AtDtDA(28): A Heavenwide Blast of Light

Sun Mar 9 09:51:45 CDT 2008

heavenwide,,,Revelation....radiant.....Prophet's Gate.........."God has abandoned Russia"
  ......."God didn't do this?"..............................

  this blast sure is associated with the anti-Word, the anti-Paraclete...................

  What the Word has come to mean in the 20th Century, at one of Pynchon's layers?

Kai Frederik Lorentzen <lorentzen at hotmail.de> wrote:
      .hmmessage P  {  margin:0px;  padding:0px  }  body.hmmessage  {  FONT-SIZE: 10pt;  FONT-FAMILY:Tahoma  }    

       Yes, and that lil' accident of 1986 was also "a huge humanly created (...) tragedy" that
       could have even been much worse. I guess that's why the name "Tchernobyl" is mentioned
       more than just once or twice. Makes me think of Homer Simpson scratching his itch with 
       a glowing Brennstab ...

       Kai

        "Was it Tchernobyl, the star of Revelation?" (AtD, p. 797)

---------------------------------

       Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2008 15:35:54 -0800
       From: markekohut at yahoo.com
       Subject: Re: AtDtDA(28): A Heavenwide Blast of Light
       To: pynchon-l at waste.org

    Heavenwide blast of light.................has to remind of an atomic bomb, yes?

  If it was anything but a naturally caused event, it was a huge humanly-created potential traegedy, yes?.........like A-bombs are......??

Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com> wrote:
  "A heavenwide blast of light.

"As of 7:17 A.M. local time on 30 June 1908 ..." (AtD, Pt. IV, p. 779)

"A heavenwide blast of light"

http://www.tunguska.ru/

http://omzg.sscc.ru/tunguska/

The Tunguska Event, sometimes called the Tunguska explosion, was a
massive explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony)
Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai of Russia, at around
7:14 a.m. (0:14 UT, 7:02 a.m. local solar time) on June 30, 1908 (June
17 in the Julian calendar, in use locally at the time)....

[...]

The explosion felled an estimated 80 million trees over 2,150 square
kilometers (830 square miles). The earthquake from the blast measured
5.0 on the Richter scale.

The Tunguska event was the largest impact event in Earth's recent
history. An explosion of this magnitude is capable of destroying a
large metropolitan area....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunguska_event

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap071114.html

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_779

Sandia supercomputers offer new explanation of Tunguska disaster

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. â The stunning amount of forest devastation at
Tunguska a century ago in Siberia may have been caused by an asteroid
only a fraction as large as previously published estimates, Sandia
National Laboratories supercomputer simulations suggest....

http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2007/asteroid.html

Associating Tesla with the Tunguska event comes close to putting the
inventor's power transmission idea in the same speculative category as
ancient astronauts. However, historical facts point to the possibility
that this event was caused by a test firing of Tesla's energy
weapon....

http://www.frank.germano.com/tunguska.htm

Padzhitnoff

Randolph St. Cosmo's "mysterious Russian counterpart"; "semi-mythical
aeronaut" 761; disappearance in 1914, 1022; c.f. Alexey Pazhitnov,
inventor of Tetris.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=P

"a contract employee of the Okhrana"

The Okhrannoye otdeleniye (Russian: ÐÑ
ÑÐ°Ð½Ð½Ð¾Ðµ Ð¾ÑÐ´ÐµÐ»ÐµÐ½Ð¸Ðµ, literally
meaning Protection Section), usually called the Okhrana in Western
sources, or Okhranka by those dissatisfied with the czarist regime,
was a secret police force of the Russian Empire and part of the
Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) in late 1800s, aided by Special
Corps of Gendarmes....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhranka

"contract employee"

http://foia.fbi.gov/guantanamo/122106.htm
http://www.americancontractorsiniraq.com/
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=10828
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/13/3138/

"at least thirty extra poods, roughly half a ton"

Russian measure of weight. One pood = 16.38 kilograms; 30 poods = 491
kg = 1081 pounds, pretty close to half a ton

ekipazh

Russian: crew, team.

"PrÃ¡vil'no!"

Russian: all right

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_779

"Russian design philosophy ..."

The Soviet space design philosophy has always been evolutionary versus
the American style of revolutionary. The American manned program went
from a reliable Apollo system to the quite untried and revolutionary
lifting body Shuttle system. The Soviet system can be seen in the
design evolution of both the Soyuz and Salyut space stations....

http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/AppA/Part1_12.html

... as long as it kept working the Russians kept on using it.

That kind of design philosophy applies to Russian ICBMs as much as it
did to the Mir space station or the Baikonur launch pad....

http://www.spacewar.com/news/icbm-05e.html

"The Russians don't worry about cosmetics or workmanship," says plant
manager Steve Blake. "They build the thing and test the shit out of
it...."

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/rd-180.html

Bol'shaia Igra

Russian: the Great Game; Padzhy's ship, counterpart to the
Inconvenience, at the North Pole, 123; in Venice, 245; at Taklamakan,
having left Tian Shan, 754; at Irkutsk, 779

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=B

"the aeronautics of other lands"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeronautics
http://www.si.edu/Encyclopedia_SI/Science_and_Technology/Aeronautics_Technology.htm
http://www.literature.at/elib/index.php5?title=Aeronautics_History_-_Charles_Vivian_-_1920

Razvedka

Russian: intelligence (in the military-political sense).

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_768-791#Page_779

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