By now the Coast Guard would be swamped with missing persons reports! Others would be on the scene in their own boats frantically searching for any sign of their missing relatives.
Oh, the humanity!
Not really. If a boat were a mile or two away from the point of launch it would have been just fine. Again, no reports coming in from any sailors either on cargo ships or sailboats have mentioned anything. How about people flying small aircraft? None of them saw it either?
I’m going with the opinion that it was just an airplane.
Doubtful. People watch Shuttle launches from the causeway and that’s six miles from the pad. That’s pretty close to witness 6.625 million lbf of thrust. One would imagine that a person could survive much closer to an SLBM launch, because that first stage is nowhere close to the thrust of a shuttle at liftoff.