A thick, “mysterious” fog has descended over a large swath of the US, evoking echoes of a secret US military biological experiment dubbed “Operation Sea Spray,” the Daily Mail reports.
Florida residents complained of an unnatural fog PHOTO SHUTTERSTOCK
For a week in September 1950, the US Navy sprayed massive amounts of bacteria off the coast of San Francisco, California, to test the vulnerability of major cities to a biological terrorist attack.
At the time, the US Navy believed that the bacteria, Serratia marcescens, which can cause respiratory problems and meningitis, and Bacillus atrophaeus, which can be lethal to immunocompromised people, were harmless to humans.
However, after inhaling the spores, 11 people ended up at a hospital near San Francisco with very rare and serious urinary tract infections. The doctors determined that they were caused by the experiment.
Some Americans recalled this test after claiming to have suffered from various respiratory, digestive symptoms and a state of lethargy that they attributed to an “unnatural” fog phenomenon, accompanied by a “substance-like burnt chemicals”.
Concerned citizens have flooded social media with videos purportedly of white particles swirling through the air.
A Florida resident told DailyMail.com that she stopped at a gas station for about 10 minutes, after which she started feeling sick.
“After about an hour I started sneezing continuously and kept it up for three hours and my eyes were swollen shut”she said.
“I got hot, felt like I had a fever, and had stomach cramps.”
“Here in SoCal, unusual fog the last few days. Unusual scents, but I’ve been smelling it for months anyway, it burns my nose. It seems like a total attack from the sky in the last few days”a California resident wrote on X on Monday.
“We had fog in Florida, which is not normal at all.” said Holly Meyer Lucas of Florida, explaining that her eyes have been stinging terribly for two weeks.
Testimonies claimed that the fog was unusual not only because of the smell, but also because of large “white particles”.
The mention of particulates has prompted some Americans to check their air filters, which a North Dakota resident did recently and made a shocking discovery.
He claimed the air filter had been changed fairly recently.
“Super dirty, so fast”he said in a video, showing the filter next to a brand new one to demonstrate how much debris has built up.
“Beware of the fog“, he warns.
David Bamber, from St Petersburg, Florida, shared a video on TikTok of himself walking through the dense fog, explaining that normal fog usually clears later in the day, but this persists at night.
“The strangest aspects are taste and smell,” Bamber said. “It smells like you lit a bunch of fireworks and the air tastes toxic. It’s very strange.”
Portions of Texas, Wisconsin, Iowa, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Florida and Minnesota were under a haze alert when reports of these bizarre symptoms appeared out of the blue last week this.
Similar experiences have also been described in some areas of Canada and the UK, sparking widespread concern.
There is no shortage of conspiracy theories, with some residents of the affected areas advancing the idea that the haze could come from a chemical weapon or have something to do with the appearance of swarms of drones that caused panic in several US states last December.
The latest theory is that the US government, which is reportedly testing a new biological weapon similar to the experiment 75 years ago, is behind the fog.
“Guys, they released a bunch of germs into the country this week in the form of fog”user X posted on Tuesday.
“My Spidey senses tell me they are seeding the sky with pathogens that make us sick. Operation Sea-Spray 4.0 (December 24-31, 2024)”.
Another asked: “Did we just suffer another Operation Sea Spray – Mist event?”
In fact, the National Weather Service (NWS) issued a dense fog advisory for several states at the time these reports appeared, indicating that there is most likely a valid scientific explanation for the phenomenon.
The appearance of white fog is caused by tiny water droplets or ice crystals that remain suspended very close to the ground and are visible in light.
As for the “chemical” smell described by residents, the fog can absorb and trap polluted air such as industrial emissions or exhaust fumes, experts explained.
“When fog forms, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and other polluting gases are trapped or ‘collected’ by the water droplets,” explained Rudolf Husar, an atmospheric scientist at Washington University, in an article for NASA’s Earth Observatory.
In addition, odors become stronger in humid air because water droplets trap odor-causing molecules and allow them to linger longer and remain concentrated.
Fog is not unusual for the US this time of year, when the weather turns cold, and certain phenomena are common in the southern or central US, where they have been noted with concern by residents.
