Mount Yamantaw
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Mount Yamantaw (Russian: гора Ямантау) is in the Ural Mountains, Bashkortostan, Russia. The name means bad mountain is the Bashkir language. It is also known as Mount Yamantau. It is suspected by the United States of being a large secret nuclear facility and/or bunker.
Large excavation projects have been observed by U.S. satellite imagery as recently as the late 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union. Two cities Beloretsk-15 and Beloretsk-16, are built on top of the facility, and possibly a third, Alkino-2, as well. They are said to house 30,000 workers each. Repeated U.S. questions have yielded twelve different responses from the Russian government regarding Mount Yamantaw[citation needed]. They have said it is a mining site, a repository for Russian treasures, a food storage area, and a bunker for leaders in case of nuclear war[citation needed].
The facility is designed to withstand up to six direct thermonuclear hits in the event of an attack[citation needed]. Large rail lines run into and out of the mountain[citation needed]. It is rumored that a direct private subway line from Moscow has been constructed to Mount Yamantaw, for the transportation of government officials and others who would be useful in a post-nuclear environment, such as nuclear scientists[citation needed]. This line would be over 800 mi long. In the event of nuclear war, scientists at Mount Yamantaw would be able to construct and launch new nuclear weapons, a key part of the former Soviet Union's nuclear strategy.
Mount Yamantaw is near one of Russia's last remaining nuclear labs, Chelyabinsk-70, raising speculation that it already houses nuclear weapons. Russian newspapers reported in 1996 that it is a part of the "Dead Hand" nuclear retaliatory command structure. Some U.S. intelligence sources say Mount Yamantaw is only one of 200 secret Russian nuclear bases upgraded over the past six years.
On a visit to Russia, former U.S. Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA), who had been following the story since 1995, asked about the mountain. "I went to Moscow and spoke with the deputy interior minister who was in charge of mining," Weldon said. "I asked him if there was any mining activity there. He just shook his head and said he had never heard of it. So I mentioned the other name the Russians use for it: Mezhgorye (Russian: Межгорье). He said he hadn't heard of that either. Then he sent an aide out to check. Twenty minutes later, the aide came back, visibly shaken. He said they couldn't say anything about it."
