The conspiracy theories on what's going in Mount Yamantau in Russia is the stuff nightmares are made of. Not much is known, but the little which is known is unsettling. In the worst-case scenario, it means that we are approaching a nuclear holocaust.
FACTS
Mount Yamantau is located in inner Russia, more precisely in the southern Ural mountains. In the local Bashkir language, Yamantau means "bad/evil mountain."
The nearby town Mezhgorye is a so-called closed city. The closed city concept is a remnant from the Cold War, and today it means that foreigners are prohibited from entering the area. During the Cold War, Mezhgorye was known as Ufa-105 and Beloretsk-16.
Mount Yamantau is also close to another closed town by the name Snezhinsk, known as Chelyabinsk-70 during the Cold War; it was founded in 1957 and is one of two remaining centers of the of the Russian nuclear program.
US satellite photos have revealed that an enormous excavation project has been going on in Mount Yamantau since at least 1992.
The purpose of this excavation project remains a mystery. Russian authorities are very secretive and have given different explanations, e.g. that it's a mining site, a repository for Russian treasures, a food storage area, and a bunker for leaders in case of nuclear war.
No foreigner has ever set foot near the site, and a U.S. military attach? stationed in Moscow was turned back when he attempted to visit the region a few years ago.
Two, possibly three, garrisons housing an estimated total of 60,000 workers have been built at Mount Yamantau.
A figure of comparison: The Bingham Canyon Mine in the USA, where 450,000 tons of material are removed from the mine everyday, is operated by 1,800 employees and some hundreds of contractors.
US intelligence sources estimate that the Russian government has invested more than $6 billion in this project.
SPECULATION
In 1996, Russian newspapers reported that the Yamantau project is a part of the Russian "Dead Hand" system.
The "Dead Hand" system was introduced in the USSR during the Cold War, and is an automated nuclear warfare system. As Wikipedia describes it, "it can automatically trigger the launch of the Russian ICBMs if a nuclear strike is detected by seismic, light, radioactivity and overpressure sensors. By most accounts, it is normally switched off and is supposed to be activated during dangerous crises only." It's unclear if this system still is in operation, but it seems likely.
Colonel Stanislav Lunev, the highest-ranking military intelligence officer ever to have defected from Russia, had this to say about the Yamantau project:"You ask about Yamantau Mountain. Well, this is a huge underground city, which could be used in time when many Russian cities are destroyed, but the military and political elite will survive and live until our planet will try to restore itself."
According to some estimates, from supposedly leaked information, it's large enough to house anywhere between 60,000 to 150,000 persons, and designed to withstand nuclear, chemical and biological attacks.
Roscoe Bartlett, a member of the US House of Representatives has followed this mysterious project closely. His conclusion: "The only potential use for this site is post-nuclear war."
Not very surprisingly, several Armageddon and 2012 theorists believe that the Yamantau project will be the catalyst of the impending apocalypse.
It's a disturbing fact that Russia would have a good chance of "winning" World War III. Contrary to popular belief, Russia's nuclear arsenal is larger than the USA's, and Russia has the second largest fleet of ballistic missile submarines and strategic bombers; new and improved models are constantly being developed, e.g. the state-of-the-art ICBM Topol-M. In terms of conventional warfare, Russia's tank force is the largest in the world and the total military forces consist of over 1 million active soldiers at any time, and its navy and air force are among the largest ones.
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