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[PTTG??]

So, Monday evening, a missile was launched from a point 35 miles west and slightly south of LA. Unfortunately, it didn't land in LA.

Despite this happening well within radar range of one of the largest cities on the continent, the military has only been able to say that it wasn't theirs and that they didn't give anybody else permission.

There are two possibilities here; first, that the US military has no idea, even after well over 12 hours, where a potentially nuclear missile came from outside of the fact that it presumably came from a submarine. Second, that they DO know, and won't tell us.

I suppose the question is, which one is worse?

Either way, I'm going to start keeping my medkit, crowbar, and lead sheeting in my car. Never know when those sorts of things could come in handy. Also, anyone know where I can find a Geiger-Müller counter or two? Like, really soon?

[DJ]

Meh, some kid probably made his model rocket a bit too big.

[Servant Corps]

Don't worry about it. It's just a jetliner, according to MSNBC. And NORAD said that whatever object it is, it did not pose a threat to the US.

[DJ]

You should still review Red Dawn, just in case.

[Nikov]

I love the automatic assumption the military is either stupid or mavolent.

[Leafsnail]

I love the automatic assumption the military is either stupid or mavolent.

So you think unaccounted for missiles being launched from near large cities are all well and good?

[Cthulhu]

Unaccounted for "missiles" you mean.  There's no proof it was a missile.

[Jackrabbit]

I dunno, if I was the military I'd feel obligated to be malevolent. It's like, a thing.

[Leafsnail]

Unaccounted for "missiles" you mean.  There's no proof it was a missile.

Great.  So, if you hear a breaking of glass downstairs and there's no proof it's a burglar...

[DJ]

Dunno about stupid and malevolent, but they're certainly incompetent if they have no clue what's flying around in their airspace.

[KaelGotDwarves]

People are dumb, CBS is fear-mongering and dumb because they asked the military the wrong question and got a correct answer, it's just a routine missile test out of San Nicolas. Used to see them all the time when I lived in socal
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/e3gf3/a_missile_was_launched_off_the_california_coast/

Quote top-rated post.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Vandenberg routinely launches Minuteman IIIs at Kwajalein to test them - maybe 4-6 per year. That's most assuredly their track.
Their rough guesstimate as to launch site is a little north of San Nicolas, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, a mutherfucking missile launch site.
San Nicholas is, not to put too fine a point on it, a detachment of 200 or more airmen managed by the 30th space wing.
If you read between the lines, CBS asked the Navy if they launched anything and the Navy said "no" (because San Nicholas and the 30th space wing are Air Force territory). Then they asked Vandenberg if they launched anything and Vandenberg said "we haven't launched anything from Vandenberg since Friday" (because they launched something from San Nicholas).2
Which is kind of exciting in its own right - Vandenberg doesn't give the first shit who shows up to watch their launches, they've got mutherfucking bleachers set up1,4. The only reason I wasn't at the COSMO-Skymed 4 launch on Friday is it was supposed to be the COSMO-Skymed 4 launch last Sunday and they delayed that launch four separate times.
I disagree with the ICBM-submarine theory because sub-launched missiles are tiny3. That rocket looked to be at least a Delta II or possibly a Minotaur IV, both of which are too big for submarines5.
EDIT 1: For the people who want to go to launches, it's every bit as dope as it could possibly be. The bleachers are at SLC-2 (Slick 2), also known as "north base." The big stuff, such as Slick 6 which was installed for super-secret space shuttle launches but never used, are at "south base" which is where the Delta IV Heavy stuff tends to go up from (which usually means big NRO launches).
This is what a dawn launch looks like at SLC-2. I took this shot of the WISE launch last year - we actually were out there with a stereo mic and a 702T along with a Redcam and a phatty angeneux lens and then were just too blown away to get good footage. The cool thing is these concrete bleachers are tied in to the PA system, so you get to listen to shit as it goes down. here's a Google Maps link to the bleachers and here's one to SLC-2. Here's Slick 6; as you can tell, it's a hike.
The cool thing about Vandenberg is you can call them up and say "I wanna see a launch" and you talk to a nice girl named Jenny who doesn't really give a shit and is really friendly. She'll give you directions to get there that are wrong, and she'll tell you that the morning ones look the coolest and that you can't really see the Slick 6 launches from anywhere that well. But you drive up there (from LA for me) and you hang out and things are really damn impressive and then you go get a meal (either breakfast or dinner) in Santa Barbara and it's awesome. Apparently they're due a new base commander in a few months and things may change, but in the meantime they're perfectly happy having you drive on base and watching stuff.
For those interested in this, get on Brian Webb's email list to find out what is going up and when. It was kinda funny - the window to get Cosmo-Skymed 4 into the sky was 6 seconds wide, so every time they had the slightest burp they had to push a day. The Minuteman III launches, on the other hand, are so casual you get the sense that they're like "you wanna push the button?" "lemme finish my burger first" (I'm sure it's more stringent than that, but you know what I mean). So you never really know what you're gonna get. Particularly as the marine layer can come in fierce out by Vandenberg which means you may see a big bright thing for 4 seconds and then it's above the cloud layer and invisible in everything but infrared.
EDIT 2: Speaking of Brian Webb, he had this to say as of ten minutes ago on the aforementioned email list:
MYSTERY LAUNCH
This morning I have been hearing reports of a mystery missile launch last night off of the southern California Coast. One account of the launch is posted at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/09/national/main7036716.shtml
Missile launches off of the southern California coast are not really that unusual. They have happened before from San Nicolas Island and from ships and submarines at sea.
As a matter of fact, the waters off of southern California contain an established range for testing and evaluating missiles, weapons systems, and so on.
EDIT 3: Perhaps "tiny" is the wrong word to use for anything capable of suborbital flight. A trident, however, is tiny when you compare it to, say, a Delta IV Heavy.
EDIT 4: selects from my last photo safari to Vandenberg. I advertised in /r/spacefleet to see if anybody wanted to come up to see, but nobody did. Perhaps because there's like 300 people in that entire subreddit. Might be a fun meetup for next time, though, presuming people don't mind the likelihood that launches will scrub.
EDIT 5: This is all purest speculation on my part, and nobody had linked to this at the time. I'm not going to stick to my guns on something based on educated guesses. I have no basis to argue that it was a San Nicolas launch rather than a sea launch because frankly, I've never been the slightest bit involved in either. The whole point of this statement was to diffuse the "ZOMG NORTH KOREANZ!!!!!!one" sentiment that tends to appear before information becomes common.
HAH! Just a weather balloon, folks, or perhaps swamp gas.
Seriously, though. I didn't see it, I've only seen this stupid report that the helicopter shot (5 will get you 10 this wouldn't have been news if they didn't have the footage, and if they had done a little vetting and fact checking before running the footage the explanations would be a lot more pedestrian). The sky was gorgeous yesterday about 5 but yesterday about 5 I was in the Trader Joe's parking lot fighting with an idiot line producer on the phone so I missed it (yet another reason to be pissed off at the bitch). Will it turn out to be something pedestrian and uninteresting? Probably. But here's another wild and unsupported theory just for fun:
This is Slick 3 at Vandenberg. SLC-3 is big enough for an Atlas 5, which is the only reason I mention it. Here's the airstrip at San Nicolas Island at the same scale - you'll note there does not appear to be anything the size of SLC-3 there, but that doesn't mean there couldn't be. Remember, a Topol M can be launched from a fucking truck (although it's about 1/7th the weight of an Atlas V) so throwing together a launchpad between Google Earth satellite passes isn't unheard of.
I'm focusing on the Atlas 5 because it's the launch vehicle for the X-37, most definitely the most spooky-secret thing the US has (publicly) in the sky. The last time they launched it the world flipped out and lost track of it for a while, but those pesky fuckers at SEESAT-L found it anyway.
By launching the X-37 by surprise, letting people get all flummoxed about WTF that was, and then letting the thing settle into an orbit while waiting a day or two to say "oh yeah, our bad, that was just the X-37" there's fewer and fewer chances for the Molczan posse to find it. I've waxed tinfoil hat about the X-37 before.

[Cthulhu]

Unaccounted for "missiles" you mean.  There's no proof it was a missile.

Great.  So, if you hear a breaking of glass downstairs and there's no proof it's a burglar...

It's more like hearing a car door slamming and everyone assuming it's a burglar.

[Earthquake Damage]

I'm with Cthulhu on this one.  Ia!  Ia!

[PTTG??]

I love the automatic assumption the military is either stupid or malevolent.

Three separate responses:
1: I never said either.
2: What else is going to get people to volunteer to go to terribly uncomfortable foreign places and trade bullets with people they've never met? Bear in mind, both of my parents are noncombat air force veterans.
3: Give me an alternative explanation for a scenario in which they say that they have no idea what a large missile miles away from a major population center is.

That's not to drive you away, I've been meaning to say that I rather admire your dedication to your beliefs insomuch as though you may be surrounded by people of many different ideologies, you keep them.

DJ: Good idea. I'll go try to find a VCR.

Servant Corps: That's what they WANT you to think! Though I suppose he'd be an expert. I'd still think that if it really was clear that it was just a jetliner, then NORAD would try to make it clear that that's all that it was. But it's food for thought.

EDIT: Whoa, post storm. It's not a missile test. That was friday. This one was monday, when no missile tests where supposed to be scheduled... hmm.... interesting, kael. Still, I'm unsure why the military (Whatever branch it may be) is working so hard to maintain the illusion of incompetence. Wouldn't it be better sounding to say "Yeah, we planned that. Sure was cool, huh?"

Summary: They're still evil and/or incompetent even if they launched it themselves and pretended not to, though perhaps not so much as they would be otherwise.

[Earthquake Damage]

2: What else is going to get people to volunteer to go to terribly uncomfortable foreign places and trade bullets with people they've never met? Bear in mind, both of my parents are noncombat air force veterans.

A sense of duty to your nation or loved ones?  By furthering the state's policy goals (ideally representing the nation's collective interests), you're presumably helping the people you care about in the long-run.

Just sayin' it doesn't have to be "hurp derp" or "let's go murder some people, but in a totally legal way!"

Also,

3: Give me an alternative explanation for a scenario in which they say that they have no idea what a large missile miles away from a major population center is.

It wasn't necessarily a missile.  That's pretty much the whole argument thus far.

Also also,

That's what they WANT you to think!

:tinfoilhat: