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What Did Google Earth Spot In the Chinese Desert?
New submitter snooz_crash writes "An Ex-CIA analyst requests your assistance in IDing a base that he has been observing for quite a while. The base has been in existence for several years, but its shape and location do not lead to an immediate answer to the riddle of 'what the heck is it?'"
It's a cleverly designed denial of service attack against the CIA/NSA/etc. By making them waste time trying to figure out what this base is, they're keeping them from discovering actual information.
Maybe that's why he's an ex-CIA analyst.
You'd get a pretty good idea, I think... if you simply went to the area. If it's a secure location, you'd get some idea of what it is based on the type of people who are guarding the entrance.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Disclaimer: I've never done anything like this. Well, this structure is pretty unique in its shape. Judging by the shadow, it's pretty high up and probably serves the most distinct purpose? It almost looks like that might be a prison yard in the middle with a fence in the back? If you're going to make a building that large and use it for office space, why make that shape? Why not just a rectangular or square building? It could also maybe be the beginnings of an airport or air base with that structure being the tower and the field to be built in front of the flat side of the U. The other sites might be hangars?
If it's a prison, the other sites might be places for arrays of solar panels or perhaps mining sites with the intent of prisoners working on those things. I mean, when you're that far out are you going to make a run for it? The electricity and/or ore would be for nearby Kashgar, Xinjiang?
If any of that were true, I have no clue what this stuff would be though. It looks like the upper left of that has had dirt pushed around to level out the ground for something to be built on top of it though. This went up fast but you might have to give it another year or two before it starts to take shape?
My work here is dung.
Blue roof, yellow trim. Built on cheap land for no good reason. Duh! It's an Ikea store.
Factory on the left, dorms on the right. Nothing to see here.
Sooo...
Newest Foxconn facility?
Where are the roof nets?
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
According to Apple Maps it's the Swaffham branch of Sainsburys.
This is a clever trick designed by Slashdot to make people RTFA.
You're not making me fall into that trap, by gum...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
look like what I imagine two coal fired power units under construction would look like.
Its probably just a mining operation, of some kind because there is no major transport, no huge power lines, no stacks, convener belt systems. (Coal fired plants would have all of those, and aren't nearly so spread out).
No major rail lines.
No paved roads, just low traffic low speed gravel roads (90 degree corners etc).
Only the eastern most group of buildings seems to be fenced
There are "tailing pile" looking like humps, but not nearly enough for this to be a high burden mine requiring massive material removal, unless they are dumping the tailing back down the mine. There appear to be fields of spread out tailings with lots of bulldozer marks just east of the blue topped building.
The lack of security, transport, massive power, and distance to population centers (which themselves are not that big) all suggest small mining operations, perhaps by several different organizations.
Nothing was there in 2009, so it may be still in the process of drilling to deep ore bodies, and not actually in production yet.
The thing about desert areas is every little truck track shows up forever.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
THe fact it's in a dessert made me think that it's a building to house water. Not a water tower or indoor artificial lake, but maybe a waste treatment plant or something like that. You need to build infrastructure to support people if you are going to build towns and cities, and China is building ghost cities in preparation for the upcoming global crisis (when the US collapses, SSEZ - Shenzhen, will go down with it - so much of that area is dedicated to Hong Kong production and US company outsourcing, and the millions living there - many illegals, will want to flee). So having pre-built cities that are empty, something the US sees as stupid, will let the government step in and give 10,000,000 jobs to people to run the empty cities, then millions more will follow them with services and support, cleaning out the localities that are in crisis. They don't have enough space for the people flocking to the cities now, so expanding, even if only by pre-making cities, makes sense. At least, it will in 10 years when the US defaults on the debt and the world economy routes around the damage.
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I think you are correct--the geography and topography give it away.
If you'll look at the image with the least zoom, you'll see that the facility is built at the edge where two different alluvial fans intersect--the "softer", darker soil is the newer alluvial fan that has eroded down into the much older deposits. There is also a natural formation that runs along this boundary that appears to be a dike--a naturally formed wall--that extends down into the earth. It kind of looks like the Great Wall of China if it were to be viewed top down.
The boundary between these two alluvial fans is essentially a cliff that has exposed the lower layers of of the older deposits at the top of the images. This is an ideal location to find exposed deposits, deposits that otherwise would have been hidden far beneath the ground had erosion not exposed it.
I suspect this is a "dry mining" facility that is going to be mining some substance from this location. That dike is important--since the flow of that alluvial fan appears to come from the top of the map, that means the dike would act as a sort of "trap", much like the riffles in a miner sluice-box--heavier elements would become trapped behind the dike while lighter material flowed over the top to be washed away by the lower elevation alluvial erosion. Much of the excavation in the images that is not associated with a structure appears to be centered around this dike.
The long structures, located in several locations, appear to have individual units inside them (some of them are in construction and have not yet had a roof installed, allowing you to see what appear to be shallow pits, one after the other, lined up inside). These could be "shakers", what amount to a crude centrifuge that uses gravity instead of centrifugal force, to perform an initial separation of materials. Normally, heavy metals are separated in centrifuges after being mixed into a slurry, but that would be difficult in this location--I don't see a drop of surface water in any of these images. That being said, processing would be focused on methods that used as little water as possible.
Another clue is the large "U"-shaped building. This building is located centrally, downhill from the majority of the other operations and has another interesting feature--several small structures that are located a ways away, but have clearly visible tracks (construction or merely vehicle marks) that all lead back to that building. I suspect these are well-heads that tap water located underneath the floodplain that the facility is located on. This water would be used for final separation in centrifuges located inside the main building. The central gate-like feature could be the final distribution point of a two-armed processing facility.
So, my guess is either barium mine, or a lithium mine. Any heavy metal, really, even gold. Any dry-mining facility would look similar at this stage of development--the tailing piles visible are just the start (sample shafts). The real tailing piles will show up once the facility is active.
Interesting considering this article:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/01/09/0449218/worldwide-shortage-of-barium
Nothing here is old or defunct.
Use Google Earth. Click the clock button, and drift back in time.
Nothing was here in 2009.
Its just a mining operation of some sort.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
As is often the case, heavy metals can occur in mixed deposits--several different kinds of minerals in one deposit.
After looking through the images more closely, something stood out that I should have noticed immediately--this isn't one facility, but four. They simply share a resource deposit. Look near the dike and it is obvious that each section has it's own access road up and over the dike where they become inter-connected by a wide road that extends the full length of the images.
If you'll look at one of the images that shows the entire facility, you'll notice that the rectangular area that contains structures is roughly divided into four mostly equal areas. Each of these areas has totally different structures--the left most has the "shakers" and the the building I suggested might contain individual centrifuges. The next area contains only the long buildings, but also has neat rows of processed materials, perhaps the tailings from testing these structures. The next area has a large single facility, maybe suggesting a more refined process or merely the desire to keep our eyes off of the more telling equipment. The right-most image shows yet another sort of facility that combines the long row buildings with an adjacent building of moderate size.
Perhaps the Chinese have located a region rich in numerous materials, each requiring a different method of processing, and this odd facility is simply co-located because the ore is of mixed content.
Another aspect that backs up a dry-mining location is the fact that there is a sizable community just "down-stream" from the facility--dry-mining techniques (including the recycling of centrifuge slurry) would prevent waste from entering the waterways located near that community, provided that tailings were redeposited on the opposite side of the dike after processing.
"... but there isn't a lot of earth-moving equipment around, not much ground has been disturbed yet..."
Actually, there is. Most of it is located in the lighter area towards the top of the map--it is hard to see them, but that place is littered with many little roads. Most of these end at some excavation--the deposits are coming from the top of the map and are then being brought down these roads to the facilities.
Aye, I noticed the water as well. But it is already being used for the very reasons you stated--irrigation and the town downstream. Wet-mining uses massive amounts of water and leaves you with lakes of toxic slurry to get rid of--there is nowhere to get rid of something like that but flush it downstream right into town. Dry-mining solves this issue.
The "U"-shaped building has a pretty extensive ramp going up the dike to the row buildings--It wouldn't surprise me if a large conveyor belt is constructed down this ramp, connecting the two structures.
But the quickest route to Paris is now over land, not water.
But the cheapest way is still to ship things by ship, not plane or rail. Even if the USA was reduced to trade insignificance, the trading areas in the SE are still better situated to deal with India and East Africa (all those untapped resources, yum) than Western China, which hasn't been close to anywhere since the Silk Road closed down.
Why are there so many people in Atlanta? It's nowhere. What, all there for the peach plantations?
Sorry, but it is on a river. Probably the end of the navigable section (or at least once was -- inland cities often grow up at portages), and it grew up as a collection spot for the cotton plantations. Pre-Civil War, cotton was the biggest US export.
Many large cities started from nothing.
Barring Persepolis, Berlin, Washington DC, Riyadh, and Brasilia (all sacred capitals rather than pre-existing natural cities), name them.
The only thing you need is water, and even Phoenix didn't need that.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but my maps show Phoenix on the Salt River, a major tributary of the Gila River, a tributary of the Colorado, so before LA started sucking it all dry they had loads of water, probably even a navigable channel out to the Gulf Of California.
Cities grow up when people have a reason to stay THERE, rather than a day's journey or more away. They stay around when there is still a reason to stay there when things change (hence the lack of population in most Western ghost towns), or when the change is not big enough to make enough of a difference.
What exactly do you mean by 'light' socialism, and why do you think it is the answer (presumably the question was "which government will survive?").
Single payer health care is cheaper and better than what the US has now. As such, collective health care is like cheaper and better insurance. And so many programs like Head Start saves more money than it costs, so even a libertarian should like it, as it results in an overall smaller government. I consider myself a libertarian, but I agree with Libertarians on just about nothing. The issue is that I'm not the kind that believes in toll sidewalks and 100% private roads. Some things, like the post office, are socialist, and still explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. It always amuses me when the rabid constitutionalists ignore the parts of the Constitution they don't like. The libertarian fore-fathers *knew* there were some things the government should do. Like the post. And if they were doing it today, I firmly believe that they'd put health care in that lot. We all pay for the post offices and post roads. Communistic libertarians.
You do need to bribe them with their own money. "If you vote for me, I'll cut your health care costs in half - *and* improve the quality of care." Voting in UK-style NIH would do that, and that's a good bribe. "If you vote me in, I'll tax everyone but you and send you a check for $10,000,000" is a bad bribe. Bribing people with efficient government isn't a bribe. We don't have to deliver the worst possible government to pretend it isn't a bribe. The police are a "bribe", and even the most libertarian Libertarian believes in at least that one service, right?
I have trouble discussing what Libertarians belive. I've joined 3 different local LPs, but whenever I discuss my issues with them, someone on Slashdot asserts that it never happened because my characterizations were so far off from what they would like the LP message to be. I try to stick to libertarians (with the small L, and no P). but the problem there is I'm the opposite of the LP, but consider myself to be libertarian. There is apparently no such thing as a libertarian that believes in responsibility.
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