Sverdlovsk Anthrax Leak: The USSR’s Deadly Lab Leak

this video is brought to you by squarespace  whether it's your new professional just a   lifelong passion start your journey to website  glory with squarespace check out their amazing   all-in-one platform through the link in the  description below more about them in a bit some 1400 kilometers east of moscow near the  ural mountains it's a city that should be   infamous yekaterinburg is today russia's fourth  largest city a modern attractive metropolis   that wouldn't look out of place gracing the  front cover of fodol's magazine but go back   in time a mere 40-yard years to when the city was  known as fedlovsk and things were a different it   was here in the spring of 1979 that the ussr  suffered its worst ever biological disaster a   catastrophe so great it's been called the  biological chernobyl after an air filter   broke at a secret bioweapons lab a deadly  cloud was accidentally released carried on   the winds it distributed its microscopic  load over factories parks homes falling   like dust over places up to 50 kilometers  away only it wasn't dust the cows contained   but anthrax tiny aerosolized spores of one of  the deadliest bacteria known to man what followed   would be a nightmare beyond all imagination that  spring local hospitals were flooded deaths racked   up the military moved in desperate to contain the  fallout yet even as fedloves descended into hell   the authorities were already preparing one  of the greatest cover-ups in soviet history in the early 1970s the world had a problem by  this point humanity had gained the technological   know-how to cause armageddon countless times  over reducing civilization to so much radioactive   dust by just flicking a switch luckily while the  dangers of nuclear weapons were extremely obvious   so were the forces stopping anyone from  actually using them less obvious were the   incentives against biological warfare that was  an issue in this era you see scientists have   become absolute experts at concocting nightmares  in little glass vials in pristine laboratories   dedicated teams were weaponizing smallpox or  creating strains of tularemia that could resist   all kinds of antibiotics in the u.s researchers  became so proficient at refining anthrax it was   estimated they could use the bacteria to kill  everyone in a one kilometer radius for the   bargain basement price of a dollar with such  awesome capacity for germ warfare it was clear   that the planet was becoming a biological  accident just waiting to happen that we might   all wipe ourselves out with a weaponized  plague before we managed to do it in nukes   hence the biological weapons convention first  ratified in 1972 the bwc pledged all signatories   to abandon their bioweapons programs and basically  just stop messing around with really terrifying   among those who joined the convention were the us  the uk and the ussr apparently though the soviet   delegate had kept his fingers crossed the entire  time within two years of signing a piece of paper   committing to doing the exact opposite the ussr  was establishing its bio preparat agency designed   to mimic a civilian disease research facility  bioprepared was in reality a sprawling network   of labs dedicated to breeding germs capable of  screwing the human body up in new and exciting   ways across 40 sites some 50 000 employees  conducted experiments on things like bubonic   plague and legionnaires disease things that could  cause chaos if released into a human population   and frequently that human population was closer  than you would imagine while the ussr maintained a   few remote bioweapon facilities like the notorious  aeroskin the bwc meant western spy planes were now   on the lookout for secret laboratories so the  soviets started sticking their new labs in the   last place that anyone would look slap bang in the  middle of populated areas the kremlin gambled that   the west's thought process would go something  like this known the risks no one would be crazy   or stupid enough to place a bioweapons facility  in the middle of the city therefore these shiny   new labs must be for civilian purposes to which we  can only imagine leona brezhnev laughing in soviet   unbeknownst to the wider world labs began popping  up across populated districts labs working around   the clock producing the bioweapon equivalent  of a neutron bomb it was a crazy strategy   one which required an absolute iron commitment to  safety but this being the soviet union safety was   basically russian for not giving a in 1971  a bioweapons test near the city of morale in   kazakhstan resulted in a smallpox outbreak ten  people were sickened three of whom died but it   would be in a city over a thousand kilometers  away that the worst accident of all took place   known as fiddlovsk today ekaterinburg the city's  outskirts were home to a laboratory known as   compound 19 and compound 19 had one task to  produce weaponized anthrax on an industrial scale in terms of scary things mother nature can throw  you it's hard to think of anything scarier than   bacillus anthracis the bacteria that causes  anthrax bacillus anthracis is found naturally in   the soil but that doesn't mean it's harmless not  at all contract anthrax and unless you get some   powerful antibiotics asap your chances of fiber  will arrange anything from unlikely to well dude   it's been nice knowing you at the less worrying  end of the scale is cutaneous infection caused   by the bacteria getting through a cut on your skin  the result is usually a large coal black welt and   a 20 chance of death remarkably this is about  the best possible outcome if bacteria instead   gets in by your mouth say by eating infected  meat then your chances of death leap as high   as 60 percent by way of comparison small box has  a fatality rate of about half of that but the real   nightmare comes if you inhale anthrax spores what  follows is the medical equivalent of wiley coyote   dropping an anvil on your chest as the bacteria  releases toxins your lungs fill with fluid your   oxygen levels drop until your skin turns blue for  all but ten percent of victims that's it for nine   in ten people who contracted inhalation anthrax  is the final stop on the scenic road that we call   life thankfully inhalation anthrax is extremely  rare the spores of bacillus anthracis are ever so   slightly too big to be easily breathed in capable  of getting stuck in human nostrils unfortunately   for the residents of sverdlovsk compound 19's  entire deal was making sure that those spores   could be ground up fine enough to enter any lungs  now it's important to note that a lot is still   unknown about compound 19 for example some still  contend that it was not working on bioweapons but   instead vaccines however high profile defectors  from the biopreparat program such as former   colonel ken alabeck have painted a much darker  picture according to their recollections the   svedlovsk lab was basically an anthrax factory  based on germlab blueprints captured from the   japanese at the end of world war ii compound 19  was reportedly filled with machines for drying   spores and grinding them into an unbelievably  fine powder that such concentrations a mere 100   kilograms of anthrax released into the air over a  city can kill up to 3 million people and compound   19 was producing way more than just 100 kilos one  estimate we saw put the lab's production capacity   at nearly 30 times that every single year even  if that's a wild overestimate it still signals   that this was a serious facility it was also  one lacking the safety protocols that you'd   expect of somewhere so dangerous while employees  were vaccinated against anthrax the only thing   standing between the lethal spores and the city of  spadlovsk was a single set of air filters if one   of those air filters were to break the results  could be catastrophic sadly in spring of 1979   break is exactly what one of those air filters was  going to do all right we'll get back to today's   video in just a moment but first here's a word  from today's video sponsor squarespace think about   it this is the age of creation everyone is out  there on the internet and they're making something   we don't just go to the internet to consume  anymore we go there to create and if you've   got a great idea for a website that you want to  move from your head to the screen in front of you   well that's where squarespace comes in it's the  perfect web tool to help you fashion the internet   into whatever you want it to be maybe other  hands-on type you got lots of opinions about   what your website should look like fantastic don't  worry squarespace is extremely customizable or   maybe you're someone who is not so design focused  not so able to make things look pretty well don't   worry squarespace also has tons of templates so  you can just select one customize it and boom easy   beautiful website 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being much much worse and   both happened because of human failure but while  the failures that led to chernobyl were long and   technical the scrub that released a bioweapon into  svedlovsk was both simple and depressingly stupid   at the end of a shift at compound 19 a technician  discovered one of the air filters leading to the   outside world was clogged no one knew for sure  when this occurred some sources say march the 30th   1979 others say march 31st or even april 2nd what  matters though is that the technician removed the   clogged filter and then wrote a note for the guy  overseeing the shift telling him that it needed to   be replaced unfortunately though the guy either  never saw the note or was more like ah i'm on   my break i'm geared either way the missing filter  was never recorded in the logbook so when the next   shift started the new supervisor checked for any  mechanical errors and finding none written down   he ordered the spore drying machines be switched  back on and so the pipe with the missing filter   roared back into life and as the hours passed  it began to expel an invisible cloud of microbes   into the cool russian air microbes that were  picked up by the wind and scattered in a 50   kilometer line known as the wind zone this line  swept south passing over a ceramics factory over   a park over streets and homes undetectable to  the naked eye it was also incredibly narrow   the sort of corridor you could cross over in  moments without ever noticing but for anything   alive in that corridor at that time well let's  just say they probably weren't alive for very much   longer the first sign something was badly wrong  came in early april by now the missing filter had   been noticed and replaced yet no one at compound  19 had thought to report the accident further up   the chain of command it was only a minor mistake  one which they hoped had gone unnoticed that hope   finally collapsed on april 4. that evening the  chief medical officer of hospital 24 margherita   yenko received a panicked phone call from a  doctor at another hospital for a couple of   days patients had been coming in complaining  of fevers chest pain and difficulty breathing   no one had been sure what to make of it but now  ianko got perhaps the scariest news she'd received   in a professional life the other hospital had  just confirmed diagnosis of anthrax and a worker   named nicolaive already two patients were dead in  no time at all that death count would skyrocket   the next day five patients died at ayenko's  hospital from the disease and more and more   people were arriving every hour all displaying the  horrifying symptoms of inhalation anthrax people   like 32 year old minova a worker at the ceramics  factory downwind of compound 19's marova was   at her job one morning in april when a colleague  asked why her hands were blue within hours she and   dozens of co-workers were wracked with fevers  every breath they took as painful as a rubber   bullet to the chest the same afternoon sminov was  rushed unconscious to the hospital by the time she   woke up 18 of her colleagues would have died  come mid-may there'd been at least 100 anthrax   diagnoses in sverdlovsk and some 66 deaths yet  even as the city slipped toward chaos the soviet   authorities had already made a fateful decision  rather than concentrate on the disaster itself   they were going to use all of their energies  to make sure no one found out what caused it the scenes that greeted residents of  svodlov's that spring were of a scale   and nightmarish intensity that wouldn't be seen  again until the height of the covet 19 pandemic   as hospitals filled with pneumonia patients the  city desperately scrambled to stop the steady trip   of deaths from becoming a tsunami penicillin was  handed out like candy thrown at anyone with even   the faintest flu-like symptoms teams armed with  needles fanned out across the city administering   anthrax vaccines up to 50 000 people were given  either the shot or antibiotics a sign of how far   local authorities feared the microbes had spread  meanwhile the bodies of the dead were being soaked   in agricultural disinfectant hospitals scrubbed  with chlorine in streets where the spores were   thought to have landed all the stray animals  were shot and every house and road and tree   were blasted with fire hoses unfortunately  some of the cleanup crews seemed to have   had no experience dealing with biohazards in the  chakalovsky district buildings were sprayed with   water rather than kill the anthrax spores this  again kicked them high up into the air causing   a whole new wave of infections this was the  background against which margarita ienko was   writing her secret diary on the outbreak  recording the emergency establishment of a   new hospital hospital 40 to deal with the victims  yet even amidst this growing emergency the kgb   was working overtime to establish a bulletproof  cover-up while the chernobyl meltdown seven years   later would emit so much radiation that keeping it  secret would be physically impossible in spedlovsk   the kgb were helped by several factors the fact  was that the leak had been a one-time event that   meant that there was a finite amount of anthrax  that had escaped meaning an upper limit on how   many it could kill the second came thanks to the  nature of anthrax itself unlike say influenza   anthrax doesn't spread from human to human so  while having 100 cases was 100 more than any city   needs it also wasn't just the beginning no matter  how many family members the infected coughed   over the case numbers wouldn't start rising  exponentially the third advantage the kgb enjoyed   was dumb luck when the spores leaked from compound  19 the wind had been blowing away from the city   center towards less inhabited places had it been  blowing in the opposite direction the case numbers   by mid-may wouldn't have peaked at a hundred but  at a hundred thousand and so with their asses   happily covered the kgb got to work in hospitals  doctors suddenly found themselves being led into   back rooms and ordered to hand over all of their  records bodies went missing from morgues death   certificates were altered so victims appeared  to have died months apart but the real genius   lay in the cover story since it was certain that  news of an anthrax outbreak in a major russian   city would escape the kgb decided to roll with it  rather than deny anything they were all like sure   there's anthrax here but it's gastrointestinal  these guys didn't inhale a bio weapon they just   ate infected meat for any doctor actually on the  ground in svedlovsk this was clearly nonsense the   effects of gastrointestinal and inhalation anthrax  are utterly different but only doctor actually in   svedlovsk would have also been a doctor the kgb  could easily have arrested meanwhile experts on   the other side of the iron curtain would be  unable to verify if the infected meat story   was true or not especially when the kgb was going  all out on spinning their tail that april and may   flyers were distributed over sverdlovsk warning  people against eating black market meat several   butchers and unofficial vendors were arrested  and charged with contaminating food the regional   health authority began seizing stocks of meat  running tests and destroying it it was a bizarre   charade a painful attempt to deflect attention  from the truth for 12 years it would also work come summer the situation in svedlovsk was back  under control the last confirmed anthrax death   would be in mid-june meanwhile the cover story  was doing exactly what the kgb had dreamed of   in 1986 after years of studying the data american  expert matthew messelson would tell the cia he   thought the soviet explanation was plausible  that same year the nobel prize prize-winning   molecular biologist joshua liedeberg would take a  trip to moscow to examine reports on the outbreak   and come back similarly convinced in 1988 a team  of soviet scientists even gave a detailed talk   at the national academy of sciences where they  showed autopsy photos and tissue slides that   all seemed to point to infected meek being the  culprit it was almost as if through sheer effort   the ussr believed it could will an alternative  universe into existence one in which there had   never been a bioweapons facility in svedlovsk  but while it might be fashionable today to talk   about there being no single objective truth  the trouble is that pesky things like evidence   usually say otherwise and despite the best  efforts of the kgb not all evidence of the leak   had been destroyed during the depths of the  anthrax crisis autopsies have been carried   out by finer abramova and lev grimberg after  opening up her first anthrax victim abramova   had approached grinberg at a swedlov's dance  there under the cover of music she'd whispered   an audacious plan in his ear a plan to preserve  proof of the outbreak's true nature as the morgues   flooded with corpses they'd both taken lung tissue  samples preserving them in formaldehyde and hiding   them among the other jars of pickled organs at the  pathology museum it'd been the sort of work that   could have gotten them arrested but they weren't  the only ones over in hospital 24 margaritienko   kept a secret diary recording symptoms and  death counts informers too managed to speak   some information out before 1979 was even over the  first reports had appeared in the british press   that the svedlovsk outbreak could be traced to a  secret lab clear proof that the ussr had violated   the bwc then there were the defectors in 1989  leading buyer preparation scientist dr vladimir   pochennick defected to the uk where he revealed  the existence of the soviet bioweapons program   suddenly the lab leak theory was back in the  news in the end there would be global events that   confirmed what everyone suspected the collapse  of the soviet union in 1991 overturned notions   of secrecy across all of its former republics  even in russia itself the year zero effect of   communism's implosions or people who'd once swam  liberally in a sea of lies start freely admitting   the truth in 1992 boris yeltsin confirmed to  a reporter that the anthrax outbreak had been   a result of a lab accident but proof would go  beyond just the word of one magnificently drunk   politician for a brief window in the early 1990s  the kgb files were open to western researchers a   steady trickle of academics immediately headed  east to uncover hidden truths of soviet history   most of them headed straight from moscow where the  action was but not all of them perhaps annoyed at   being duped in 1986 matthew messelson and his  wife janine giermann led a group of american   scientists not to the russian capital but to  ekaterinburg east of the ural mountains there   they would finally find hard scientific evidence  of the worst biological accident in soviet history the fact the american team uncovered  the truth was due to both diligent work   and good fortune good fortune because when  abramova and lev grinberg found out about the   investigation they retrieved their hidden samples  and handed them over those samples clearly showed   lymph node swelling in victims chests a sure sign  of inhalation anthrax and diligent work because   the team made several inspired decisions during  the investigation the first came when they plotted   those who'd been infected on a map and found them  scattered all over the city rather than give up   though they went and interviewed the families  and found out where the victims had worked   that done they replotted the map to show where  they'd been during shift time what came back   was a map with a narrow band of infections on  it all stretching downwind from compound 19 in   a straight line for 50 kilometers as dr meselson  really noted in his report bad meat does not go in   a straight line 50 kilometers long eventually the  team concluded that the lab's missing air filter   reported previously by defector ken alibaic had  released a few milligrams of spores that had been   carried by the wind a few milligrams probably  not even enough to be visible to the naked eye   and yet it had caused so much damage and so much  suffering and so much death and it's here that we   come to the great unknowns that still surround  this case despite the fall of the soviet union   despite meselson's investigation and the accounts  of defectors is still unknown exactly how many   died in the svedlovsk anthrax leak meselson logged  77 infections not all of whom died other estimates   have put the number closer to 105 dead with many  thousands of infections potentially treated with   penicillin and that's just the more plausible  totals in a secret diary margaritarienko recalled   45 dying in a single day at a hospital alongside  hearing rumors that over 200 had died during the   same period at hospital 40. well that's almost  certainly a massive overcount it does highlight   the mysteries still surrounding the disaster  mysteries that also include why only two of the   dead were female and why no one under the age of  24 was infected as time goes by these lingering   questions are only going to become harder to solve  today the kremlin has once again turned to denying   a lab leak ever happened as fedlovsk only instead  of blaming infected meat the new theory pinpoints   a more convenient enemy a western agents who  deliberately released anthrax spores to sabotage   russia in our current age of disinformation  it seems like any lie can find an audience   the svedlovsk lab leak then may not quite have  been in the same league as chernobyl unlike the   abandoned wastes around pripyat yet ketterinburg  is still inhabited and even thriving yet it's   worth remembering the similarities between the  two in both cases authorities responded to a   disaster not with openness but with obfuscation  lies and a half-assed cover-up a cover-up that   helped nobody but those in power while leaving  ordinary people exposed to incredible danger   this video may have been mostly the tale of  a grim accident at some long forgotten soviet   facility but it should also act as a warning  of what happens when those in charge care only   about protecting themselves we can only hope it's  a warning that one day humanity will learn to heed

Channel: Geographics

Views: 521,552

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Id: x3FMww5biJ8

Length: 21min 44sec (1304 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 07 2022