Did a doomsday cult detonate a nuke?

Unexplained seismic waves in the vast, empty expanse of Australia remain a mystery—as we trace the story of a blind guru, an apocalyptic death cult, and what you can get away with in rural hinterlands

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I: Mystery in the Outback

Thirty-one years ago, a doomsday cult used a shell company to purchase a remote sheep station in the vast expanse of western Australian wasteland. Soon, the disciples arrived, establishing a hub in one of the least densely inhabited areas on the planet. Nobody took much notice of them as they imported research equipment, chemicals, and flew in top scientists from thousands of miles away.

The deserted plot of land, a thousand kilometers northeast of Perth, was chosen for two reasons. First, it was in the middle of nowhere, beyond the gaze of state surveillance. Second, it contained substantial deposits of uranium, an element used to create nuclear weapons.

At 11:03 pm on May 28th, 1993, the iron-stained earth of the Outback shook, causing needles in a distant seismographic station to jitter, scribbling a recording of the event into the geological record. The seismic event’s epicenter was only a small distance southeast of the doomsday cult’s new settlement.

But the pattern in the data was unusual. It didn’t match with a standard earthquake. Something was off.

Contemporary witness accounts, including testimony taken from aboriginal prospectors nearby, highlighted that “the sky lit up in a bright flash of white light.” They reported that the flash was accompanied by a large explosion, which continued for several seconds. Other more distant witnesses felt that it was consistent with a “large mining blast, only bigger and longer in duration.”

The seismic activity also fit the profile of previous “clandestine events,” in which a small seismic event is detected, but in such a remote area that the data is sparse. Previously, that was one possible tell-tale sign of a blast designed to remain in the shadows, such as a secret, state-sponsored nuclear test.

At least one explanation could be ruled out: this was no routine mining explosion. Legal restrictions meant that such explosions were outlawed after sunset. Moreover, the seismic waves produced by the mystery event were 170 times larger than any recorded mining explosion in the region. This was much, much bigger.

But at the time, these puzzles were left unsolved—the sort of peculiarity that happens but remains unexplained in an enormous, strange world. So, nobody beyond the region took much notice of the seismograph. A perplexing bit of geological data, yes, but hardly worth worrying about. Nature keeps some secrets.

Less than two years later, however, this little-known seismic event attracted intense attention, ranging from some of the world’s best scientists to the most powerful members of the United States Congress. They were all driven by one question: what happened on the evening of May 28, 1993—and was it plausible that a doomsday cult had somehow detonated a rudimentary nuclear bomb?

The answer—which has largely been forgotten by history—leads from the Australian outback to secret experimentation with weapons of mass destruction, revealing a bizarre apocalyptic conspiracy stretching across thousands of miles.

Its cast of characters includes a “blind and bearded madman” and his end-of-days zealots who tested their deadly weapons on Australian sheep before deploying them as tools of assassination and terror in their homeland. They hunted down opponents who dared to challenge them, making their bodies disappear before unleashing toxic gases on densely populated neighborhoods, all while hoping to empower and enlighten themselves, a spiritual fulfillment only made possible by drinking the used bath water of their prophetic leader.

But their story also serves as a warning: nefarious groups can get away with quite a lot, just so long as they’re far enough away from the watchful gaze of the world.

And since it probably wasn’t a nuclear blast, what was it?