Absolutely great read. I wouldn't expect anything less, especially coming from you friendo.
I remember us having a light discussion about the crater being made either by the excavation drill, the V2 missile, or the actual nuke in Nuketown. Take a gander at this:
At 0:15, note how far off the nuke is being dropped. Now if you replay it a few times, it seems to drop far enough in an equal distance compared to the crater made in Nuketown Zombies.
The explosion itself has to be large, which makes sense why the nuke was originally dropped at a very far distance. The impact created an extremely large crater, and would definitely unearth all that Element 115 which would later be investigated/extracted.
The question of why soldiers are fighting in Nuketown is a very interesting one. Aside the whole "Multiplayer maps are not entirely canon" ordeal, it would seem strange for the Spetsnaz soldiers to be fighting with US soldiers in a training facility. Needless to say, that nuke was not dropped by mistake. What makes it interesting is that if there were something of value within Nuketown, why would the nuke decide to be dropped during a fight?
To me (this is a far stretch), it seems as though the U.S. did not want to risk the Spetsnaz from retrieving something within Nuketown. In order to prevent that, the U.S. may have deliberately killed both them and their own American soldiers to prevent such an event from happening. Sacrificial lamb, you might call it.
Looking at this intrigues me. Let's say that the "MEANWHILE..." is in relation to the events of Nuketown Zombies. Note that the pyramid -shortly after flying through space - is now seen planted on the Moon's surface. It appears as though the four astronauts are coming out of that temple...or at least one of them is. We can't call them the O4 yet because we know that we spawn right in No Man's Land, in front of Hangar 18. Why travel to the Moon via pyramid, go to Area 51, only to come right back? It doesn't make much sense. What is known from this image, however, is that the pyramid is probably still on the Moon a good distance away from Griffin Station.
I'm reflecting back on this and it makes me wonder: if we have one temple sitting just outside of the Moon base, and the MPD within the base itself, doesn't that account for two pyramids? Sure, they aren't the exact same thing but it seems peculiar and odd to have them both near one another.
The excavation drill is spot on. For what purpose would [they] have to excavate the Element 115, I don't know.