Military anthrax leaks in the closed city of Sverdlovsk, a military-industrial complex in the Soviet Union. It produces tanks, nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. An accident caused by radioactive leaks over 1,000 square kilometers had already occurred in 1958. The biological laboratories had been built after the Great Patriotic War (aka WWII) thanks to military documents captured from the Japanese in Manchuria, where they had already used anthrax against thousands of Chinese. The April 2, 1979, incident occurred at Military Compound 19, and the spore strain was designated Anthrax 836. It had been isolated following another accidental release in 1953 in Kirov; in 1956, an even more virulent strain, 836, was isolated from rodents in the Kirov sewers, which was selected for inclusion in the warheads of SS-18 ICBMs targeting the United States. The official death toll is 105, but thousands more are suspected.
