THE RV WAS PARKED INSIDE A MOUSE-INFESTED hangar at the edge of a horse pasture. It was a 38-footer-a plausible amount of space for Luis "Lue" Elizondo, his wife, Jen, and their two German shepherds, Hercules and Paris. But this was no KOA, with handy sewer and water lines.
The drinking water from the spigot made them both sick before they realized it was best left to the livestock. Every week or so, Elizondo humped out the 20-gallon black-water tank to dump into the sewage tank they'd put in the ground. There was no air conditioning, and flies were incessant. It was, in other words, not the kind of arrangement you'd expect for the star of a newly launched History Channel show.
Still, Elizondo figured it wasn't so bad, trudging across the pasture, sidestepping horse patties. This was 2018, more than a decade after he'd served as a counterintelligence officer in Afghanistan under far more precarious conditions. Here in rural Southern California, the hazards were entirely of the mind. Elizondo had to embrace his decision to forgo his corner office at the Pentagon, with its steady and reliable paycheck; he had to avoid giving mental energy to vindictive employees within the Department of Defense who were furious about his departure and his new life in the public eye. In a nation both ravenous for and divided by conspiracy theories and pseudoscience, he had to block out threats and character attacks emanating from the nether regions of the internet. And he had to reassure Jen when she was perturbed with him, which was often, because more than two decades into their marriage she felt obligated to point out the ways in which their circumstances had taken challenging turns. Such as, most people don't live 15 feet from their own waste.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May - June 2023 من Popular Mechanics US.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة May - June 2023 من Popular Mechanics US.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
ONE OF THE 'GREATEST THREATS' TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK.
EXPERTS ARE PREPARING THE REGION AGAINST THE THREAT OF DANGEROUS VOLCANIC MUDFLOWS, KNOWN AS LAHARS, WHICH COULD INUNDATE THE COMMUNITIES SURROUNDING MT. RAINIER IN AS LITTLE AS 30 MINUTES.
THE WORLD'S TOUGHEST ROW
They rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, battling unpredictable weather, chaotic seas, and finicky equipment. But what they discovered gave them profound new insights into the power of the ocean.
HOW TO DIY OFF-GRID SOLAR
SPEND THE TIME UP FRONT AND PLAN IT CAREFULLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT
Are We on the Verge of an ARMS RACE in SPACE?
RUMORS OF A RUSSIAN SPACE NUKE, ALONG WITH OTHER SATELLITE-TARGETING WEAPONS, HAVE MADE GEOPOLITICAL TENSIONS EXTEND INTO ORBIT.
Fresh Fingerprints on an Ancient Statue
A CLAY FIGURINE HAS SPENT MILLENNIA incomplete, waiting at the bottom of a lake for its long-dead craftsman to finish the Iron Age-era statuette.
Quantum Entanglement in Our Brains
IT HAS LONG BEEN ARGUED THAT THE human brain is similar to a computer. But in reality, that's selling the brain pretty short.
The Tools of Copernicus
WAY BACK IN 1508, WITH ONLY LIMited tools at his disposal, Nicolaus Copernicus developed a celestial model of a heliocentric planetary system, which he described in hist landmark work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. It was a complete overhaul of our conception of the universe-one that, unfortunately, earned him the ire of the Catholic church for decades after his death-and forever changed the way we look at the stars.
Building a Sixth-Generation Bomber Raptor
THE GLOBAL COMBAT AIR Programme (GCAP)-a project by the U.K., Italy, and Japan to develop a sixth-generation stealth fighter-has been busy at the drawing board reshaping its vision of the future of air warfare. And judging by the new concept model unveiled at this year's Farnborough air show, that future has big triangular wings.
The Electroweak Force of the Early Universe
TODAY, THE UNIVERSE AS WE KNOW IT IS governed by four fundamental forces: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity.
This Ancient Fossil With a Brain and Guts
WE KNOW WHAT FOSSILS LOOK like. For example, typical dinosaur fossils are bones turned to stone and preserved from the passage of time, located, if we're particularly lucky, in large collections that can be reassembled to represent the beast they used to prop up in their entirety.
