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Nuking the Moon
- And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board
- Narrated by: Vince Houghton
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
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Publisher's summary
The International Spy Museum's Historian takes us on a wild tour of missions and schemes that almost happened, but were ultimately deemed too dangerous, expensive, ahead of their time, or even certifiably insane.
"Compulsively readable laugh out loud history." (Mary Roach, New York Times best-selling author of Grunt and Stiff)
In 1958, the US Air Force nuked the moon as a show of military force. In 1967, the CIA sent live cats to spy on the Soviet government. In 1942, the British built a torpedo-proof aircraft carrier out of an iceberg. Of course, none of these things ever actually happened. But in Nuking the Moon, intelligence historian Vince Houghton proves that abandoned plans can be just as illuminating - and every bit as entertaining - as the ones that made it.
Vividly capturing the fascinating stories of how 21 plans from WWII and the Cold War went from conception, planning, and testing to cancellation, Houghton explores what happens when innovation meets desperation: For every plan as good as D-Day, there's a scheme to strap bombs to bats or dig a spy tunnel underneath the Soviet embassy. Along the way, he reveals what each one tells us about 20th-century history, the art of spycraft, military strategy, and famous figures like JFK, Castro, and Churchill. By turns terrifying and hilarious - but always riveting - this is the unique story of history left on the drawing board.
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Drones are transforming warfare through the use of artificial intelligence, drone swarms, and surveillance - leading to competition between the US, China, Israel, and Iran. Who will be the next drone superpower?
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Great history of drone warfare
- By CJ on 02-08-24
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Insiders Reveal Secret Space Programs & Extraterrestrial Alliances
- By: Michael E. Salla
- Narrated by: Jerry Lord
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Classified space programs have been an integral part of a complex jigsaw puzzle concerning UFOs, extraterrestrial life, ancient civilizations and advanced aerospace technologies, which have long defied any coherent understanding. Now finally, we have something to put all the pieces together with the disclosures of secret space program whistleblower, Corey Goode. A detailed investigation of Goode’s and other insider testimonies reveals the big picture of a parallel world of secret space programs and extraterrestrial alliances.
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A waste of time
- By Roland Vellanoweth on 03-09-19
By: Michael E. Salla
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Burning the Sky
- Operation Argus and the Untold Story of the Cold War Nuclear Tests in Outer Space
- By: Mark Wolverton
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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After the Soviet Union proved to the United States that it possessed an operational intercontinental ballistic missile with the launch of Sputnik in October 1957, the world watched anxiously as the two superpowers engaged in a game of nuclear one-upmanship. Amid this rising tension, eccentric physicist Nicholas Christofilos brought forth an outlandish, albeit ingenious, idea to defend the US from a Soviet attack: detonating nuclear warheads in space to create an artificial radiation belt that would fry incoming ICBMs. Known as Operation Argus, this plan is the most secret and riskiest experiment in history, and classified details of these nuclear tests have been long obscured.
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Extraordinary interesting history
- By Magnus Almgren on 10-23-20
By: Mark Wolverton
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Skunk Works
- A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed
- By: Ben R. Rich, Leo Janos
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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From the development of the U-2 to the Stealth fighter, the never-before-told story behind America's high-stakes quest to dominate the skies. Skunk Works is the true story of America's most secret and successful aerospace operation. As recounted by Ben Rich, the operation's brilliant boss for nearly two decades, the chronicle of Lockheed's legendary Skunk Works is a drama of Cold War confrontations and Gulf War air combat, of extraordinary feats of engineering and human achievement against fantastic odds.
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Ben Rich's life story...but not in that order
- By Allstar on 11-05-16
By: Ben R. Rich, and others
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Crashback
- The Power Clash Between the US and China in the Pacific
- By: Michael Fabey
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Out in the Pacific Ocean, there is a war taking place. It is a "warm war", a shoving match between the United States, since World War II the uncontested ruler of the seas, and China, which now possesses the world's largest navy. The Chinese regard the Pacific, and especially the South China Sea, as their ocean, and they're ready to defend it. Each day the heat between the two countries increases as the Chinese try to claim the South China Sea for their own, and the United States insists on asserting freedom of navigation.
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time to admit how Obama years made us vulnerable
- By Andrew on 03-26-18
By: Michael Fabey
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A Fiery Peace in a Cold War
- Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon
- By: Neil Sheehan
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 19 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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From Neil Sheehan, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic A Bright Shining Lie, comes this long-awaited, magnificent epic. Here is the never-before-told story of the nuclear arms race that changed history - and of the visionary American Air Force officer Bernard Schriever, who led the high-stakes effort. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War is a masterly work about Schriever’s quests to prevent the Soviet Union from acquiring nuclear superiority, to penetrate and exploit space for America, and to build the first weapons meant to deter an atomic holocaust.
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Schriever rhymes with beaver.
- By John Gardner on 11-13-09
By: Neil Sheehan
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Kill Chain
- The Rise of the High-Tech Assassins
- By: Andrew Cockburn
- Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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This essential, pause-resister narrative on the history of drone warfare by the acclaimed author of Rumsfeld explores how this practice emerged, who made it happen, and the real consequences of targeted killing.
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Introduction
- By Batman on 03-24-15
By: Andrew Cockburn
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Command and Control
- Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety
- By: Eric Schlosser
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 20 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America's nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved - and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind.
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A miracle that we escaped the Cold War alive....
- By A reader on 02-16-14
By: Eric Schlosser
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The Weapon Wizards
- How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower
- By: Yaakov Katz, Amir Bohbot
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 9 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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From drones to satellites, missile defense systems to cyber warfare, Israel is leading the world when it comes to new technology being deployed on the modern battlefield. The Weapon Wizards shows how this tiny nation of 8,000,000 learned to adapt to the changes in warfare and in the defense industry and become the new prototype of a 21st century superpower, not in size, but rather in innovation and efficiency - and as a result of its long war experience.
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Good Overview, May Overstate Level of Innovation
- By JBF on 06-15-17
By: Yaakov Katz, and others
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Unacknowledged
- An Exposé of the World’s Greatest Secret
- By: Steven M. Greer MD
- Narrated by: William Hughes
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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The biggest lie in history is about to be shattered. UFOs are real. In late June of 1947, three extraterrestrial craft were downed outside Roswell Air Force Base. Many more followed, revealing dozens of ET species and a Rosetta Stone to a new physics, an energy generation and propulsion system responsible for interstellar space travel. This new system could have easily replaced oil, gas, coal, and nuclear plants - and with them, the entire geopolitical and economic order on our planet. But a cabal of bankers, the military-industrial complex, and Big Oil stopped it.
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One Of Those Must Buy Phenomenal Rare Books
- By Vitaly on 11-09-17
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Atomic Bomb Island
- Tinian, the Last Stage of the Manhattan Project, and the Dropping of the Atomic Bombs on Japan in World War II
- By: Don A. Farrell, Dr. Gordon E. Castanza - editor
- Narrated by: John Lescault
- Length: 18 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Atomic Bomb Island tells the story of an elite, top-secret team of sailors, airmen, scientists, technicians, and engineers who came to Tinian in the Marianas in the middle of 1945 to prepare the island for delivery of the atomic bombs then being developed in New Mexico, to finalize the designs of the bombs themselves, and to launch the missions that would unleash hell on Japan.
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Required WW2 reading
- By Allen on 04-02-21
By: Don A. Farrell, and others
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The Bomber Mafia
- A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
- By: Malcolm Gladwell
- Narrated by: Malcolm Gladwell
- Length: 5 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Malcolm Gladwell, author of New York Times best sellers including Talking to Strangers and host of the podcast Revisionist History, uses original interviews, archival footage, and his trademark insight to weave together the stories of a Dutch genius and his homemade computer, a band of brothers in Central Alabama, a British psychopath, and pyromaniacal chemists at Harvard. As listeners hear these stories unfurl, Gladwell examines one of the greatest moral challenges in modern American history.
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Listen to the same story on his podcast for free
- By Dustin on 04-28-21
By: Malcolm Gladwell
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Secret Journey to Planet Serpo
- A True Story of Interplanetary Travel
- By: Len Kasten
- Narrated by: Robin Douglas
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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On July 16, 1965, a massive alien spacecraft from the Zeta Reticuli star system landed at the Nevada test site north of Las Vegas. Following a plan set in motion by President Kennedy in 1962, the alien visitors known as the Ebens welcomed 12 astronaut-trained military personnel aboard their craft for the 10-month journey to their home planet, Serpo, 39 light-years away. Working with the DIA originators of the Serpo project and the diary kept by the expedition’s commanding officer, Len Kasten chronicles the complete journey of these cosmic pioneers.
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QUOTE, UNQUOTE 🤮
- By MyName on 03-09-20
By: Len Kasten
What listeners say about Nuking the Moon
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jim Boyle
- 02-26-21
A personal delivery of plan B,C,D,-Z
I enjoyed the author's passionate and personal delivery of dry boring facts and dates. He brings content to the reader uniquely. like a guest from the neighborhood over for family dinner being asked " So Vince, tell us about the new book on the government making cats into atom bombs "? And he lets loose with excitement and energy. The author delivers his personal account of his research. I push this issue to potential readers to contrast the reviews that are harshly critical of the author's personal bias, agenda, and telling his story his way. I see the author's delivery as genuine and true to his printed word. I'm a well read cold war history buff and enjoyed listening to him expand on and introduce me to many operations of interest. It helps the $ 20,000 toilet plunger the Pentagon has a line item for make sense. I highly recommend this author's work and will follow him for his next edition. I was very close to skiping this read based on reviews critical of the author's passion for declassified techno-spook stuff that almost was attempted. I offer an A+ job well done.
Jim Boyle KF4COP Raleigh, NC
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- Alexander
- 05-07-19
Great mix of Fun and History
I normally don't buy these types of books but I'm glad I did...heard about it on a podcast and have to admit it was fun and informative.
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2 people found this helpful
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- SBen
- 04-06-21
Rare instance of the author reading the audiobook being the best idea.
Not only do I love the content, narration, writing style, and rare glimpse into our nation’s history, but this audiobook makes me want to hang out with the author.
Favorite quote, “...because hovercrafts are AWESOME.” Better when he says it by far.
His service to our country - both in Special Forces and CIA - give him the credentials and authority to discuss these matters. His Ph.D. gives him a measured, responsible approach to researching and presenting information. His personality is the icing on the cake.
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- The Dave
- 06-02-20
Good If You Love Military
The narrator is a little casual for the subject matter. Mind you, I'm not looking for a textbook here, I want something readable however his current pop culture references and self-deprecating humor will obsolete this book too soon. Also didn't realize it would be 100% intense military details. This is a military book to be sure. If you like that kind of thing, with all the Pentagon intrigue, troop terminology and inside descriptions of weapons, this is for you.
I handled about half of it, then returned.
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- Cameron S.
- 11-06-19
Light fun read.
A fun bit of escapism, but somewhat forgettable. I would recommend it, but only to someone already interested in the topic.
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-11-19
What a great read
One of the best books I have listened to in a while. The authors is clearly very passionate about the subject and it shows. My only gripes are I think it skimped on how ridiculous the nuclear powered aircraft was and that I wish I didn’t get through it so fast. I highly recommend it!
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- Kearin E. Smirniotis
- 01-30-23
Amazing book recommend
This should get a Emmy it’s thought me so much thank you so much
For this book
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- Boc
- 01-29-21
Thought provoking and humorous
Definitely recommend it the download if you are suspicious of how the government spends our tax dollars.
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- Courtmey
- 06-04-19
love this book great research
Really enjoyed all the fun and exciting stories around all these great successes and failures. Worked on our ICBM fleet for a number of years so I really loved the chapters on different weapons.
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- Shane
- 08-04-19
the shit that didn't happen
pretty interesting stories of history and the stuff that doesn't happen in between historical turning points
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