Eerie ruins at site where Stalin tested atomic bombs

[struggle4progress]

C.J. Chivers, New York Times
Sunday, March 6, 2005

Semipalatinsk Test Site , Kazakhstan -- The road is an aged dirt track running in a line across the Central Asian steppe, past grazing cattle and horses, arriving at a hillock overlooking a parched basin.

There are no warning signs. There is no gate beside the abandoned guard shack at the remains of the fence. Only the climbing numbers on the radiation detector suggest that perhaps it would be best to turn around. <snip>

Here, briefly, stood a metal tower roughly 100 feet high, ringed by sturdy objects: brick buildings, a bridge, bunkers of reinforced concrete and a park of idled tanks and aircraft, some with live animals tethered inside, set at various distances to see how they weathered what came next. Concrete observation towers were arranged at fixed distances in several directions, their instruments connected by subterranean cable to a distant command post where the experiment's masters could assess their work.

On this spot on a summer morning in 1949, Soviet scientists detonated Stalin's first atomic bomb. Over the next 40 years, in the air above the steppe and the soil of the surrounding area, scientists detonated at least 455 more. <snip>

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/03/06/MNGKKBJUSD1.DTL

[Zuni]

1. You should read about their bio-warfare sites

In Robert Graysmith's book 'Amerithrax', he describes the sites where they tested their bio weapons --- places now almost completely uninhabitable in Kazakstan.

The whole central asian region was devestated by the Soviets

[pretzel4gore]

3. soviets?

had the russian empire still existed, and had it been constantly threatened by west, invaded twice in 30 years etc, then same thing would have happened...to blame 'soviet' (which mean s 'workers') for a geopolitical phenomenon(!) ...france and USA /btitain tested their nukes where? can anyone vist testing range in nevada, or bikini atoll? The 'Soviet Union' became very fascistic after all that happened to it during years after ww1.....but the working people were never to blame... A 'Soviet Union' based upon democratic principles and women/minority political empowerment, served by a free press would be a good idea if possible - just witness what the greedy race/class warfare pigs will do in next few years to the planet to see one alternative...
is 'soviet' bureaucratic incompetence any worse then ours? especially when we told about it, at same time as telling our dirty secrets remains verbotten...

[Igel]

4. I wonder if the area where a nuclear waste site erupted

in the Urals is habitable yet, or if the villages have completely decayed.

Or if the Aral Sea is being refilled, and the salinity leaching out of the salt flats the short-sighted irrigation methods produced.

The Soviet government, not in the least responsible to the people or international opinion, mucked up a lot of areas.

[Zuni]

5. The Aral Sea and other areas

are almost toally dead. The Aral Sea used to be the 4th largest inland body of water, now it is little more than mud and salt and dried up chemicals. Many parts of the whole region are literally toxic from bad agriculture, mass use of pesticides, toxic waste dumping, lack of any pollution controls--etc. The areas of former Soviet Central Asia have some of the highest infant mortality rates in the world---on par with the worst areas in sub saharan africa.

In the Urals, according to my relatives who are Russian, they still have black snow from factories with no pollution controls. The Volga is so filled with trash you can practically walk across it.

China has pollution problems that are even worse.

[Igel]

6. The Urals sounds like the Beskydy (part of the Carpathians

between Poland and Czech Republic/Slovakia). Lots of dead and dying trees, polution--there are really large industrial plants just north in S. Poland, and in the

I was hoping that the collapse of the USSR would have helped the Aral Sea a bit. The articles in the Soviet press in '88 and '89 were heartbreaking.

[hlthe2b]

2. That is a bizarre article to me...

Just when it starts to get into the issues, it abruptly stops. This should have been a multi-page story.... Geez!

[bpilgrim]

7. had the same feeling

but you can bet will get all the detials of the jackson trial

peace