Friday, 1 April 2011

Stalin's plans to escalate Armegeddon

Deep, deep under Warsaw, not far from Kolumna Zygmunta, stands a chilling monument to the Cold War. It was here that Stalin had built his nuclear command bunker from which he intended to launch atomic missiles against Western Europe. Opened to the public last month, the Soviet rocket launching panel (below) attracts interest from tourists and locals alike.

Because Russia was too far for the early Soviet rockets (based on wartime German V-2 flying bombs), the launch centre had to be situated further west, yet out of range of NATO's own rocketry. The historic heart of Warsaw was chosen as the last place that western spies would guess the installation could be located.

After Stalin's death and subsequent thaw in East-West relations, the nuclear installation was successfully used to power all of Warsaw's neon lights until the reactor finally broke down in 1965.

Left: One of the exhibits at the visitor centre, a Soviet map showing radioactive fallout crossing England, 36 hours after a putative 14 megaton nuclear strike on Manchester. Click to enlarge. Poster based on an illustration originally published in Atomnaya Energiya v Raky'etnoi Ty'ekhnikye, Moscow, 1951.

Note the quaint old British county names transliterated into Cyrillic. Chilling indeed.




This time two years ago:
We are two

This time three years ago:

This time four years ago:

7 comments:

student SGH said...

Happy b-day to your blog and have a good foul's day!

Unknown said...

OK, I waited all day to comment. Hard to guess how many you fooled . . . any ideas? So the public here are inspecting - control panels for elevators or what?

I'm impressed by your creativity and you almost had me going. Great job!

Michael Dembinski said...

@ Kolin - right you are, Sir! Well done for not getting fooled (I know for sure I fooled one Canadian reader:))

Anyone know what and where this installation is? Kolin - 'elevators' - almost right...

Unknown said...

escalators, then. The credit goes to my wife the multilinguist.

Unknown said...

How long do we have to wait for the answer? :)

Michael Dembinski said...

Well, Kolin... go to the escalators that run up between Trasa WZ and the Kolumna Zygmunta end of Krakowskie Przedmieście. Descend the stairs that lead down the the public toilets (clean, free). And here you'll find the above object! (And let me know when you do). The map (from a real book, though published in 1959) is a red herring.

Unknown said...

Strange . . . I just happened on these washrooms about a week ago when I was seeking a clean toilet in the area. I didn't see the panels but I'll check it out next time! You are a treasure trove or Warsaw info!