Video: Soviet ghost town Gudym: a nuclear fortress 200 km from the United States, which few have heard of even now
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
At the sight of abandoned cities, there can often be a nagging feeling of melancholy, an involuntary desire to revive them to life. However, the place that will be discussed in this article will surely cause completely opposite feelings. This place is a conscientious city Gudym in Chukotka … Top secret facility located just 200 km from America. A military death base, one of the USSR's trump cards in the Cold War.
Gudym is one of the many names for the secret city. Officially, the military was often called Andyr-1. It was here that the Soviet nuclear bases were located, and if the situation escalated, the missiles from Gudym were supposed to destroy half of the continent. Outwardly, the city looks quite ordinary: several three-storey buildings, a school and a shopping center. Now all this is completely abandoned and half destroyed. However, the most valuable thing in Gudym was underground - a giant multi-level dungeon, where rockets and fuel were kept.
Gudym was one of 15 secret, or closed, cities of the USSR. This city was not marked on the map, and the entry of foreigners here was strictly prohibited. The city was built in the 1950s; in total, since 1961, about 5 thousand people (the military and their families) have lived here. At the base there were three RSD-10 missile systems, the name "Pioneer". In the event of a nuclear war, they were supposed to hit Alaska, the states of Washington, California and South Dakota.
Despite the geographical remoteness and the status of secrecy, local residents were satisfied with the living conditions in Gudym. There were high salaries, there was no shortage of anything, the shopping center in Chukotka had everything that other cities of the USSR only dreamed of.
Nuclear weapons were removed from Gudym in 1986, for some time the city functioned as an ordinary military base, but by 2002 it was completely empty.
Gudym was abandoned due to historical circumstances: Russia did not need a distant military base. The story of another the ghost town of Pripyat - completely different. People left it because of a terrible man-made disaster. Photos taken in the dead city look even more eerie …
Recommended:
How the 33rd President of the United States planned to bomb the USSR and why he could not arrange a nuclear apocalypse
After testing atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States had no doubt that it had a clear military advantage over the weakened Soviet Union. For four years America was considered the only country that possessed nuclear weapons, and this became the main reason for the emergence of plans to bomb the USSR. One of these plans was "Totality", developed to this day with an unclear purpose - to misinform the enemy or really attack him
Top secret tragedy: How a Soviet seaside town disappeared from the face of the earth in a few minutes
In the history of the USSR, it happened that some events of the country's authorities (for whatever reason) tried not to give wide publicity. This mainly concerned those incidents that were associated with significant human casualties. Even the consequences of some such disasters, both man-made and natural, remain in secret archives years later
How was the fate of 6 Soviet actors who emigrated to the United States
In the days of the Soviet Union, each of our today's heroes was famous and popular. It seemed that in the USSR they had everything an actor could want: fame, recognition, success. But many famous actors in the USSR went overseas in their time in search of a better life. But whether they managed to find this very best life in a foreign land, read our today's review
Samovars, which have seen a few: The largest, the oldest, "Goblin" and others
Interestingly, the two main Russian souvenirs, the samovar and the matryoshka, are not from Russia at all. The history of the samovar goes back more than one thousand years. Before the era of electricity, these convenient devices for heating water existed in many forms, in different countries and eras. Displaced by modern household appliances, they have almost disappeared from everyday life, so it is worth remembering what they were. In our review, the most unusual and famous, the most expensive and beautiful samovars
10 monotheistic gods that many have never even heard of
There is a generally accepted stereotype that monotheistic gods are a kind of bearded entity, similar to old people. But in fact, the concept of one God in different parts of the world and among different peoples sometimes took very strange and unusual forms