Remnants: The deadly legacy of the Soviet Union’s biological warfare program.

Biological warfare. It is a term that can cause widespread panic and fear at its mere intimation. However, during the Cold War both the United States and the Soviet Union produced and stockpiled huge quantities of lethal germs and toxins which were intended for use against the opposite side in the event of a full-blown war. Whilst President Nixon ended all aspects of the US biological weapons project designed exclusively for ‘offensive use’ in 1969, the Soviets continued to research, produce and subsequently genetically alter germs and toxins right up until the programme was officially dismantled in 1992. This was despite signing the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) in 1972 – a international agreement designed to ban the production of biological agents.

Why did the Russians continue? Simple: they highly doubted that the US had any intention of upholding their end of the BWC bargain, and so continued to manufacture germ warfare in secret for decades. The results would be nothing short of catastrophic.

 

Soviet Biological Capability

The Soviet Bioweapons project – or ‘Biopreparat’ – was of a mammoth scale; capable of producing over 100 tonnes of weaponised bacterial agents per annum at its peak in the mid to late 1970s. Some of the diseases that were cultivated and converted into weapons include smallpox, anthrax, plague, typhus, tularaemia, Q Fever, botulism and the Marburg virus. As well as germs designed to target the human population of a country, the Soviets developed weaponised versions of bacteria that would kill ‘food animals’ (such as rinderpest, a disease that is fatal to cattle). In this way they could, if necessary, starve a country into submission during a war by decimating it’s livestock.

By all accounts there were over 50 clandestine weapons manufacturing facilities across the Soviet Union, employing around 50,000 military and civilian personnel. Safety and containment protocols were often critically inefficient, and thus it is no wonder that there were several serious containment breaches which resulted in deaths amongst the local population…and extensive government cover-ups. Whilst I will detail two of these incidents below, don’t for a second think that these are the only two such incidents. Due to the secretive nature of the Russian government it is likely that we will never know just how many times biological agents escaped from Soviet-era labs or polluted the environment due to deliberate release.

 

The Sverdlovsk Anthrax Incident

In 1979 inside a specially built bioweapons facility, a horrific chain of events were set in motion by a simple communication error. Inside the secret government anthrax lab, there was a drying room which was used to dehydrate anthrax spores into a fine white powder; this could then be aerosolised and used against the enemy – producing a mortality rate of 90% without treatment. On the last evening of March in 1979, a maintenance worker removed one of the filters from the exhaust chimney in order to clean it. He did so and then left a note to his superiors advising them of his actions and stating that the filter should be put back into place before the drying machines were turned back on.

His note was summarily ignored and the machines were restarted the following morning with nothing to separate the drying anthrax powder from the outside world. Highly deadly weaponised spores spilled unhindered into the atmosphere surrounding the laboratory and during the following days all of the workers at a ceramic factory fell ill with the disease. The leak was traced back to Sverdlovsk when it was found that the ceramic plant had been directly downwind of the anthrax drying facility at the time of the incident, and the only thing that all of the victims had in common was their place of work. Animals in the area also became sick and died within a week of being exposed to the spores.

At least 105 people died from inhalation anthrax as a result of this blunder, and the Communist party attempted to hush the incident up – falsifying medical records and having the KGB destroy relevent evidence from Sverdlovsk. It is thought that the death toll is higher that the official number, which was only released in 1992 at the fall of the Soviet Union. Whilst the laboratory at Sverdlovsk has ‘officially’ been closed down, armed men with attack dogs still patrol the closed compound and – some reports state – that work has moved to underground laboratories which are still working with dangerous pathogens.

 

The Aral Sea Incident

In 1971 the Soviet Union was secretly preparing to field test an aerosolised version of the smallpox virus which had been weaponised to emphasise its haemorrhagic properties – thus making it more lethal. From their extensive research complex on Vozrozhdeniya Island (now joint property of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan) the Soviets exploded a canister of smallpox which had been placed in a remote area of the island, most of which was barren desert.

Approximately nine miles from the island, a research vessel was surveying plankton from the Aral Sea. Over the next few days one of the crew developed smallpox symptoms, despite having already been vaccinated against the virus. From there, small outbreaks of the disease occurred in two Uzbek cities and three people died from a haemorrhagic form of the smallpox virus.

The Soviet response to this outbreak was swift however, and the outbreak was quickly arrested through mass vaccination of the population of the Aral Sea region, quarantine of suspected cases and the disinfection of thousands of suspected ‘contaminated goods’. The fact that the disease had escaped from the research complex at Vozrozhdeniya however, did not become public knowledge until 2002.

However, twenty-six years after it was abandoned by the dissolving Soviet Union, Vozrozhdeniya is still a haunting place with unmitigated lethal potential…

 

Vozrozhdeniya Island Today

In 1991 the Soviets retreated from the Aral Sea region and abandoned their biological research lab on Vozrozhdeniya (codenamed ‘Aralsk-7’) virtually overnight. At its peak, the island held 1,500 inhabitants – all of whom either worked on the biological warfare program or were immediate family members of the workers – and also had shops, schools, an airfield and even a small football stadium. This small city came to be known as ‘Kantubek’, and it was as secretive as America’s Area 51 is deemed to be today.

Kantubek is still there. As a ghost town.

Nobody lives there as the ground is – probably quite rightly – seen as ‘polluted’. Occasionally groups of Uzbek or Kazakh nomads will visit the island in search of copper and other scrap metal that they can salvage from the decaying buildings, but other than that…the island is an unofficial ‘no-go zone’.

The real ‘nightmare fuel’ of this story is this: when Kantubek was abandoned and left to rot, so was the super-secret germ warfare facility at nearby Aralsk-7. In the apparent hurry to leave Vozrozhdeniya Island, many containers of lethal, genetically modified diseases were either smashed on the ground and abandoned, or were stored in inappropriate containers – which have now developed leaks. As a result, the island (which is dangerously close to becoming a peninsula due to the drop in water levels in the Aral Sea) is now seen as one of the most dangerous and polluted places on the face of the Earth. Don’t believe that the Soviets just smashed Petri dishes and test tubes full of lethal viruses? Don’t believe that anyone could be so soulcrushingly irresponsible? See below:

This is one of the many highly dangerous refuse areas on Vozrozhdeniya today. A team of photographers and journalists had to abandon their venture to the site after their ventilators became overloaded with chemical agents mere 15 minutes into the complex. It is thought that the toxins that remain at Vozrozhdeniya have been responsible for several bubonic plague outbreaks in the area as well as the mass death of Saiga antelope – 50,000 of which dropped dead one hour after grazing on the contaminated steppe land downwind.

Whilst the anthrax burial sites (inside which drums containing hundreds of tonnes of weaponised anthrax spores lay abandoned) on the island have now been officially decontaminated, the land is still considered to be highly dangerous. Nobody knows what else lurks beneath the soil, or may still linger in the air. We can but hope that all of the weaponised germs have been accounted for, as the consequences of a nihilist terrorist organisation such as ISIS obtaining these Soviet-era super-germs would be totally and utterly unthinkable.

 

“What’s the point in truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?” – Aldous Huxley.

North Korea: Society inside the ‘Secret State’.

 

So today’s post will be a little shorter than yesterday’s hard slog through DACA legislation, you’ll be heartened to hear! We will be focussing on the world’s only remaining ‘hermit state’ – North Korea, or as it is also known, The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

Whilst North Korea has opened its borders a little in the last decade or so – mainly for tourism purposes – it still remains an enigma to the outside world. Approximately 4,000 – 4,500 Western tourists visit the nation annually; the actual number of tourists is much higher, but 95% of the total number are thought to originate from China – a country which has long been a close ally of the North Korean regime.

However, every aspect of a visit to this secretive nation is highly controlled by government approved tourism agencies such as Koryo Group. Tourists are not allowed to deviate from the specified tour itinerary – mainly made up of sites of political relevance – and they are kept forever under the watchful eyes of the government ‘minders’ who accompany the group. The tours are designed to showcase the DPRK and it’s government in the best light possible and visitors are kept away from the dark underbelly of the country stringently. All you need to do is look at the few documentaries that undercover journalists have posted on YouTube and you will see tourists being told sharply by the tour guide(s) not to photograph scenes outside the windows of the tour bus as it passes by. Scenes such as local people picking through the dirt at the roadside to find food, or virtually empty market-stalls which highlight the country’s ever present food shortage. Tours to North Korea portray the nation through rose-tinted glass. You have to dig deeper to find the real North Korea, and to see how it’s citizens truly live.

So below I have compiled some little known facts about North Korea, designed to give you an insight into this undeniably bizarre state.

1) North Korea is the world’s only true ‘Necrocracy’. This means that it is a government that still operates under the rule (or the set of rules laid down by) a dead leader. Until his death in 1994, Kim Il-Sung (known by North Koreans as ‘The Great Leader’) ruled North Korea; a post he had held since the end of the Korean War and the separation of the two Koreas. After his death, he was declared ‘Eternal President’ and has thus retained his position as Supreme Leader of the DPRK – even attaining God-like status in the minds of the North Korean populace. In 1998, according to The Times newspaper, rather than listening to the then leader of the country – Kim Jong-Il – make a speech, the North Korean Assembly instead listened, enraptured, to a tape-recording of a speech made by the late Eternal President. North Korean citizens over the age of 16 are required to wear two lapel badges whenever they leave home – one depicting the Great Leader, Kim Il-Sung, and the other depicting his now-deceased son – Grand Marshal, Kim Jong-Il. Leaving home without one is deemed an ‘anti-Kim offence’ and those found doing so are frequently punished or face Maoist-style ‘self-criticism sessions’.

2) North Korea’s political ideology is NOT communist, contrary to popular belief. They have a unique ideology called ‘Juche’, which roughly translates as ‘self Reliance’s, and was introduced by founding father, Kim Il-Sung. Basically, the theory behind Juche is that each North Korean citizen should be a ‘master of the Revolution’, help the nation become self-reliant by tireless work and thus build the DPRK into a true beacon of socialism. The symbols of Juche are a flaming torch, and the typical Communist hammer and sickle motif…with the addition of a paintbrush in the centre to symbolise North Korean artists and intellectuals.

3) Each North Korean citizen has a form of unique political karma called ‘Songbun’. This is calculated based on the social, political and economic activities of your ancestors and your living relatives. Their general trustworthiness and any run-ins with the military or the police will also be factored into your own ascribed Songbun. By all accounts there are over 50 different categories you can be assigned to and, whilst ‘losing’ Songbun and being ‘demoted’ a category or two is apparently quite easy….gaining Songbun is notoriously hard to do. Why is Songbun so important? Simple. It can affect everything to do with your life and that of your spouse/children. From what jobs you are eligible for, to what education you can receive…even to the amount of food you are eligible to receive under government rationing.

4) There is a ‘Three Generations of Punishment’ law in North Korea. If you commit a crime or are found guilty of political dissidence, you are sent to prison (or more usually in North Korea, a hard labour camp). However you do not go alone – your family will often be sentenced alongside you for the same crime. In some reports all three generations of a family will suffer the same fate as you – that’s your parents and your children. In other reports it is the two generations of your family that will descend from you – so that’s your children and your grandchildren. Either way, it is a particularly nasty and Draconian punishment system that sheds a lot of light on why North Koreans were so eager to show their grief to the cameras on the dead of Kim Jong-Il in 2011. They did not want their children ending up in work camps due to ‘a parent not affording the proper respect to the passing of the Grand Marshal’.

5) North Korea has concentration camps. Yes, you read that right. Completely isolated from the outside world, families are sentenced to a lifetime of hard labour, unrelenting torture and starvation. The most famous of these camps are Yodok (about 70 miles from the capital, Pyongyang) and Hoeryong (five miles from the northeastern border with China). The camps are both surrounded by natural barriers, such as rivers and tall mountains, which prevents them from being seen by the outside world. Below however is a photograph that purports to show prisoners inside the fence at Yodok concentration camp:

As might be expected, the North Korean government initially denied that these camps existed – and then when the installations appeared on satellite images – insisted that the camps had already been decommissioned and closed down.

However, escapees who have defected from North Korea have come forward with stories of torture and barbarity that rival the Nazi atrocities at Auschwitz. One such man is Kim Kwang-Il who spent over two years Jeongeori concentration and documented the daily human rights abuses through a series of harrowing illustrations. One illustration, depicting methods of repetitive torture that the guards employed against the emaciated inmates, is shown below:

Another such escapee is Kim Young-Soon who spent nine years as an inmate of Yodok camp. Both of her parents and her eight-year-old son died of disease and starvation whilst they served her sentence alongside her, as per North Korea’s ‘Three Generations of Punishment’ law. Upon her successful defection from the country, she told officials how many inmates used to eat dirt to try and survive, whilst others lost limbs to frostbite or succumbed to insanity through repeated torture. She urged potential tourists to ‘stay away’ from the country so as not to inadvertently support an ‘evil’ regime with their money.

 

In conclusion, there is more to North Korea than a frequently malfunctioning nuclear weapons program. The stories of the country’s oppressed masses deserve a more prominent space on the world stage so that we can honour the vows that were made at the conclusion of World War II – we can never, ever allow something like Auschwitz, or Treblinka or Dachau to happen again. Ever. If we know about such atrocities – like those that occur at Yodok and Hoeryong – and do nothing…does that make us any better than the perpetrators?

 

The Journey Begins

Well this promises to be the start of either a very short and thankless journey…or a life-changing one with endless opportunities…

…enough philosophising!

I have taken a huge step in my life today. I have, somewhat madly, applied to return to university and study a field that I have always been fascinated by. Journalism.

Yes! Aha! I will transform into the hated and loathed face of the ugly, overbearing and over-opinionated media whose droning voice we cannot ever escape. It pervades our living rooms, emanating from the speakers of our televisions. It dogs our footsteps with constant newsflashes on our smartphones. It’s influence is heard in the voices of the burgeoning population who walk our streets….

…well actually, no. I won’t become anything so powerful or fanciful. My goal is to be quite the opposite of the above. I went equipped with ‘The Speech’ to my interview with the head of the Communications and Media faculty today; annoyingly I did not get the chance to make my ‘grand and insightful’ speech as I was offered a place without needing it. Huzzah! It hasn’t quite sunk in yet. I’ll probably re-read this later, shake my head and delete it for being ‘too weird and esoteric’.

However, since I spent a good while writing it (to the sound of smooth jazz music and my father banging around angrily above me in the loft), I’m going to post it here for your *ahem* reading pleasure. Oh, the latent sarcasm ends here by the way. 😋

“I have been an avid follower of world events since I was very young. Much too young to be concerned with the events of the US Presidential Election of 2000, in fact. However at the tender age of ten, I was arguing the case for the election of George W. Bush to the post of President. My best friend (also slightly mad) thought my politics were grossly wrong and so championed the case for the then Democratic candidate…Al Gore. What resulted was a prolonged battle of political campaigning by two ten-year-olds (the stories could last for pages) but in an effort to outwit my ‘opponent’ I began to really read and interpret news stories for the first time. This started me down the path that I now seek to walk to completion.

I feel that journalists have this unique – and undeniably dangerous – power that very few people could ever hope to possess. They can reach millions, if not billions, of people through the written or spoken word. The facts that are reported can have a tremendous effect upon the journalist’s audience which, thanks to social media platforms, is growing exponentially. This is the reason why it is so pivotally important that the facts are just that – facts. Not speculation. Not rumour. Facts.

As Uncle Ben once said to Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility”. This is a message that is of the utmost importance in the field of journalism. Facts should be reported “as is” and with no ‘spin’ or insertion of the journalist’s own political or social opinions.

If the facts are reported incorrectly then the results can be disastrous. Take for example the 2010 reports of a mosque that was due to be built at the Ground Zero site in New York City. A total falsehood that, via a television commercial financed by the dubious Koch Brothers, exploded into the media and incited protests throughout the American populace. The reality was that an Islamic community centre had been approved for construction more that two blocks away from the Ground Zero site…however through insidious and deliberate dissemination of disinformation, the media had cast the die. Thus the ‘fake news’ story is what the general public remember, not the truth. Occurrences like the one outlined above are to be avoided by the media at all costs. If not for the preservation of one’s own reputation, then for the preservation of order.

The honesty and integrity of the media is also something that should be preserved. The brave ‘truth will out’ image of journalism that was coined by such greats as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who broke the Watergate scandal to America and spelled the death knell for President Nixon’s administration. This is what journalists should aspire to. To emulate the actions of these unforgettable men who worked so tirelessly to uncover the truth, in the face of possible reprisals from the very highest echelons of government.

I will close by stating this: I wish to study journalism so that I can have the honour of serving the people, as others have done so valiantly before me. I will tell the whole and unbiased truth. Opinions are for the listener/reader to develop – they are not for me to impose upon them. I hold dear the ideals of the past and I wish my journalism to reflect that ”Golden Age” of media, which is slipping through our fingers – like sand through an hourglass – as journalism becomes ever more personal, polarised and influenced by the opinions of whomsoever holds the most cash. Journalism should not be influenced by whoever owns the television network or newspaper; their money and politics should not be used to obfuscate the truth.

The phrase ‘money talks’ should not apply to the field of journalism. No amount of money should twist the facts and camouflage the truth.

I wish to study journalism because money does not ‘talk’ to me.

The truth talks to me.

“You can’t serve the public good without the truth as a bottom line.” – Carl Bernstein.