General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsExplosion at research center in Russia
Russian government says no biohazards released.Color me skeptical.
Meanwhile in Russia... There was an explosion at a research
center which stores one of the world's largest collections of
viruses including small pox & ebola. All glass in the building
was shattered per RFE/RL, but Russian gov't says no biohazards
released https://svoboda.org/a/30167061.html
Link to tweet
Poor Russia, I hope everybody can stay safe from this contamination, and
that it really is nothing to worry about
Town/city where it happened, Novosibirsk, houses 1.5 million souls
Cary
(11,746 posts)Whiskeytide
(4,461 posts)lpbk2713
(42,760 posts)If that's not a contradiction I don't know what is.
Beakybird
(3,333 posts)I hope it's not related.
GemDigger
(4,305 posts)Russia is having a whole lot of bad luck lately. It's unfortunate that their bad luck affects the planet.
pwb
(11,276 posts)Chernobyl , the nuclear missile a few weeks ago blew up in the atmosphere and now Bio chemicals? Putins Russia is dangerous to the world often, lately.
They keep re-electing Putin and allow him free rein...'dangerous matter.'
irisblue
(32,982 posts)Several people check the fuel barrels & orders another 1000
RussellCattle
(1,535 posts)....for Smallpox begins, in the past tense. One of the great accomplishments of modern medicine is the eradication of this terrible disease. Keeping the virus alive in a laboratory setting means keeping faith with the public that it never gets out in the public again. Lets hope that Russia's infectious disease control response is up to the task.
Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)material there. Andromeda Strain?
That sounds like a full breech of containment with the explosion jettisoning whatever was in there.
Now, what was in that facility? The world's largest collection? Does that include bio-weapon grade materials?
Talk about a vector, this sounds like it could be Pandora's Epidemic Box.
Tanuki
(14,919 posts)Apparently CBS All Access is filming a new miniseries of The Stand. Pretty timely.
Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)Ah, wasn't there a Trump-like President character in that one, also? I am a bit fuzzy on that now. Been a long time.
Blue_true
(31,261 posts)You were on target.
Fullduplexxx
(7,865 posts)sheshe2
(83,793 posts)Love SK. When I first read that book, I Had The Flu! Scared the heck out of me.
Thanks for the heads up about the new miniseries, Tanuki. Timely.
world wide wally
(21,744 posts)Smallpox?
Newest Reality
(12,712 posts)There are facilities in many places that research or contain weaponized viruses, etc. Many countries have them.
Compliance with the agreement, as well as the fate of the former Soviet bio-agents and facilities, is still mostly undocumented.[14] Leitenberg and Zilinskas, in The Soviet Biological Weapons Program: A History (2012), state flatly that "In March 1992...Yeltsin acknowledged the existence of an illegal BW program in the former Soviet Union and ordered it to be dissolved. His decree was, however, not obeyed."[15] They conclude that "In hindsight, we know that with the ultimate failure of the... [negotiations] process and the continued Russian refusal to open the... facilities to the present day, neither the Yeltsin or Putin administrations ever carried out 'a visible campaign to dismantle once and for all' the residual elements of the Soviet BW program".[16]
1990-1999: Specimens of deadly bacteria and viruses were stolen from western laboratories and delivered by Aeroflot planes to support the Russian biological weapons program. At least one of the pilots was a Russian Foreign Intelligence Service officer".[17] At least two agents died, presumably from the transported pathogens[17]
2000-2009: The academician, "A.S.", proposed a new biological warfare program, called the "Biological Shield of Russia" to president Vladimir Putin. The program reportedly includes institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences from Pushchino[4]
I don't know how many of these are currently active, but here is a list of facilities in Russia:
Biopreparat (18 labs, test sites, and production centers)
Stepnagorsk Scientific and Technical Institute for Microbiology, Stepnogorsk, northern Kazakhstan
Institute of Ultra Pure Biochemical Preparations, Leningrad, a weaponized plague center
Vector State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology (VECTOR), a weaponized smallpox center
Institute of Applied Biochemistry, Omutninsk
Kirov bioweapons production facility, Kirov, Kirov Oblast
Zagorsk smallpox production facility, Zagorsk Today Virological Center NIIM (Scientific research institute) Russian Defense Ministry in Sergiyev Posad.
Berdsk bioweapons production facility, Berdsk
Bioweapons research facility, Obolensk
Sverdlovsk bioweapons production facility (Military Compound 19), Sverdlovsk, a weaponized anthrax center
Aralsk-7, Vozrozhdeniya (Renaissance) Island, Aral Sea, this BW test site was built here and on neighboring Komsomolskiy Island in 1954
Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services
Project Bonfire, development of antibiotic-resistant microbial strains
Project Factor, creation of microbial weapons with new properties of high virulence, improved stability, and new clinical syndromes
Some of the agents involved are at the end of the wiki article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_biological_weapons_program
11 Bravo
(23,926 posts)Why would they lie now?
USALiberal
(10,877 posts)stonecutter357
(12,697 posts)11 Bravo
(23,926 posts)Hortensis
(58,785 posts)program defected to the U.S. in the 1990s and wrote a book published in 2000 about it. Apparently Alibek doesn't do open social media, too bad. Here's a link to the NCBI/NIH'S review, which gives it four stars out of four.
Alibek refers to Biopreparat as our Manhattan project. The Soviet Government decided that the best agents were those for which there was no known cure. This shaped the entire course of our program and thrust us into a never-ending race against the medical profession. ...
Biohazard is a first class book about biological warfare, whether read as a thriller or as a revelation. Alibek provides mountains of facts as well as insights into the Byzantine intrigues and power struggles within the Soviet system. As I finished the book, I recalled Rudyard Kiplings 1898 poem, The Truce of the Bear:
When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer,
That is the time of perilthe Time of the Truce of the Bear.
dalton99a
(81,526 posts)Takket
(21,578 posts)Initech
(100,081 posts)Rebl2
(13,525 posts)no biohazards released.
Hekate
(90,714 posts)I had my kids in 1975 and 1978. It felt really weird that they were not vaccinated for this disease, when it had been so taken for granted when I was growing up. In college I had met a deeply-scarred student from Afghanistan who had survived it -- that is how recently this disease was in the wild.
Back then I read that there were just a few vials left -- frozen in research labs in the USSR and the USA. But no worries! Perfectly Safe!
Fast forward to 2019. Do you trust the word of Putin? Also, anti-vaxxers believe what they read on Facebook, not science books.
DetroitLegalBeagle
(1,924 posts)The original vaccine only lasted 3-5 years for full immunity. After that it drops over time. A booster is necessary to bring it back to near full protection.
DoD still vaccinates certain military personnel for it. So the vaccine is in production, probably at low levels though.
magicarpet
(14,155 posts).... and thoroughly disinfected the place with Lysol. So there is nothing to worry about.
yaesu
(8,020 posts)Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,036 posts)ornotna
(10,803 posts)I'm good.
Leghorn21
(13,524 posts)The blast took place during repairs to a fifth-floor sanitary inspection room at the State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology usually known as Vector in Koltsovo, in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia, the centre said on Monday. The site housed biological weapons research during the Soviet era and is now one of Russias main disease research centres.
One worker suffered third-degree burns after the blast, which blew out the glass in the building. A fire covering 30 square metres was later extinguished.
Russian authorities insisted that the room where the explosion occurred was holding no biohazardous substances and that no structural damage was caused.
(one more paragraph)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/17/blast-sparks-fire-at-russian-laboratory-housing-smallpox-virus
Koltsovo (pop 15,000) is in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia - X marks the (general) (blurry) spot
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,356 posts)Poiuyt
(18,126 posts)Nonfiction book that reads like a suspense novel. Trust me--you don't want to catch smallpox.