100 Places You Will Never Visit (20 page)

Within hours of the attack, the Syrian news agency reported an incident in which air defense units had confronted Israeli planes and “forced them to leave after they dropped some ammunition in deserted areas without causing any human or material damage.” An Israeli spokesman was reported as saying that “This incident never occurred,” while US officials spoke of “second-hand reports” that contradicted each other.

The rumor mill inevitably went into overdrive, with claims that Al Kibar was actually a nuclear complex built with the assistance of North Korea. Syrian scientists at the plant, it was said, were on the verge of building a viable nuclear bomb. It is now thought that work on the complex got underway around 2002, and in 2004 US intelligence picked up on an unusually high volume of contact between Al Kibar and Pyongyang. The US would later release photographs showing what seemed to be reactor components at the site, and others showing the construction of buildings apparently designed to disguise what lay within. Al Kibar remains strictly off-limits to visitors, a fact attested to by residents of Dayr az Zawr, the last major outpost of civilization before the vast stretch of desert in which Al Kibar lies. Anyone who dares to cross the inhospitable landscape will soon find themselves subject to impassable roadblocks, while locals are warned that access is forbidden on security grounds.

Under international pressure, the Syrian government eventually claimed that the site had been a conventional weapons facility, and categorically denied any involvement by international partners. In 2008, Damascus finally allowed experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect Al Kibar. They found a site that had been hurriedly cleared of debris and concreted over—suggesting the Syrians had something to hide. Sure enough, despite the absence of a “smoking gun,” the IAEA concluded in 2011 that Al Kibar almost certainly had been a nuclear facility—one that for a long time none of the key regional players have wanted to admit existed.

68 The Ararat anomaly

LOCATION Mount Ararat, Turkey

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Dogubayazit

SECRECY OVERVIEW Site of historic mystery: an unexplained object seen on satellite photos that some claim is Noah’s Ark.

In 1949, a US Air Force surveillance plane took pictures above Mount Ararat where, according to the Book of Genesis, Noah’s Ark came to rest after the retreat of the biblical flood. When the images were inspected, some claimed they revealed a partially buried object on the northwest corner of the mountain’s Western Plateau. Was it, some have asked, the remains of the Ark?

Mount Ararat, situated close to the sensitive border of Turkey, Iran and what was then the Soviet Union, understandably became a site of great interest to the US government in the early years of the Cold War. The 1949 images, taken during a reconnaissance flight authorized by Headquarters US Air Force Europe—reveal a strange anomaly about 4,700 meters (15,500 ft) up the mountain, which has a summit of some 5,100 meters (16,700 ft). The pictures were immediately classified as secret, and a file was opened which would go on to include numerous other images of the anomaly taken from a variety of aircraft and satellites over the ensuing decades.

Expeditions have been attempting to track down the remains of the Ark on Ararat since at least the 19th century, and rumors insisted that the various reconnaissance flights and other missions had seen something. However, it was only in 1995, thanks to the persistence of University of Richmond Professor Porcher Taylor, that stills from the 1949 footage were finally declassified. Other images still remain secret even today.

What exactly is depicted is a source of heated debate. In the opinion of the US Defense Intelligence Agency, the images show nothing more than “linear façades in the glacial ice underlying more recently accumulated ice and snow.” Meanwhile, Dino Brugioni, the founder of the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center, concluded that: “Oh, it looked like a bow of a ship stuck in the mountain. But it did not conform with the Bible dimensions. It was much too large.” Others have claimed that they can make out a number of carved wooden beams.

Of course, the chances of a wooden boat surviving several thousand years up a mountain are remote. Furthermore, no one has yet brought back physical evidence from the site of the anomaly. But if it’s all just a trick of the light, why does so much official secrecy still surround the images?

1 QUICKBIRD CLOSE-UP The DigitalGlobe QuickBird satellite made this image of the Ararat Anomaly in 2003, revealing that its surface is apparently quite smooth in relation to the rougher rocks around it (though not as smooth as the overlying snowcap).

2 BIBLICAL PEAK While Mount Ararat itself has become associated with the Ark in the Western imagination, the biblical text actually says that the ship came to rest in the Mountains of Ararat—a far larger region straddling the borders of Turkey. The Armenian monastery at Khor Virap (above) commands spectacular views of the mountain.

69 Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

LOCATION Kiev Oblast, Ukraine

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Kiev

SECRECY OVERVIEW Access restricted: the now-deserted scene of the world’s worst nuclear accident.

In 1986, Chernobyl in the Ukraine was the scene of the most devastating nuclear disaster in history. An Exclusion Zone around the site of the reactor that exploded, sometimes known as the Zone of Alienation, extends for 30 kilometers (19 miles) and remains a largely no-go area for all but a small community of researchers tracking the continuing impact of the tragedy.

Construction of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, situated close to the border of the Ukraine and Belarus, began in 1970. At that time, the Ukraine was one of the constituent states of the Soviet Union, and the plant was officially called the V.I. Lenin Nuclear Power Station. An entire city, Pripyat, was built at the same time to provide homes for the plant’s workers and their families. The first reactor went into service in 1977, and three more were running by 1983. Two more reactors were under construction when disaster struck on April 26, 1986.

By that stage, Chernobyl’s four reactors were producing about 10 percent of the Ukraine’s electricity. However, the plant already had a somewhat calamitous history—in 1982, Reactor No. 1 suffered a partial meltdown that was covered up by the communist regime in Moscow. But this incident paled in comparison to what happened to Reactor 4 on that April Saturday. A power surge led to a series of explosions within the reactor, exposing its graphite moderator, which then caught fire. Vast clouds of radioactive smoke rose into the skies over Europe, with the highest proportion of fallout landing on Belarus. Large-scale releases of radionuclides continued for ten days after the accident, and it is estimated that some 200,000 square kilometers (80,000 square miles) of Europe suffered at least some contamination.

The immediate priority for the government in Moscow was crisis containment. The 53,000 inhabitants of Pripyat were not evacuated until the following day, and news of the disaster was not broadcast until the following Monday, and then only as a television announcement lasting less than 30 seconds. The longer-term impact of events at Chernobyl is hard to calculate—Soviet figures attributed just 31 deaths to the disaster, but other health experts suggest that tens of thousands might eventually die of cancers related to the effects of the fallout.

The Soviet government incurred massive expense in attempting a clean-up and relocating more than 350,000 people from areas in peril. Agriculture and forestry in the area around Chernobyl was devastated, with the loss of 800,000 hectares (2 million acres) of farmland and 700,000 hectares (1.7 million acres) of forest from productive use. Some have suggested that the disaster cost the economy hundreds of millions of dollars over the years that followed, and hastened the USSR’s economic collapse.

Reactor 4 itself was hastily encased in a concrete and steel “sarcophagus.” Doubts as to its long-term safety were expressed by some in the scientific community, and in 2007 it was reported that a new steel containment structure costing US$1.4 billion would be built by 2013. Amazingly, Chernobyl continued to operate for many years after the disaster. In 1991 another fire broke out (this time in Reactor 2), and it was only in 2000 that the plant was finally closed down by the now-independent Ukrainian government. Nonetheless, decommissioning is expected to last for many more years.

FINAL RESTING PLACE Shortly after the initial disaster in 1986, a metal and concrete sarcophagus was hastily erected over Reactor 4 to lock in some 250,000 tons of radioactive materials. Amid concerns about its structural integrity, there are now plans to build a replacement “New Safe Confinement” structure.

As for the citizens of Pripyat, they were commanded to abandon their previous lives with virtually no notice. Most were unceremoniously forced on to buses by armed soldiers in an afternoon. Many left assuming they would soon return. They never have, and today Pripyat stands abandoned. A rusty, lonely-looking Ferris wheel that once brought pleasure to the town’s visitors is now one of the more potent symbols of what happened at Chernobyl. Many of its inhabitants have subsequently complained of health problems, both physical and psychological. Indeed, the Chernobyl Forum (an initiative of the International Atomic Energy Agency) reported that “the mental health impact of Chernobyl is the largest public health problem unleashed by the accident to date.”

The area covered by the Exclusion Zone has been subject to minor alterations over the years, and pollution levels within its boundaries are highly variable. It remains, though, predominantly uninhabited, save for a few returned ex-residents and some squatters, all of whom live there without official permission but are broadly tolerated by the authorities. Spread across the zone are at least 800 “burial grounds” for abandoned, contaminated vehicles. The perimeter is constantly patrolled by police and military, with visitors forced to present their documentation at checkpoints. Most who enter are carrying out scientific research work or are employed in the lengthy decommissioning process.

1 SCATTERED DEBRIS More than 1,000 square kilometers (380 sq miles) of land directly around Chernobyl were blanketed with dangerous heavy elements following the explosion. Lighter radioactive isotopes were scattered across much of Europe, affecting agriculture for years.

2 ABANDONED DREAMS A deserted classroom stands eerie and silent witness to the devastation wrought by the Chernobyl disaster. The entire area was hurriedly evacuated and those who dare venture back today can expect to find an unsettling world reminiscent of a modern-day Marie Celeste.

70 UVB-76 transmitter

LOCATION Northwestern Russia

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Pskov

SECRECY OVERVIEW Location uncertain: transmitter broadcasting a mysterious shortwave radio station.

UVB-76, known to radio hams as “the Buzzer,” is not everybody’s idea of the perfect radio station. Broadcasting almost continuously since 1982, its output consists not of lively chat or the latest hit music, but of a buzzing sound repeated on average 25 times per minute, every minute of every hour of every day. But for some it holds an unyielding fascination—who is behind its broadcasts, and what is it all about?

Even the bosses of UVB-76 know that variety is the spice of life. In the early 1990s, the beeping noise that had been in operation for ten years changed to the buzz that we have today. Then there is an attention-grabbing double buzz on the hour and, irregularly but every few weeks or so, a male voice reciting a short refrain of numbers or words—often a string of Russian names—all transmitted on an AM frequency of 4625 kilohertz. Background noises including unintelligible conversations suggest that these bizarre broadcasts are sent from a microphone that is constantly left open.

It is believed by some that the site of the transmitter responsible for UVB-76 moved in 2010. Around this time, a voice was heard on the station apparently giving it a new call sign of MDZhB (though fans, who monitor the stations’ activities and produce eye-catching plots of its signal like the one shown here, tend to stick with the UVB-76 moniker). Until this time, the transmitter was thought to lie close to Povarovo, a town near Moscow that once had a strong military presence, but is now largely deserted. It has been conjectured that today the transmitter resides somewhere near Pskov in the northwest of the country. Such a move may have been associated with a wider reorganization of Russia’s defense forces.

What it all means, no one seems to know. Neither the Russian government nor the country’s broadcast authorities have ever explained what purpose the station serves. Some have suggested that its occasional verbal messages are a means of testing whether receiving stations are maintaining a suitable level of alertness.

Others say that UVB-76 is transmitting information to a network of international spies: it may be a so-called “numbers station,” designed to send encrypted messages to listeners in possession of a code key. More prosaically, many observers suspect that it may simply be a hangover from the Soviet era, its true purpose now lost amid a Cold War bureaucracy that is fast being forgotten.

71 FSB Headquarters

LOCATION Lubyanka Square, Moscow, Russia

NEAREST POPULATION HUB Moscow

SECRECY OVERVIEW Operations classified: home to Russia’s security service and once the feared headquarters of the KGB.

The building once inhabited by the KGB and now by part of the FSB security service in downtown Moscow’s Lubyanka Square was designed by Aleksandr V. Ivanov at the end of the 19th century as the headquarters of an insurance company. After the Bolshevik Revolution, it was converted to its more famous use, and it retains its role as the focal point of Russia’s secret services.

Today, the Lubyanka encompasses three buildings, with the FSB largely inhabiting a gray block to the left of the iconic central yellow building. This yellow neobaroque structure housed the operations of the Rossiya insurance company from 1898 until the Bolsheviks took it over 20 years later. It was then turned over to the Cheka, the forerunner organization of the KGB. The building was significantly expanded in the 1940s on the designs of Alexsey Shchusev.