{"id":237632,"date":"2023-10-03T18:03:42","date_gmt":"2023-10-03T18:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lovemainstream.com\/?p=237632"},"modified":"2023-10-03T18:03:42","modified_gmt":"2023-10-03T18:03:42","slug":"inside-the-abandoned-siberian-city-built-on-the-bodies-of-ww2-prisoners-left-frozen-in-time-after-cold-war-mine-blast-the-sun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lovemainstream.com\/world-news\/inside-the-abandoned-siberian-city-built-on-the-bodies-of-ww2-prisoners-left-frozen-in-time-after-cold-war-mine-blast-the-sun\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the abandoned Siberian city built on the bodies of WW2 prisoners left frozen in time after Cold War mine blast | The Sun"},"content":{"rendered":"
A SIBERIAN city was almost completely taken off the map after a mine explosion forced its residents to abandon it.<\/strong><\/p>\n The ruins of Kadykchan now haunt the landscape of Russia's Far East – frozen in time since the Cold War.<\/p>\n The eerie coal-mining town has been completely deserted for over thirty years – left to rot since its last bus load of residents shipped out.<\/p>\n Chilling footage reveals blackened and crumbling Soviet-era concrete apartment blocks, smashed up classrooms and rusting playgrounds overrun by nature.<\/p>\n The remote and abandoned city is found deep into Magadan province, an area also known as "Kolyma" – a name that used to strike fear in the hearts of Russians.<\/p>\n It is only reachable along thousands of miles of a highway, referred to as the "Road of Bones" due to the amount of people that were killed in labour camps during Stalin's reign of terror.<\/p>\n The Soviet-era despot opened up the region in the 1930s in order to extract minerals, metals and gold from its uninhabited lands using forced labour.<\/p>\n Throughout the 30s and on through World War 2, over a million prisoners suffered in the horrible conditions and -50C temperatures of Kolyma.<\/p>\n Two-hundred thousand of them died.<\/p>\n After the war, two coal mines were opened in Kadykchan and prisoners were soon replaced by civilians attracted by the promise of a good salary and a flat.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n As the Cold War dragged on, the city flourished in the 1970s and became bustling with young people who wanted work and started music festivals and opened clubs.<\/p>\n In 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed and the worker's salary's were no longer guaranteed. <\/p>\n The coal-mining city fell into depression, one of the mines closed and the future looked bleak.<\/p>\n A past resident, Tatiana Shchepalkin, told the BBC: \u201cSalaries weren\u2019t being paid and people couldn\u2019t even buy basic things like food.<\/p>\n \u201cImagine your husband comes home from the mine and you\u2019ve got nothing to give him to eat. The children are hungry.\u201d<\/p>\n It didn't seem like it could get any worse, until tragedy struck on November, 25, 1996.<\/p>\n A methane explosion ripped through the mine during a busy morning shift and six men were killed.<\/p>\n The last mine was closed for good and Kadykchan no longer had a reason to exist. The city was finished.<\/p>\n \u201cThings were terrible\u2026Things were so desperate people were shooting dogs for food," Tatiana remembered.<\/p>\n Residents quickly began packing up their lives and getting out.<\/p>\n Soon the city had completely emptied. In turn, the local council moved in and torched most of the buildings.<\/p>\n There Kadykchan remains – blackened, crumbling and surrendering to nature.<\/p>\n A man who spent his entire life in the remote, freezing city watched the smoke burn as he left.<\/p>\n \u201cYour soul refuses to believe it,\u201d Vladimir Voskresensky told the BBC.<\/p>\n \u201cBut that\u2019s how it is."<\/p>\n Now the only people to walk amongst the rubble are intrepid explorers gripped by its dark history.<\/p>\n Elsewhere in Russia, in the shadow of the\u00a0Ural mountains is a rusting, eerie site of a graveyard of trains built in preparation for World War 3.<\/p>\n The steel skeletons of dozens of steam locomotives betray a time when the spectre of the\u00a0mushroom cloud\u00a0loomed dangerously near.<\/p>\n During the Soviet era it served as a nuclear war base – ready and waiting to whisk\u00a0Russians\u00a0to safety if\u00a0all other transportation failed or was destroyed.<\/p>\n Time progressed, the Iron Curtain lifted, diesel trains took over and the threat of nuclear war waned – leaving a cemetery on rusty tracks.<\/p>\n
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