Mar d'Aral

The worst man-made environmental disaster. From the early decades of the 1900s, the then USSR used the territories of Central Asia for industrial and military exploitation in favor of Moscow. Nuclear sites were set up in these wastelands and tests with chemical and bacteriological weapons were carried out for decades. Before the dissolution of the USSR, the chemical and bacteriological military waste was stored as toxic waste in this area and on the island of Vozrozdenie, in Italian "rebirth", a place that had hosted laboratories in which chemical weapons, viruses and bacteria were tested on animals; now that the island is no longer completely surrounded by waters, the fear is that these animals could migrate to the surrounding territories and spread unknown diseases with their infectious load. A story that has recently made a comeback with the “Novichok” case.