Thread by @PasanteDeLaKGB

Dealing with #outbreak
Apr 2 1979 Sverdlovsk - USSR
The first reports emerged in October 1979 by way of a Russian-language newspaper in Frankfurt, West Germany that was close to the Soviet emigre community, which ran a brief report lacking any details about a major germ accident

leading to deaths estimated in the thousands taking place in Russia. New details emerged in this same paper in early 1980, with reports of an explosion in April 1979 at a secret military installation near Sverdlovsk that released a large amount of anthrax spores into the air,

again with a thousand people estimated dead from the disease. There were reports that the area had been placed under Soviet military control with decontamination efforts implemented. The story gained attention as British and West German newspapers ran stories on the catastrophe

As these reports emerged, U.S. intelligence began to look more carefully at satellite imagery and signals intercepts from the spring of 1979 and found possibly corroborative signs of a serious accident such as roadblocks and decontamination trucks around Compound 19, a military

installation in Sverdlovsk, as well as a visit by Soviet Defense Minister Ustinov to the city. The anthrax explanation also seemed plausible, given the past history of U.S. and Soviet efforts to develop the deadly microbe into a biological weapon.

The Sverdlovsk anthrax leak is an incident when spores of anthrax were accidentally released from a military facility in the city of Sverdlovsk (formerly, and now again, Yekaterinburg) 1450 km east of Moscow on April 2, 1979

This accident is sometimes called "biological Chernobyl". The ensuing outbreak of the disease resulted in approximately 100 deaths, although the exact number of victims remains unknown.

The cause of the outbreak had for years been denied by the Soviet Union, which blamed the deaths on intestinal exposure due to the consumption of tainted meat from the area, and subcutaneous exposure due to butchers handling the tainted meat.

Just a year after signing on to the 1972 bioweapons ban, the Soviet Union had actually expanded its bioweapons production via a massive new civilian program, known as Biopreparat, that employed 50,000 personnel scattered across 52 separate facilities.

Biopreparat had manufactured hundreds of tons of a dozen different biowarfare agents, designed to be spread by missiles or sprayed out of airplanes.

The deputy director of Biopreparat, Kanatzhan Alibekov (now Ken Alibek), would later immigrate to the United States and give his account of the Sverdlovsk incident in his book Biohazard, based on accounts he overheard from several colleagues.

The bacteria had originated from a bioweapons facility in Sverdlovsk known as Compound 19A, built in 1946 “using specifications found in the Japanese germ warfare documents captured in Manchuria,” according to Alibekov.

The Japanese Unit 731 was infamous during World War II for both testing and field deploying bioweapons targeting Chinese civilians.

Compound 19A produced tons of anthrax in powdered form annually, for release from ballistic missiles — in particular a strain known as Anthrax 836 selected (not designed) because it was particularly deadly to humans. One day —

Alibek places the date as March 30, 1979, though most sources insist it was early April — a technician removed a clogged filter and left a note indicating it needed to be replaced. #notgreatnotterrible

Through May, at least 99 Soviet citizens were infected and 64 died within a two-and-a-half-mile radius of the factory. Alibek claims he was told the actual count was closer to 105. For sheep, which were more susceptible to the spores, cases were reported within 30 miles.

Boris Yeltsin more or less supported Alibek’s account when he admitted to the chemical weapons program and the accident in a speech in 1993. Furthermore, Andrei Mironyuk, head of Special Department of the Ural Military District, also testified in Ural magazine in 2008.