The late Mac Tonnies, the author of
After the Martian Apocalypse, had his suspicions that planet-wide altercations of the nuclear kind may have been at the heart of the puzzle of what led to the scarring and destruction of much of Mars. He said: “The D&M Pyramid is swollen and cracked, as if once molten. Despite this, no signs of volcanism are apparent. An unknown dark, sooty material has settled into fine-scale fractures, with a thick concentration near what researchers have referred to as a ‘domed uplift,’ thought by some to represent
an ancient internal explosion [Italics mine].” He also felt that it was important enough to highlight “early speculation by Richard Hoagland and John Brandenburg [who] raised the possibility that the domed uplift…is the result of ‘explosive penetration.”