Vozrozhdeniya island

Vozrozhdeniya

Native name: Ostrov Vozrozhdeniya
Geography
Location	Central Asia
Country
Kazakhstan  Uzbekistan
Demographics
Population	1,500 (as of 1980s)

Rebirth Island joins the mainland in mid-2001.

Vozrozhdeniya Island (Russian: Остров Возрождения, Ostrov Vozrozhdeniya) — also known as Rebirth Island or Renaissance Island — was an island in the Aral Sea during the Soviet Union. Now the former island is owned by Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (as of the early 1980s). In 1954, a biological weapons test site called Aralsk-7 was built there and on the neighboring Komsomolskiy Island.^[1]

Geography

Vozrozhdeniya was once a small island; however, the island began to grow in size in the 1960s as the Aral Sea dried up due to its feeder rivers being dammed by the Soviet Union for agricultural projects.^[2] The shrinkage of the Aral continued and accelerated, and Vozrozhdeniya became a peninsula in mid-2001 when the channel to its south dried up completely and became a land bridge.^[3] Upon the disappearance of the Southeast Aral Sea in 2008, Vozrozhdeniya effectively ceased to exist as a distinct geographical feature. It briefly reemerged as a peninsula in 2010 when the eastern basin was flooded by heavy snow melt.

History

Located in the central Aral Sea, Vozrozhdeniya Island was one of the main laboratories and testing sites for the Soviet Union's Microbiological Warfare Group. In 1948, a top-secret Soviet bioweapons laboratory was established here, which tested a variety of agents, including anthrax, smallpox, plague, brucellosis, and tularemia.^[4] In 1971, a release of weaponized smallpox from the island sickened ten people, of whom 3 died.

In the 1990s, word of the island's danger was spread by Soviet defectors, including Ken Alibek, the former head of the Soviet Union's bioweapons program.^[5] It was here, according to recently released documents, that anthrax spores and bubonic plague bacilli were made into weapons and stored. The main town on the island was Kantubek, which lies in ruins today, but once had approximately 1,500 inhabitants.

The laboratory staff members abandoned the small island in 1992.^[6] Many of the containers holding the spores were not properly stored or destroyed, and over the last decade many of these containers have developed leaks.

In 2002, through a project organized and funded by the United States with Uzbekistan assistance, 10 anthrax burial sites were decontaminated.^[7]

In popular culture

• In the video game Command & Conquer: Generals, the island was under U.S. occupation but was captured by the fictional Global Liberation Army. The mission is set in the future where the island was surrounded by sea, suggesting the Aral Sea was reflooded in the story.
• The area and its former Soviet biological weapons base and laboratories was featured in a mission in the video game, Call Of Duty: Black Ops.
• The area was the primary setting in the video game Residue.

See also

• Biopreparat
• Ken Alibek
• Kantubek
• Gruinard Island in Scotland, another location formerly used for anthrax testing.

References

External links

• Youtube: Going To Extremes: Voz-Island (Part 1)
• Youtube: Going To Extremes: Voz-Island (Part 2)
• Welcome to Anthrax Island - Guardian Unlimited
• Rebirth Island joins the mainland (2000 and 2001 satellite images)
• NASA satellite image comparison between 1989 and 2003
• Biological Decontamination of Vozrozhdeniye Island: The U.S.-Uzbek Agreement
• Former Soviet Biological Weapons Facilities in Kazakhstan: Past, Present, and Future
• 1960's Satellite images of Soviet laboratory
• Top Inhospitable Places in the World

Coordinates: 45°09′N 59°19′E / 45.150°N 59.317°E / 45.150; 59.317