Cyrus Sutton and his brush with a nuclear-capable Trident missile in the Mojave desert…

Two days ago, the filmer and surfer Cyrus Sutton, who is currently alone in the Mojave desert working on a documentary about GMOs in Hawaii, emailed me a photo of what appeared to be a meteor shower above his head.

“This just happened?!” he said.

Social lit up, as it does, with theories that it was a nuclear bomb, maybe a comet, some kind of alien invasion or part of “secret military testing.”

I figured it was part of the annual Taurid meteor shower and told Cyrus so but, yesterday, it was revealed that it was actually a nuclear-capable Trident missile test-fired by the US Navy.

Now I’ve been around a bit, I’ve had my share of freak-outs, some drug-induced, some simply from an over-arching timidity that I just can’t seem to shake. I couldn’t even imagine what it’d be like to be alone in the desert, at sunset, when, out of nowhere, a gigantic missile roars over your head.

Cyrus does.

“The first thing that went through my mind as that it was an alien death ray or something. It was NOT a comet or a meteor,” he says.

“It was NOT a comet or a meteor. It started ascending as a glowing orange ball. Then it burst up high emitting huge radiating bubbles that looked blue green like the northern lights, its point was fierce white light like a star. It zoomed northward leaving an aurora like glow in its wake.

“It was over LA. I was 150 miles east in no-man’s land. I remember thinking of that Twilight Zone episode where the guy is in the bank vault when the nuke detonates, he goes outside to see that everyone is gone.”

“Then I thought, holy shit I’ve got to get a picture of this thing. By the time I got my camera it was blue and green and white and bubbling outward quickly eventually taking over a good part of the sky. I missed the first few shots (blurry and underexposed) fingers were trembling and I couldn’t think straight. Then I got my tripod out of the back and got some proper shots. After it disappeared only a large dab of turquoise remained where it first exploded near the band of the milky way.

“I drove 10 miles into town to poach the wifi at the local library to see what it was. There was nothing in the news but social media was lighting up. A bunch of people posted phone shots and were asking the same questions. I posted a photo asking if anyone saw it and there were reports from SF to SD and clear east to Vegas so the entire southern half of Southern California caught the show.

“On the news they are saying it was a comet or a meteor but meteors don’t rise then explode, change color and blast off into space in a piercing white light. The next day the media said it was the trusty US military testing an intercontinental ballistic missile. That makes a lot more sense. A lot of people were saying it was aliens but I don’t know. Probably some classified military star wars shit.”

Paranoia ensues! 

Photos and video here! 

Someone writes a song about it!