Biochemical weapons test site in the Aral Sea (23 photos)

22 January 2014

For exactly 50 years, namely from 1942 to 1992, a biochemical test site called “Barkhan” was located and operated on Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea. Although the most dangerous biological weapons and the latest military developments were tested there, a special military camp for employees was built not far from the test site. It was called Kantubek (Aralsk-7), and the number of its permanent residents numbered almost one and a half thousand people. We read further about what tests were carried out at the Barkhan training ground, and how the researchers and military personnel lived there, forced to live next door to such a dangerous place.

Since 1973, the test site on Vozrozhdeniya Island has become the main testing site for the Biopreparat enterprise, which was involved in the secret biological program of the USSR. Here they tested weapons based on a variety of pathogens - bacteria (anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, plague, typhus, Q fever), viruses (smallpox, Ebola, Marburg, Venezuelan equine encephalomyelitis) and toxins. At the test site, they also tested strains specially developed by Biopreparat that were resistant to all antibiotics known at that time. Horses, sheep, donkeys, and even monkeys specially imported for these purposes were used as experimental subjects.

Eyewitnesses claim that in the early 1990s the city was hastily evacuated. Some of the equipment was dismantled and taken away, the rest was buried on the island. After some time, due to the shallowing of the Aral Sea, Vozrozhdeniya Island ceased to be an island. During the time that passed after the closure of the test site and the town, the site was repeatedly visited by scientists and tourists.

What the city of Kantubek looked like during its heyday, in the late 1970s, and what is happening there decades after the evacuation.

Kantubek, 1979-1981