June 2013: A cloudburst in Kedarnath region of Rudraprayag district, Uttarakhand left thousands dead and approximately 84,000 people stranded.
July 2016: A cloudburst hit Singhali area near Pithoragarh early morning, flattening homes in over seven villages and leaving many residents trapped in the debris.
June 2018: Several incidents of cloudbursts were reported from parts of Uttarakhand, including Tehri in Garhwal, Pauri, and Uttarkashi.
These were just a few of the disasters that were taking place regularly in the Uttarakhand region. The news caught our attention. What could be the reasons for the repeated incidents? Could it all be attributed to global warming or environmental degradation? What if there was a more sinister plot at work?
The matter got us thinking, and we tracked the disasters that had occurred around the globe in the last decade. The findings were shocking. There were hundreds of such incidents with no logical explanations. It was easy to attribute them to natural causes.
Then we stumbled upon some shocking discovery. Several countries were conducting research and experiments to control the weather across the globe.
The powerful countries realised that weather can be used as an instrument of war. They realised that the tweaking of weather could create earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, landslides, and other natural disasters.
With that in mind, advanced countries set up research and development institutes to conduct experiments in the field. Scientists and researchers started tampering with nature.
A new term was born and ‘Weather Modding’ or ‘ENMOD’ (an acronym for Environmental Modification Techniques) came into being. USA and Russia took a lead by using gadgets emitting electromagnetic waves to tweak the weather. Today, they are believed to have gained the capability to manipulate weather in times of war. Their success has set the ball rolling with many countries entering the fray.
The path to attaining weather supremacy, however, is not an easy one. As with all new discoveries, it requires hundreds of tests to be carried out, an investment of millions of dollars, and the employment of high calibre scientists. While it is easier to allocate the resources, the fundamental problem lies in conducting the actual tests on the ground. The ground tests can cause extensive damage to life and property.
Secrecy is the essence of developing weapons of mass destruction. The development of such weapons is graded ‘Top Secret’. The technology involved is shrouded in mystery and the know-how closely guarded.
The US set up what was known as the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) based in Gakona, Alaska. It is a part of a new generation of sophisticated weaponry under the US Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) using super-powerful radio wave-beaming technology affecting weather.
The activities of HAARP are of covert nature. It is believed that the HAARP experiments were conducted on foreign soil. These experiments caused extensive damages to life and property. The belief led many countries, including the European Union, to point fingers at HAARP. The clamour was followed by the demand for its closure. The US finally succumbed to pressure and announced its closure in 2014. However, there are doubts that they have terminated the project.
Curiosity led us to research deeper and we collate a lot of data on the subject. The facts and figures spoke for themselves. There was a lot going on in the weather arena. With that premise, we began writing our book and Decoding the Feronia Files was born. It was a painstaking project which required us to wade through tomes of information and weave it into an exciting story. To make the subject interesting, we gave it the shape of a thriller and by the end of a year we had the first Indian Cli Fi thriller in hand.
‘Two years later, on February 7, 2021, we woke up to the news of one more disaster - Glacial lake burst or avalanche… what caused the Uttarakhand disaster?’ screamed the headlines. While scientists are grappling with the reasons, there has been talk that the latest disaster could have been caused by a gadget left in the Himalayan region.
Strangely, that’s the premise on which Decoding the Feronia Files is based.
Can weather be controlled? If so, can it be weaponised? The USA set up haarp in 1993 for research on weather modification. Its covert experiments caused unexplained weather changes like cloudbursts, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, leading to massive destruction across the globe. Worldwide outrage finally forced the closure of haarp. But the deadly experiments continued to ravage the world. Around the same time, a secret device is planted by a foreign mountaineering expedition in the Himalayas. It has the potential to change weather patterns in India. A team of Army mountaineers is sent to retrieve the gadget. But, will they be able to retrieve it before the damage is done? Will the intelligence agencies across several countries succeed in nabbing the culprits who are trying to weaponise weather? Decoding the feronia files is a thriller that takes the readers on an international roller-coaster ride to track the scientists carrying out experiments that could unleash a new weapon of mass-destruction—weather.
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