Biochemical testing ground in the Aral Sea: Renaissance island. Biochemical testing ground in the Aral Sea: Renaissance island Aralsk revival island 7

For almost 45 years, a Soviet center for testing biological weapons has existed on a godforsaken island in the middle of the Aral Sea. A residential town with a school, shops, a post office, a cafeteria, research laboratories and, of course, a training ground where extensive tests of deadly biological agents, including anthrax, plague, tularemia, brucellosis, and typhoid, were conducted. In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, the military threw both the city and the landfill in the Aral sands.

A source:

1. Back in the late 1920s, the command of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army preoccupied themselves with the choice of a place to host a scientific center for the development of biological weapons and a testing ground for them. The task of spreading the proletarian revolution to the whole world was still on the agenda, and shells with deadly strains inside could accelerate the construction of a state of workers and peasants of a planetary scale. For this good purpose, it was necessary to choose a relatively large island with a distance from the coast of at least 5-10 kilometers. They even searched for a suitable candidate for Baikal, but in the end they decided to stop at three sites: the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea and the single islands of Gorodomlya on Lake Seliger and Renaissance in the Aral Sea.

2. The main pre-war center for studying this important issue was the island of Gorodomlya located in the Tver Region, located in relative proximity to the capital of the USSR. In 1936-1941 it was here that the 3rd Testing Laboratory, the main Soviet center for the development of biological weapons, transferred from Suzdal monasteries and subordinate to the Military Chemical Department of the Red Army, was located here. However, the Great Patriotic War convincingly showed that such institutions should henceforth be created much further from the borders of the USSR with potential opponents.

3. Renaissance Island was ideally suited for this task. This deserted piece of land in the Aral Sea, a drainless salt lake on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was discovered in 1848. The lifeless archipelago, where there was no fresh water, was called the Tsar Islands for some unimaginable reason, and its constituent parts - the islands of Nikolai, Konstantin and Naslednik. It was Nicholas who, optimistically (and perhaps with irony) renamed Renaissance Island, after the war, became a top-secret Soviet testing ground for testing deadly diseases put at the service of the homeland.

4. At first glance, this island with an area of \u200b\u200babout 200 square kilometers met all safety requirements: practically uninhabited surroundings, flat terrain, hot climate, unsuitable for the survival of pathogenic organisms.

5. In the summer of 1936, the first expedition of military biologists headed by Professor Ivan Velikanov, the father of the Soviet bacteriological program, landed here. The island was taken from the NKVD, evicted from the exiled fists and the following year tested some bioagents based on tularemia, plague and cholera. The work was complicated by the repressions that the leadership of the Military Chemical Directorate of the Red Army suffered (Velikanov, for example, was shot in 1938), and was suspended for the duration of the Great Patriotic War, to resume again with even greater zeal after its end.

6. In the northern part of the island, the military town of Kantubek, officially called Aralsk-7, was built. In general, it was similar to hundreds of its other analogues that arose in the vast expanses of the Soviet Union: one and a half dozen residential buildings for officers and scientific personnel, a club, a canteen, a stadium, shops, barracks and a parade ground, its own power station. So Aralsk-7 looked in the picture of the American spy satellite of the late 1960s.

7. A unique airfield “Barkhan” was built near the village, the only one in the Soviet Union that had four runways that resembled a wind rose in their location. A strong wind always blows on the island, sometimes changing its direction. Depending on the current weather, planes landed in one or another strip.

8. In total, there were up to one and a half thousand soldiers and their families. It was, in essence, an ordinary garrison life, the peculiarities of which were perhaps the special secrecy of the object and not too comfortable climate. Children went to school, their parents went to the service, in the evenings watched a movie in the officers' house, and on weekends they had picnics on the shores of the Aral Sea, which until the mid-1980s still really looked like the sea.

10. Kantubek in its heyday. With the nearest city on the "main land", Aral, maritime communication was carried out. Fresh water was also delivered here by barges, which were then stored in special huge tanks on the outskirts of the village.

12. A laboratory complex was built a few kilometers from the village (PNIL-52 — the 52nd field research laboratory), which, among other things, contained experimental animals that became the main victims of the tests conducted here. The scope of research is illustrated by the following fact. In the 1980s, a batch of 500 monkeys was purchased specially for them in Africa from the USSR Foreign Trade Department. All of them eventually became victims of the tularemia microbe strain, after which their corpses were burned, and the resulting dust was buried on the island.

13. The southern part of the island was occupied by the test site itself. It was here that shells were blown up or pathogenic strains based on anthrax, plague, tularemia, Q-fever, brucellosis, glanders, other especially dangerous infections, as well as a large number of artificially created biological agents, were sprayed from the aircraft. (Photo clickable)

14. The location of the landfill in the south was determined by the nature of the prevailing winds on the island. The aerosol cloud formed as a result of the test, actually a weapon of mass destruction, was carried by the wind in the opposite direction from the military camp, after which anti-epidemic measures and decontamination of the territory were mandatory. A hot climate with regular forty-degree heat was an additional factor that ensured the safety of military biologists: most bacteria and viruses died from prolonged exposure to high temperatures. All specialists participating in the tests passed mandatory quarantine.

15. Simultaneously with the post-war intensification of military scientific work on Renaissance Island, the Soviet leadership laid the foundation for an environmental disaster, inconspicuous at first, which ultimately led to the enormous degradation of the Aral Sea. The main source of food for the lake-sea was Amu Darya and Syr Darya. In total, these two largest rivers of Central Asia supplied to the Aral Sea about 60 cubic kilometers of water per year. In the 1960s, the waters of these rivers began to be dealt with by reclamation canals - it was decided to turn the surrounding deserts into a garden and grow such cotton needed by the national economy. The result was not long in coming: the cotton crop, of course, grew, but the Aral Sea began to rapidly chalk.

16. In the early 1970s, the amount of river water reaching the sea decreased by one third, after another decade only 15 cubic kilometers per year began to flow into the Aral Sea, and in the mid-1980s this figure completely dropped to 1 cubic kilometer. By 2001, the sea level dropped by 20 meters, the volume of water decreased by 3 times, the surface area - by 2 times. The Aral Sea was divided into two unconnected large lakes and many small ones. In the future, the shallowing process continued.

18. The area of \u200b\u200bthe Renaissance island with the shallowing of the sea began to increase equally rapidly - and in the 1990s it grew almost 10 times. The Tsar Islands at first merged into one island, and in the 2000s it merged with the "big land" and turned, in fact, into a peninsula.

19. Finally “buried” the test site on the island of Renaissance, the collapse of the USSR. The weapon of mass destruction turned into an entity that was of little relevance in post-Soviet realities, and in November 1991 the Aralsk-7 military biological laboratory was closed. The population of the village was evacuated within a few weeks, all infrastructure (residential and laboratory), equipment were abandoned, Kantubek turned into a ghost town.

22. The marauders quickly took the place of the military, in their own way appreciating the wealth of the former top-secret scientific center left by the army and scientists. Everything that was at least of any value and at the same time succumbed to dismantling and transportation was removed from the island. Kantubek-Aralsk-7 has become an elusive dream for lovers of abandoned cities.

24. The streets of the town of Soviet military biologists, where two and a half decades ago, garrison life flowed measuredly.

One of the most famous shots of the site on Renaissance Island, taken by the U.S. reconnaissance satellite KH-9 HEXAGON at the height of the Cold War.

23 years ago, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, by decree, closed one of the most secret military facilities in the Soviet Union. It was located in an extremely remote and sparsely populated region, then a huge country - on an island in the center of the Aral Sea, which is still called Renaissance Island.

It is known that experiments were conducted at this training ground in the field of the creation, production and testing of one of the most barbaric weapons of mass destruction - biological weapons. And now the Aral Sea is no longer there, the island also disappeared, turning into part of the mainland desert, and the landfill has lived its strange life of a ghost for all these 23 years.

Grigory Bedenko, a Kazakhstani journalist and blogger, published unique materials from his archive that could possibly somehow explain the phenomenon of the Aralsk-7 facility.

The idea of \u200b\u200bcreating a scientific center for the development of biological weapons in the USSR arose in the 1920s. The military even then began to think big and flirt with weapons of mass destruction. In 1915, in the area of \u200b\u200bthe town of Ypres, the 4th German Army first applied the spraying of chlorine from cylinders. Bacteriological weapons had a much longer history - for example, in the ancient world plague corpses were thrown over the walls of besieged cities to cause an epidemic among the defenders. Herbert Wells described the attempt to change the world in 1894 in the story “The Abducted Bacillus”.

For a scientific center, a place was required that would be sufficiently remote and isolated from other settlements. On the one hand, these are the requirements of secrecy, on the other, security. An ideal option would be an island. Three “candidates” were selected: one of the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea, Gorodomlya Island on Lake Seliger and Renaissance Island in the Aral Sea. We stopped at Gorodoml. Here, in 1936-1941, the main Soviet center for the development of biological weapons was located - the 3rd test laboratory subordinate to the Military Chemical Administration of the Red Army. Previously, she occupied one of the Suzdal monasteries.

After World War II, it became clear that such institutions should be located as far as possible from the border. The next location of the bacteriological laboratory was Renaissance Island, the former Nikolai.

That was the Aral Sea in the 60s of the 20th century. A red arrow points to Renaissance Island. Then its area was 260 square kilometers, the island was isolated from inhabited places by tens of kilometers of the water surface and a very harsh deserted desert. An interesting fact, the island was discovered by the prominent Russian geographer Nikolai Butakov in 1848 and named it in honor of Emperor Nicholas the First. The modern name of this place appeared a bit later. The most secret Soviet training ground was located there.

Nicholas this island with an area of \u200b\u200babout 200 square meters. kilometers was named after the emperor. They discovered it together with two other islands - the Heir and Constantine - in 1848. For some unknown reason, the archipelago was called Royal. Before the revolution, local residents and industrialists were engaged in fishing, hunting, mined salt, exported saxaul to the mainland, etc. After 1917, all this economy was nationalized, and the collective farm methods completely destroyed. The population of the island was reduced to 4-5 Kazakh families, infrastructure - to several buildings.

In 1924, people arrived - on the island of Renaissance, the Regional Special Purpose Detention Center was created, in which 45 prisoners sentenced for robbery and banditry served their sentences. The report of the head of the detention center says that the island is convenient for both fishing and cattle breeding, as the soil is well suited for pastures.

And this is how the Aral Sea looks now. There is practically no water left, islands too. The white line indicates the state border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

The special isolator was liquidated in 1926. Instead, an insulator of regional significance was opened, designed for 400 prisoners. However, it was closed in 1929-1930. No mysterious reasons. It’s just that the flywheel of the Soviet repressive machine was accelerating, the number of prisoners was increasing, and this required the creation of places of imprisonment of a different format.

In 1936, an expedition of military biologists led by the father of the Soviet bacteriological program, Professor Ivan Velikanov, landed on Renaissance Island. Researchers tested bioagents based on tularemia, cholera and plague. Further developments were suspended due to repression. Professor Velikanov was shot in 1938.

Then the war began. The test laboratory was evacuated from the island of Gorodomlya, first to Kirov, then to Saratov and, finally, to the island of Renaissance. Since 1942, the Barkhan biochemical training ground began to operate here - the 52nd Field Research Laboratory (PNIL-52) - military unit 04061. Then, the military town of Kantubek, officially named Aralsk-7, was built in the northern part of the island.

Between the former Renaissance Island in the south and the Kulanda Peninsula in the north, where the Kazakh village of the same name is now located, only a small strait remains. But even in the early 2000s, from Kulanda to the training ground, it was necessary to sail a boat for at least 3 hours, and then drive another 60 km. More about this later.

The test site occupied the southern part of the island. The tests consisted of detonating shells and spraying strains from an aircraft that were developed on the basis of anthrax, plague, brucellosis, tularemia, Q fever, glanders and other deadly infections. The strains were produced at the enterprises of the defense complex in Sverdlovsk, Kirov, Zagorsk, Stepnogorsk.

In the planned zone of destruction, soldiers of urgent service placed cages with experimental animals or tied them to stakes. Nearby were installed "vacuum cleaners" - special devices with tubular filters that allowed the concentration of bacteria at one point or another. After spraying, the same soldiers in chemical protection suits collected animals and sent them to the laboratory. All this was very similar to the procedure. test "dirty bomb" on the islands of Lake Ladoga .

Here is how the test on Renaissance Island is described in the book of Ken Alibek, the former scientific director of programs for the development of biological weapons and bioprotection in the USSR, and then the initiator of the liquidation of these programs, “Caution! Biological weapons! ”:“ About a hundred monkeys are sitting on a dull island open to all winds off the coast of the Aral Sea, which are tied to pillars stretching in long parallel rows almost to the horizon. A dull clap breaks the silence, and at the point of the explosion a thick cloud of mustard-colored smoke appears. Seeing him, the animals in fright start to shrillly scream and rush about, pulling on the leashes holding them. Monkeys try to escape by covering their heads, hiding their nose and mouth. But animals are doomed: they will die soon. ”

Monkeys were chosen because their respiratory organs are most similar to human ones. The monkeys were supplied to Aralsk-7 by the Sukhumi kennel, but for some experiments it was necessary to get animals abroad. In the 1980s, through the Vneshtorg line of the USSR, 500 monkeys were purchased in Africa and through a network of shell companies to the Renaissance island. They tested the strain of anthrax Anthrax-836 and specially derived “fighting” plague bacteria. By their death, animals proved that the developed strains are able to “break through” the defense of a potential adversary. It is estimated that spraying 100 kilograms of anthrax spores in densely populated urban areas can kill about 3 million people.

Tests were also carried out on rabbits, sheep and horses. They were specially grown for "laboratory needs" on the Kulanda Peninsula, located nearby.

Most of the water remained only in the Northern Aral, which turned into an autonomous body of water, thanks to the construction of the Kok-Aral dam. This was done to at least somehow revive fishing in the Kazakhstani part of the Aral Sea. But it was also the final sentence to the sea.

There are suggestions that the matter was not limited to animal experiments. A strange kind of barracks, which adjoined a laboratory located a few kilometers from Aralsk-7, is suggesting this idea.

“The laboratory building and the adjacent huts are unusual and mysterious,” writes Trud. Tashkent ”Valery Biryukov in the article“ Secrets of the Renaissance Island ”(“ Labor ”, October 25, 2001). - Judging by the well-preserved inscriptions and tablets, mostly women lived in other barracks. Moreover, judging by the conditions of their detention, these were most likely prisoners. In the laboratory building itself, several rooms, similar to examination rooms, are equipped with gynecological chairs. The room adjacent to them has only one hermetically sealed door. A stainless steel pipe is lowered from the ceiling, not reaching the floor about a meter. In another room, several dozens of beautifully executed male and female mannequins with folding arms and legs are stored. A rich library of biology and a huge warehouse of various flasks and special utensils have been preserved. The iron doors to most basements are welded and not open to this day. Safes of various sizes are scattered everywhere.

... Between the village and the laboratory building there is a strange, boiler-like facility, but there are no boilers there. Three pipes painted in different colors go from the tanks towards the laboratory building. Strange, but over the forty-four years of its existence, the secret garrison has not acquired its own cemetery. A crematorium functioned here. ”

And now the most interesting. Landfill "Aralsk-7", or the village of Kantubek, as it was called on all maps, is located here (shown by arrow).

At the proving ground and in the laboratory terrible things were happening, and the city of Aralsk-7 at that time was living peacefully or sleeping peacefully. It was no different from other Soviet closed cities: one and a half dozen residential buildings, a canteen, a club, shops, a stadium, barracks, a parade ground, and a power station. The population of Aralsk-7 reached 1,500 people - the military, scientists, other specialists and their families. Children went to school, their parents to the service. The soldiers were drill on the parade ground. In the evenings, a movie was shown in the officers' house; picnics were organized on weekends on the Aral Sea.

The island was connected to the "mainland" by sea and air. Fresh water, products and equipment were delivered here by barges. Equipped in 1949, the runway subsequently turned into the Barkhan airfield. This unique construction for the USSR had four runways. The choice of a particular band was determined depending on which wind was blowing. Renaissance Island was distinguished by strong winds.

By the way, the local wind rose served as a defense for Aralsk-7 from a biological threat. The location of the landfill was chosen so that the wind immediately carried the aerosol cloud formed as a result of the test in the opposite direction from the military town. True, they say, in 1972 there was a case when, due to a sudden gust of wind, two fishermen fell into a plague cloud. Both died.

In addition, mandatory anti-epidemic measures and decontamination of the territory were carried out at the landfill. All test participants underwent mandatory quarantine. An additional insurance was the hot climate. Most bacteria and viruses could not withstand prolonged exposure to local temperatures. Therefore, as a rule, tests were carried out in the late afternoon. The layer of cold air that covered the heated ground held bacteria in, thereby reducing the risk of infection being transferred outside the landfill.

Protection of the top-secret island from prying eyes was provided by military boats and patrol vehicles on land continuously plying across the sea. The laboratory building and the training ground encircled several rows of barbed wire.

In images from space, the landfill can be recognized by the so-called "asterisk". This is a unique field airfield built of 4 concrete strips. The creation of such a special design was dictated by the very changeable winds on the island. Those. transport aircraft could land here in almost any weather conditions.

Literally, Aralsk-7 closed in 1992. On the one hand, secrecy has become increasingly difficult. As a result of the ecological catastrophe, the Aral Sea was rapidly becoming smaller, in the 1990s the area of \u200b\u200bthe Renaissance Island increased almost 10 times. Protecting such a vast territory has become increasingly difficult.

Another more serious reason is the collapse of the USSR. In 1990, Ken Alibek, already mentioned by us, handed over to the President of the country Mikhail Gorbachev a note with a proposal to close the biological weapons program. Gorbachev agreed and the liquidation began. It took place in 1990-1991.

The population was evacuated within a few weeks. People left Aralsk-7 with the most necessary, left furniture and even the main value of that time - color TVs. Equipment was also abandoned - brand new trucks and tractors, spare parts for them, as well as laboratory equipment. Only the most valuable was taken out of the equipment. Dangerous strains were either destroyed or preserved in burial grounds.

For some time Aralsk-7 was empty. Then marauders were drawn into it.

In 1998, ecologists, epidemiologists and geologists visited the Renaissance island. Among the epidemiologists were American experts. The general conclusion they made: this place poses no threat, either bacteriological or environmental. Today, the island of the Renaissance has become a peninsula. The former secret city lies in ruins. Nothing of value is left here. But who knows what is stored underground here. The military is not too willing to share their secrets.

The training ground consisted of three main zones: 1 - an airfield; 2 - residential area; and located at a considerable distance from these objects, absolutely closed - laboratory zone 3. A few kilometers from the landfill was a marina where ships and barges came with cargoes necessary for the landfill to operate.

In this image it is seen that the concrete slabs from all four stripes of the airfield are removed.

Some boards are neatly folded to one side. These are already traces of the work of looters. After leaving the military training ground, he actually remained abandoned and unguarded, which was used by the local population and criminal elements. The landfill was robbed, taking out the most valuable from there, from the mid-90s to the beginning of the 2000s. And there was a lot of valuable there ...

Administrative and residential area of \u200b\u200bthe landfill. Almost half of all buildings are located where they have always been. Some buildings are half destroyed, others are completely destroyed.

1 - soldiers' barracks and the headquarters of the training ground. 2 - residential area, multi-storey buildings for officers and their families.

Boiler room of the landfill. For the laboratory complex, a lot of steam was required - autoclaves worked to sterilize the equipment. And this despite the fact that there were no sources of drinking water on the island, it was imported with special barges, and then it entered the landfill through a special pipeline. It was made from alloys that did not corrode. Subsequently, all the pipes were removed from the island by looters.

Partially destroyed laboratory area. It was two kilometers from the administrative, and was completely isolated by several rows of barbed wire

Three-story building of the main laboratory. It was here that the main and most dangerous experiments related to biological weapons were carried out.

And now we offer your attention to a unique video filmed during my visit to the training ground in 2001. All of the above objects are removed from the ground. It can be concluded that for 14 years, almost nothing at the training ground has changed. Cameraman Khasen Omarkulov.

In general, a lot of information related to Renaissance Island can be found on the net. However, all of it is fragmented, and due to the complete absence of any official data, the ghost polygon has overgrown with a huge number of all kinds of speculations, sometimes the most incredible. Therefore, I would like to first of all comment on what we managed to remove. I apologize for the not very good quality of screenshots from the video, however, it should be noted that it is one of a kind. Here, the internal structure of the main laboratory complex is shot in detail. Perhaps this one will shed light on what work was carried out at the training ground.

So, the path to the training ground begins with the ex-peninsula of Kulanda, where a large aul is located and a horse farm quite large for these places forgotten by God. Camels are bred here.

It is known that the main types of experiments with WMD were carried out on horses. And these horses were delivered to the training ground by Kulanda's horse farm.

And this is Renaissance Island itself - a marina for ships and barges that brought all kinds of cargo and fresh water here.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the landfill became the "property" of two new independent states: the marina on the island and the Chaika support base, located near Aralsk (now there is nothing left of it - the locals smashed it brick by brick) and moved to Kazakhstan. The airfield, the administrative and laboratory area of \u200b\u200bthe training ground became part of the territory of Uzbekistan.

In fact, our looters were operating on the territory of a neighboring state, and with complete impunity. The landfill for almost 10 years, starting in 1992, when personnel was evacuated from there, was not guarded by anyone.

By the way, we got there, having agreed with the "foreman" of local stalkers. The condition was one - not to remove them. Two teams dismantled the facilities of the landfill - one worked on the island, the second took out building materials, pipes, diesel fuel and other useful things in the direction of Aralsk. Local fishermen in their old motor boats transported all this across the strait. In 2001, it took him about three hours to sail. The island connected to the mainland, somewhere in the year 2009. The stalkers had at least two highly passable trucks — the three-bridge Ural on Kulandy and the old GAZ-66 abandoned by the military on the island. His stalkers were restored to operational condition, having delivered spare parts to the island.

The range was covered by military boats.

Project T-368 patrol boat with serial number 79 was built in 1973. This is one of the modifications of Soviet torpedo boats. Enterprise G-4306 - Sosnovsky Shipbuilding Plant. Located in the city of Sosnovka, Kirov region of the Russian Federation. The plant stands on the banks of the Vyatka River, a tributary of the Volga. Apparently, the boat hit the Aral Sea by rail from one of the Caspian ports.

And on these self-propelled barges, fresh water was delivered to Renaissance Island.

The administrative area of \u200b\u200bthe landfill.

A mysterious room with a very sophisticated air intake and ventilation system. It can be assumed that there were powerful diesel generators. Apparently, they provided energy for the landfill.

Alley with street lighting in the administrative area.

The remains of a powerful compressor.

The building was built in 1963.

It was an officer club and part-time movie theater. In general, the history of the training ground began back in the 1930s, when an expedition landed on Renaissance Island led by the famous Russian bacteriologist Ivan Velikanov. His task was to investigate the possibility of using the bubonic plague as a means of destroying enemy manpower. Subsequently, the Japanese invaders were very successfully engaged in this in China, setting up absolutely monstrous experiments over people there. And Professor Velikanov was arrested by the NKVD in 1937, and work was curtailed until the beginning of the Cold War. So, there are several, so to speak, cultural layers at the training ground.

Polygon communication node.

On Renaissance Island there was a military hospital and clinic.

Arch at the entrance to the residential area of \u200b\u200bthe landfill.

The two-story building of the kindergarten. Military microbiologists lived on Renaissance Island with their wives and children.

The living area of \u200b\u200bthe landfill is solid sand-lime brick houses. They are best preserved.

View of the administrative area from the roof of a residential building. Visible soldiers' barracks and the headquarters building.

The administrative zone also consisted of the same type of one-story shield houses.

Obviously, the peak of research on biological weapons came in the late 70s and early 80s. It was then that the number of military specialists and members of their families permanently residing on Renaissance Island, according to various sources, reached 1,500 people. For these people, the most comfortable atmosphere was created for those times and in those conditions. They were in a very ambiguous position. Firstly, in 1972, the Soviet Union joined the so-called "Nixon Pact." This international document prohibited the research, development and testing of all types of WMDs based on biological weapons. However, research was secretly carried out both in the USA and in the USSR.

The stool remained standing on the balcony of the officer’s apartment. The real disaster for the people who worked on the island was the 92nd year, when the training ground was closed by presidential decree. The evacuation of personnel took place so rapidly that the military threw all large items in the apartments - furniture, televisions, washing machines, refrigerators, etc. It is likely that people were promised a speedy return to the island, which never happened. And all the most valuable went to the looters.

In addition to personal belongings of the military at the training ground, fuel and lubricant warehouses, motor vehicles and much more turned out to be abandoned. True, as they say, stalkers, food supplies were unsuitable for consumption, as they were filled with bleach and filled with lysol. Before leaving the training ground, the military conducted a large-scale disinfection of all objects.

And this is the dungeon of the main laboratory complex. There were powerful autoclaves for heat treatment of equipment.

Everything was washed and washed in ordinary cast-iron bathtubs, however, except for two taps with cold and hot water, a third was brought to them - with a disinfectant.

These ominous designs are the so-called "explosive cameras." The principle was this: the room was divided into two parts - “dirty” and “clean”. You could get into both of them only after passing through the sanitary inspection room with a disinfectant shower. A shutter opened in one part of the chamber, and a cage with an experimental animal was planted there along special guides. Then the shutter was closed, the animal was infected with a biological agent in the form of an aerosol. After that, on the “dirty” side, the specialists took the cage, and then they monitored the progress of the disease.

"Explosive cameras" are located on the second floor of the complex in a completely isolated room with airtight doors.

And this room is a "stone bag" - three sanitary inspection rooms lead to a windowless room.

Here stands a camera, type 5 K-NJ, number 254, released in 1974. Such devices are used to work with radioactive materials. The Aralsk-7 specialists, obviously, adapted it for biological experiments.

Through this shutter, materials for experiments were fed into the chamber.

Biological hazard sign on a sealed second floor door.

In these cabinets, apparently, the packaging of biological agents was carried out. It could be, for example, a vaccine against a particularly dangerous infection.

But this is perhaps the most interesting image! On the door to another “stone bag” the following is written: “Danger! T - 37, T +27 ". Specialists say that a temperature of minus 37 degrees Celsius is optimal for storing bubonic plague strains, and plus 27 - anthrax or anthrax spores. Here is, to some extent, an explanation of what exactly they worked at the landfill. Graffiti in the upper left corner of the door is a new “cultural layer”. He was left by stalkers.

The military left the training ground so quickly that they did not even have time to “cover up the tracks”, leaving nameplates with the names and initials of those responsible for a particular site.

Officer A.V. Mironin was responsible for the male sanitary inspection room.

And for the dangerous furnace No. 6 V.P. Dushaev. What was burned in this furnace, one can only guess.

And here is a curious inscription. Conscript soldiers also worked in the laboratory. Now they are already 46 years old. Probably, they could tell a lot about this place, but, apparently, are under a practically lifetime non-disclosure subscription.

The experiment room is a thick porthole, like in a nuclear power plant, a centrifuge, a bathtub and some strange purpose steel box with a powerful lock. Everything is painted in an unpleasant protective color.

This is how the main laboratory complex looks from the inside ...

... but like this - outside ...

What else do we know about this mysterious place?

In the period from the 95th to the 98th years, an American intelligence mission visited the Renaissance Island in order to collect the maximum amount of data and samples from the landfill. For this, the American side allocated $ 6 million to the Uzbek authorities.

And some more information about the landfill. In 2002-2003, a group of specialists from the Kazakh Scientific Center for Quarantine and Zoonotic Infections (which, incidentally, is under the patronage of the United States) landed on Renaissance Island in order to search for burial anthrax. However, the results of the expedition were immediately classified. Apparently, a certain type of work was carried out there until 2008, when Uzbekistan, again with American money and under the strict American guidance, allegedly began searching for an oil and gas field in the region of the island. Similar research was carried out by the Kazakh side. Then, when they found nothing there, the topic was closed.

According to some reports, the work was not related to oil and gas, namely, the elimination of burial anthrax. However, no one can confirm or deny this. The authorities closed everything again, and some information from Uzbekistan can be achieved with approximately the same success as to expect publicity on the North Korean missile program.

Somewhere by 2010, the media slipped information that the graves were destroyed. But she again is not confirmed by anyone. Well, and finally, there was also information that Kazakhstani specialists would monitor the former training ground until 2014. At the same time, obviously, measures were taken to eradicate stalking on Renaissance Island. A border post is located in Aralsk today, and the local prosecutor’s office has also joined the case. Apparently, the Uzbek side did the same.

However, in this whole story there is some understatement. And the events of the last decade confirm this.

2003 year. The SARS epidemic is literally mowing down people in China. In various countries of the world, several thousand people die from this mysterious disease, from which there is no vaccine or medicine. Scientists (at the official level) puzzled why the harmless coronavirus, which does not infect humans, has become so aggressive towards this species. At the unofficial - it was about biological weapons: the coronavirus went through a process of gene modification. They mounted a piece of DNA of a very dangerous disease for adults - measles. And interestingly, the children did not have SARS. As a result, the virus disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared. Moreover, without any consequences. Now let's recall what the biggest world event happened in 2003 - the US invasion of Iraq in order to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein. And all over the world, thousands of anti-war actions took place on city streets.

Just a coincidence?

2007 year Another epidemic of a viral disease from which it is impossible to defend itself is bird flu. The most aggressive strain was H5N1. And here, by a miraculous combination of circumstances, the only effective means of combating infection is with the only pharmaceutical company in the world, the Swiss F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd - a drug called Oseltamivir with the Tamiflu brand name. Her income in a matter of months grows to astronomical amounts.

And finally, 2014. In the southwestern region of Africa, hundreds of people per day are mowed by Ebola hemorrhagic fever. By the way, she got her name in honor of the Ebola River, which flows in Zaire. It was there that the virus was first detected, which, although it was considered dangerous, but not so much as to constitute a global threat. What did the USA and Russia do first? They sent their military microbiologists to the affected countries in order to study the consequences of the disease, or maybe something else ...

From Nicholas to the Renaissance

The idea that a scientific center for the development of biological weapons was necessary in the USSR appeared in the early years of Soviet power, and the Red Army command was almost immediately puzzled by the choice of a place where a secret object could be located. To test strains of viruses, it was required to find a large island at least 5 kilometers offshore, and the authorities even assumed that the case would take place on Lake Baikal, but in the end they chose other “candidates”: Solovki in the White Sea, Gorodomlya island in Seliger, and finally, the island of Nicholas I in the Aral Sea.

MASTAK

First, Gorodomlyu was given for research - in the 1930s, the first foot-and-mouth disease institute in the USSR was built on the island, where they created a vaccine for foot and mouth disease, and in 1937 the Biotechnical Institute, which created vaccines for the army and developed biological weapons, was transferred here. However, during the war it became clear that it was better to place such institutions as far as possible from the borders with enemy states, so soon the testing laboratory was moved to the island of Nicholas, which at that time received a new name - the island of Renaissance.

This place was really ideal for working with deadly viruses, so after the war a deserted patch of land with an area of \u200b\u200babout 200 square kilometers, located in a dry, hot climate on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, became a top-secret Soviet testing ground for deadly diseases. In the north of the island, the military town of Kantubek (Aralsk-7) was built, in which houses were built for employees of the training ground with families and officers, a kindergarten, a school, a canteen, shops, a stadium, barracks and an own power station were built. In addition, near the town, the Barkhan airfield was built - the only one in the Union that had four runways that were needed to land airplanes without problems, despite the strong changeable winds.

Discomfort zone

No matter how much effort and money they spent on the construction of the airport and residential area, both of them did not make sense without a third, located far from these facilities and a completely closed laboratory area and a training ground, over which strains of anthrax, bubonic plague, brucellosis, tularemia were sprayed from an airplane and other especially dangerous infections that were brought here from the enterprises of the military-industrial complex in Kirov, Yekaterinburg (then Sverdlovsk) and Stepnogorsk. The landfill was located on the southern part of the island - this was done so that the winds carried the aerosol cloud even further south, after which, of course, decontamination measures were taken.

Alexander Afanasyev 1979 — 1981

The system was simple and streamlined: in the affected area, soldiers placed cages with experimental animals, sprayed strains, and then, putting on chemical protection suits, transferred the animals to the laboratory. Most often the monkeys played the role of the enemy - they were chosen because the respiratory organs of primates resemble most human ones. In Aralsk-7 experimental monkeys were delivered from Abkhazia, but sometimes brought from abroad - for example, five hundred monkeys were delivered from distant Africa to test the Anthrax-836 strain of anthrax. By the way, in 1971, employees of the enterprise nevertheless tried on the role of experimental animals - a cloud based on a strain of reinforced smallpox covered a research vessel, as a result of which several people died from the disease.

In the mid-70s, Kantubek began to flourish: while on the one side of the island the monkeys were dying of tularemia, on the other hand there were about one and a half thousand people. Children studied, adults worked, walked in the park on weekends, went to the cinema and had romantic dates on the Aral Sea, which in those days still really resembled the sea. Quiet measured life flowed here until the 90s, and then Aralsk-7 was closed. Firstly, starting from the 60s, the Aral Sea became smaller year after year, and the area of \u200b\u200bthe island, on the contrary, increased, and it was difficult to guarantee the secrecy of the project, and secondly, after the collapse of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev closed the program for the development of biological weapons.

Alexander Afanasyev 1979 — 1981

This decree was for the residents of Kantubek a bolt from the blue - evacuation took place at such a speed that people left all the equipment and furniture in the apartments, the laboratory staff threw equipment, devices and vehicles, and dangerous strains in a hurry were destroyed and sealed in burial grounds. It is curious that neither the place itself nor the signs of disinfection scared off the looters who robbed the landfill over the next few years.

Ghosts of the past

Today the Renaissance island has turned into a peninsula - the sea has become so shallow that with one of its edges the island has merged with the "big land" and has become available to all comers. But neither this fact, nor the conclusions of epidemiologists that this area already poses any threat, did not save Kantubek from the fate of a dead city, where only rare stalkers periodically drop in. Not so long ago, a border guard post was put up in Aralsk so that no one could enter the landfill at all.

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On the one hand, a biological threat is not as dangerous as radiation, on the other hand, everyone knows that in this land are the remains of experimental animals and burial grounds with viruses that were not destroyed during the liquidation. About five years ago, newspapers wrote that the graves were destroyed, no one confirmed this information.

The abandoned ghost town of Aralsk-7 also received its share of fame - the dark history of this place inspired video game developers, and Renaissance Island became almost the main location in the game Call of Duty: Black Ops, and there is a mission in Command & Conquer: Generals, which must be captured by the forces of a terrorist group.

Watch the Cities of the Living and the Dead every Saturday at 8 p.m. on the Discovery Channel.

For almost 45 years, a Soviet center for testing biological weapons has existed on a godforsaken island in the middle of the Aral Sea. A residential town with a school, shops, a post office, a cafeteria, scientific laboratories and, of course, a training ground where extensive tests of deadly biological agents, including anthrax, plague, tularemia, brucellosis, and typhoid, were conducted. In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, the military threw both the city and the landfill in the Aral sands. Onliner.by talks about the history and present of the top-secret Renaissance island, which the ecological disaster in the Aral Sea has turned into a ghost peninsula.

Back in the late 1920s, the command of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army preoccupied themselves with the choice of a place to host a scientific center for the development of biological weapons and a testing ground for them. The task of spreading the proletarian revolution to the whole world was still on the agenda, and shells with deadly strains inside could accelerate the construction of a state of workers and peasants of a planetary scale. For this good purpose, it was necessary to choose a relatively large island with a distance from the coast of at least 5-10 kilometers. They even searched for a suitable candidate for Baikal, but in the end they decided to stop at three sites: the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea and the single islands of Gorodomlya on Lake Seliger and Renaissance in the Aral Sea.

The main pre-war center for studying this important issue was the island of Gorodomlya located in the Tver Region, located in relative proximity to the capital of the USSR. In 1936-1941 it was here that the 3rd Testing Laboratory, the main Soviet center for the development of biological weapons, transferred from Suzdal monasteries and subordinate to the Military Chemical Department of the Red Army, was located here. However, the Great Patriotic War convincingly showed that such institutions should henceforth be created much further from the borders of the USSR with potential opponents.

Renaissance Island was ideally suited for this task. This deserted piece of land in the Aral Sea, a drainless salt lake on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was discovered in 1848. The lifeless archipelago, where there was no fresh water, was called the Tsar Islands for some unimaginable reason, and its constituent parts - the islands of Nikolai, Konstantin and Naslednik. It was Nicholas, optimistically (and perhaps with irony) renamed Renaissance Island, after the war that became a top-secret Soviet testing ground for testing deadly diseases put at the service of the homeland.

This island, with an area of \u200b\u200babout 200 square kilometers, at first glance met all safety requirements: practically uninhabited surroundings, flat terrain, hot climate, unsuitable for the survival of pathogenic organisms.

In the summer of 1936, the first expedition of military biologists headed by Professor Ivan Velikanov, the father of the Soviet bacteriological program, landed here. The island was taken from the NKVD, evicted from the exiled fists and the following year tested some bioagents based on tularemia, plague and cholera. The work was complicated by the repressions that the leadership of the Military Chemical Directorate of the Red Army suffered (Velikanov, for example, was shot in 1938), and was suspended for the duration of the Great Patriotic War, to resume again with even greater zeal after its end.

In the northern part of the island, the military town of Kantubek, officially called Aralsk-7, was built. In general, it was similar to hundreds of its other analogues that arose in the vast expanses of the Soviet Union: one and a half dozen residential buildings for officers and scientific personnel, a club, a canteen, a stadium, shops, barracks and a parade ground, its own power station. So Aralsk-7 looked in the picture of the American spy satellite of the late 1960s.

A unique airfield "Barkhan" was built near the village, the only one in the Soviet Union that had four runways that resembled a wind rose in their location. A strong wind always blows on the island, sometimes changing its direction. Depending on the current weather, planes landed in one or another strip.

In total, there were up to one and a half thousand soldiers and their families. It was, in essence, an ordinary garrison life, the features of which were perhaps the special secrecy of the object and not too comfortable climate. Children went to school, their parents went to the service, in the evenings watched a movie in the officers' house, and at weekends they had picnics on the Aral Sea, which until the mid-1980s still really looked like the sea.

Kantubek at its peak. With the nearest city on the "main land", Aral, maritime communication was carried out. Fresh water was also delivered here by barges, which were then stored in special huge tanks on the outskirts of the village.

A laboratory complex was built a few kilometers from the village (PNIL-52 - the 52nd field research laboratory), which, among other things, contained experimental animals that became the main victims of the tests conducted here. The scope of research is illustrated by the following fact. In the 1980s, a batch of 500 monkeys was purchased specially for them in Africa from the USSR Foreign Trade Department. All of them eventually became victims of the tularemia microbe strain, after which their corpses were burned, and the resulting dust was buried on the island.

The southern part of the island was occupied by the test site itself. It was here that shells were blown up or pathogenic strains based on anthrax, plague, tularemia, Q-fever, brucellosis, glanders, other especially dangerous infections, as well as a large number of artificially created biological agents, were sprayed from the aircraft.

The location of the landfill in the south was determined by the nature of the prevailing winds on the island. The aerosol cloud formed as a result of the test, actually a weapon of mass destruction, was carried by the wind in the opposite direction from the military camp, after which anti-epidemic measures and decontamination of the territory were mandatory. A hot climate with regular forty-degree heat was an additional factor that ensured the safety of military biologists: most bacteria and viruses died from prolonged exposure to high temperatures. All specialists participating in the tests passed mandatory quarantine.

Simultaneously with the post-war intensification of military scientific work on the island of Renaissance, the Soviet leadership laid the foundation for an environmental disaster, inconspicuous at first, which ultimately led to the enormous degradation of the Aral Sea. The main source of food for the lake-sea was Amu Darya and Syr Darya. In total, these two largest rivers of Central Asia supplied to the Aral Sea about 60 cubic kilometers of water per year. In the 1960s, the waters of these rivers began to be dealt with by reclamation canals - it was decided to turn the surrounding deserts into a garden and grow such cotton needed by the national economy. The result was not long in coming: the cotton crop, of course, grew, but the Aral Sea began to rapidly chalk.

In the early 1970s, the amount of river water reaching the sea decreased by one third, after another decade only 15 cubic kilometers per year began to flow into the Aral Sea, and in the mid-1980s this figure completely dropped to 1 cubic kilometer. By 2001, the sea level dropped by 20 meters, the volume of water decreased by 3 times, the surface area - by 2 times. The Aral Sea was divided into two unconnected large lakes and many small ones. In the future, the shallowing process continued.

The area of \u200b\u200bthe Renaissance island with the shallowing of the sea began to increase just as rapidly - and in the 1990s it grew almost 10 times. The Tsar Islands at first merged into one island, and in the 2000s it merged with the "big land" and turned, in fact, into a peninsula.

Finally “buried” the test site on the island of Renaissance the collapse of the USSR. The weapon of mass destruction turned into an entity that was of little relevance in post-Soviet realities, and in November 1991 the Aralsk-7 military biological laboratory was closed. The population of the village was evacuated within a few weeks, all infrastructure (residential and laboratory), equipment were abandoned, Kantubek turned into a ghost town.

Marauders quickly took the place of the military, in their own way appreciating the wealth of the former top-secret scientific center left by the army and scientists. Everything that was at least of any value and at the same time succumbed to dismantling and transportation was removed from the island. Kantubek-Aralsk-7 has become an elusive dream for lovers of abandoned cities.

The streets of the town of Soviet military biologists, where two and a half decades ago, garrison life flowed measuredly.

Residential buildings.

Children will never go to this school.

A reservoir for fresh water delivered from the "mainland".

Former Voentorg store.

The developer of biological weapons, the Umbrella Corporation from the films and computer games "Resident Evil" - an invention of scriptwriters. However, she had prototypes. For example, the closed city of Aralsk-7 in what is now Kazakhstan. The experiments here were not as spectacular as in the movies, but much more terrible.

For a scientific center, a place was required that would be sufficiently remote and isolated from other settlements. On the one hand, these are the requirements of secrecy, and on the other, security. An ideal option would be an island. Three “candidates” were selected: one of the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea, Gorodomlya Island on Lake Seliger and Renaissance Island in the Aral Sea. We stopped at Gorodoml. Here, in 1936-1941, the main Soviet center for the development of biological weapons was located - the 3rd test laboratory subordinate to the Military Chemical Administration of the Red Army. Previously, she occupied one of the Suzdal monasteries.

Renaissance Island: from Sumy to Prison

Then the war began. The test laboratory was evacuated from the island of Gorodomlya, first to Kirov, then to Saratov and, finally, to the island of Renaissance. Since 1942, the Barkhan biochemical training ground began to operate here - the 52nd Field Research Laboratory (PNIL-52) - military unit 04061. Then, the military town of Kantubek, officially called Aralsk-7, was built in the northern part of the island.

Renaissance training ground: 500 monkeys purchased for trials in Africa

Tests were also carried out on rabbits, sheep and horses. They were specially grown for "laboratory needs" on the Kulanda Peninsula, located nearby.

There are suggestions that the matter was not limited to animal experiments. A strange kind of barracks, which adjoined a laboratory located a few kilometers from Aralsk-7, is suggesting this idea.

Aralsk-7: a wind rose kept the city from infection

Aralsk-7: the population was evacuated within a few weeks

Another more serious reason is the collapse of the USSR. In 1990, Ken Alibek, already mentioned by us, handed over a note to the President of the country, Mikhail Gorbachev, with a proposal to close the biological weapons program. Gorbachev agreed and the liquidation began. It took place in 1990-1991.

For some time Aralsk-7 was empty. Then marauders were drawn into it.

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Photo: Mikhail Kolevatov and Alexander Afanasyev, panoramio.com