Ken Alibek describes (in Biohazard) the Rebirth Island test site in the Aral Sea:
Ten centuries ago, according to Russian legend, there was a mysterious kingdom on the shores of the Black Sea called Tmu Tarakan. Its name was variously translated as the “Place of Darkness” or the “Kingdom of Cockroaches.” Modern-day Muscovites use the phrase whenever they want to describe a destination that is as loathsome as it is remote.
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The Aral Sea was once the world’s fourth-largest inland body of water, but it has been shrinking every year since the 1960s when, in a wrong-headed agricultural experiment, Soviet state planners ordered the diversion of the Aral’s river sources into concrete irrigation canals. The canals were to transform this part of Central Asia into a cotton bowl. After the first bumper harvests, the desert soil was exhausted, and local residents have been reaping the consequences ever since. The rivers silted over and clouds of toxic salts billow across the region every year, leaving one of the world’s highest cancer rates in their wake.
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In 1972, two fishermen died when a shift in the direction of the wind sent a cloud of plague over their boat. In the 1970s and 1980s, abnormally high incidences of plague were detected among rodents in inhabited areas north of the testing ground. Following the Soviet collapse in late 1991, doctors reported outbreaks of plague in several areas of Central Asia.
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We used to say that the most fortunate inhabitants of the Soviet Union were the condemned monkeys of Rebirth Island. They were fed oranges, apples, bananas, and other fresh fruits rarely seen by Soviet citizens. Our work teams could only admire this vision of plenty from afar. Each piece of fruit was carefully inventoried and guarded to dissuade members of the scientific teams from giving in to temptation.
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Scientists on the occasional foraging trips into town were shocked to see the earthen huts with no running water that served as dwellings for most of the inhabitants. Malnutrition and hepatitis were common.