Vozrozhdeniye Island
Vozrozhdeniye island is located in the Aral Sea approximately 1,300 miles (2,092.15 km) to the east of Moscow. The island was used as biological weapons test site for the former Soviet Union. Now decommissioned, the island has served for decades as the repository of a large quantity of spores of Bacillus anthracis, the bacterial agent of anthrax, and other disease-causing bacteria and viruses.
Vozrozhdeniye island translates as Renaissance island. The island was used for open-air testing of bioweapons. The sparse vegetation on the island, remote location, and summer temperatures that reach 140° F (60° C) reduced the chances that escaping bioweapons would survive. Besides the testing of anthrax bioweapons, Soviet archives indicate that the microbial agents of tularemia, plague, typhoid, and possibly smallpox were used for experimentation.
The biological warfare agents buried on the island were supposed to have been destroyed following the signing of a treaty with the Soviet Union banning the manufacture and use of such weapons. Similar weapons manufactured for the same reason by the United States were reportedly destroyed in 1972. The bioweapons were manufactured by Soviet Union as part of their Cold War-inspired biological warfare program. They were buried on the island in 1988. The island has been abandoned since 1991 by the Russian government.
Vozrozhdeniye island has remained unguarded since that time. The main reason has been the isolated location of the facility in the middle of the Aral Sea. Over the past two decades, irrigation demands for water have depleted the freshwater sea to such an extent that the sea is becoming smaller. Many scientists now fear that Vozrozhdeniye Island might soon be directly connected to the mainland, making the stockpiled weapons more vulnerable to bioterrorist theft.
Additionally, indications are that some of the buried bioweapons are migrating toward the surface. Once exposed, some of the materials could aerosolize and be spread by the wind or transported by birds.
The anthrax buried on the island was designed especially for the lethal use on humans in the time of war. The powder is a freeze-dried form of the bacteria called a spore. The spore is a dormant form of the bacterium that allows the persistence of the genetic material for very long periods of time. Resuscitation of the spore requires only suspension in growth media having the appropriate nutrients and incubation of the suspension at a temperature that is hospitable for the bacterial growth. Direct inhalation of the spores produces a lethal form of anthrax.
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