"As for the lights that the Marines saw six kilometers away, Shoup believes they were actually seeing lights from a town seventeen kilometers distant. They had misread the lights of a distant city as headlamps from a much closer convoy. Shoup attributes the perception that these headlamps appeared to be moving to a phenomenon called “autokinesis.” He explains,
“When you stare at lights long enough in the dark, it looks like they are moving. That’s autokinesis.” What it boils down to is that under clear skies, in open terrain with almost no vegetation, the Marines don’t have a clue what’s out there beyond the perimeter. Even with the best optics and surveillance assets in the world, no one knows what happened to nearly 10,000 pounds of bombs and missiles dropped a few kilometers outside the encampment."
Off topic, but I was very surprised to learn how faithful the HBO series was to Wright’s book that I went one level deeper and read Nathaniel Fick’s book, “One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer”. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Fick’s description of events fit pretty well with Generation Kill. You don’t see that very often.
"As for the lights that the Marines saw six kilometers away, Shoup believes they were actually seeing lights from a town seventeen kilometers distant. They had misread the lights of a distant city as headlamps from a much closer convoy. Shoup attributes the perception that these headlamps appeared to be moving to a phenomenon called “autokinesis.” He explains, “When you stare at lights long enough in the dark, it looks like they are moving. That’s autokinesis.” What it boils down to is that under clear skies, in open terrain with almost no vegetation, the Marines don’t have a clue what’s out there beyond the perimeter. Even with the best optics and surveillance assets in the world, no one knows what happened to nearly 10,000 pounds of bombs and missiles dropped a few kilometers outside the encampment."