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Gruinard Island
Gruinard Island lies in Gruinard Bay on the west coast of Ross and Cromarty, approximately halfway between Gairloch and Ullapool. The small, oval-shaped island covers an area of about 484 acres (196 ha), it measures approximately 1.2 miles (2 km) long by 0.6 miles (1 km) wide, and sits just under 0.7 miles (1.1 km) offshore.
It seems that in 1881 six people lived on the island, and the ruins of cottages and field walls can be found on the land. There do not appear to be any records of when the last inhabitant left the island, but by the 1930s it was being used solely for sheep grazing, rough shooting, fishing, collecting birds eggs, and as a popular spot for local picnics. Other than the sheep, the island's population comprised of rabbits, and visiting birds.
The uninhabited island became well known after World War II, having been chosen as the test site for lethal germ warfare tests, which led to it being quarantined for 48 years due to the resultant contamination.
Taken in 1981, the image to the right is significant as the island would still then have been contaminated, with official warning signs in place to discourage visitors:
GRUINARD ISLAND THIS ISLAND IS GOVERNMENT PROPERTY UNDER EXPERIMENT THE GROUND IS CONTAMINATED WITH ANTHRAX AND DANGEROUS LANDING IS PROHIBITED BY ORDER .1981. |
The dots on either side of the date in the last line indicate that the years was printed on a small replaceable panel. Presumably some unfortunate Government employee had to visit the island and update this panel every year for as long as the order remained in place.
Scientists recorded their work on film, but this material remained classified until 1997.
Anthrax
Anthrax is a serious infectious disease caused by bacteria known as Bacillus anthracis. It can be found naturally in soil (where it can lie dormant for years) and commonly affects domestic and wild animals around the world. People can become infected and get sick with anthrax if they come into contact with infected animals or contaminated animal products, and severe illness in both humans and animals can result.
Anthrax is not contagious, so cannot be 'caught' like cold or flu, but may be contracted by skin contact, ingestion, inhalation, or injection.
It was once not uncommon for animal workers to become infected with anthrax through skin contact, and this was referred to as woolsorter's disease and resulted in a boil which eventually formed a black centre.
Domestic and wild animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, antelope, and deer can become infected when they breathe in or ingest spores in contaminated soil, plants, or water. Routine vaccination can help prevent outbreaks in areas where domestic animals have had anthrax.
Humans can become infected when anthrax spores enter the body and become active. No longer dormant, the bacteria can begin to multiply, spread out into the body, produce toxins (poisons), and cause severe illness.
Least dangerous is skin infection via a cut or scrape, provided it is recognised and treated. Infection usually develops from 1 to 7 days after exposure.
Next is intestinal anthrax, where spores enter the body by consuming food or drink that is contaminated with spores. While this is nearly always fatal, it is also rare.
Inhalation is the most deadly, with some 95% of such cases proving fatal, even with medical treatment. Once anthrax spores have been inhaled death usually occurs within seven days, due to causes such as internal bleeding, blood poisoning, or even meningitis. Symptoms of the initial infection might include mild fever, malaise, fatigue, coughing, sometimes accompanied by a feeling of pressure on the chest. Initial symptoms may appear to be a common cold, with inflammation of the lungs, which then become more severe. Infection usually develops within a week of exposure, but can take up to 2 months.
Injection is a more recent means of infection, seen in heroin users. Although it is similar to skin infection, it can be deeper (spreading faster) and hidden. Other infections resulting from this type of drug use may also hide the symptoms.
Biological weapons experts have suggested that 100 kg of anthrax sprayed on a major city would be sufficient to kill more than 3 million people.
Early germ warfare
As early as the 1930s, the British had learned several foreign nations were involved in activities potentially related to germ warfare, more generally referred to as biological warfare in later years. As World War II began, further intelligence was received which suggested that the Axis powers were pursuing similar research with the aim of on acquiring such a capability, and may even have succeeded in developing it. As the war continued, and Nazi forces seemed to be making steady progress across Europe and towards Russia, Winston Churchill concluded that there was a need to develop a germ warfare weapon. He would have been well aware of the drawbacks of such a weapon, after the use of gas during World War I, but wanted to have such a weapon available to act as a deterrent, to be used in the event that Hitler ever chose to use such a weapon first. The War Cabinet decided that investigations had to be carried out to determine the feasibility of such biological or germ weapons, and that the British had to able to threaten retaliation in the event that such weapons were used against their country. The British device would be referred to as the N-Bomb.
World War II germ warfare tests
In late 1940, a highly secret autonomous group known as the Biology Department, Porton (BDP), was set up within the Chemical Defence Experimental Station (CDES) at Porton Down, mandated to assess the feasibility and hazard of biological warfare, and to consider the means for retaliation should this form of warfare be employed against the British. Porton Down had already carried out trials with harmless simulants released from bombs on its range, and demonstrated how even a small device could deliver a significant number of inhalable particles 250 yards from the explosion. Laboratory test carried out with animals had also confirmed that inhalation of the dispersed material caused fatalities in several species of animal, proving that the material remained viable after the explosion.
In 1942, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) purchased the island of Gruinard for £500, when it was immediately declared to be a Prohibited Area, and all visitors banned. The island was designated X-Base.
Test on the island were carried out by experts from Porton Down, involving the detonation of small explosives charges loaded with anthrax spores. It should be noted that the island was never bombed from the air, as suggested by some stories. This would have been far too risky, and resulted in an uncontrolled release of the spores, and was not the aim of the tests.
In order to determine the effect of the spores on living animals, a flock of 60-80 sheep was purchased from a local farm and transported to the island. There, the animals were restrained in various ways to ensure they would be in the path of the spores when they were released.
This short excerpt, from a much longer American report on biological warfare (Department of the Army, Food and Drug Administration, Biological Warfare and Terrorism: The Military and Public Health Response - a six-part set - AVA20825VNB6, 2000)⚠ [^Biological Warfare and Terrorism: The Military and Public Health Response (Part 1 of 6) : Department of the Army : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive Retrieved April 26, 2013.^]
, shows the salient points:
(:youtube TIpB2gV1iyk:)
Gruinard Island Anthrax Biological Warfare Experiment Great Britain 1942
Also, an unidentified American documentary, which included a section on Gruinard:
(:youtube -vkYjPtvbUY:)
Anthrax exposed, Scottish Highlands
The following declassified film was made by MRD Porton Down from a silent film taken during the trials by an American observer - Lieutenant Calderon Howe of the US Navy, then serving with the Special Projects Division of the Army Chemical Warfare Service at Fort Detrick and at Porton Down.
The film is part of the Imperial War Museum Film and Video Archive and it is due to their foresight and diligence that the original has been preserved for posterity. This version is posted purely for educational and research purposes. Copyright Imperial War Museum. The IWM catalogue number is DED 252
(:youtube 6Mykjxkwwe0:)
Gruinard Island X-Base Anthrax Trials 1942-43
A small controlled explosion was used to disperse the spores. This had two purpose, to disperse the spores so the effectiveness of their spread could be assesses, and to discover whether or not the spores would survive the blast pressure and temperature of the explosion.
There was no immediate effect on the animals, but after three days they began to collapse and die, with blood oozing from their bodies shortly before death occurred.
The trials were carried out during the summers of 1942 and 1943. The first year saw trials with a 30 pound bomb, followed in the second year with a 4 pound bomb. The smaller bomb had been designed to be part of a cluster bomb which contained more than 100 of the 4 pound bombs.
The tests were successful in that they confirmed that the spores could be dispersed and would infect the sheep, and that the material remained viable after the dispersal explosion. However, the island was too small to accommodate larger and more ambitious tests, and was abandoned soon after these tests were completed. By the time the tests were completed, D-Day was approaching, and the need for such a weapon was receding, as it was of little use on the battlefield.
Like the gasses used during World War I, this new biological weapon was found to be similarly difficult to control. It's dispersal was dependent on the weather, and being spread by the wind meant it could change direction unexpectedly and without warning. Such attacks could be turned back on their originators, making such weapons almost as deadly to them as their intended target.
Anthrax had also proven to have another disadvantage. Unlike a modern chemical or biological weapon, which is designed to self-destruct after a few hours or days and allow personnel into the area, anthrax spores persist in ground after use, for decades, rendering it lethal and denying access almost permanently. To be useful, such weapons need to be able to be disabled after use, either by design, or later neutralisation, thereby allowing access to the area they were used on.
The project had been a joint effort involving Britain, Canada, and the United States, but the end of World War II also ended any urgency to acquire a tactical biological weapon.
After the animal tests had been completed on the island, stories of dead sheep being washed ashore began to appear. At the time, these were attributed to a Greek freighter in the area, and it was said that Greek sailors had been throwing infected carcasses overboard. The British Government even reimbursed local farmers who had lost stock, on behalf of the Greek Government. However, this was actually a cover story prepared by the security service, to hide any evidence of the real work being carried out on the island.
In reality, once the tests had been completed, the carcasses had been collected and placed at the base of a cliff on Gruinard. The plan had been to bury them by using explosives to drop the cliff, but the plan went wrong, and the force of the explosion blew some of the infected carcases out to sea, where they were lost. When reports of animals dying on the mainland began to circulate, the security services created the story about the Greek sailors, amidst fears that news of the lethal testing which had been carried out on the island would lead to panic.
1943 Mainland anthrax outbreak
Many accounts of the 1942 and 1943 anthrax tests carried out on Gruinard include a reference to an anthrax outbreak in 1943, on the west coast of the Scottish mainland facing Gruinard. While this is shared between these online articles, there does not appear to be an independent report or account dealing with only that outbreak, or giving any details of where it occurred, or what the outcome was.
The same articles give this mainland outbreak as the reason why testing was stopped in 1943.
It is certainly a possibility, since the tests were being carried out using airborne spores, and these remain dormant and resistant to most methods of destroying them, meaning that they could easily have reached the mainland and caused infection.
Cattle cake infection
In order to meet the War Cabinet requirement for a means of retaliation, Porton Down produced some five million linseed-oil based cattle cakes which had been filled with deadly anthrax spores, for use in Operation Vegetarian. The plan was to use bombers to drop the cattle cakes over Germany using specially designed containers, each holding 400 cakes. The plan intended for the disease to destroy the German beef and dairy herds, and possibly even spread into the human population. Preparations for the operation were not completed until early 1944. It was essential that weapon be deployed during the summer months, when the cattle were on the pastures. By then, Allied troops had landed in Europe, and it had become clear that the war could be won using conventional means. The plan was abandoned. ⚠ [^Millions were in germ war tests | Politics | The Observer Retrieved April 26, 2013.^]
The stockpile of infected cattle cake was kept at Porton Down until the end of World War II, when it was destroyed by incineration.
Hitler assassination plan
In June 1944, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) devised a plan to assassinate Hitler by sending a lone agent into Germany to contaminate his clothing with anthrax spores, but the plan was never approved because of concerns that killing Hitler would only have succeeded in turning him into an unintended martyr. One British officer argued against the plot stating that, "It would almost certainly canonize [Hitler] and give birth to the myth that Germany would have been saved if he had lived."
Postwar consequences of the tests
After World War II ended, the owner sought the return of the island in 1945. However, the Ministry of Supply recognized the extent of the contamination of the island as a result of the experiments, and that it could not be de-requisitioned until deemed safe.
In 1946, the Government agreed to acquire the island and responsibility for it. Consequently, the owner or his/her heirs and beneficiaries would then be able to repurchase the island for the original sale price of £500 when it was declared "Fit for habitation by man and beast".
Between 1947 and 1968, the island was visited by staff from the Microbiological Research Establishment (MRE) at Porton Down, to collect soil samples for assay. No reduction in the level of contamination was found over that period.
In 1979, the Chemical Defence Establishment (CDE) took over responsibility for this work, when a small joint CDE/MRE team carried out a survey, followed by a more detailed series of CDE surveys during the early 1980s. A study was also undertaken into possible means of decontaminating the land. Improved assay techniques, together with the more detailed surveys revealed that the area contaminated by the anthrax spores was not widespread, but had in fact been effectively limited to the area of the World War II experiments around where the spores had been released, and extended only to an area of about three acres.
This would tie in with local accounts given to the BBC, such as from fisherman Alexander Wiseman, who admitted to having passed the official warning signs, "I've been there many times to recover loose buoys which had washed up on the beach. I didn't think anything of it." The contractor tasked with decontaminating the island said " I was told people had even had picnics on Gruinard's beach," adding, "We were vaccinated against anthrax before we went, but were actually at greater risk from the formaldehyde which is quite difficult to deal with."
Odd B&W photographs of Gruinard
While searching for information relating to Gruinard two B&W photographs were found online, but the sources given for them were found to be dead links, so nothing is known about them (unless you know better, and would email detail to the Admin).
The first image appears to show the Government warning sign dated 1978, but has an odd white area to the left. This has obscured/deleted the scene in the background and appears to be behind the sign, which is unaffected by this white area. While the sign appears to be part of the original image, there is a definite vertical line or distortion along the vertical boundary between the white area and the remainder of the scenery in the background. This artefact does not appear anywhere along the edges of the sign where it meets the white area, so has to be taken as an indication that some sort of manipulation has taken place.
One other aspect of this image begs further scrutiny - as shown, the sign is facing INLAND, an aspect that seems a little strange, since the signs were presumably placed to deter those who may have approached the island with intentions to land there. The positioning of the sign, if genuine, is therefore less than ideal since, in order to be effective, it would surely need to face SEAWARD, otherwise visitors would have to land simply to read it, and only then, when it is too late, learn they were prohibited.
With respect to this aspect, period films taken from boats approaching the island do show the signs, and they are FACING those vessels as would be expected.
The second image shares the same anomaly as first, in so far as it appears to be an approximately similar view, and depicts a sign facing INLAND, yet intended to warn those approaching from the SEAWARD side that landings are prohibited.
It seems odd that a hand would appear to have been deliberately positioned over the date appearing on the sign, blocking it from view. This would be a key detail in any actual visit to prove when it took place.
The two 'people' appearing in this image are not protected from the real danger of anthrax spore, airborne infection, and appear to be in industrial plastic coveralls and wearing heavy industrial rubber gloves, leaving their faces open to exposure and offering no respiratory protection. In detail, the one on the left appears to have his nose poking out of the opening for the face.
The low resolution of this image makes detail hard to discern, but the two 'people' look a little odd and either out of place, or perhaps artificial. Their stance is almost mannequin-like.
It may just be an effect of the low quality image, but a close look at the hand over the date on the sign suggest none of the fingers are bent, or there is any suggestion of pointing. Zooming into the wrist area shows the darker hand/glove looking as if it was on a stick emerging from the white sleeve, and a small part of the stick (or perhaps rod) is exposed in the gap between the sleeve and the hand/glove.
But this has to be said to be an observation made when looking closely at a fairly low resolution version of this image, so may only be a result of the image being compressed and degraded.
Operation Dark harvest and environmental terrorism
The anthrax contamination led to one of the earliest examples of "environmental terrorism".
In 1981, a group threatened to leave to leave samples of soil "at appropriate points that will ensure the rapid loss of indifference of the government and the equally rapid education of the general public". The group claimed that the soil had been collected from Gruinard by a team of microbiologists from two universities, and went on to say that with the assistance of locals, they had landed on the island and collected a total of 300 lb (140 kg) of contaminated soil from the ground.
Through messages sent to newspapers under the heading Operation Dark Harvest, the group demanded that the Government decontaminated the island, and threatened to leave samples of the soil they had collected "at appropriate points that will ensure the rapid loss of indifference of the government and the equally rapid education of the general public". On the same day that the messages were sent, a sealed package containing soil was left outside Porton Down. When tested, it was found to contain anthrax bacilli.
A few days later, another sealed package of soil was left in Blackpool, where the Conservative Party (then in power) was holding its annual party conference. The soil in this package was not found to contain anthrax when tested, but officials said that the soil it contained was similar to that found on the Gruinard.
BBC Documentary
Broadcast in 2022, The Mystery of Anthrax Island.
Available on iPlayer: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00151xw
Anthrax is a rare disease caused by naturally occurring bacteria which can form spores that are fatal to humans and animals. During the Second World War, government scientists from Porton Down attempted to weaponise anthrax, creating a deadly strain that they then tested on Gruinard Island, an uninhabited remote site off the coast of Scotland.
This proved disastrous for Gruinard and, from 1942 onwards, people were forbidden from setting foot on the island. Signs were erected on the shore and the adjacent mainland, and Gruinard was dubbed The Island of Death or Anthrax Island.
This documentary reveals an extraordinary Scottish story from 1981, when a shadowy group called the Dark Harvest Commandos claimed to have landed on the island and removed 300lbs worth of infected soil.
They wrote a dramatic letter explaining and justifying their actions, which was sent to various newspapers and the BBC. In the letter, they explained their campaign to clean up Gruinard had begun with a package of island soil dumped outside Porton Down.
Nobody knew who they were or if they were serious.
Following the documentary, the Ministry of Defence made a statement:
Gruinard Island was decontaminated and deemed safe in 1987. As part of the sale of the island in 1990, the MoD agreed to undertake further workadd , if necessary, within 150 years of the sale.
Decontamination
In 1986, a major operation commenced in order to decontaminate Gruinard and make it habitable.
This began with spraying the area to be decontaminated with a herbicide, then burning off the dead vegetation was then burnt off to ensure that the subsequent application of decontaminant would reach all areas of the surface. This involved the spraying of the entire island with 280 tonnes of formaldehyde solution diluted in 2,000 tonnes of seawater, and removing the most contaminated areas of topsoil which lay around the original wartime dispersal site. Perforated tubing was used to ensure that 50 litres of solution were applied to every square metre being treated, with the area being divided into sections which were treated in a set procedure.
In October 1968, the effectiveness of the decontamination process was assessed by taking two duplicate sets of soil samples. One was tested by CDE at Porton Down, the other by the Central Veterinary Laboratory at Weybridge, Surrey. The samples were taken to a depth of 50 cm, or to bedrock, with some 130 sites were sampled by taking twin cores, each being analysed as a number of slices. This showed that the decontamination treatment had been almost completely effective, with anthrax spores detected only in small quantities in a few places. These specific areas were treated in July 1987, followed by further soil sampling in October 1987. No traces of anthrax spores were found.
Blood from indigenous rabbits on the island was also tested for anthrax antibodies. No such antibodies were found.
Following these measures, it was recommended that a flock of sheep be left on the island, and monitored to determine its state of health. A local farmer grazed part of his flock of sheep on the island for six months when 40 sheep were grazed on Gruinard Island from May to October 1987. The sheep were inspected monthly by the District Veterinary Officer, and returned to the mainland in October 1987 in excellent condition.
On April 24, 1990, 48 years after the island had been quarantined, and 4 years after the decontamination works had been completed, junior Defence Minister Michael Neubert visited the island and removed the safety signs, indicating that the island had been rendered safe
On May 1, 1990, as per the original requisition order of World War II, the island was sold back to the heirs of the original owner for the original sale price of £500.
Starting in 1986 a determined effort was made to decontaminate the island, with 280 tonnes of formaldehyde solution diluted in seawater being sprayed over all 196 hectares of the island and the worst-contaminated topsoil around the dispersal site being removed. A flock of sheep was then placed on the island and remained healthy. On 24 April 1990, after 48 years of quarantine and 4 years after the solution being applied, junior defence minister Michael Neubert visited the island and announced its safety by removing the warning signs.[8] On 1 May 1990, the island was repurchased by the heirs of the original owner for the original sale price of £500.[10]
Doubts about the decontamination
When the official assurances were issued regarding the safety of the island following the completion of the decontamination, the Glasgow Herald newspaper reported that a leading archaeologist was unconvinced by the announcement.
Dr Brian Moffat, then archaeological director of an excavation of a medieval hospital near Edinburgh, said his team had encountered buried anthrax spores which had survived for hundreds of years, and told the paper: "I would not go walking on Gruinard. If anthrax is still active at Soutra, there is no reason to suppose it has not survived on more recent sites. It is a very resilient and deadly bacterium." ⚠ [^BBC News | SCOTLAND | Britain's 'Anthrax Island' Retrieved April 26, 2013.^]
American visit 2001
Gruinard Island was eventually decontaminated with 280 tons of formaldehyde solution and declared safe in the 1990’s.
In 2001, Inside Edition sent me to Gruinard Island after the anthrax attacks in America to see if any of the hearty anthrax spores may have survived.
We wore HAZMAT suits and full-face respirator masks.
Hazardous materials expert PJ Richardson took a soil sample that was analyzed and came back negative.
(:youtube hsOJRxs_dTI:)
Anthrax Island - Inside Edition (2001)
Anthrax vaccine
According to a BBC report, it was announced in July 2001 that a team led by a Scottish scientist had produced a vaccine for anthrax.
Sir William Stewart, who led the research group, said the vaccine should act as a safeguard for the future. Production of the vaccine followed two years work at Porton Down, the Government's chemical and biological warfare research centre.
2019 Scotsman article
In 2019, The Scotsman ran an article summarising the history of the island.
There is little life on the Scottish island of Gruinard - which was known for years as the Island of Death.
Even today, there are seldom any visitors to the isle apart from perhaps the odd curious kayaker lapping at its shores or a fisherman collecting a stranded buoy.
Gruinard has effectively been a no go zone for almost 80 years after it became a top-secret UK government test centre for biological weapons during World War Two.
It was here that anthrax bombs were dropped on sheep to determine how harmful the highly infectious disease could be in a warfare situation.
In 1942, British military scientists from Porton Down ventured to Gruinard which sits off the mainland between Achiltibuie and Laide in Wester Ross.
⚠ [^The Scottish ‘Anthrax Island’ poisoned by the government Retreived 04 April 2019.^]
Soviet anthrax research
Gruinard was not the only island contaminated by biological or germ warfare tests, and a former Soviet island has been confirmed as a site where similar testing was carried out.
Kantubek
Kantubek was a town on Vozrozhdeniya Island (Uzbekistan) in the Aral Sea. The town once had a population of about 1,500, and was used by the former Soviet Union to test biological weapons. It is reported that such experiments were being conducted there on monkeys, as far back as the early 1930s.
The town can still found on maps, but is described as being uninhabited and in ruins.
Vozrozhdeniya Island
Vozrozhdeniya Island, also known as Rebirth Island, was an island in the Aral Sea, an inland sea within the former Soviet Union.
Once a small island, Vozrozhdeniya began to grow in size during the 1960s as the Aral Sea began to dry up as the rivers which drained onto it were gradually dammed by the Soviet Union for agricultural projects. This process continued until Vozrozhdeniya became a peninsula in mid-2001, when the channel to its south dried up completely and became a causeway or land bridge.
When the Southeast Aral Sea disappeared completely in 2008, Vozrozhdeniya also effectively ceased to exist as a distinct geographical feature, although the peninsula briefly reappeared in 2010, when the eastern basin flooded during a heavy snow melt.
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 there, testing a variety of agents, including anthrax, smallpox, plague, brucellosis, and tularemia.⚠ [^Tom Mangold; Jeff Goldberg (2001). Plague Wars: The Terrifying Reality of Biological Warfare. Macmillan. pp. 46–47. ISBN 9780312263799^]
In 1971, a release of weaponised smallpox from the island infected ten people, resulting in three deaths.
In the 1990s, information about the island's danger was spread by Soviet defectors, including Ken Alibek, former head of the Soviet Union's bioweapons program.⚠ [^Hoffman, David (2009). The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy. Random House. p. 460. ISBN 9780385524377^]
. This confirmed that Vozrozhdeniya had been a biological weapons centre where anthrax spores and bubonic plague bacilli had been made into weapons, and stored.
Laboratory staff abandoned the small island in 1992.⚠ [^Pala, Christopher (2003), Anthrax Island, The New York Times, January 12, 2003.^]
Many of the containers holding the spores were not properly stored or destroyed when the area was abandoned, and many of containers developed leaks.
In 2002, through a project organized and funded by the United States with Uzbekistan assistance, 10 anthrax burial sites were decontaminated, an expedition led by Brian Hayes, a biochemical engineer with the United States Department of Defense's Threat Reduction Agency, travelled to the area during the spring and summer, to neutralize what was probably the largest anthrax dumping grounds in the World. A team of 113 is reported to have neutralized between 100 and 200 tonnes of anthrax over a three-month period in a cleanup operation costing approximately US$5,000,000.
Biopreparat
Biopreparat is now known to have been the Soviet Union's major biological warfare agency from the 1970s. It comprised a vast network of secret laboratories, with each being focused on a different deadly agent. 30,000 employees researched and produced pathogenic weapons for use in a major war.
It had been established in 1973, describes as a civilian' continuation of earlier Soviet biological warfare programs, after and academician convinced General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev that development of biological weapons was necessary. The research at Biopreparat constituted a blatant violation by the Soviet Union of the terms of the Biological Weapons Convention of 1972, which outlawed biological weapons, and its existence was steadfastly denied by Soviet officials for decades.
In April 1979, a major outbreak of pulmonary anthrax in the city of Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) caused the deaths of some 105 Soviet citizens. The Soviets tried to cover up the incident, but details were leaked to the West in 1980 when the German newspaper Bild Zeitung carried a story about the accident. Moscow described allegations that the epidemic was an accident at a biological warfare facility as "slanderous propaganda" and insisted the anthrax outbreak had been caused by contaminated food.
Biopreparat suffered with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990, but was part of a system of 18, nominally civilian, research laboratories and centres scattered mainly around European Russia, where a small army of scientists and technicians developed biological weapons including: anthrax, ebola, marburg, plague, Q fever, junin, glanders, and smallpox. It was the largest producer of weaponized anthrax in the Soviet Union and a leader in the development of new bioweapons technologies.
Biopreparat facilities included major labs and production centres:
The project had 18 major labs and production centers:
- Stepnagorsk Scientific and Technical Institute for Microbiology, Stepnogorsk, northern Kazakhstan
- Institute of Ultra Pure Biochemical Preparations, Leningrad, a weaponised plague center
- Vector State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR), a weaponised smallpox center
- Institute of Engineering Immunology, Lyubuchany
- Institute of Applied Biochemistry, Omutninsk
- Kirov bioweapons production facility, Kirov, Kirov Oblast
- Zagorsk smallpox production facility, Zagorsk
- Berdsk bioweapons production facility, Berdsk
- Sverdlovsk bioweapons production facility (Military Compound 19), Sverdlovsk, a weaponised anthrax centre
- Vozrozhdeniya Island bioweapons testing site, Aral Sea
Pathogens that were successfully weaponised by Biopreparat included (in order of completion):
- Smallpox
- Bubonic plague
- Anthrax
- Venezuelan equine encephalitis
- Tularemia
- Influenza
- Brucellosis
- Marburg virus (believed to be under development as of 1992)
- Ebola (believed to be under development as of 1992)
- Machupo virus (believed to be under development as of 1992)
- Veepox (hybrid of Venezuelan equine encephalitis with smallpox)
- Ebolapox (hybrid of ebola with smallpox)
Production figures for the above pathogens have been described as being in the tens of tons per annum, with redundant production facilities located throughout the Soviet Union.
References
⚠ [^#^]
External links
- Nearby Canmore or ScotlandsPlaces items
- http://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/ww2/projects/chemical-biological-warfare/uk.htm Retrieved 15 February 2017.
- The secret history of anthrax - Declassified documents show widespread experimentation in '40s Retrieved 14 February 2017.
- BBC News | UK | Living with anthrax island Retrieved April 26, 2013.
- ASA Newsletter - Article 01-5C. Gruinard Island Returns to Civil Use Retrieved April 29, 2013.
- Milzbrand - German site page about anthrax Retrieved 14 February 2017.
- Anthrax | CDC Retrieved 14 February 2017.
Aerial views
- Old OS maps
- Nearby geocaches
- Bing Maps
- OS Get-a-map™
- Fly to in Google Earth
- SABRE - Maps (has many options) WiP - Needs lat/lon edit!
- Flash Earth
- EarthTools - disabled
- Coming
Map
⚠ (:gma-point lat=57.8885775 lon=-5.4694748 :)
⚠ (:gma-map view=hybrid zoom=12:)
⚠ [[!World War II]]
⚠ [[!Island]]
⚠ [[!Research Establishment]]
⚠ (:WPCategoriesList:)
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