Vozrozhdeniya - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Vozrozhdeniya, also known as Rebirth Island , was a former island of the Aral Sea

Aral Sea

The Aral Sea was a lake that lay between Kazakhstan in the north and Karakalpakstan, an autonomous region of Uzbekistan, in the south...

or South Aral Sea

South Aral Sea

The South Aral Sea is a lake in the basin of the former Aral Sea which formed in 1986 when that body divided in two, due to diversion of river inflow for agriculture...

. Due to the ongoing shrinkage of the Aral, it became first a peninsula

Peninsula

A peninsula is a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to mainland. In many Germanic and Celtic languages and also in Baltic, Slavic and Hungarian, peninsulas are called "half-islands"....

in mid-2001 and finally part of the mainland

Mainland

Mainland is a name given to a large landmass in a region , or to the largest of a group of islands in an archipelago. Sometimes its residents are called "Mainlanders"...

. Since the disappearance of the Southeast Aral in 2008, Vozrozhdeniya effectively no longer exists as a distinct geographical feature. The area is now shared by Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...

and Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....

History

Located in the central Aral Sea, Vozrozhdeniya Island was one of the main laboratories and testing sites for the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

's Microbiological Warfare Group. In 1948, a top-secret Soviet bioweapons laboratory was established here, which tested a variety of agents, including anthrax

Anthrax

Anthrax is an acute disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Most forms of the disease are lethal, and it affects both humans and other animals...

, smallpox

Smallpox

Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...

, plague, brucellosis

Brucellosis

Brucellosis, also called Bang's disease, Crimean fever, Gibraltar fever, Malta fever, Maltese fever, Mediterranean fever, rock fever, or undulant fever, is a highly contagious zoonosis caused by ingestion of unsterilized milk or meat from infected animals or close contact with their secretions...

, and tularemia

Tularemia

Tularemia is a serious infectious disease caused by the bacterium Francisella tularensis. A Gram-negative, nonmotile coccobacillus, the bacterium has several subspecies with varying degrees of virulence. The most important of those is F...

.

In the 1990s, word of the island's danger was spread by Soviet defectors, including Ken Alibek

Ken Alibek

Colonel Kanatzhan Alibekov — known as Dr. Kenneth Alibek since 1992 — is a former Soviet physician, scientist and biological warfare expert of Kazakh descent. He is a military physician, has PhD in microbiology and ScD in biotechnology...

, the former head of the Soviet Union's bioweapons program. It was here, according to recently released documents, that anthrax

Anthrax

Anthrax is an acute disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Most forms of the disease are lethal, and it affects both humans and other animals...

spore

Spore

In biology, a spore is a reproductive structure that is adapted for dispersal and surviving for extended periods of time in unfavorable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many bacteria, plants, algae, fungi and some protozoa. According to scientist Dr...

s and bubonic plague

Bubonic plague

Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...

bacilli

Bacillus

Bacillus is a genus of Gram-positive, rod-shaped bacteria and a member of the division Firmicutes. Bacillus species can be obligate aerobes or facultative anaerobes, and test positive for the enzyme catalase. Ubiquitous in nature, Bacillus includes both free-living and pathogenic species...

were made into weapons and stored. The main town on the island was Kantubek

Kantubek

Kantubek was a town on Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea. The town is still found on maps, but is usually uninhabited, and lies in ruins today....

, which lies in ruins today, but once had approximately 1,500 inhabitants.

The laboratory staff members abandoned the small island in 1992. 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 by the United States and with Uzbekistan assistance, 10 anthrax

Anthrax

Anthrax is an acute disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Most forms of the disease are lethal, and it affects both humans and other animals...

burial sites were decontaminated. According to the Kazakh Scientific Center for Quarantine and Zoonotic Infections, all burial sites of anthrax

Anthrax

Anthrax is an acute disease caused by the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. Most forms of the disease are lethal, and it affects both humans and other animals...

were decontaminated.

The area was featured in a mission in Call Of Duty: Black Ops

Call of Duty: Black Ops

Call of Duty: Black Ops is a first-person shooter video game developed by Treyarch, published by Activision and released worldwide on November 9, for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii consoles, with a separate version for Nintendo DS developed by n-Space. Announced on April 30, 2010,...

External links

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History

See also

External links