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Aralsk-7 - closed a ghost town,
Almost 45 years to the godforsaken island in the Aral Sea there was a top-secret Soviet test center for biological weapons. The residential town with a school, shops, post office, dining room, science laboratories, its airport, power station and, of course, the landfill, which hosted large-scale trials of deadly biological agents, including anthrax, plague, tularemia, brucellosis, typhoid. In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet military was thrown into the Aral sands of the city and the landfill. Onliner.by tells the history of this island and the Renaissance, which is an environmental disaster in the Aral Sea has turned into a peninsula ghost.
Back in the late 1920s, the command of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army worried about the choice of location for the research center for the development of biological weapons, and its range for the test. The objective to extend the proletarian revolution throughout the world is still on the agenda, and the shells with the deadly strains inside could accelerate the construction of the state of workers and peasants on a planetary scale. For this good purpose it was necessary to choose a relatively large island with a distance from the shore at least 5-10 kilometers. We are looking for a suitable candidate, even on the lake, but in the end decided to stay at three sites: the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea and the islands of single Gorodomlya at Lake Seliger and the Renaissance in the Aral Sea.
42 photo. A source.
The main pre-war center for the study of this important issue has become located in the Tver region Gorodomlya island, is in relative proximity to the capital of the USSR. In the years 1936-1941 it was placed here translated from Suzdal monasteries and to obey military and chemical management of the Red Army 3rd test laboratory, the main Soviet center for the development of biological weapons. However, the Great Patriotic War has convincingly shown that such institutions should continue to create far beyond the borders of the USSR and the likely opponents.
Renaissance Island suited for this task perfectly. This desolate piece of land in the Aral Sea, undrained salt lake on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was opened in 1848. Lifeless archipelago, where there was no fresh water, for some unimaginable reason, royally named islands, and its component parts - the islands of Nicholas, Constantine and heir. It Nikolai optimistic (and perhaps ironically) island renamed Renaissance, after the war became a top-secret Soviet base-polygon for testing at the service of the homeland fatal diseases.
This island is an area of about 200 square kilometers with a glance to satisfy all safety requirements: practically uninhabited neighborhood, flat terrain, hot climate unsuitable for the survival of pathogenic organisms.
In the summer of 1936 is the first expedition landed military biologists led by Professor Ivan Velikanov, father of the Soviet bacteriological program. The island was taken away from the jurisdiction of the NKVD, the evicted kulaks exiled here in the next year have tested some of the biological agents that are based on tularemia, plague and cholera. Works complicated repression, which has undergone a chemical management Military control of the Red Army (the Giants, for example, in 1938, was shot) and were suspended at the time of the Great Patriotic War, to the newly resumed with even greater fervor after its completion.
In the northern part of the island it was built a military town Kantubek, officially called Aralsk-7. In general, he looked like a hundred other their counterparts encountered in the vast Soviet Union: a dozen of houses officers and scientific personnel, club, canteen, stadium, shops, barracks and parade ground, its own power. So Aralsk-7 looked at the picture of the American spy satellite late 1950.
Near the village and built a unique airfield "Dune", the only one in the Soviet Union, which had four runways, its location reminiscent of a wind rose. The island is always a strong wind blows, sometimes changing its direction. Depending on the current weather planes sit on this or that band.
In total, there were up to a thousand soldiers and their families. It was, in fact, regular garrison life, features which were perhaps that secrecy object and not too comfortable climate.
Children go to school, their parents are in the service, the evening watched a movie in the house officers, and weekend picnics on the shore of the Aral Sea, which until the mid-1980s it was still really like the sea.
Kantubek in its heyday. With the closest town to the "mainland", the Aral, a message carried by sea. Barges brought here, and fresh water, which is then stored in special tanks in the huge outskirts of the village.
A few kilometers from the village was built laboratory complex (PLMS-52 - 52nd Field Research Laboratory), where, among other things, contained and experimental animals, becoming the main victims of the tests carried out here. The scale of research illustrates the following fact. In the 1980s, especially for them in Africa through the Foreign Trade of the USSR, they have bought a batch of 500 monkeys. All of them eventually became victims of a strain of tularemia microbe, and then burned their bodies, and the resulting ashes buried on the island.
The southern part of the island occupied actual test site. It is here undermined shells or sprayed from a plane on the basis of pathogenic strains of anthrax, plague, tularemia, Q fever, brucellosis, glanders, and other especially dangerous infections, as well as a large number of artificial biological agents.
Location landfill in southern conditional on the nature of the prevailing winds on the island. The resulting aerosol cloud testing actually weapons of mass destruction, applied by the wind to the opposite side of the military camp, and then compulsorily carried out anti-epidemic measures and decontamination area. The hot climate with regular forty-degree heat was an additional factor that ensures the safety of military biologists most bacteria and viruses killed by prolonged exposure to high temperatures. All professionals involved in the trials were held and mandatory quarantine.
Simultaneously with the activation of the post-war military and scientific works on the island of Renaissance Soviet leadership it was necessary at first imperceptible beginning of an ecological catastrophe, which led ultimately to the enormous degradation of the Aral Sea. The main source of supply of the lake, the sea was the Amudarya and Syrdarya. In total, the two largest rivers in Central Asia delivered to the Aral Sea some 60 cubic kilometers of water per year. In 1960, the water of the rivers began to understand reclamation channels - it was decided to transform the surrounding desert into a garden, and there is a right to grow the national economy cotton. The result was not long in coming: the harvest of cotton, of course, has grown, but the beginning of the Aral Sea is rapidly shallow.
In the early 1970s, the number of river water which reached the sea was reduced by a third, after another decade of the Aral Sea began to arrive only 15 cubic kilometers per year, and in mid-1980, this figure dropped to do 1 cubic kilometers. By 2001, the sea level has dropped by 20 meters, the volume of water has decreased by 3 times the surface area of water - 2 times. The Aral Sea was divided into two unconnected large and many small lakes. In the future, the process continued shallowing.
***
The island with the Renaissance shallowing sea beginning to rise as rapidly - and in 1990 increased almost 10 times. Royal Island is first merged into one island, and in the 2000s he joined with the "mainland" and became, in fact, in the peninsula.
Finally "bury" the test site on the island of Renaissance collapse of the USSR.
Weapons of mass destruction has become a post-Soviet realities maloaktualnuyu in essence, and in November 1991 the military-biological laboratory Aralsk-7 was closed. The population of the village was evacuated for a few weeks, the entire infrastructure (housing and laboratory) technique were thrown Kantubek turned into a ghost town.
***
Place the military quickly took looters, in their own way have estimated left the army and scientists wealth of the former top-secret research center.
All that represented at least some value, and thus amenable to dismantle and transport, were removed from the island. Kantubek-Aralsk-7 has become an elusive dream of fans of ghost towns.
The streets of the town Soviet military biologists, where two decades ago with a small garrison flowed measured life.
***
***
Blocks of flats.
Blocks of flats.
The children will never go to this school.
The reservoir for fresh water is delivered to the "mainland."
Former shop Voyentorg.
In contrast to the Chernobyl exclusion zone, there can be no risk to health.
The biological threat is far less hardy than the radiation, although environmentalists still sounding the alarm due to the continued existence of the former landfill burial sites with the remains of the dead during the test animals.
But sometimes scenery still remind the neighborhood so far Ukrainian Pripyat.
***
***
Renaissance Island with its mysterious top-secret history and apocalyptic this could not interest the developers of computer games that landed in one of the episodes of Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Source:
Back in the late 1920s, the command of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army worried about the choice of location for the research center for the development of biological weapons, and its range for the test. The objective to extend the proletarian revolution throughout the world is still on the agenda, and the shells with the deadly strains inside could accelerate the construction of the state of workers and peasants on a planetary scale. For this good purpose it was necessary to choose a relatively large island with a distance from the shore at least 5-10 kilometers. We are looking for a suitable candidate, even on the lake, but in the end decided to stay at three sites: the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea and the islands of single Gorodomlya at Lake Seliger and the Renaissance in the Aral Sea.
42 photo. A source.
The main pre-war center for the study of this important issue has become located in the Tver region Gorodomlya island, is in relative proximity to the capital of the USSR. In the years 1936-1941 it was placed here translated from Suzdal monasteries and to obey military and chemical management of the Red Army 3rd test laboratory, the main Soviet center for the development of biological weapons. However, the Great Patriotic War has convincingly shown that such institutions should continue to create far beyond the borders of the USSR and the likely opponents.
Renaissance Island suited for this task perfectly. This desolate piece of land in the Aral Sea, undrained salt lake on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was opened in 1848. Lifeless archipelago, where there was no fresh water, for some unimaginable reason, royally named islands, and its component parts - the islands of Nicholas, Constantine and heir. It Nikolai optimistic (and perhaps ironically) island renamed Renaissance, after the war became a top-secret Soviet base-polygon for testing at the service of the homeland fatal diseases.
This island is an area of about 200 square kilometers with a glance to satisfy all safety requirements: practically uninhabited neighborhood, flat terrain, hot climate unsuitable for the survival of pathogenic organisms.
In the summer of 1936 is the first expedition landed military biologists led by Professor Ivan Velikanov, father of the Soviet bacteriological program. The island was taken away from the jurisdiction of the NKVD, the evicted kulaks exiled here in the next year have tested some of the biological agents that are based on tularemia, plague and cholera. Works complicated repression, which has undergone a chemical management Military control of the Red Army (the Giants, for example, in 1938, was shot) and were suspended at the time of the Great Patriotic War, to the newly resumed with even greater fervor after its completion.
In the northern part of the island it was built a military town Kantubek, officially called Aralsk-7. In general, he looked like a hundred other their counterparts encountered in the vast Soviet Union: a dozen of houses officers and scientific personnel, club, canteen, stadium, shops, barracks and parade ground, its own power. So Aralsk-7 looked at the picture of the American spy satellite late 1950.
Near the village and built a unique airfield "Dune", the only one in the Soviet Union, which had four runways, its location reminiscent of a wind rose. The island is always a strong wind blows, sometimes changing its direction. Depending on the current weather planes sit on this or that band.
In total, there were up to a thousand soldiers and their families. It was, in fact, regular garrison life, features which were perhaps that secrecy object and not too comfortable climate.
Children go to school, their parents are in the service, the evening watched a movie in the house officers, and weekend picnics on the shore of the Aral Sea, which until the mid-1980s it was still really like the sea.
Kantubek in its heyday. With the closest town to the "mainland", the Aral, a message carried by sea. Barges brought here, and fresh water, which is then stored in special tanks in the huge outskirts of the village.
A few kilometers from the village was built laboratory complex (PLMS-52 - 52nd Field Research Laboratory), where, among other things, contained and experimental animals, becoming the main victims of the tests carried out here. The scale of research illustrates the following fact. In the 1980s, especially for them in Africa through the Foreign Trade of the USSR, they have bought a batch of 500 monkeys. All of them eventually became victims of a strain of tularemia microbe, and then burned their bodies, and the resulting ashes buried on the island.
The southern part of the island occupied actual test site. It is here undermined shells or sprayed from a plane on the basis of pathogenic strains of anthrax, plague, tularemia, Q fever, brucellosis, glanders, and other especially dangerous infections, as well as a large number of artificial biological agents.
Location landfill in southern conditional on the nature of the prevailing winds on the island. The resulting aerosol cloud testing actually weapons of mass destruction, applied by the wind to the opposite side of the military camp, and then compulsorily carried out anti-epidemic measures and decontamination area. The hot climate with regular forty-degree heat was an additional factor that ensures the safety of military biologists most bacteria and viruses killed by prolonged exposure to high temperatures. All professionals involved in the trials were held and mandatory quarantine.
Simultaneously with the activation of the post-war military and scientific works on the island of Renaissance Soviet leadership it was necessary at first imperceptible beginning of an ecological catastrophe, which led ultimately to the enormous degradation of the Aral Sea. The main source of supply of the lake, the sea was the Amudarya and Syrdarya. In total, the two largest rivers in Central Asia delivered to the Aral Sea some 60 cubic kilometers of water per year. In 1960, the water of the rivers began to understand reclamation channels - it was decided to transform the surrounding desert into a garden, and there is a right to grow the national economy cotton. The result was not long in coming: the harvest of cotton, of course, has grown, but the beginning of the Aral Sea is rapidly shallow.
In the early 1970s, the number of river water which reached the sea was reduced by a third, after another decade of the Aral Sea began to arrive only 15 cubic kilometers per year, and in mid-1980, this figure dropped to do 1 cubic kilometers. By 2001, the sea level has dropped by 20 meters, the volume of water has decreased by 3 times the surface area of water - 2 times. The Aral Sea was divided into two unconnected large and many small lakes. In the future, the process continued shallowing.
***
The island with the Renaissance shallowing sea beginning to rise as rapidly - and in 1990 increased almost 10 times. Royal Island is first merged into one island, and in the 2000s he joined with the "mainland" and became, in fact, in the peninsula.
Finally "bury" the test site on the island of Renaissance collapse of the USSR.
Weapons of mass destruction has become a post-Soviet realities maloaktualnuyu in essence, and in November 1991 the military-biological laboratory Aralsk-7 was closed. The population of the village was evacuated for a few weeks, the entire infrastructure (housing and laboratory) technique were thrown Kantubek turned into a ghost town.
***
Place the military quickly took looters, in their own way have estimated left the army and scientists wealth of the former top-secret research center.
All that represented at least some value, and thus amenable to dismantle and transport, were removed from the island. Kantubek-Aralsk-7 has become an elusive dream of fans of ghost towns.
The streets of the town Soviet military biologists, where two decades ago with a small garrison flowed measured life.
***
***
Blocks of flats.
Blocks of flats.
The children will never go to this school.
The reservoir for fresh water is delivered to the "mainland."
Former shop Voyentorg.
In contrast to the Chernobyl exclusion zone, there can be no risk to health.
The biological threat is far less hardy than the radiation, although environmentalists still sounding the alarm due to the continued existence of the former landfill burial sites with the remains of the dead during the test animals.
But sometimes scenery still remind the neighborhood so far Ukrainian Pripyat.
***
***
Renaissance Island with its mysterious top-secret history and apocalyptic this could not interest the developers of computer games that landed in one of the episodes of Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Source:
