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 last year:
Warsaw's favourite weekend destination

This time two years ago:
We are two

This time three years ago:

Crushed velvet dusk in my City of Dreams

This time four years ago:

My VERY FIRST blog post