its nuclear warheads to Russia in exchange for economic aid and security assurances, and in December 1994, Ukraine became a non-nuclear weapon state-party to the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The last strategic nuclear delivery vehicle in Ukraine was eliminated in 2001 under the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).
There has never been any serious evidence of any lost or loose nuclear weapons during the transfer of Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal to Russia. In fact, there’s never been a lost nuclear weapon in Russia, despite that country having, as of today, the world’s second-largest arsenal and plenty of terrorist groups that would like to get their hands on them. I say “never” at least as far as any Western intelligence agency, government, or international organization has been able to determine — and a lost nuclear weapon is not the sort of thing people shrug off. As I wrote back in 2023:
