Aralsk-7: The Soviet Bioweapon Disaster
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- Опубліковано 29 кві 2022
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The in-depth story of the 1971 Aralsk-7 Smallpox Incident in the Soviet Union.
The Aralsk-7 facility at Vozrozhdeniye Island was anything but ordinary. There were no reports of loud explosions, rocket launches, or the usual that one might expect from the mighty Red Army. Instead, it was home to a secret biological weapon testing site.
At the biolab scientists and military personnel carried out pathogen tests that cause feared diseases like anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, Q-fever, and Venezuelan equine encephalitis.
Moreover, tests on Vozrozhdeniya Island included the most potent recipes of weaponized smallpox. Tested bioweapons were dispersed by exploding bombs and through aerosol sprayers. On and above the ground, detectors measured the level of pathogen dispersion.
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We reveal the world's darkest and greatest disasters all based on true stories.
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I really enjoy your content but *please* include time stamps if you're going to put a sponsored ad in the video, especially in the middle of it. It's really frustrating!
What about Wuhan Lab Virus?
Right
May want to consider moving the sponsored ad to the end as i cant ad block it and am forced to report it.
NordVPN, as secure as a Soviet bioweapons site.
Dang, i gotta stop reloading youtube before i go to bed. Just 13 more mins....
Frrrr
Mood.
Nek minnit it's 2am and I gotta get up in 4 hours xD
expecially sunday nights before work.
....oh..go on then.. Just one more... 2hs later....
There is a very good book called “biohazard” that goes over the whole Soviet bio weapons program , written by the head of it after his defection . It’s the scariest thing I have ever read .
There's another called "A Higher Form of Killing" that covers the same territory
Insane stuff...
Thanks for info...
Really scary subject, but also interesting....
And I am now very scared - Europe
I just bought it because of your comment. Thank you.
Biohazard Labs 2019 : SARS Cov ( coronavirus ) worldwide.
The Aral Sea itself is a disaster worth a video.
I wonder how many testing sites like that are still operational around the world... Creepy to think about
I wonder how many testing sites there are that aren't operational but still considered biohazards?
It shouldn't be an issue since most people value human life more than the socialists do
@@darthbalgarus6986 Not exactly. Count the radiation events in South America due to stupid people not taking care of actual radio active material and you'll see...
More then youd be comfortable knowing i imagine
@@darthbalgarus6986 ...yeah the US UK or others would never be so irresponsible as to research such things, carry out human tests using such things or contaminate entire small islands to this end... only those mean socialists. 🙄both sides of the dumbass socialist vs capitalist divide did these things, still do these things and above all caused each other to do these things by goading each other along. Both are bad, objectively.
I mean I gotta say the Soviets actually handled this huge mistake quite well COMPARED to how they normally preform such as the kursk submarine disaster and chernobyl disaster
I was thinking the same thing
they handled the chernobyl disaster well when it blew up, otherwise most of europe would be uninhabitable today
@@thefarter6462 funny joke
@@ChromisPasqueflowerBowerbird you have no idea bud, almost all of europe would be uninhabited today if they really handled it that poorly when it blew up
Ah, why yes, the USSR was alive and kicking in 2003.
It was Russia and it’s corruption that fucked that one up, not the USSR.
‘Finally The Who declared the world free of smallpox in 1980.
That was, until... July 15, 1971...’
I’m not sure that’s how time works mate.
Yeah that kinda fucked me up for a minute there
good catch, i moved parts around after recording the voice over. I fixed that part ✂✂ thanks for letting me know
I’m still confused 😵💫
Damn... I didn't know Pete Townshend had that kind of power...
Smallpox reverses entropy.
Fighting is one thing... but eradication of a population is another.
When a population threatens the existence of another Population the best course of action is Eradication if all other measures fail
@@FatRescueSwimmer04 I suppose there may be some instance where this would be true. But in general civilized humans use their militaries to fight with each other and as far as possible leave civilians alone. They spare as much of the infrastructure and land as possible so the winner can take it over as well as rule the conquered civilians. But that was history before industrialization and "democracy" where the civilians elect their leaders making the civilians themselves vulnerable to attack also. Nature will only tolerate so much destruction in the name of "winning" and when she fights back....
My mom and I had the opportunity to visit Zagorsk a few years ago while on our 2nd trip to Russia. We started with a visit to Sergius Monastery (Zagorsk Monastery) that was founded in 1337. We took time to walk through the Monastery but we spent the vast majority of our day walking around the town enjoying the beauty. It is a very beautiful area and we met several locals who have become good friends. Hopefully we will be able to go back some day.
1:38 - at the time (1971) Lavrentiy Beria had been dead for 18 years
Glad smallpox was hunted to extinction, got myself a smallpox head mounted on my wall from my great uncle who use to hunt the pathogen.
You can't extinct viruses, they stay latent in Genes, or were stored in labs.
Hahaha
I hope it was similar to Monty Python’s Fly Hunt.
While it is a highly entertaining account, there are some inaccuracies.
1) Lavrentiy Beria was a prominent figure in Soviet history, known for being the head of the NKVD (the Soviet secret police). However, he was executed in 1953 and thus could not have been involved in a biological weapons program in the 1970s. His involvement in the Soviet atomic bomb project is well-documented, but his direct command over a biological weapons program is not established in historical records.
2) Lev Berg was a real person but was not a 24-year-old marine biologist in 1971. He was actually a well-known Soviet geographer and biologist born in 1876, making him 95 years old in 1971. Additionally, Lev Berg was male, not female, as indicated in your narrative.
3) Vozrozhdeniya Island was indeed used by the Soviet Union for biological weapon testing, particularly as part of the Soviet biological weapons program known as Biopreparat. However, some details in your account, like the specific pathogens tested and the timeline of events, may not be entirely accurate or verifiable. Where did you get all the specific details?
Anyway... that is my two cents for critical feedback.
Best regards
Your delivery is getting really good, please keep making videos!
Very typical American, with incorrect weights and a weird habit to pronounced "e" as "ah".
Can you put the sponsor at the start or the end please? Right in the middle is super jarring.
You're right.The end is better, and btw, it's always some gross British speaking gross body function thingy.
that's why they put the advertising in the middle, so you can't easily skip it.
@@jwenting I still skip it, just now more much more annoyed than I was before.
I'm not a huge fan of the American government, but I couldn't begin to imagine what would happen if this Stalin regime were allowed to operate unchecked and unchallenged. These were some sick individuals.
Thank you for this video. I am amazed that aside from the "Dead Hand" book and a few articles the Soviet violation of all its promises repeatedly by creating bioweapons has gotten so little coverage.
I do belly kisses 😘 😘
Our US government is not any different. Look at how many leaks happen at BSL4 labs in the states.
The same goes for South Korea, Taiwan, but especially the US and Israel. You never hear anything about their repeated breaches of the biological weapons ban in the mainstream media either, only in scientific papers and defense-related sources.
@@pieterveenders9793lmfao what breaches
@@natowaveenjoyer9862 Offensive bioweapons work.
“They were concerned about whether or not they could they didn’t stop to think of they should…” doesn’t quite go far enough. Does it.
What this shows to me is that there are some kinds of tests that cannot be performed safely.
For example the United States at least had the sense to not test the entire Pluto Supersonic Low-Altitude Missile, knowing they could only test the engine in a closed lab .
Grow up, the United States do the same tests but on their own people and prisoners. President Clinton had to apologise for tests done on citizens with their knowledge
Russia tested something similar (Burevestnik nuclear cruise missile) and it atomized at least half a dozen high-ranking military scientists.
@@olegkosygin2993 and have now fielded it, supposedly.
@@jwenting lol no, they haven't, not unless you can show me a white-house-shaped hole in DC. It's a nuclear cruise missile, not a conventional tactical ballistic one that have been used so far.
@@olegkosygin2993 They're in service, not used in combat.
Same with the US Minuteman missile. Just because there's no Kremlin sized hold in the ground in Moscow doesn't mean they don't exist.
I enjoyed the documentary, it includes a time when the Ariel Sea was full & delves into the mysterious “anthrax island” (can’t spell it off top of head). One issue however the USSR didn’t start its biological program in response to the US. The American biological weapons program dates back to 1943 while the Soviet to 1936. There’s a lot of Soviet propaganda about the US and biological weapons which isn’t really necessary to paint the American program with a terrible brush. The US allowed the head of the infamous & criminal Japanese bio weapons program to go free for his research & data. The misinformation or disinformation comes because the US stopped “offensive” research (large scale production of bio-weapons for use in war) after a joint U.S. - Soviet treaty in 1975. The USSR took a cynical view that the treaty was just propaganda and the US must be trying to trick them to get a lead because that’s what we would do. It was very embarrassing when the USSR collapsed and the Ariel Sea dried up that oh yeah there’s a whole illegal by our own law top secret industrial scale production facility. Even more so that the US came in & paid to employ laid off scientists to keep them from working for rouge states while providing money & expertise to clean & contain.
yep
You should stick the advertisements in the beginning. It really messes with the pacing and immersion of the story when it just cuts out to some useless VPN commercial.
Luckily practically every sponsor ad is one minute long, give or take a few seconds. Easy enough to skip when you see it.
They are trying to push you to buy the no ad membership
Loving your channel !!
This is terrifying. Considering the current political climate with Russia, the generational lack of smallpox vaccinations and the overall feeling towards vaccines, I can only imagine the damage if one of these were unearthed or used. I wouldn’t put it past Putin. 😱
Me either. I'd take a pox vaxx very happily but they haven't been offered for 40 years. Srsly I wish I was a boomer they got the best of everything.
@@annnee6818, well, the military still gets a smallpox vaccine, though it might not protect against any weaponized strains of smallpox, as the Soviets worked on making a vaccine resistant strain among other horrors and they did succeed with it. There's a great book called BIOHAZARD about the Soviet weapons program from the highest defector from the Soviet bioweapon program, well worth the read.
The Soviet bioweapons program never ended, it just got better hidden...
Of course they lost some of the facilities that were part of the programs ended up in now independent countries like Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, often without those countries even knowing what they had within their borders.
E.g. Kazakhstan inherited many tons of highly enriched Uranium and weapons grade Plutonium, stored in warehouses with just a padlock on the door for security.
The CIA ended up working together with the Kazakh government and the USAF to move the entire load to the USA where it was turned into fuel for nuclear power stations.
@@annnee6818 um 😐 look I’m all for vaccines but that’s not how it works plus it left a scar.
@@annnee6818 intersting. My brother is born in 1998 and had smallpox vaccine. But those much younger than him doesn't have one. I am not sure when mandatory smallpox vaccination stopped in our country. But it was surrly active in 1998.
Jeeez, if i had a nickel for every Russian disaster I'm finding out about on UA-cam. The Soviets really didn't give a crap about the well-being of their people
Definitely same as china too
There is no link between these two statements. Just because YT likes savouring Russian disasters more than other nations' disasters Russians don't become more disasterous than other nations
this is shockingly competent for what we now know as russia. Glad they took this serious and had proper meassures available.
Defiantly sounds like the beginning of a horror movie where after abandoning the plant, test subjects break containment and roam the island. With the lake drying up, these infected creatures of different species, including humans, start to make their way to civilization. That or say the lake never dries up and a bunch of gung ho adventurers go to the island in search of old relics and riches that may have been left behind, only to find nightmarish creatures who have escaped their cages and cells.
Definitely*
I gotta loved how treyarch managed to include this incident in black ops 1
OOPS, don't shake, break or drop.
All super powers have their bio super weapons.
Imagine if they had put all those resources towards something good
Oh thank god this was isolated, and never possibly replicated in the future
God always gets a capital G.
never say never...
It was isolated only because the KGB reacted quickly and quarantined the entire city within hours of the alarm being given.
One of the very few benefits of a communist society is that the government can do that so easily.
@@randygreen007 God Always gets a capital g 🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓🤓
@@randygreen007 nerd
As a medic the simple idea of using virus and bacteria as weapons is repulsing
They are loving entities with fast evolutionary capacity and it is extremely easy to lose control over them causing a potential pandemic
The world is already a bad place without people toying with lethal pathologies
In the U.S theyve just moved one of the only level 4 bio lab in the country from plum island new york to Manhattan kansas. just a few hours from me. Its horrifying to think about when you look into the history of plum island. Level 4 means they deal with viruses and other nasty things with no known cure. They moved it from a remote island in the middle of the ocean to the heart of a populated area of kansas... Whats the worst that could happen?
Some of the others in the US are in large cities, like Atlanta... CDC BL4... and Academy NY, home to the UNY BL4 lab.
ir handles animal diseases
@@user-cw3wm9lx7w animal illnesses... like that is a defense after 2020. Understand, working in the tropics I knew of a half dozen illnesses we knew came from excessive contact with animals. Not to mention the half dozen more that already attack humans every fall. I know that lab, and the thing that I wish is that we copied the Soviet closed city method, the way we did for Los Alamos. Small towns, bought out so they are safe to work
@@leechowning2712 Yes. I wasn’t sure because people believe Plum Island was responsible for everything. It didn’t cause the lyme disease emergence in the US. But yes logic would state to dump it in the middle of No where, ideally some place that wasn’t useful for even agriculture, and keep it locked tight.
@@user-cw3wm9lx7wLike Wuhanvirus?
I'm pretty sure Russia still continue their Biological weapon program 💀
I'm sure the Western governments just accelerated their programs.
As all powers
You think the US doesn’t?
@@chadhOneAtl not as much as Russia
mark my words within the next few years some tiktoker chasing clout will purposely go to one of these bio weapon ruin sites and start the next pandemic xx
LOL, no joke! And the US spent hundreds of MILLIONS helping the Russians clean up the Aral Sea site and the ones in Ukraine.
Anything for clicks likes and money
Gotta do it for the views.
"HEY GUYS IT'S YA BOI G-DAWG COMIN' ATCHA FROM THIS SUPER SCARY LAB WHERE WE'RE GOING TO BE MAKING DRINKS WITH ONLY THINGS WE FIND IN LITTLE VIALS SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON"
I’m just glad that nothing dangerous has ever gotten out of any of these bio labs and spread across the world.
Gruinard Island, another anthrax test site, has finally been declared free of spores recently - but these were not hardened. What ongoing testing is happening here?
as a species, we really cant seem to stop doing horrible and very idiotic shit. Its really frustrating
I am literally amazed how much high-quality detailed factual content that this channel can cram into a 13-minute video the channel literally blows my mind!
Ya know these people really wanted to bring doomsday on earth. Screw aliens invasion we have humanity can create post apocalypse
Please do a video on Kingfisher Airlines Rise&Fall
Not so fun fact: Some smallpox samples were lost during the fall of the soviet union.
Nothing has changed 100 yrs later except now your computer can get a virus as well!
The military effort of USSR was surrounded by mystery. Whereas the normal is to systematically publish your military effort in the latest news :D
I absolutely loved this episode.
Now you can go there as tourists
Tragic that this could of been avoided if the researcher followed the rules and not went close to the island.
Russians were lucky. Imagine if the biologist was from Moscow...
There was an epidemic brought from Africa - the sick guy virtually fcked around Moscow upon return and got many people infected. They fixed the issue be-a-u-ti-ful-ly. There's gotta be some documentary, but from the docs I've seen they acted just incredibly well.
One thing to keep in mind is that the khazakstan government recently completely demolished the whole town of kantubek, and everything that might be contaminated with dangerous biological substances.
There is a great book called The Dead Hand about the Soviet WMD programs and it talks about this incident.
Mandatory buttpats for the great video and to amp up the UA-cam algorithm. Keep it up!
"So lenia! he's coming because I threw half way my sandwich!" ***running away***
This is the same facility they poke fun at in pickle Rick episode of Rick and Morty. Dude even yells the name of the facility in the episode as they begin to realize Rick is inside their facility. But then it goes of the rails into other explosions and awesome cartoon fights.
6:39 That lady MADE SURE she was gonna be on camera and look nice doing it.
12:06. Plum Island: Nothing to see here folks...heh heh heh... ☣️🧬🧫🧪💉🩸💊🦠
Not anymore. It's all moved out to Manhattan, KS.
@NorthForkFisherman Which is worse. Right smack in the middle of the continental US. And you can't expect me to believe that Island is "clean" now. No way. No how.
@@dubuyajay9964 Nor am I asking you to. Anything with spores could still be very active in the soil, just waiting for a host. Now, since I work with viruses here in Kansas myself, having that USAMRID lab on my figurative doorstep is both fascinating and chilling.
@NorthForkFisherman Not thrilled about it either. I'm in San Antonio. Who knows what they ship between those two sites. And well... if anything leaked... I'm literally downwind of it.
@@dubuyajay9964 It would be an absolutely fascinating place to work, however.
its good that its unguarded and unknown. now visitors and future archeologists can explore and dig around
Lavrentiy Beria literally looks like some sort of James Bond movie villain.
That's how they want people to see him. Food for thought: he was murdered immediately after Stalin's death (which was actually a murder too). All his records destroyed. Court trial convicted him of being a British spy and sentenced to death (though he'd actuallt been dead already). And alternative image was created.
Though I'd give a lot to read his notes - as a manager the guy's responsible for massive industrialization not seen before of after, weapons that provide world safety till today, space explorarion and lots and lots of other advances for the entire mankind.
Come to think of it - US was competing with his achievements - therefore the advance. And therefore no advance worldwide since late 70s and total decline since the Soviet Union collapse. The only thing mankind got since 70s is the one you hold in your hand right now.
Scary...
Those scientists: “oh f**k oh sh*t oh f**k oh sh*t oh f**k oh sh*t what have we done??”
-lights cigarette
"Blyat..."
Highly recommend The Dead Hand by David E Hoffman.
I was somehow keep thinking abt biolab in fort detrick maryland 😂
Do the 2001 Anthrax attacks.
@ 9:52 The KGB Chief Yuri Andropov has a discussion with Dave Thomas the Wendy's guy. It turns out that Wendy's was a front for Dave Thomas, super spy.
3 Died, that is not nearly wiping out a village. The death of three is bad enough.
the village was abandoned when the test site was closed down. It had outlived its purpose, which was to house the staff of the bioweapons site and their families.
12:33 Hey it's Skadovsk! :D
I'd love to hear more about how you catch plankton with a net....
August 6.
My birthday..
Also August 6 1945 was the first use of atomic weapon in anger.
this is good intro for new STALKER game
After I Watched On Of Your Videos Aka The First Video I watched from your channel was the Charleston Super Sofa Store Fire. Since Then. I Had Been Watching Your Videos
1:59 see that man on the right, he looks like an oompaloompa, no wonder wonka had to save them from an island.
This is how bad pandemic horror movies start.
"Exclusive smallpox recipe"? Sounds delicious. Do you serve rice or potatoes as a side?😣
Oh no, a starch just wouldn't pair well with smallpox, you'd want to serve one of those tiny bumpy squashes! Though what made it special was it being resistant to the common vaccine that was being used to eradicate smallpox.
Frightening.
“Mighty” Red Army
These videos slap man wtf
Open air... Bioweapons this will not go wrong at all.
Is the footage at 10:30 from Mariupol, Donetsk Region, Ukraine?
Sounds familiar….🤔
US did end bio work as a result of the 72 Treaty. After an anthrax accident in the late 1970s, verified by internation in spection after the fall of the Soviet Union, the US began to take defensive planning efforts.
Ya know papers an’t not helped the problems
@@seanpetaia Nice double negative. Can you restate what you meant. When I left the service, new chemical detection equipment and masks were being adopted. I can't say what happened after the US leadership drank the believe the Russian Kool-aid again.
@@arthurmosel808 I am surprise yu have responded really quickly. Tell yu this they signed papers to make sure these events won’t happen to make “ laws” . But let be honest they don’t care of how they will doom this earth we called home*
It’s not an island anymore, just a lump of sand in the desert.
Makes me re-think COVID
9:52 is that Putin on the left? I'm not familiar with how he looked earlier and the side view makes it hard for me to say for sure
Yes
Why does stalin look exactly like the joker at 2:01?
Bet there’s countries still doing this crap and stock piling it
America uk Russia china all will be
Ok, new terrifying word at 13:00 Anthrax slurry. Djeez.. 🤮☠️
Lavrentiy Beria was long dead before this disaster. He was executed after the death of Stalin in 1953.
So thats how zombie crawlers were invenred 😮
In the end they all escape from labs... OK, lesson learned.
1:25 Not so mighty anymore lol
80 years ago British were number one , then Russia, then america has held 1st place but it looks like china is going to dominate with way more soldiers, air crafts an military capabilities similar 🚬 capitalism is what's destroying America's outreach
Thanks humans, really cool.
I think this disaster makes Chernobyl look like a playground
Did you do one of your nice videos on the virus that escaped a Danish lab that became known as the Spanish flu but not the Danish flu?
Lol, are you're seriously going to claim that the Spanish flu from more than a century ago was the result of a lab release? There wasn't even such a thing as virology back then yet, no means of handling virusses either, safely or otherwise, nor testing methods to determine the presence of a virus let alone which specific one. All of that didn't start until the 1960's.
source?
@@user-cw3wm9lx7w He/she is just talking nonsense and will never post a source.
All I could think when you mentioned yuri was wow that name sounds like something click and clack would read in their credits. Sounding like the act of taking a pee. Urine Dropoff
He actually rose to leader of the Soviet Union after Brezhnev died in 1982. The 2.5 years between Brezhnev and Gorbachev was very chaotic, with the West not really sure who was in power in the Soviet Union (they were super-closed back then, like North Korea is today). The names which kept popping up were Yuri Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, Andrei Gromyko, and Dmitri Ustinov. Except for Gromyko, all died within those 2.5 years, leading to jokes about how Soviet leaders would drop off shortly after gaining power (play on Andropov's name). The official story is that these three died of natural causes. But many still consider it more likely they were poisoned / assassinated by rivals in a power struggle. They were all hard-liners, and their deaths cleared the way for a reformer like Gorbachev to take power, ushering in the end of the Cold War (the Berlin Wall came down 4 months after Gromyko died).
There is nothing there now,, the whole site was cleaned up by the international community.. Your facts are out of date.
I think call of duty rebirth island is based on this island, its even located on the aral sea in the game
It is based on it's this island is known as Vozrozhdeniya otherwise known as "rebirth island"
I think that's physical evidence, not circumstantial.
Strangly sounds similar to Covid...
The sea has been drained for a reason.
Yeah the soviets wanting to grow more cotton
Leave it to humans, to seek their own destruction, using the one thing we collectively wish and strive to eliminate.
Beria was executed in 1953 after Stalin's death. How was he in charge in 1971 when he was torched in 53?
So u telling me they alr got plague inc
The only ones who have been caught doing this for the US and maybe the English.
WHAT ARE THE NUMBERS MASON?!?!