Explosion at research center in Russia

[Leghorn21]

Russian government says “no biohazards released.”
Color me skeptical.

Meanwhile in Russia... There was an explosion at a research
center which stores one of the world's largest collections of
viruses including small pox & ebola. All glass in the building
was shattered per RFE/RL, but Russian gov't says no biohazards
released https://svoboda.org/a/30167061.html

Link to tweet

Poor Russia, I hope everybody can stay safe from this contamination, and
that it really is nothing to worry about


Town/city where it happened, Novosibirsk, houses 1.5 million souls

[Cary]

1. Gee, I believe Putin

[Whiskeytide]

2. Crap. I'm sure those idiots had a zombie virus in there somewhere. n/t

[lpbk2713]

3. No biohazard per Putin's government.

If that's not a contradiction I don't know what is.

[Beakybird]

4. I had a sneezing fit just moments ago.

I hope it's not related.

[GemDigger]

5. Kick, not because I like it but because I don't.

Russia is having a whole lot of bad luck lately. It's unfortunate that their bad luck affects the planet.

[pwb]

6. Russia is pretty reckless with dangerous matter.

Chernobyl , the nuclear missile a few weeks ago blew up in the atmosphere and now Bio chemicals? Putins Russia is dangerous to the world often, lately.

[sheshe2]

18. Yes.

Russia is pretty reckless with dangerous matter.

They keep re-electing Putin and allow him free rein...'dangerous matter.'

[irisblue]

7. Meanwhile at the CDC...

Several people check the fuel barrels & orders another 1000

[RussellCattle]

8. "Smallpox was an infectious disease...." That's the way the Wiki entry...

....for Smallpox begins, in the past tense. One of the great accomplishments of modern medicine is the eradication of this terrible disease. Keeping the virus alive in a laboratory setting means keeping faith with the public that it never gets out in the public again. Lets hope that Russia's infectious disease control response is up to the task.

[Newest Reality]

9. Well, that's some sci-fi

material there. Andromeda Strain?

That sounds like a full breech of containment with the explosion jettisoning whatever was in there.

Now, what was in that facility? The world's largest collection? Does that include bio-weapon grade materials?

Talk about a vector, this sounds like it could be Pandora's Epidemic Box.

[Tanuki]

14. or Stephen King's "The Stand"

Apparently CBS All Access is filming a new miniseries of The Stand. Pretty timely.

[Newest Reality]

17. That's a good example

Ah, wasn't there a Trump-like President character in that one, also? I am a bit fuzzy on that now. Been a long time.

[Blue_true]

22. There was a demon that acted as the leader.

You were on target.

[Fullduplexxx]

30. That was in the dead zone

[sheshe2]

21. The Super Flu.

Love SK. When I first read that book, I Had The Flu! Scared the heck out of me.

Thanks for the heads up about the new miniseries, Tanuki. Timely.

[world wide wally]

10. WTF are they doing with all those viruses anyway?

Smallpox?

[Newest Reality]

15. Research is one thing...but...

There are facilities in many places that research or contain weaponized viruses, etc. Many countries have them.

Compliance with the agreement, as well as the fate of the former Soviet bio-agents and facilities, is still mostly undocumented.[14] Leitenberg and Zilinskas, in The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History (2012), state flatly that "In March 1992...Yeltsin acknowledged the existence of an illegal BW program in the former Soviet Union and ordered it to be dissolved. His decree was, however, not obeyed."[15] They conclude that "In hindsight, we know that with the ultimate failure of the... [negotiations] process and the continued Russian refusal to open the... facilities to the present day, neither the Yeltsin or Putin administrations ever carried out 'a visible campaign to dismantle once and for all' the residual elements of the Soviet BW program".[16]

1990-1999: Specimens of deadly bacteria and viruses were stolen from western laboratories and delivered by Aeroflot planes to support the Russian biological weapons program. At least one of the pilots was a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service officer".[17] At least two agents died, presumably from the transported pathogens[17]

2000-2009: The academician, "A.S.", proposed a new biological warfare program, called the "Biological Shield of Russia" to president Vladimir Putin. The program reportedly includes institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences from Pushchino[4]

I don't know how many of these are currently active, but here is a list of facilities in Russia:

Biopreparat (18 labs, test sites, and production centers)
Stepnagorsk Scientific and Technical Institute for Microbiology, Stepnogorsk, northern Kazakhstan
Institute of Ultra Pure Biochemical Preparations, Leningrad, a weaponized plague center
Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR), a weaponized smallpox center
Institute of Applied Biochemistry, Omutninsk
Kirov bioweapons production facility, Kirov, Kirov Oblast
Zagorsk smallpox production facility, Zagorsk Today Virological Center NIIM (Scientific research institute) Russian Defense Ministry in Sergiyev Posad.
Berdsk bioweapons production facility, Berdsk
Bioweapons research facility, Obolensk
Sverdlovsk bioweapons production facility (Military Compound 19), Sverdlovsk, a weaponized anthrax center
Aralsk-7, Vozrozhdeniya (Renaissance) Island, Aral Sea, this BW test site was built here and on neighboring Komsomolskiy Island in 1954
Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services
Project Bonfire, development of antibiotic-resistant microbial strains
Project Factor, creation of microbial weapons with new properties of high virulence, improved stability, and new clinical syndromes

Some of the agents involved are at the end of the wiki article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_program

[11 Bravo]

11. They told the truth about Chernobyl.

Why would they lie now?

[USALiberal]

12. LOL nt

[stonecutter357]

13. lol when did russia tell the truth about Chernobyl ?

[11 Bravo]

23. Ummm ... never. That was kind of the point.

[uponit7771]

32. +1

[Hortensis]

16. The guy who supposedly ran Russia's entire bio warfare

program defected to the U.S. in the 1990s and wrote a book published in 2000 about it. Apparently Alibek doesn't do open social media, too bad. Here's a link to the NCBI/NIH'S review, which gives it four stars out of four.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1116867/

Alibek refers to Biopreparat as “our Manhattan project.” “The Soviet Government decided that the best agents were those for which there was no known cure. This shaped the entire course of our program and thrust us into a never-ending race against the medical profession.” ...

Biohazard is a first class book about biological warfare, whether read as a thriller or as a revelation. Alibek provides mountains of facts as well as insights into the Byzantine intrigues and power struggles within the Soviet system. As I finished the book, I recalled Rudyard Kipling’s 1898 poem, The Truce of the Bear:

“When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer,
That is the time of peril—the Time of the Truce of the Bear.”

[dalton99a]

19. Explosion broke all the beakers and windows, but the viruses decided to stay inside

[Takket]

20. yeah just like there was no radiation from that nuclear weapon that blew up

[Initech]

24. And that's how the zombie apocalypse started.

[Rebl2]

25. Yeah right

no biohazards released.

[Hekate]

26. If smallpox re-enters the world, it will find a virgin population with NO immunity ...

I had my kids in 1975 and 1978. It felt really weird that they were not vaccinated for this disease, when it had been so taken for granted when I was growing up. In college I had met a deeply-scarred student from Afghanistan who had survived it -- that is how recently this disease was in the wild.

Back then I read that there were just a few vials left -- frozen in research labs in the USSR and the USA. But no worries! Perfectly Safe!

Fast forward to 2019. Do you trust the word of Putin? Also, anti-vaxxers believe what they read on Facebook, not science books.

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

34. Most of the population has no immunity

The original vaccine only lasted 3-5 years for full immunity. After that it drops over time. A booster is necessary to bring it back to near full protection.

DoD still vaccinates certain military personnel for it. So the vaccine is in production, probably at low levels though.

[magicarpet]

27. After the bio-lab explosion Putin and trDump went there,....

.... and thoroughly disinfected the place with Lysol. So there is nothing to worry about.

[yaesu]

28. well, if people start turning orange we know for sure tRump is a russian zombie nt

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

29. Any mushroom clouds?

[ornotna]

31. Glad I got a flu shot this year

I'm good.

[Leghorn21]

33. Tiny update - plus, I had the right region, but the wrong town

A gas explosion has sparked a fire at a Russian lab that houses viruses ranging from smallpox to Ebola, authorities have said.

The blast took place during repairs to a fifth-floor sanitary inspection room at the State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology – usually known as Vector – in Koltsovo, in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia, the centre said on Monday. The site housed biological weapons research during the Soviet era and is now one of Russia’s main disease research centres.

One worker suffered third-degree burns after the blast, which blew out the glass in the building. A fire covering ​​30 square metres was later extinguished.

Russian authorities insisted that the room where the explosion occurred was holding no biohazardous substances and that no structural damage was caused.

(one more paragraph)

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/17/blast-sparks-fire-at-russian-laboratory-housing-smallpox-virus

Koltsovo (pop 15,000) is in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia - X marks the (general) (blurry) spot

[Hermit-The-Prog]

36. 'fess up -- that's a sharpie mark on that map!

[Poiuyt]

35. Read The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston

Nonfiction book that reads like a suspense novel. Trust me--you don't want to catch smallpox.