A massive nuclear disaster drill is underway at a Russian atomic power plant in the same region as Vladimir Putin's vast 'Dead Hand' doomsday bunker. More than 1,000 people are taking part in the exercise at Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Plant in Sverdlovsk region.
Drill scenario and participants
The drill tests how emergency responders handle a simultaneous double whammy of accidents at two reactors. It envisages nuclear explosions or leaks and involves rescue workers, medical personnel, police, troops from Russia's Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Protection Forces, and government officials.
"The scenario is based on a highly improbable combination of multiple adverse events, including natural disasters," said Rosatom, Russia's state-owned nuclear energy corporation. "The goal is to test the readiness of personnel and the coordination between emergency services."
Allegations of sinister motives
One Telegram channel Insider-T alleged there was a sinister reason behind the drills. "Deploying personnel in chemical protection suits onto the streets of the Urals serves as both a stress test for civil defence and a clear signal to Western intelligence agencies," it stated. "The Kremlin is demonstrating that Russia is physically and psychologically preparing for a war of attrition involving weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and that, unlike European capitals, we are already actively practicing survival mechanisms."
However, other reports insisted this was a routine drill, with such exercises held annually. The two-day exercise includes carrying out evacuations, clearing rubble and extinguishing fires. The authorities called on residents of Zarechny not to panic. The aim is to "test the effectiveness of measures to prevent and eliminate emergency situations". A major drill of this kind is held once a year at different atomic power plants.
Connection to Putin's doomsday bunker
This one lies just 200 miles from a Putin doomsday nuclear bunker at the core of his sinister 'Dead Hand' atomic strike system, also known as Perimeter. The heavily protected facility is buried deep inside 4,984ft Kosvinsky Kamen mountain in the northern Urals. It is designed to allow an order to wipe out the West - even if Putin and the top Kremlin leadership had been killed in a NATO strike.
Known as Grot, it houses communications equipment designed to keep orders flowing to Russia's nuclear forces if a first strike destroys the Kremlin's usual command and control centres, leaving the leadership incapacitated. The scale is staggering, with procurement documents showing the giant bunker includes 22,000 tonnes of steel—enough to build three Eiffel Towers. The Putin complex called Object 1335 inside hollowed-out granite has swallowed 56,000 tonnes of cement since his secret decree 20 years ago to modernise the 'Dead Hand' system.
"Russia's military-political leadership now has a practically reliable technical means of carrying out retaliation in both automated and automatic modes," said Major-General Viktor Khalin, a former official in the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. Under an "automated" system, an officer still makes the final decision on a retaliatory strike. But in "automatic" mode, the sequence could proceed without any order from Putin and his top commanders if, for example, they had been wiped out.
This effectively overrides the "triple key" under which three people must sanction a Russian nuclear launch - Putin, 73, his Defence Minister Andrei Belousov, 67, and Chief of the General Staff General Valery Gerasimov, 71. They have a combined age of 211. Putin's chilling mountain complex includes radio facilities, life-support systems and cooling equipment purchased including in the West in 2019 with a combined capacity of about five megawatts.
