The Arctic Circle, a deserted island off the beaten track, and Xindi Island, which is larger than 2 Hainan Islands, how did it become a forbidden area for human life?
The world is full of mysterious and spooky forbidden areas are many, such as the Valley of Death in the desert valley of California, the Bermuda Triangle, as well as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant area in Ukraine, and so on. In these forbidden areas, some are naturally formed, but also because of human misconduct caused by the harsh environment, the air is filled with the smell of death, so these places are sparsely populated, even birds, animals and fish are extremely rare.
Compared to some of the more well-known restricted areas, Xindi Island is probably a bit more unfamiliar to most people. This island is under the jurisdiction of Russia and is located in the Arctic Ocean between the Barents Sea and the Kara Sea, covering an area of more than 80,000 square kilometers, which is more than twice the size of Hainan Island in China. It was thought to be a small, uneventful island near the Arctic Circle, but I never thought it would be a restricted area for humans.
Novaya Zemlya is an island off the coast of the Russian Arctic Ocean. Visually, Novaya Zemlya has a long, narrow shape and is divided into two islands, north and south, by the Matotchkinshal Strait. It is not a small island, but it is not suitable for human habitation, because the vast majority of the island is desert, and the southern part is still polar tundra. In addition, the island is located in the Arctic region, the climate is cold and icy all year round, the winter temperature can reach as low as minus 20 degrees, even in the summer the maximum temperature here can only reach seven degrees. The entire region is filled with fog and wind, so it is very unfavorable to human survival.
The untouched island of Xindi was discovered by the Dutch explorer Barungi as early as the sixteenth century, he thought it was a route to the East, but the harsh climate trapped Barungi on the island, and finally died on the island because of lack of food and medical care. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, some settlers came to Xindi Island and reclaimed it. Because of its remote location and harsh environment, not many people came here and did not attract the attention of the Soviet government.
How did Xindi Island change from an obscure Arctic island to a vital nuclear test site for the former Soviet Union?
Xindi Island is located in an unpopulated area, the main geological structure of the island is granite, which is the best place for nuclear explosive weapons experiments. You know, many countries in the world want to develop nuclear weapons, but suffer from the lack of professional scientific research personnel, and most importantly, there is not even a site to test nuclear weapons. Atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs and other nuclear weapons themselves contain a large amount of radioactive material, one is enough to destroy a city, test their effects naturally to choose a place where there is little biological survival.
In the 1950s, during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War, Xindi Island was used as a nuclear weapons testing site by the former Soviet Union. In order to test the power of nuclear weapons and not to harm the innocent people on the island, the Soviet government ordered the relocation of the islanders in July 1957. In addition, the government closed all entrances to the island and prohibited all ships and people from approaching it.
Xindi Island can be said to have fallen victim to politics. The former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev planned to design a hydrogen bomb with a yield of 100 million tons to confront the United States, and named it "Big Ivan", but due to various constraints, the Soviet Union reduced the weight of the bomb to 50 million tons. This time, the mission was so tight and closed that only the scientists who developed the nuclear weapon and part of the test site were left on the island, and Xindi was as isolated from the world and full of mystery.
After about four years, on October 30, 1961, an unprecedented 50 million TNT "Khrushchev bomb" was detonated on Xindi Island, accompanied by a diffuse mushroom cloud that rolled across the sky of Xindi Island, instantly turning the surrounding buildings and vegetation into black charcoal, destroying radar and communication equipment for thousands of miles, and even causing global electromagnetic interference.
After hundreds of nuclear tests, what is the current status of Xindi Island?
While realizing the military might of the former Soviet Union, European and American countries also took notice of the small, obscure island of Xindi. In fact, the blast of "Big Ivan" was not the first time that the Soviet Union conducted a nuclear test on Xindi Island, but it must have been the most powerful and destructive one. The yield of the "Big Ivan" was 50 million tons, thousands of times more than the power of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan by the United States, which almost leveled the entire Hiroshima. If the "Big Ivan" is used in war, the fate of mankind will be unimaginable.
From 1954 to 1991, the Soviet Union conducted more than two hundred nuclear tests on Xindi Island, with the total number of nuclear bombs equivalent to five "big Evans", and they divided the island into three zones, basically conducting nuclear tests in each zone. The nuclear tests were carried out in each of the three zones, and while they were a deterrent to hostile countries, they were also fatal to the environment of Xindi Island.
The entire island is littered with potholes and holes, covered by nuclear weapons where the devastation of the grass does not grow. But Xindi is not completely reduced to a "ghost town" with no people left. On the west coast, at the southern end of the island, there is a small town called Beluga Cuba, where more than 2,000 people live, mostly families of Russian soldiers, who have built up this small area in a decent way, with all kinds of infrastructure facilities. In addition, the northern part of the island, where Russia has established the Russian Arctic National Park, attracts most people to the special environment of the polar circle tourism.
Although quite a lot of radioactive materials can still be detected in Xindi Island, the Russian government has been sparing no effort to clean up the contamination. Some of the sources of contamination have not affected the local population or the environment as much as the Internet or public opinion would have you believe. After all, this is a new era of "peaceful development" and people are aware of the dangers of nuclear weapons and understand that only a clean and peaceful environment is the way for human beings to live together.
