Aralsk 7 closed ghost town. Biochemical testing site in the Aral Sea: Vozrozhdeniya Island. From Nicholas to the Renaissance

Almost 45 years on a godforsaken island in the middle Aral Sea There was a Soviet center for testing biological weapons. A residential town with a school, shops, post office, canteen, scientific laboratories and, of course, a testing ground where large-scale tests of deadly biological agents took place, including anthrax, plague, tularemia, brucellosis, typhoid. In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, the military abandoned both the city and the training ground in the Aral sands. Onliner.by talks about the history and present of the top-secret Vozrozhdeniya Island, which an environmental disaster in the Aral Sea turned into a ghost peninsula.

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

The main pre-war center for the study of this important issue was the Gorodomlya island located in the Tver region, which was located in relative proximity to the capital of the USSR. In 1936-1941, it was here that the 3rd Test Laboratory, the main Soviet center for the development of biological weapons, was located, transferred from the Suzdal monasteries and subordinate to the Military Chemical Directorate of the Red Army. 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.

Vozrozhdeniya Island was ideal for this task. This deserted piece of land in the Aral Sea, an endorheic salt lake on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was discovered in 1848. For some unimaginable reason, the lifeless archipelago, where there was no fresh water, was called the Tsar’s Islands, and its constituent parts were called the islands of Nicholas, Constantine and Heir. It was Nikolai, optimistically (and perhaps ironically) renamed Renaissance Island, that after the war became a top-secret Soviet base-testing ground for deadly diseases put in the service of the homeland.

This island, with an area of about 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, led by Professor Ivan Velikanov, the father of the Soviet bacteriological program, landed here. The island was taken away from the NKVD, the exiled kulaks were evicted from here, and the following year they tested some bioagents created on the basis of tularemia, plague and cholera. The work was complicated by the repressions to which the leadership of the Military Chemical Directorate of the Red Army was subjected (Velikanov, for example, was shot in 1938), and was suspended during the Great Patriotic War, only to be resumed 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 vastness of the Soviet Union: a dozen and a half residential buildings for officers and scientific personnel, a club, a canteen, a stadium, shops, barracks and a parade ground, and its own power plant. This is what Aralsk-7 looked like in a photograph taken by an American spy satellite in the late 1960s.

A unique airfield, Barkhan, was built near the village, the only one in the Soviet Union that had four runways, reminiscent of a wind rose in its location. There is always a strong wind blowing on the island, sometimes changing its direction. Depending on the current weather, planes landed on one runway or another.

In total, there were up to one and a half thousand military personnel and their families. It was, in essence, an ordinary garrison life, the only features of which were the special secrecy of the facility and a not very comfortable climate. Children went to school, their parents went to work, watched movies in the evenings at 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 a sea.

Kantubek in his heyday. With the nearest city on " mainland", Aralsk, sea communication was carried out. Fresh water was also delivered here by barges, which was 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 - 52nd field research laboratory), where, among other things, experimental animals were kept, which became the main victims of the tests carried out here. The scale of the research is illustrated by the following fact. In the 1980s, a batch of 500 monkeys was purchased especially for them in Africa through the USSR Foreign Trade. All of them eventually became victims of a strain of the tularemia microbe, after which their corpses were burned and the resulting ashes were buried on the island.

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

The location of the test site 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 blown by the wind in the opposite direction from the military camp, after which anti-epidemic measures and decontamination of the territory were mandatory. The hot climate with regular heat of forty degrees was an additional factor that ensured the safety of military biologists: most bacteria and viruses died from prolonged exposure to high temperatures. All specialists who participated in the tests underwent mandatory quarantine.

Simultaneously with the post-war intensification of military scientific work on Vozrozhdenie Island, the Soviet leadership made an imperceptible beginning environmental disaster, which ultimately led to the colossal degradation of the Aral Sea. The main source of nutrition for the lake-sea was the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. In total these two largest rivers Central Asia supplied about 60 cubic kilometers of water per year to the Aral Sea. In the 1960s, the waters of these rivers began to be drained by reclamation canals - it was decided to turn the surrounding deserts into a garden and grow cotton there, which was so necessary for the national economy. The result was not long in coming: the cotton harvest, of course, increased, but the Aral Sea began to rapidly become shallow.

In the early 1970s, the amount of river water reaching the sea was reduced by a 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, sea level dropped by 20 meters, the volume of water decreased by 3 times, and the water surface area by 2 times. The Aral Sea was divided into two unconnected large lakes and many little ones. Subsequently, the shallowing process continued.

With the shallowing of the sea, the area of Vozrozhdeniya Island began to increase just as rapidly - and in the 1990s it grew almost 10 times. The Royal Islands first merged into one island, and in the 2000s it connected with the “mainland” and essentially turned into a peninsula.

The test site on Vozrozhdeniya Island was finally “buried” by the collapse of the USSR. Weapons of mass destruction became an entity 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 several weeks, all infrastructure (residential and laboratory), equipment were abandoned, Kantubek turned into a ghost town.

The place of the military was quickly taken by looters, who in their own way appreciated the wealth of the former top-secret scientific center left by the army and scientists. Everything that was of any value and could be dismantled and transported 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 just over two decades ago garrison life flowed smoothly.

Residential buildings.

The children will never go to this school again.

A reservoir for fresh water delivered from the “mainland”.

Former Voentorg store.

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

One of the most famous images of the test site on Vozrozhdenie Island, taken by the American KH-9 HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite at the height of Cold War

It is known that at this test site experiments were carried out in the field of creation, production and testing of one of the most barbaric types of weapons of mass destruction - biological weapons. And now the Aral Sea is no longer there, the island has also disappeared, turning into part of the mainland desert, and the test site has been living its strange ghost life all these 23 years.

Kazakh journalist and blogger Grigory Bedenko published unique materials from his archive, which may somehow explain the phenomenon of the Aralsk-7 object.

Let's take a look at them...

The idea of creating a scientific center for the development of biological weapons in the USSR arose back in the 1920s. The military already began to think big and flirt with weapons of mass destruction. In 1915, near the town of Ypres, the German 4th Army first used chlorine spray 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. And the attempt to change the world with the help of cholera in 1894 was described by H.G. Wells in the story “The Stolen Bacillus.”

The scientific center required a place that would be sufficiently remote and isolated from others settlements. On the one hand, these are requirements of secrecy, on the other - security. An island would be ideal. Three “candidates” were selected: one of the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea, Gorodomlya Island on Lake Seliger and Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea. We stopped at Gorodomlya. 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 Directorate of the Red Army. Previously, it occupied one of the Suzdal monasteries.

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

This is what the Aral Sea was like in the 60s of the 20th century. The red arrow points to Renaissance Island. Then its area was 260 square kilometers, the island was isolated from inhabited areas by tens of kilometers of water surface and a very harsh deserted desert. Interesting fact, the island was discovered by the outstanding Russian geographer Nikolai Butakov in 1848 and named it in honor of Emperor Nicholas I. The modern name of this place appeared a little later. The most secret Soviet training ground was located there.

Nicholas this island with an area of about 200 square meters. kilometers was named after the emperor. It was discovered along with two other islands - Heir and Constantine - in 1848. For some unknown reason, the archipelago was called Tsarsky. Before the revolution local residents and industrialists were engaged here in fishing, hunting, extracting salt, exporting saxaul to the mainland, etc. After 1917, this entire economy was nationalized and completely ruined by collective farm methods. The population of the island was reduced to 4-5 Kazakh families, the infrastructure was reduced to a few buildings.

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

And this is what the Aral Sea looks like now. There is practically no water left, no islands either. The white line marks the state border of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

The special purpose isolator was liquidated in 1926. Instead, a regional isolation facility was opened, designed for 400 prisoners. However, it was also 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 detention 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 Vozrozhdeniya Island. Researchers have 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 testing laboratory was evacuated from Gorodomlya Island, first to Kirov, then to Saratov and finally to Vozrozhdeniya Island. Since 1942, the Barkhan biochemical training ground began to operate here - the 52nd field research laboratory (PNIL-52) - military unit 04061. Then, in the northern part of the island, the military town of Kantubek, officially called Aralsk-7, was built.

Between former Island Revival in the south and the Kulandy peninsula in the north, where the Kazakh village of the same name is now located, only a small strait remains. But back in the early 2000s, it took at least 3 hours to travel by boat from Kulanda to the test site, and then drive another 60 km by car. More on this later.

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

In the planned affected area, conscripts placed cages with experimental animals or tied them to stakes. “Vacuum cleaners” were installed nearby - special devices with tubular filters that allowed the concentration of bacteria at one point or another. After the spraying, the same soldiers in hazmat suits collected the animals and sent them to the laboratory. All this was very reminiscent of the procedure "dirty bomb" tests on the islands of Lake Ladoga.

This is how the test on Vozrozhdeniya Island is described in the book by the former scientific director of programs for the development of biological weapons and biodefense in the USSR, and then the initiator of the liquidation of these programs, Ken Alibek, “Caution! Biological weapons!”: “On a bleak, windswept island off the coast of the Aral Sea, sit about a hundred monkeys, tied to poles stretched out in long parallel rows almost to the horizon. A dull bang breaks the silence, and a thick cloud of mustard-colored smoke appears at the point of the explosion. Seeing him, the animals, in fright, begin to scream shrilly and rush around, pulling on the leashes that hold them. Monkeys try to escape by covering their heads, hiding their nose and mouth. But the animals are doomed: they will soon die.”

Monkeys were chosen because their respiratory organs are most similar to humans. Monkeys were supplied to Aralsk-7 by the Sukhumi nursery, but for some experiments it was necessary to obtain animals abroad. In the 1980s, through the Foreign Trade of the USSR, 500 monkeys were purchased from Africa and delivered to Vozrozhdeniya Island through a network of front companies. They were tested with the Anthrax-836 anthrax strain and specially bred “combat” plague bacteria. By their death, the animals proved that the developed strains are capable of “breaking through” the defense of a potential enemy. It is estimated that spraying 100 kilograms of anthrax spores in densely populated urban areas could kill about 3 million people.

Tests were also carried out on rabbits, sheep and horses. They were grown specifically for “laboratory needs” on the Kulandy Peninsula, located nearby.

Big water remained only in the Northern Aral, which turned into an autonomous reservoir thanks to the construction of the Kok-Aral dam. This was done in order to somehow revive fishing in the Kazakh part of the Aral Sea. But this was also the final verdict on the sea.

There are suggestions that the matter was not limited to animal experiments. This idea is suggested by the strange-looking barracks that adjoined the laboratory located a few kilometers from Aralsk-7.

“The laboratory building and the adjacent barracks are unusual and mysterious,” writes the own correspondent of the Trud newspaper. Tashkent" Valery Biryukov in the article "Secrets of Renaissance Island" (Trud, October 25, 2001). - Judging by the well-preserved inscriptions and tablets, the other barracks were mostly inhabited by women. Moreover, judging by the conditions of their detention, they were most likely prisoners. In the laboratory building itself, several rooms similar to examination rooms are equipped with gynecological chairs. The room next to them has only one hermetically sealed door. A stainless steel pipe descends from the ceiling, about a meter short of the floor. Another room houses several dozen beautifully crafted male and female mannequins with bendable arms and legs. A rich library on biology and a huge warehouse of all kinds of flasks and special utensils have been preserved. The iron doors to most of the basements were welded shut and have not been opened to this day. Safes of various sizes are scattered throughout.

...Between the village and the laboratory building there is a strange object that looks like a boiler room, but there are no boilers there. Three pipes, painted in different colors, go from the tanks towards the laboratory building. It’s strange, but during the forty-four years of its existence, the secret garrison never acquired its own cemetery. There was a crematorium here."

Now comes the most interesting part. The Aralsk-7 training ground, or the village of Kantubek, as it was called on all maps, is located here (shown by the arrow).

Terrible things were happening at the test site and in the laboratory, and at that time the city of Aralsk-7 was living peacefully or sleeping peacefully. It was no different from other Soviet closed cities: a dozen and a half residential buildings, a canteen, a club, shops, a stadium, barracks, a parade ground, and a power plant. The population of Aralsk-7 reached 1,500 people - military personnel, scientists, other specialists and their families. Children went to school, their parents went to work. The soldiers were engaged in drill training on the parade ground. In the evenings, movies were shown in the officers' house; on weekends, picnics were held on the shores of the Aral Sea.

The island was connected to the “mainland” by sea and air service. Fresh water, food and equipment were delivered here by barges. The runway, equipped back in 1949, later became the Barkhan airfield. This unique structure for the USSR had four runways. The choice of one lane or another was determined depending on what kind of wind was blowing. Vozrozhdeniya Island was characterized by strong winds.

By the way, the local wind rose served as protection for Aralsk-7 from a biological threat. The location of the test site was chosen so that the wind would immediately blow the aerosol cloud formed as a result of the test in the opposite direction from the military camp. True, they say that 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 site. All test participants underwent mandatory quarantine. The hot climate served as additional insurance. 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 the bacteria, thereby reducing the risk of transferring the infection outside the landfill.

The protection of the top-secret island from prying eyes was ensured by military boats and patrol vehicles on land continuously cruising the sea. The laboratory building and testing ground were surrounded by several rows of barbed wire.

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

Aralsk-7 literally closed in 1992. On the one hand, it has become increasingly difficult to ensure secrecy. As a result of an environmental disaster, the Aral Sea rapidly became smaller; in the 1990s, the area of Vozrozhdeniya Island increased almost 10 times. Protecting such a vast territory has become increasingly difficult.

Another reason, more serious, is the collapse of the USSR. In 1990, the already mentioned Ken Alibek handed over a note to the country's President Mikhail Gorbachev 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 for several weeks. People left Aralsk-7 with the most necessary things, leaving behind furniture and even the main value of that time - color televisions. Equipment was also abandoned - brand new trucks and tractors, spare parts for them, as well as laboratory equipment. Only the most valuable equipment was removed. Dangerous strains were either destroyed or preserved in burial grounds.

For some time, Aralsk-7 was empty. Then the looters began to move in.

In 1998, ecologists, epidemiologists and geologists visited Vozrozhdeniya Island. Among the epidemiologists were American specialists. The general conclusion they made: this place does not pose any threat, either bacteriological or environmental. Today Vozrozhdeniya Island has turned into a peninsula. The former secret city lies in ruins. There is nothing of value left here. But who knows what is stored underground here. The military is not too willing to share its secrets.

The training ground consisted of three main zones: 1 – airfield; 2 – residential area; and located at a considerable distance from these objects, absolutely closed - laboratory zone 3. A few kilometers from the test site there was a pier where ships and barges arrived with cargo necessary for the life of the test site.

This image shows that concrete slabs have been removed from all four runways of the airfield.

Some slabs are neatly stacked to the side. These are already traces of the work of looters. After the military left the training ground, it was virtually left abandoned and unguarded, which the local population and criminal elements took advantage of. The landfill was robbed, taking away the most valuable things from there, from the mid-90s to the early 2000s. And there was a lot of valuable stuff there...

Administrative and residential zone of the landfill. Almost half of all buildings are located where they have always been. Some buildings were half destroyed, others were completely destroyed.

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

Boiler room of the landfill. The laboratory complex required a lot of steam - autoclaves were used to sterilize the equipment. And this despite the fact that there were no sources of drinking water on the island; it was transported by special barges and then supplied to 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 located two kilometers from the administrative office, 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 you a unique video filmed during my visit to the test site in 2001. All of the above objects were removed from the ground. We can conclude that in 14 years almost nothing has changed at the test site. Cameraman Khasen Omarkulov.

In general, you can find a lot of information related to Renaissance Island on the Internet. However, it is all scattered, and due to the complete absence of any official data, the ghost test site has grown a huge amount all kinds of speculation, sometimes the most incredible. Therefore, I would like to first of all comment on what we managed to film. I apologize for the not very good quality of the screenshots from the video, however, please note that it is one of a kind. Here the internal structure of the main laboratory complex is photographed in detail. Perhaps this will somehow shed light on what kind of work was carried out at the site.

So, the path to the training ground begins from the ex-peninsula of Kulandy, where there is a large village and a horse farm, quite large for these God-forsaken places. Camels are also bred here

It is known that the main types of experiments with weapons of mass destruction were carried out on horses. And these horses were supplied to the training ground by the Kulanda horse farm.

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

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the test site became the “property” of two new independent states: the pier on the island and the Chaika support base, located near Aralsk (now there is nothing left of it - local residents smashed it brick by brick), went to Kazakhstan. The airfield, administrative and laboratory zone of the test site became part of the territory of Uzbekistan.

In fact, our looters operated on the territory of a neighboring state, and with complete impunity. For almost 10 years, starting in 1992, when personnel were evacuated from there, the site was not guarded by anyone or anything.

By the way, we got there by agreeing with the “foreman” of the local stalkers. There was only one condition - not to take them off. Two teams dismantled the landfill structures - one worked on the island, the second transported building materials, pipes, diesel fuel and other useful things towards Aralsk. Local fishermen transported all this across the strait in their old motor boats. In 2001, it took about three hours to swim along it. The island connected with the mainland around 2009. The stalkers had at least two all-terrain trucks - a three-axle Ural on Kulandy and an old GAZ-66 abandoned by the military on the island. Its stalkers restored it to operational condition, bringing spare parts to the island.

The training ground was covered by military boats.

The T-368 project patrol boat with serial number 79 was built in 1973. This is one of the modifications of Soviet torpedo boats. Enterprise G-4306 – Sosnovsky Shipyard. Located in the city of Sosnovka Kirov region RF. The plant is located on the banks of the Vyatka River, a tributary of the Volga. Apparently, the boat hit the Aral Sea railway from one of the Caspian ports.

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

Administrative zone of the landfill.

A mysterious room with a very complex air intake and ventilation system. It can be assumed that there were powerful diesel generators here. 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 officers' club and part-time cinema. In general, the history of the test site began back in the distant 30s, when an expedition led by the famous Russian bacteriologist Ivan Velikanov landed on Vozrozhdeniya Island. His task was to investigate the possibility of using bubonic plague as a means of destroying enemy personnel. Subsequently, the Japanese invaders did this very successfully in China, performing absolutely monstrous experiments on people there. And Professor Velikanov was arrested by the NKVD in 1937, and his work was curtailed until the beginning of the Cold War. So, at the site there are several, so to speak, cultural layers.

Landfill communications center.

There was a military hospital and a clinic on Vozrozhdeniya Island.

Arch at the entrance to the residential area of the landfill.

Two-story kindergarten building. Military microbiologists lived on Renaissance Island with their wives and children.

The residential area of the landfill consists of high-quality houses made of sand-lime brick. They are the best preserved.

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

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

Obviously, the peak of research on biological weapons occurred 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 reached, according to various sources, 1,500 people. For these people, an environment that was as comfortable as possible for those times and in those conditions was created. 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 weapons of mass destruction based on biological weapons. However, research was carried out secretly in both the USA and the USSR.

The stool remained standing on the balcony of the officer’s apartment. A real disaster for the people working on the island was in 1992, when the landfill was closed by presidential decree. The evacuation of personnel occurred so quickly that the military abandoned all large items in the apartments - furniture, televisions, washing machines, refrigerators, etc. It is likely that people were promised a quick return to the island, which never happened. And all the most valuable things went to the looters. In addition to the personal belongings of the military, fuel and lubricants warehouses, vehicles and much more were actually abandoned at the training ground. True, as the stalkers say, the food supplies turned out to be unfit for consumption, as they were covered with bleach and filled with Lysol. Before leaving the training ground, the military carried out a large-scale disinfection of all facilities.

And these are the dungeons of the main laboratory complex. There were powerful autoclaves for temperature treatment of equipment.

Everything was washed and washed in ordinary cast-iron baths, however, in addition to two taps with cold and hot water, a third one was connected to them - with a disinfectant.

These ominous structures are so-called “explosion chambers”. The principle was this: the room was divided into two parts - “dirty” and “clean”. You could only get into both by going through a sanitary checkpoint with a shower of disinfectant. In one part of the chamber, the shutter was opened, and a cage with an experimental animal was placed there along special guides. Then the shutter was closed, and the animal was infected with a biological agent in the form of an aerosol. Afterwards, specialists took over the cell from the “dirty” side and then monitored the progress of the disease.

The “explosion chambers” are located on the second floor of the complex in a completely isolated room with sealed doors.

And this room is a “stone bag” - three sanitary inspection rooms lead to a room without windows.

There is a camera here, type 5 K-NZh, number 254, released in 1974. Such devices are used to work with radioactive materials. Aralsk-7 specialists apparently adapted it for biological experiments.

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

Biohazard sign on second floor airtight door.

Apparently, biological agents were packaged in these cabinets. 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.” Experts say that a temperature of minus 37 degrees Celsius is optimal for storing strains of bubonic plague, and plus 27 for anthrax or anthrax spores. This, to some extent, is an explanation of what exactly they were working with at the test site. The graffiti in the upper left corner of the door is a new “cultural layer”. The stalkers left him.

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

Officer A.V. Mironin was responsible for the men’s sanitary checkpoint.

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

And here is another interesting inscription. Conscript soldiers also worked in the laboratory. Now they are already 46 years old. They probably could tell a lot about this place, but, apparently, they are under an almost lifelong non-disclosure agreement.

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

This is what the main laboratory complex looks like from the inside...

...and like this - outside...

What else do we know about this mysterious place?

In the period from 95 to 98, an American reconnaissance mission visited Renaissance Island in order to collect the maximum amount of data and samples from the test site. 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, by the way, is under the patronage of the United States) landed on Renaissance Island to search for anthrax burial sites. However, the results of the expedition were immediately classified. A certain type of work, apparently, was carried out there until 2008, when Uzbekistan, again with American money and under sensitive American leadership, allegedly began searching for oil and gas deposits in the area of the island. The Kazakh side also carried out similar research. Then, when nothing was found there, the topic was closed.

According to some reports, the work was not related to oil and gas, but specifically to the elimination of anthrax burials. However, no one can confirm or deny this. The official bodies have closed everything again, and getting some information from Uzbekistan is about the same as expecting publicity on North Korea’s missile program.

Around 2010, information leaked into the media that the burial sites had been destroyed. But again it has not been confirmed by anyone. Well, and finally, there was also information that Kazakh specialists would monitor the former landfill until 2014. At the same time, apparently, measures were taken to eradicate stalking on Renaissance Island. A border outpost is located in Aralsk today, and the local prosecutor's office has also become involved in the case. Apparently, the Uzbek side did the same.

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

2003. The SARS epidemic is literally decimating people in China. IN different countries the world from this mysterious disease, for which there is no vaccine or cure, several thousand people die. Scientists (at the official level) have puzzled over why a harmless coronavirus that does not affect humans has become so aggressive towards this biological species. Unofficially, they were talking about biological weapons: the coronavirus went through a process of genetic modification. A piece of DNA from a very dangerous disease for adults - measles - was inserted into it. And what’s interesting is that the children did not suffer from SARS. As a result, the virus disappeared as mysteriously as it appeared. Moreover, without any consequences. Now let’s remember what the largest world event happened in 2003 - the US invasion of Iraq to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein. And all over the world, many thousands of anti-war protests took place on city streets.

Just a coincidence?

2007. Another epidemic of a viral disease from which it is impossible to protect ourselves is bird flu. The most aggressive strain was H5N1. And then, by a miraculous coincidence, the only effective means of combating the infection turns out to be from the world’s only pharmaceutical company, the Swiss F. Hoffmann-La Roche, Ltd - a drug called Oseltamivir under the brand name Tamiflu. Her income grows to astronomical amounts in a matter of months.

And finally, 2014. In the southwestern region of Africa, hundreds of people a day are being killed by Ebola hemorrhagic fever. By the way, it got its name in honor of the Ebola River, which flows in Zaire. It was there that a virus was first identified, which, although it was considered dangerous, was not so dangerous as to pose a threat on a global scale. What was the first thing the US and Russia did? They sent their military microbiologists to the affected countries to study the consequences of the disease, and maybe something else...

The closed military town of Kantubek (Aralsk-7) is a residential area of PNIL-52 (field research laboratory), where 1.5 thousand people lived.
In addition to the scientists testing biological weapons and their families, military unit 04061 was located.

Built on the northern - Kazakhstani - part of the island, the military town of Kantubek (Aralsk-7) is a typical military settlement of the Soviet era. More than a thousand people permanently lived here - military biologists (more like officers of the chemical forces), representatives of the special services, and their families.

The range maintenance regiment was also located here (military unit 25484).
Before the end of 1991, the regiment included, according to recollections, 7 companies. For officers, a year of service on the island was counted as two years of service. Selection of soldiers for service in this, as well as in similar military biological units Soviet army, was thorough and focused. Only people who had a “responsible” profession before the army were included - dispatchers, installers, electric mechanics, etc. The circle of places from which these people were called was also limited - big cities(Moscow, Kyiv, Sverdlovsk, etc.), where the disappearance of an individual could not be noticed.

In Kantubek, an infrastructure developed on a Soviet scale was created, necessary for its autonomous existence - a school, a kindergarten, a stadium, a cinema, a trade network and Catering. The town turned out to be large: more than one and a half dozen three-story residential buildings, officers' houses, soldiers' and officers' clubs.

Particularly dangerous tests were carried out not on Vozrozhdenie Island itself, but on Constantine Island, located several kilometers to the south.
The placement of people's housing in the north, and the testing site in the south of Vozrozhdeniya Island is associated with the direction of the prevailing winds - from north to south. Unfortunately, there were exceptions.

A stud farm was built specifically for the military on the Kulandy Peninsula. Some horses were used for experiments, while others were given blood necessary to prepare a nutrient medium for breeding dangerous strains. Horse corpses were buried in remote areas of the island.

Its own airfield "Barkhan" provided direct and secret air communication with any point in the Soviet Union. Large planes landed and took off daily. Objects for experiments were brought and unloaded under guard - sometimes monkeys and other living creatures.
Sea traffic passed through a special port equipped in Udobnaya Bay near the military camp.

A particular shortage for the inhabitants of the island was imported water, the supply of which was strictly categorized: the best went to officers and their families, the worst to soldiers in their first year of service. The specialists who participated in the tests (local and those arriving from the “mainland”), upon completion, underwent a month-long quarantine on the island.

Military security boats cruised around the island. The laboratory building and the testing ground were fenced off from the curious by two rows of barbed wire.
Drivers, pilots, and geologists spoke about the strictest ban on crossing zone boundaries in the Aral Sea. For many years, the cities of Muynak and Kungrad were closed to foreigners so that intelligence could not obtain samples of air, soil and water for analysis for the content of components of biological and chemical weapons. There were strictures on Vozrozhdenie Island itself. It was divided into sectors and each required its own access.

For camouflage, the island's workers were assigned to the Kazakh city of Aralsk. There in Aralsk there was also military unit, which included a range maintenance regiment. However, even higher military commanders were stationed in Sergiev Posad.

Samples for biological tests were supplied to the island from all points of the VBK - Kirov and Sverdlovsk, Omutninsk and Sergiev Posad, Obolensk and Koltsovo. Even American biological munitions ended up at the test site.

The range of experimental pathogens was also wide - these included bacteria (anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, plague), and rickettsia (typhoid, Q fever), and viruses (smallpox, Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis), and toxins (botulism toxin and others ). Among other things, the most aggressive pathogens were tested on the island, including specially developed strains that were resistant to antibiotics and capable of overcoming the immune defenses of residents of potential enemy states. All imaginable species of animals acted as experimental subjects - horses, sheep, donkeys and even specially imported monkeys.

In 1982-1983, a biological weapon based on tularemia, capable of breaking through the immune defense of a potential enemy, was tested on Vozrozhdeniya Island. It was developed in Omutninsk by K.B. Alibekov. In the summer of 1982, the tests were led by generals A.A. Vorobyov (Biopreparat) and V.A. Lebedinsky (15th Directorate of the General Staff). As a result of testing 20 special ammunition on 500 experimental monkeys (they were imported through the USSR Ministry of Foreign Trade from Africa), almost all the pre-vaccinated monkeys died. However, army representatives demanded a repetition, and in the summer season of 1983 the experiments were repeated more correctly. After the tests, the corpses of the monkeys were burned.
Testing of the latest, most effective anthrax formulation was carried out in 1987.

"...At the very beginning of the 90s, the base was evacuated. Urgently. In an hour and a half. By plane. Half-drunk coffee was left on the tables, half-read newspapers, curtains in the open windows floated lonely in the wind...

Laboratories, houses, farmsteads and marinas were empty. And then the sea left. And in the place of the bay, where the pier overlooked, a salt marsh formed. The gaping gaps of the windows of the laboratory building are visible from afar above the dazzling white surface of the dead bay.

The Kazakhs took a ferry across the strait in the north and took out all the metal they could get their hands on. They tore off the roofing iron from the roofs, pulled out laboratory furniture by the roots, even twisted the fence mesh and took it away. Now there are only empty, forever abandoned premises. Only tarbagan marmots continue to inhabit the outskirts of the village..."

For almost 45 years, on a godforsaken island in the middle of the Aral Sea, there was a Soviet center for testing biological weapons. A residential town with a school, shops, post office, canteen, scientific laboratories and, of course, a testing ground where large-scale tests of deadly biological agents took place, including anthrax, plague, tularemia, brucellosis, typhoid. In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the USSR, the military abandoned both the city and the training ground in the Aral sands.

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

2. The main pre-war center for the study of this important issue was the Gorodomlya island located in the Tver region, which was located in relative proximity to the capital of the USSR. In 1936-1941, it was here that the 3rd Test Laboratory, the main Soviet center for the development of biological weapons, was located, transferred from the Suzdal monasteries and subordinate to the Military Chemical Directorate of the Red Army. 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. Vozrozhdeniya Island was ideal for this task. This deserted piece of land in the Aral Sea, an endorheic salt lake on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was discovered in 1848. For some unimaginable reason, the lifeless archipelago, where there was no fresh water, was called the Tsar’s Islands, and its constituent parts were called the islands of Nicholas, Constantine and Heir. It was Nikolai, optimistically (and perhaps ironically) renamed Renaissance Island, that after the war became a top-secret Soviet base-testing ground for deadly diseases put in the service of the homeland.

4. This island, with an area of about 200 square kilometers, at first glance 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, led by Professor Ivan Velikanov, the father of the Soviet bacteriological program, landed here. The island was taken away from the NKVD, the exiled kulaks were evicted from here, and the following year they tested some bioagents created on the basis of tularemia, plague and cholera. The work was complicated by the repressions to which the leadership of the Military Chemical Directorate of the Red Army was subjected (Velikanov, for example, was shot in 1938), and was suspended during the Great Patriotic War, only to be resumed with even greater zeal after its end.

6. In the northern part of the island, the military town of Kantubek was built, officially called Aralsk-7. In general, it was similar to hundreds of its other analogues that arose in the vastness of the Soviet Union: a dozen and a half residential buildings for officers and scientific personnel, a club, a canteen, a stadium, shops, barracks and a parade ground, and its own power plant. This is what Aralsk-7 looked like in a photograph taken by an American spy satellite in the late 1960s.

7. Near the village, a unique airfield “Barkhan” was built, the only one in the Soviet Union that had four runways, reminiscent of a wind rose in its location. There is always a strong wind blowing on the island, sometimes changing its direction. Depending on the current weather, planes landed on one runway or another.

8. In total, there were up to one and a half thousand military personnel and their families here. It was, in essence, an ordinary garrison life, the only features of which were the special secrecy of the facility and a not very comfortable climate. Children went to school, their parents went to work, watched movies in the evenings at 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 a sea.

10. Kantubek in his heyday. There was a sea connection with the nearest city on the “mainland”, Aral. Fresh water was also delivered here by barges, which was 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 - 52nd field research laboratory), where, among other things, experimental animals were kept, which became the main victims of the tests carried out here. The scale of the research is illustrated by the following fact. In the 1980s, a batch of 500 monkeys was purchased especially for them in Africa through the USSR Foreign Trade. All of them eventually became victims of a strain of the tularemia microbe, after which their corpses were burned and the resulting ashes were buried on the island.

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

14. The location of the test site 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 blown by the wind in the opposite direction from the military camp, after which anti-epidemic measures and decontamination of the territory were mandatory. The hot climate with regular heat of forty degrees was an additional factor that ensured the safety of military biologists: most bacteria and viruses died from prolonged exposure to high temperatures. All specialists who participated in the tests underwent mandatory quarantine.

15. Simultaneously with the post-war intensification of military-scientific work on Vozrozhdenie Island, the Soviet leadership laid the beginning, imperceptible at first, of an environmental disaster, which ultimately led to the colossal degradation of the Aral Sea. The main source of nutrition for the lake-sea was the Amu Darya and Syr Darya. In total, these two largest rivers in Central Asia supplied about 60 cubic kilometers of water per year to the Aral. In the 1960s, the waters of these rivers began to be drained by reclamation canals - it was decided to turn the surrounding deserts into a garden and grow cotton there, which was so necessary for the national economy. The result was not long in coming: the cotton harvest, of course, increased, but the Aral Sea began to rapidly become shallow.

16. In the early 1970s, the amount of river water reaching the sea was reduced by a 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, sea level dropped by 20 meters, the volume of water decreased by 3 times, and the water surface area by 2 times. The Aral was divided into two unconnected large lakes and many small ones. Subsequently, the shallowing process continued.

18. With the shallowing of the sea, the area of Vozrozhdenie Island began to increase just as rapidly - and in the 1990s it grew almost 10 times. The Royal Islands first merged into one island, and in the 2000s it connected with the “mainland” and essentially turned into a peninsula.

19. The collapse of the USSR finally “buried” the test site on Vozrozhdenie Island. Weapons of mass destruction became an entity 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 several weeks, all infrastructure (residential and laboratory), equipment were abandoned, Kantubek turned into a ghost town

22. The place of the military was quickly taken by looters, who in their own way appreciated the riches of the former top-secret scientific center left by the army and scientists. Everything that was of any value and could be dismantled and transported 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 just over two decades ago garrison life flowed smoothly.

27. Residential buildings.

29. The children will never go to this school again.

30. A reservoir for fresh water delivered from the “mainland”.

31. Former Voentorg store.

32. Unlike Chernobyl zone alienation, you can be here without risk to health. The biological threat is much less tenacious than radiation, although environmentalists are still sounding the alarm bell due to the burial grounds that continue to exist on the territory of the former test site with the remains of animals that died during testing.

34. However, sometimes the landscapes still resemble the surroundings of the so distant Ukrainian Pripyat.

37. Renaissance Island, with its mysterious top-secret history and apocalyptic present, could not help but interest computer game developers, ending up in one of the episodes of Call of Duty: Black Ops.

38. The shallowed Aral Sea opens up wide scope for geological exploration activities. Already in the 1990s, deposits of oil, gas, and rare non-ferrous metals were discovered here. Their active development on the one hand and the transformation of Vozrozhdenie Island into a peninsula on the other make contact more and more likely more people with the territory of a military biological laboratory.

40. And although the military and civil authorities claim that everything necessary measures security measures regarding the former test site were adopted in a timely manner, one can only guess what else Vozrozhdenie Island may be hiding in its depths and how unpleasant these surprises can be for humanity.

Kazakh journalist and blogger Grigory Bedenko published unique materials from his archive, which may somehow explain the phenomenon of the Aralsk-7 object.

Let's take a look at them...

One of the most famous images of the test site on Renaissance Island, taken by the American KH-9 HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite at the height of the Cold War.

The scientific center required a place that would be sufficiently remote and isolated from other populated areas. On the one hand, these are requirements of secrecy, on the other - security. An island would be ideal. Three “candidates” were selected: one of the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea, Gorodomlya Island on Lake Seliger and Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea. We stopped at Gorodomlya. 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 Directorate of the Red Army. Previously, it occupied one of the Suzdal monasteries.

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

Nicholas this island with an area of about 200 square meters. kilometers was named after the emperor. It was discovered along with two other islands - Heir and Constantine - in 1848. For some unknown reason, the archipelago was called Tsarsky. Before the revolution, local residents and industrialists were engaged in fishing, hunting, extracting salt, exporting saxaul to the mainland, etc. After 1917, this entire economy was nationalized and completely ruined by collective farm methods. The population of the island was reduced to 4-5 Kazakh families, the infrastructure was reduced to a few buildings.

And this is what the Aral Sea looks like now. There is practically no water left, no islands either. The white line marks the state border of the Republic of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Between the former Renaissance Island in the south and the Kulandy Peninsula in the north, where the Kazakh village of the same name is now located, there is only a small strait. But back in the early 2000s, it took at least 3 hours to travel by boat from Kulanda to the test site, and then drive another 60 km by car. More on this later.

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

Tests were also carried out on rabbits, sheep and horses. They were grown specifically for “laboratory needs” on the Kulandy Peninsula, located nearby.

Large water remained only in the Northern Aral, which turned into an autonomous reservoir thanks to the construction of the Kok-Aral dam. This was done in order to somehow revive fishing in the Kazakh part of the Aral Sea. But this was also the final verdict on the sea.

Now comes the most interesting part. The Aralsk-7 training ground, or the village of Kantubek, as it was called on all maps, is located here (shown by the arrow).

The island was connected to the “mainland” by sea and air. Fresh water, food and equipment were delivered here by barges. The runway, equipped back in 1949, later became the Barkhan airfield. This unique structure for the USSR had four runways. The choice of one lane or another was determined depending on what kind of wind was blowing. Vozrozhdeniya Island was characterized by strong winds.

For some time, Aralsk-7 was empty. Then the looters began to move in.

This image shows that concrete slabs have been removed from all four runways of the airfield.

Administrative and residential zone of the landfill. Almost half of all buildings are located where they have always been. Some buildings were half destroyed, others were completely destroyed.

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

Partially destroyed laboratory area. It was located two kilometers from the administrative office, 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.

In general, you can find a lot of information related to Renaissance Island on the Internet. However, it is all scattered, and due to the complete absence of any official data, the ghost test site has become overgrown with a huge number of all kinds of speculation, sometimes the most incredible. Therefore, I would like to first of all comment on what we managed to film. I apologize for the not very good quality of the screenshots from the video, however, please note that it is one of a kind. Here the internal structure of the main laboratory complex is photographed in detail. Perhaps this will somehow shed light on what kind of work was carried out at the site.

So, the path to the training ground begins from the ex-peninsula of Kulandy, where there is a large village and a horse farm, quite large for these God-forsaken places. Camels are also bred here

It is known that the main types of experiments with weapons of mass destruction were carried out on horses. And these horses were supplied to the training ground by the Kulanda horse farm.

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

The training ground was covered by military boats.

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

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

Administrative zone of the landfill.

A mysterious room with a very complex air intake and ventilation system. It can be assumed that there were powerful diesel generators here. 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.

Landfill communications center.

There was a military hospital and a clinic on Vozrozhdeniya Island.

Arch at the entrance to the residential area of the landfill.

Two-story kindergarten building. Military microbiologists lived on Renaissance Island with their wives and children.

The residential area of the landfill consists of high-quality houses made of sand-lime brick. They are the best preserved.

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

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

And these are the dungeons of the main laboratory complex. There were powerful autoclaves for temperature treatment of equipment.

Everything was washed and washed in ordinary cast-iron baths, however, in addition to two taps with cold and hot water, a third one was connected to them - with a disinfectant.

The “explosion chambers” are located on the second floor of the complex in a completely isolated room with sealed doors.

And this room is a “stone bag” - three sanitary inspection rooms lead to a room without windows.

There is a camera here, type 5 K-NZh, number 254, released in 1974. Such devices are used to work with radioactive materials. Aralsk-7 specialists apparently adapted it for biological experiments.

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

Biohazard sign on second floor airtight door.

Apparently, biological agents were packaged in these cabinets. It could be, for example, a vaccine against a particularly dangerous infection.

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

Officer A.V. Mironin was responsible for the men’s sanitary checkpoint.

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

This is what the main laboratory complex looks like from the inside...

...and like this - outside...

What else do we know about this mysterious place?

According to some sources, the work was not related to the nave

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