May 1st, 2014 , 10:06 am

On Saturday, April 26, the landing of the Ukrainian army attacked the checkpoint of the Donetsk People's Republic near the city of Soledar (Donetsk region). This was reported by RIA Novosti.

An important point for understanding the situation: the checkpoint covers the road from the Kharkiv-Rostov highway to the Volodarsky salt mine (10 km from Soledar, 40 km from Slavyansk). Since the times of the USSR, this mine has been turned into one of the largest military warehouses, where stocks of weapons from the First and Second World Wars are stored. The militias set up a roadblock to prevent National Guard militants from reaching the warehouses.

The battle near Soledar turned out to be short. Miners from the surrounding mines, armed with shovels, crowbars and pipes, began to flock to the checkpoint. Seeing the miners, the paratroopers preferred to plunge back into the helicopter and fly away, firing a few shots into the air as a warning.

Recall that after the wars in the first half of the twentieth century, a huge amount of weapons remained on the territory of the Soviet Union. At the same time, the legendary Kalashnikov assault rifle was adopted, and the need for the former arsenals disappeared. Some of the outdated small arms were melted down, others were given to developing countries, but a fair amount was mothballed just in case.

According to experts, from 1 to 3 million weapons are stored in the Soledar salt mine - Mosin's three-line guns, PPSh-41 and PPS-43 submachine guns, German MP-38/40 submachine guns, Thomson submachine guns 1928, Fedorov assault rifles, Mauser Kar98k, American Gapand M1, Mauser and Colt pistols, Degtyarev machine guns of the 1928 model, German MG-34, MG-42, and even the famous Maxim and Lewis machine guns. Plus, for each type of weapon there are a couple of million canned cartridges.

All "barrels" are in very good technical condition - in lubrication, even now take it and shoot. Salt mines are unique in that they maintain a constant temperature and humidity level, so the conditions for storing weapons there are ideal.

Now the warehouses of Soledar are guarded by a small detachment of servicemen of the Ukrainian army. In turn, the Ukrainian garrison is blocked by self-defense forces of the Donetsk Republic.

What is behind the battle near Soledar, are military depots of strategic interest?

If a weapon spreads across the territory of the state, it is always dangerous, - Viktor Litovkin, head of the ITAR-TASS military information editorial board, notes. - They can be used both for blackmail and for sabotage.

Despite their age, the weapons in the warehouse in Soledar are quite functional. Unless, of course, it has been stored properly all these years. By the way, the Mosin rifle is the best sniper weapon for today. Do you know why? Modern sniper rifles are usually automatic, and this negatively affects the accuracy of shooting. But the “three-ruler” is reloaded manually - like rifles in modern biathlon (automatic weapons are not used there either). If you put a modern optical sight on a Mosin rifle, you get a great sniper weapon.

"SP": - PPSh-41 and PPS-43 assault rifles are also effective weapons?

This is a good weapon, but only by the standards of World War II. Compared to modern designs, these are very inaccurate automata.

"SP": - And the machine guns "Maxim" and "Lewis"?

Also a good weapon - for yesterday's wars.

"SP": - Warehouses in Soledar are primarily of interest to the National Guard or to the militia of the Donetsk Republic?

They are of interest to both. When you don’t have real modern weapons in your hands, then outdated weapons that can still hit the enemy are never superfluous.

In fact, Soledar's arsenals are good for Gulyai-Polye - in the broadest sense of the word. Against regular modern armies, such weapons are ineffective, but in order to make the population dependent, or to arm self-defense units, they are quite good.

"SP": - The mine is guarded by the Ukrainian garrison. Is it possible to protect such a warehouse with small forces?

It all depends on what protection and defense systems the warehouse is equipped with. Sometimes even small forces can effectively keep such objects under control - remember the story of 300 Spartans who blocked the gorge and held the 40,000th army of the Persian king Xerxes? A military warehouse is a complex engineering structure, and when designing it, of course, defense issues are well thought out ...

I am not sure of the significant value of the weapons in the warehouse in Soledar, - said Anatoly Khramchikhin, deputy director of the Institute for Political and Military Analysis. - I think the landing force was going to strengthen the Ukrainian garrison guarding the arsenal, so that the weapons from the warehouse would not fall into the hands of the self-defense fighters of the South-East.

The fact is that the Ukrainian army itself also has enough more modern weapons - gigantic weapons depots have remained in Ukraine from Soviet times. With this weapon - if desired - you can equip the National Guard. But the self-defense forces of the Donetsk People's Republic are interested in the arsenal in Soledar.

I must say that the warehouse in Soledar is the only arsenal of weapons from the times of the First and Second World Wars known to me in the territory of the CIS. Indeed, in a salt mine, the conditions for storing weapons are ideal. But still, it is very old, although it can still work ...

15 years ago, the Russian army underwent a total inspection of weapons in storage: they opened, in particular, all boxes with machine guns, - says Anatoly Tsyganok, head of the Center for Military Forecasting of the Institute of Political and Military Analysis. - You will not believe: the machines of the Second World War were as good as new. In 1946-1947 they were mothballed - covered with grease. Their wooden stocks have rotted away, but the metal has remained untouched by time. I think the situation with weapons in Soledar is the same.

"SP": - It turns out that you can shoot from it without problems?

This weapon is reliable by the standards of World War II. If you hit the table with the butt of a PPSh assault rifle, holding the weapon vertically, the machine gun will most likely fire. It's such a design feature. But otherwise, the weapon is quite reliable.

Now Kyiv is seriously afraid that the arsenal in Soledar will be in the hands of the Donetsk People's Republic. Given the low combat readiness of the Ukrainian army, this could be fatal for Kyiv.

There is another significant point: practice shows that it is undesirable to use the army to perform police functions against its own population - such an army is demoralized, and subsequently fights badly. In my opinion, by throwing the army to the South-East, Kyiv made a strategic mistake. If it comes to taking the arsenal in Soledar by the South-East, the Ukrainian army, decomposed during the police operation, is unlikely to be able to resist the militias...

South-East of Ukraine: balance of power(on materials"Komsomolskaya Pravda")

Grouping of Ukrainian troops

Number: more than 15 thousand people;

Armament: 160 tanks, more than 230 infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers, more than 150 guns and mortars, aviation.

Self-defense units

Number: 2.5 thousand people;

Armament: about 200 units of automatic weapons (mostly captured from the regional police and security departments), several dozen units of smooth-bore hunting weapons, 6 BMDs (taken from Ukrainian paratroopers in Kramatorsk).

technolirik writes:

My post today is dedicated to an object that, despite the close work of metalworkers, is of great historical interest and was top secret until the 1990s, only 12 people from the top Polish leadership knew about Soviet nuclear weapons storage facilities located in Poland, and the Soviet Union itself until of his death, he denied the fact that his nuclear bombs were located in Poland, although this was a known fact for NATO intelligence back in the 1970s. In this post, I will show in detail what remains of the once impregnable military base, including the heart of the base - two underground bunkers that stored atomic bombs that could wipe Europe off the face of the earth. The post turned out to be voluminous and very interesting, so take your time and sit down comfortably.

The object we are looking for is located in the forest on the territory of the forestry. The fact that the forest in these places is not easy is evidenced by the Soviet concrete road departing from the highway - a clear sign that something interesting is hidden in the thicket. She will lead us to our destination.

Soon the concrete road ends next to a large area of ​​concrete slabs.


If you look closely at the uneven terrain, you can see among the trees and bushes man-made objects of clearly military purpose.


Also, the forest for hundreds of meters around is littered with evidence of the military past of these places.


The remains of the perimeter, which was triple here.


Also, not far from the bunkers, there are such pits, in the place of which until recently there were structures of a military unit.


Now it is impossible to determine what kind of buildings were located here.


The military unit was on the reserve of the Polish army until 2000, then the guard was removed, and in 2009, 300 hectares of the territory occupied by the unit were completely cleared of all structures and concrete buildings.


Even the foundations were not left of the buildings, so carefully the Poles cleaned the territory before transferring it to the forestry. Only numerous trenches, coils of barbed wire and a couple of bunkers - that's all that reminds of the once overprotected military unit.


In addition to the perimeter, numerous firing points and a concrete fence, the object surrounded the perimeter of the trench. Of all the above, he alone has survived to this day.


In some places you can still find concrete bridges through the trench for the passage of vehicles.



In addition to two underground storage facilities for nuclear weapons, there was another bunker of the "Granit" type. Actually, for the sake of it, we came here, but after combing dozens of hectares of forest, we did not find the slightest sign of granite, which looked like this:


It was only when preparing this post that I learned from Polish Internet sources that Granit was dismantled along with the rest of the territory in 2009. The "Granite" was built in 1975 from concrete tubing, sprinkled with earth on top. On both sides, the entrance to the vault was closed by massive armored doors. The diameter of the granite was 6 meters, the length was 30 meters. Tactical nuclear weapons were stored inside - artillery shells with nuclear warheads of 152 and 203 mm caliber. Each of the three Soviet nuclear storage facilities in Poland was completed with a Granit-type bunker in the mid-1970s.

To date, only two underground nuclear storage facilities have survived from the former facility, an overview of which this post is devoted to.


But I will start with the history of the emergence of Soviet nuclear bases in Poland, which dates back to the mid-1960s.

In 2007, the Polish Minister of Defense declassified documents from the Warsaw Pact, among which was found a folder containing materials related to Operation Vistula. These materials contained evidence that 180 Soviet nuclear warheads were located on the territory of the PRN, of which 14 had a yield of 500 kilotons of TNT (the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 15 kilotons). In the event of a military conflict with the NATO bloc, nuclear weapons were to be transferred to special missile and aviation units of the Polish Army, which were supposed to strike them at the states that were part of the NATO bloc. These 180 nuclear warheads were stored in three storage facilities specially built for this purpose, one of which we will consider today.

The portals to the vaults are filled with soil, but each of them has a hole through which you can easily get inside.


The construction of storage facilities for nuclear weapons was preceded by exercises conducted in 1965 by the Soviet Union to transport nuclear charges to western Poland under conditions of hostilities. All options were tried - by water, land and air, and they all ended in failure. The road took too long and the risk of destruction of transport by the enemy was too high. After these exercises, it became obvious that atomic weapons should be located in Poland near airfields and missile units in order to be ready for use as soon as possible. After that, it was decided to build storage facilities for Soviet nuclear weapons on the territory of five countries of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTS) - in Poland, the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary.

In February 1967, a meeting was held in Moscow between the Minister of Defense of the PPR, Marian Spychalski, and the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal Andrey Grechko, which resulted in the signing of an agreement on the construction of three arsenals for storing nuclear weapons in Poland. This document was top-secret - in Poland only 12 top military officials were admitted to this secret, whose names are stored in a folder with declassified documents, and the operation itself to deploy nuclear warheads on the western border of the empire received the code name "Vistula".

According to the ATS strategy and declassified documents, the Eastern Bloc planned to be the first to launch a nuclear strike on NATO states in the event of a military conflict. According to the calculations of the Kremlin strategists, the counterattack of the NATO countries was supposed to destroy up to 53% of the troops of the USSR and its allies. The western border of the empire in the Third World War was assigned the honorable role of taking the first blow and turning into "radioactive ashes." For more than two decades, the PPR has maintained that it does not have nuclear weapons on its territory and has actively sought the elimination of American military bases with nuclear weapons in western Germany in international forums.

It can be seen that the bunkers are often visited by diggers - on the embankment that closes the entrance, they even built original steps.


Based on the signed agreement, three nuclear storage facilities were built in the strictest secrecy in the years 1967-1970 near the western border of Poland, each of which was located next to military training grounds so as not to attract undue public attention. Each of the objects received its code name: 3001 was located near the Podborsko aviation training ground, 3002 near the Brzeźnica-Kolonia training ground and 3003 Templewo near the Wędrzyn training ground. At the same time, similar facilities were being built on the territory of other ATS countries - the GDR, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria, with which top-secret agreements were also signed.

The "3000 series" warehouses were built according to Soviet designs, but the construction work was carried out by Polish engineering troops who were told they were building secret communications bunkers. The equipment inside the vaults was brought in from the Soviet Union. The financial costs for the construction of storage facilities, which amounted to 180 million zlotys at the rate of 1970, were borne by Poland. After work was completed in January 1970, the finished facilities were handed over to the Soviet Army and they soon housed the Soviet nuclear arsenal, which had lain there for twenty years. Each of these warehouses was designed to store 60 nuclear warheads and was serviced exclusively by Soviet personnel. From 1970 to 1990, no Pole set foot on any of these objects.

Each of the two storage bunkers has a similar hall through which you can easily get inside.


The territory of the 3003 Templewo base covers an area of ​​​​about 300 hectares and, in addition to storage facilities, there were also barracks for the accommodation of service personnel and security guards, fuel storage facilities, garages for vehicles and armored vehicles, as well as leisure facilities for military personnel (sauna, cinema, etc.). While the base is officially referred to as Object 3003 Templewo in military records, the Russians referred to it as the "Wolfhound". The garrison of the facility consisted of 60 officers and 120 special forces soldiers. All this was protected from the outside world by a triple perimeter of live barbed wire, between the rows of which motion sensors were installed, as well as paths for sentries with dogs that regularly bypass the perimeter. Inside, numerous fortifications were built on the territory of the base, such as concrete pillboxes with machine guns, rifle trenches and anti-amphibious obstacles. In addition, inside the base space was divided into three sectors by a concrete fence with barbed wire on top, around each of the three storages, including "Granite". Inside the base, in case of a possible enemy invasion, there were 12 BMP-1 armored vehicles. All premises of the facility, as well as roads, were covered with camouflage nets, and coniferous trees were planted on the roof of the bunkers. Thus, it was impossible to detect the location of the object from the air or from a satellite.

In 2009, as part of the transfer of the territory of the base to the forestry, all buildings, except for the storage facilities themselves, were completely dismantled and not the slightest trace remained of them. You can see how the individual elements of the base looked in 2005 at the link.

The second storage bunker is completely identical to the first and is also covered with soil, in which a hole has been dug.


Both underground warehouses are located at a distance of 300 meters from each other so that their longitudinal axes are perpendicular. This was done to increase protection against a shock wave in the event of a nuclear explosion nearby. Due to this arrangement, no matter from which side the shock wave came, one bunker would have survived a nuclear strike anyway, if it had not fallen directly on the territory of the unit. Containers with warheads were delivered to the warehouse by trucks, and ramps built in front of the warehouses were used to load / unload cargo into the warehouse. The containers were moved manually on trolleys. Given that the weight of the largest warheads was more than 500 kg, considerable effort was required to transport them.

The main defense department of the country says that today the Russian armories are literally overflowing with machine guns, sniper rifles and pistols, which were produced more than 30 years ago. According to some reports, the number of small arms in military arsenals at the beginning of 2012 was about 16 million barrels, of which about 35-40% have exhausted their resource. Until the end of 2015, the department of Anatoly Serdyukov is going to dispose of about 4 million weapons.

This was ambiguously perceived in Russia. Some people are sure that maintaining and increasing the number of small arms in the country is a matter of national security, and therefore no disposal mechanisms for the military arsenal are simply not appropriate. Others say that the disposal of old models of small arms that have exhausted their resource a decade ago is long overdue.

There is a rather remarkable opinion of experts, which boils down to the fact that a reduction in the number of military small arms by 4 million is too small a figure. It is necessary to carry out a larger reduction, leaving no more than 3-4 million units in the spare arsenal.

All parties have their own arguments. Representatives of the first side are confident that the Ministry of Defense is involved in a dubious project that could affect the ability of the army to solve a whole range of tasks. The arguments in this case look something like this: small arms were created for the benefit of the Fatherland, and therefore their mass disposal is a blow to the security of the Russian army, which may face the need to participate in a large-scale conflict.

The Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper directly says that the large-scale disposal of small arms launched by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation is similar to an episode more than 100 years ago, when the Minister of War Sukhomlinov signed an order in which he allowed the disposal of about 400 thousand rifles of the Berdan No. 2 system . Adjutant General Sukhomlinov in 1910 stated that these weapons only clutter up warehouses, and therefore they must either be sold or disposed of. However, after the start of the First World War, problems with the armament of the Russian army appeared, which indicated the “flaw” of V.A. Sukhomlinov. Soon the head of the military ministry of imperial Russia was arrested and convicted of treason. Apparently, "MK" unequivocally makes it clear that the disposal of small arms of the present times can lead to the same consequences as the disposal after the order of V.A. Sukhomlinov in the second decade of the 20th century.

Supporters of plans for the disposal of small arms, announced by Anatoly Serdyukov, are not inclined to dramatize. In their opinion, it is simply incorrect to compare the situation in 1910 and 2012, especially since we are talking about the disposal of small arms that have exhausted their resource. According to these people, if the industry does not work for the real supply of the army, but only for packing warehouses, and without replacing old types of weapons with new ones, then there is no need to talk about modernizing the army.

Both positions deserve respect. Indeed, the permanent storage of old weapons does not fit into the modernization plans. However, before something is massively disposed of, it is necessary to analyze the manufacturing industry. If our enterprises are ready to fulfill all the points of the State Defense Order in terms of creating ultra-modern small arms capable of becoming competitive, including on the world market, then the disposal of old weapons does not look frightening. But after all, it often happens that we first carry out total destruction, and then conversations and reflections begin on the fact that the idea was not reasonable and, therefore, began to be implemented in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Well, and who will be accused of treason there, and whether there will be such a person in the event of unpleasant events, this is already a big question ...

In this regard, so that no ambiguous judgments arise on the announced occasion, the Ministry of Defense must guarantee that all the measures taken do not go beyond the modernization framework and do not affect the country's defense capability. And in this case there is only one guarantee - long-term contracts for the production of new high-precision, efficient and reliable weapons, which must be implemented without fail.

By the way, at a time when 16 million barrels are actually ownerless in army warehouses, in modern schools in the lessons of life safety (BZ) it was generally forbidden to conduct lessons devoted to the study of training weapons ... And if more recently a school graduate could add to his asset the fact that the lessons of basic military training revealed for him the basics of handling small arms, today many older students have seen a Kalashnikov assault rifle, perhaps depicted in numerous computer games ...

After the collapse of the USSR, the young states inherited many once powerful military and scientific facilities. The most dangerous and secret objects were urgently mothballed and evacuated, and many others were simply abandoned. They were left to rust: after all, the economy of most newly-made states simply could not pull their maintenance, they turned out to be of no use to anyone. Now some of them are a kind of mecca for stalkers, "tourist" objects, visiting which is associated with considerable risk.

"Resident Evil": a top-secret complex on the island of Renaissance in the Aral Sea

During Soviet times, on an island in the middle of the Aral Sea, there was a complex of military bioengineering institutes involved in the development and testing of biological weapons. It was a facility of such a degree of secrecy that most of the employees who were involved in the maintenance infrastructure of the landfill simply did not know exactly where they worked. On the island itself, there were buildings and laboratories of the Institute, vivariums, equipment warehouses. Very comfortable conditions were created in the town for researchers and the military to live in conditions of complete autonomy. The island was carefully guarded by the military on land and at sea.

In 1992, the entire facility was urgently mothballed and abandoned by all the inhabitants, including the security of the facility. For some time it remained a "ghost town" until it was scouted by marauders, who for more than 10 years removed everything that was thrown there from the island. The fate of the secret developments carried out on the island and their results - cultures of deadly microorganisms - still remains a mystery.

Heavy-duty "Russian woodpecker": radar "Duga", Pripyat

The Duga over-the-horizon radar station is a radar station created in the USSR for the early detection of launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles by launching flashes (based on the reflection of radiation by the ionosphere). This gigantic structure took 5 years to build and was completed in 1985. The cyclopean antenna, 150 meters high and 800 meters long, consumed a huge amount of electricity, so it was built near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

For the characteristic sound on the air emitted during operation (knock), the station was named Russian Woodpecker (Russian Woodpecker). The installation was built to last for centuries and could successfully function to this day, but in reality, the Duga radar station worked for less than a year. The object stopped its work after the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant.

Underwater shelter of submarines: Balaklava, Crimea

According to people in the know, this top-secret submarine base was a transit point where submarines, including nuclear ones, were repaired, refueled and replenished with ammunition. It was a gigantic complex built to last for centuries, capable of withstanding a nuclear strike, under its arches up to 14 submarines could be accommodated at the same time. This military base was built in 1961 and abandoned in 1993, after which it was dismantled piece by piece by local residents. In 2002, it was decided to arrange a museum complex on the ruins of the base, but so far things have not gone beyond words. However, local diggers willingly take everyone there.

“Zone” in Latvian forests: Dvina missile silo, Kekava, Latvia

Not far from the capital of Latvia in the forest are the remains of the Dvina missile system. Built in 1964, the facility consisted of 4 launch silos with a depth of about 35 meters and underground bunkers. A significant part of the premises is currently flooded, and visiting the launcher without an experienced stalker guide is not recommended. Also dangerous are the remains of poisonous rocket fuel - heptyl, according to some information, remaining in the depths of the launch silos.

"Lost World" in the Moscow region: Lopatinsky phosphorite mine

The Lopatinskoye phosphorite deposit, 90 km from Moscow, was the largest in Europe. In the 30s of the last century, it began to be actively developed in an open way. At the Lopatinsky quarry, all the main types of bucket-wheel excavators were used - moving on rails, moving on caterpillars, and excavators walking with an "added" step. It was a gigantic development with its own railroad. After 1993, the field was shut down, leaving all expensive imported special equipment there.

The mining of phosphorites has led to the emergence of an incredible "unearthly" landscape. The long and deep trenches of the quarries are mostly flooded. They are interspersed with high sandy ridges, turning into flat, like a table, sandy fields, black, white and reddish dunes, pine forests with regular rows of planted pines. Giant excavators - "absetzers" resemble alien ships rusting on the sands in the open. All this makes the Lopatinsky Quarries a kind of natural and man-made "reserve", a place of increasingly lively pilgrimage for tourists.

"Well to hell": Kola superdeep well, Murmansk region

The Kola superdeep well is the deepest in the world. Its depth is 12,262 meters. It is located in the Murmansk region, 10 kilometers west of the city of Zapolyarny. The well was drilled in the northeastern part of the Baltic Shield exclusively for research purposes in the place where the lower boundary of the earth's crust comes close to the earth's surface. In the best years, 16 research laboratories worked at the Kola superdeep well, they were personally supervised by the Minister of Geology of the USSR.

Many interesting discoveries were made at the well, for example, the fact that life on Earth arose, it turns out, 1.5 billion years earlier than expected. At depths where it was believed that there was no, and could not be, organic matter, 14 species of fossilized microorganisms were found - the age of the deep layers exceeded 2.8 billion years. In 2008, the facility was abandoned, the equipment was dismantled, and the destruction of the building began.

As of 2010, the well is mothballed and is gradually being destroyed. The cost of restoration is about one hundred million rubles. There are many implausible legends about the “well to hell” associated with the Kola super-deep well, from the bottom of which the cries of sinners are heard, and the hellish flame melts the drills.

"Russian HAARP" - multifunctional radio complex "Sura"

In the late 1970s, as part of geophysical research, a multifunctional radio complex "Sura" was built near the city of Vasilsursk, Nizhny Novgorod Region, to influence the Earth's ionosphere with powerful HF radio emission. The Sura complex, in addition to antennas, radars and radio transmitters, includes a laboratory complex, an economic unit, a specialized transformer electrical substation. The once secret station, where a number of important studies are still being carried out today, is a thoroughly rusted and battered, but still not completely abandoned object. One of the important areas of research carried out at the complex is the development of methods for protecting the operation of equipment and communications from ion disturbances in the atmosphere of various nature.

Currently, the station operates only 100 hours per year, while at the famous American HAARP facility, experiments are carried out for 2000 hours over the same period. The Nizhny Novgorod Radiophysical Institute does not have enough money for electricity - for one day of operation, the equipment of the test site deprives the complex of the monthly budget. The complex is threatened not only by lack of money, but also by theft of property. Due to the lack of proper protection, "hunters" for scrap metal now and then make their way to the territory of the station.

"Oil Rocks" - a seaside city of oil producers, Azerbaijan

This settlement on overpasses, standing right in the Caspian Sea, is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest oil platforms. It was built in 1949 in connection with the beginning of oil production from the bottom of the sea around the Black Stones - a stone ridge barely protruding from the surface of the sea. There are drilling rigs connected by overpasses, on which the settlement of oil field workers is located. The settlement grew, and during its heyday included power plants, nine-story dormitory buildings, hospitals, a cultural center, a park with trees, a bakery, a lemonade production workshop, and even a mosque with a full-time mullah.

The length of overpass streets and lanes of the sea city reaches 350 kilometers. There was no permanent population in the city, and up to 2,000 people lived there as part of a shift shift. The period of decline of the Oil Rocks began with the advent of cheaper Siberian oil, which made offshore mining unprofitable. However, the sea town still did not become a ghost town; in the early 2000s, major repairs began there and even began laying new wells.

Failed Collider: Abandoned Particle Accelerator, Protvino, Moscow Region

In the late 1980s, the construction of a huge particle accelerator was planned in the Soviet Union. The Protvino scientific center near Moscow, the city of nuclear physicists, was in those years a powerful complex of physics institutes, where scientists from all over the world came. A ring tunnel 21 kilometers long was built, lying at a depth of 60 meters. He is now near Protvino. They even began to bring equipment into the already finished accelerator tunnel, but then a series of political upheavals erupted, and the domestic “hadron collider” remained unmounted.

The institutes of the city of Protvino maintain the satisfactory condition of this tunnel - an empty dark ring underground. The lighting system works there, there is a functioning narrow-gauge railway line. All sorts of commercial projects were proposed, such as an underground amusement park or even a mushroom farm. However, scientists have not yet given up this object - perhaps they are hoping for the best.