Deformities, rare cancers and chilling levels of suicide blight a community living less than a 100 miles from a Soviet nuclear test site.
Some 460 nukes were detonated in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, and thousands of people living there today have horrific health problems because of the radioactive fallout.
Between 1949 and 1998 the Soviet Union tested 456 nuclear weapons in the Semipalatinsk Test Site — also known as "The Polygon".
Some of the blasts were conducted underground.
Yet more than 100 were dropped from the air as they would in a catastrophic nuclear war, with large populations living as close as 90 miles from where warheads exploded.
But the effect from fallout on those living near ground zero of the Communist superpower has created a nuclear tragedy for generations of people — that was covered up by Moscow in echoes of the Chernobyl disaster.
It has been widely alleged the people living there were even used as guinea pigs to see what would happen to humans living near an explosion.
Magdalena Stawkowski, who is a medical anthropologist researching nuclear weapons legacy in Kazakhstan, told: "Everyone is impacted. Those living nearby are exposed.
"Those further away ingest radioactive meat.
"When seasonal fires burn through the test site, radioactive particles are resuspended in the air and get carried by the wind who knows where.
"Mining industries operating in the region sell their ores on the global market. Are they radioactive? Some say yes, others say no."
The Red Army would even order people in some villages to go outside during the detonation, according to a UN report.
The official estimate is over 40 years there were about one million people in the zone of radiation fallout.
Radiation levels here are said to be still way above safe levels for humans.
Today it is the only place on Earth where thousands of people still live in and around a nuclear weapons test site.
Local people graze their animals on the test site before selling the meat because there is little signage or education about radiated areas.
Miners report being encouraged to drink a protective shot of vodka to guard against radiation exposure, instead of being given proper protection.
The last test took place in 1989 shortly before the Berlin Wall fell, heralding the beginning of the end of the USSR in 1991, when the test site shut.
Unfortunately this reportedly resulted in a leakage of large amounts of the radioactive noble gases xenon and krypton.
Like Chernobyl you can today visit the area with dark tourism package holidays.
You certainly would not want to call this place home, given the health problems the locals suffer.
At the orphanage in Semey, since the 1950s, there has been a phenomenal increase of babies born with severe neurological and physical abnormalities.
Dmitriy Vesselov, who lived in the region, but now campaigns against nuclear weapons, said: "Thirty years after the termination of tests at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, second and third generations of children have mutations caused by long-term exposure to ionizing radiation.
"The level of oncological diseases is still significantly higher than average values."
Studies have found radiation has damaged the genetic code they inherit from their parents, who then abandon them.
Alicia Sanders-Zakre, from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), said: "The Soviet Union dropped more than 100 nuclear weapons above Semipalatinsk.
"The radiation killed some in the surrounding area immediately, but caused deadly diseases decades later for others and even afflicted unborn children and generations to come with chronic diseases and disabilities."
Blood, breast, lung, esophagus, stomach, and thyroid cancers are several times higher than elsewhere in the country as are levels of people killing themselves.
Studies indicate that within a 40-mile zone around the test site, the suicide rate is, inexplicably, more than four times the national average.
Mutations among babies are also tragically common.
There is even a museum showing the hideous deformities common in the area at the regional medical institute in Semey, which is the largest city near the old nuclear testing site.
It contains a room filled with jars containing tragedies caused by nuclear testing such as deformed fetuses and human organs.
In 2018, the CIA declassified a top secret report in which its spooks had interviewed a local man in the 1950s about what it was like when the Russians set off a nuclear weapon.
He vividly described one occasion when the ground began to shake and the workers were ordered out of the factory he was working in.
Buildings in the area began to oscillate "as if they had been set in motion by the ground".
Meanwhile, the air was "crackling with pressure" as if the "air was tearing up”.
Then he turned around and saw "the upper third of a large fireball on the southwest horizon," appearing in "colour and intensity like a bright sun shining through a haze".
Most other studies are kept secret to this day so this one has given a glimpse into the Communist cover-up which resembles what happened in Chernobyl in 1986.
But the institute’s director Kazbek Apsalikov, who found the report and passed it on to New Scientist.
It details how the Kremlin dispatched researchers on three expeditions to Ust-Kamenogorsk.
They found widespread and persistent radioactive contamination of soil and food both there and across the towns and villages, with people suffering radiation sickness.
Meanwhile, the incident which was thought to have been one of many, was white-washed, it is claimed.
Music: Lights - Patrick Patrikios
Source: The Sun, Abandoned Spaces
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/patryn.worldlatestnews
Some 460 nukes were detonated in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, and thousands of people living there today have horrific health problems because of the radioactive fallout.
Between 1949 and 1998 the Soviet Union tested 456 nuclear weapons in the Semipalatinsk Test Site — also known as "The Polygon".
Some of the blasts were conducted underground.
Yet more than 100 were dropped from the air as they would in a catastrophic nuclear war, with large populations living as close as 90 miles from where warheads exploded.
But the effect from fallout on those living near ground zero of the Communist superpower has created a nuclear tragedy for generations of people — that was covered up by Moscow in echoes of the Chernobyl disaster.
It has been widely alleged the people living there were even used as guinea pigs to see what would happen to humans living near an explosion.
Magdalena Stawkowski, who is a medical anthropologist researching nuclear weapons legacy in Kazakhstan, told: "Everyone is impacted. Those living nearby are exposed.
"Those further away ingest radioactive meat.
"When seasonal fires burn through the test site, radioactive particles are resuspended in the air and get carried by the wind who knows where.
"Mining industries operating in the region sell their ores on the global market. Are they radioactive? Some say yes, others say no."
The Red Army would even order people in some villages to go outside during the detonation, according to a UN report.
The official estimate is over 40 years there were about one million people in the zone of radiation fallout.
Radiation levels here are said to be still way above safe levels for humans.
Today it is the only place on Earth where thousands of people still live in and around a nuclear weapons test site.
Local people graze their animals on the test site before selling the meat because there is little signage or education about radiated areas.
Miners report being encouraged to drink a protective shot of vodka to guard against radiation exposure, instead of being given proper protection.
The last test took place in 1989 shortly before the Berlin Wall fell, heralding the beginning of the end of the USSR in 1991, when the test site shut.
Unfortunately this reportedly resulted in a leakage of large amounts of the radioactive noble gases xenon and krypton.
Like Chernobyl you can today visit the area with dark tourism package holidays.
You certainly would not want to call this place home, given the health problems the locals suffer.
At the orphanage in Semey, since the 1950s, there has been a phenomenal increase of babies born with severe neurological and physical abnormalities.
Dmitriy Vesselov, who lived in the region, but now campaigns against nuclear weapons, said: "Thirty years after the termination of tests at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site, second and third generations of children have mutations caused by long-term exposure to ionizing radiation.
"The level of oncological diseases is still significantly higher than average values."
Studies have found radiation has damaged the genetic code they inherit from their parents, who then abandon them.
Alicia Sanders-Zakre, from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), said: "The Soviet Union dropped more than 100 nuclear weapons above Semipalatinsk.
"The radiation killed some in the surrounding area immediately, but caused deadly diseases decades later for others and even afflicted unborn children and generations to come with chronic diseases and disabilities."
Blood, breast, lung, esophagus, stomach, and thyroid cancers are several times higher than elsewhere in the country as are levels of people killing themselves.
Studies indicate that within a 40-mile zone around the test site, the suicide rate is, inexplicably, more than four times the national average.
Mutations among babies are also tragically common.
There is even a museum showing the hideous deformities common in the area at the regional medical institute in Semey, which is the largest city near the old nuclear testing site.
It contains a room filled with jars containing tragedies caused by nuclear testing such as deformed fetuses and human organs.
In 2018, the CIA declassified a top secret report in which its spooks had interviewed a local man in the 1950s about what it was like when the Russians set off a nuclear weapon.
He vividly described one occasion when the ground began to shake and the workers were ordered out of the factory he was working in.
Buildings in the area began to oscillate "as if they had been set in motion by the ground".
Meanwhile, the air was "crackling with pressure" as if the "air was tearing up”.
Then he turned around and saw "the upper third of a large fireball on the southwest horizon," appearing in "colour and intensity like a bright sun shining through a haze".
Most other studies are kept secret to this day so this one has given a glimpse into the Communist cover-up which resembles what happened in Chernobyl in 1986.
But the institute’s director Kazbek Apsalikov, who found the report and passed it on to New Scientist.
It details how the Kremlin dispatched researchers on three expeditions to Ust-Kamenogorsk.
They found widespread and persistent radioactive contamination of soil and food both there and across the towns and villages, with people suffering radiation sickness.
Meanwhile, the incident which was thought to have been one of many, was white-washed, it is claimed.
Music: Lights - Patrick Patrikios
Source: The Sun, Abandoned Spaces
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/patryn.worldlatestnews
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