Vozrozhdeniye Island. Also known as Rebirth, Renaissance, or Anthrax Island.
Want to be reborn? Then I definitely recommend making a little trip to this Kazakh/Uzbek owned little paradise. Maybe “island” isn’t the proper term anymore, since the body of water it was surrounded by, the Aral sea, dried up in 2002.
“In 1936, Vozrozhdeniye Island was transferred to the authority of the Soviet MOD for use by the Red Army’s Scientific Medical Institute. The first expedition of 100 people, headed by Professor Ivan Velikanov, arrived on the island that summer. The researchers were provided with special ships and two airplanes and reportedly conducted experiments involving the spread of tularemia and related microorganisms. In the fall of 1937, however, the expedition was evacuated from the island because of security problems, including the arrest of Velikanov and other specialists.
In 1952, the Soviet government decided to resume BW testing on islands in the Aral Sea. A biological weapons test site, officially referred to as “Aralsk-7,” was built in 1954 on Vozrozhdeniye and Komsomolskiy Islands. The MOD’s Field Scientific Research Laboratory (PNIL) was stationed on Vozrozhdeniye Island to conduct the experiments. Military unit 25484, comprising several hundred people, was also based on the island and reported to a larger unit based in Aralsk. The PNIL developed methods of biological defense and decontamination for Soviet troops. Samples of military hardware, equipment, and protective clothing reportedly passed field tests at the island before being mass-produced. During the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, military protective gear developed for Afghan conditions was tested at the PNIL.”
(from GlobalSecurity.org)
This place, and places like this, are sick, in every true meaning of the word.
