Kantubek - Misplaced Pages

Ghost town on an island in the Aral Sea

Kantubek
Native name: Russian: Кантубек Uzbek: Kantubek Karakalpak: Qantubek
Satellite image of former Kantubek, November 1997

Geography
Location	Central Asia
Coordinates	45°09′17″N 59°20′06″E / 45.15472°N 59.33500°E / 45.15472; 59.33500
Demographics
Population	0 (2020)

Kantubek (Russian: Кантубек; Karakalpak: Qantubek) is a ghost town on Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea. The town is still found on maps but was abandoned in 1992 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It has since been demolished, and there are plans to make the area a national park. Kantubek used to have a population of approximately 1,500 and housed scientists and employees of the Soviet Union's top-secret Aralsk-7 biological weapons research and test site.

Brian Hayes, a biochemical engineer with the United States Defense Threat Reduction Agency, led an expedition in the spring and summer of 2002 to neutralize what was believed to be the world's largest anthrax dumping grounds. His team of 113 people neutralized between 100 and 200 tonnes of anthrax over a three-month period. The cost of the cleanup operation was approximately US$5 million.

References

Gorvett, Zaria (28 September 2017). "The deadly germ warfare island abandoned by the Soviets". BBC. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
Pala, Christopher (12 January 2003). "Anthrax Island". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
Pala, Christopher (22 March 2003). "Anthrax buried for good". The Washington Times. Retrieved 26 August 2020.

v t e Soviet program of biological weapons
Weaponized agents	Smallpox ANTHRAX Plague Botulism Brucellosis Glanders Q SEB Tularemia VEE MARV Red rust Rice blast Polonia
Researched agents	AHF AVIAN BHF CHIKV CCHF DENGUE EEE FMDV Hantavirus Lassa fever Melioidosis VND Plague Potato blight Penicillium Psittacosis Ricin RVF Rinderpest Typhus WEE Yellow fever ZIKV
Operations and projects	Project Bonfire Project Factor Kamera Ekologiya
Facilities and test sites	BIOPREPARAT SNOPB VECTOR Scientific and Production Base Laboratory B Berdsk Zone-3 BIOSINTZ Sverdlovsk-19 [ru] Aralsk-7 Institute of Virus Preparations Laboratory No. 1
Administrators	Lavrentiy Beria Yakov Fishman
Scientists	Kanatjan Alibekov Hans Born Pyotr Burgasov [ru] Alexander Catsch Igor Domaradsky [ru] Elena Fidler Yuri Ovchinnikov Vladimir Pasechnik Sergei Popov Nikolay Ressovsky Nikolai Ustinov Ivan Velikanov Marina Voroshilova Zinaida Yermolyeva
Accidents	Sverdlovsk anthrax leak Aral smallpox incident Aral ecological collapse
Related topics	Biological agent Biological warfare (BW) Biological Weapons Convention Entomological warfare U.S. biological weapons program History of biological warfare Sanitary epidemiological reconnaissance

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References