Secret Soviet Subs

Twenty years ago, had I come anywhere near this facility, I would have been shot. Well, probably interrogated for months by the KGB, then shot.

A few miles from Sevastopol, one of the most restricted cities in the former Soviet Union, lies the even more restricted town of Balaklava. It is here that the Soviets carved into the Crimean rock a secret nuclear submarine base, capable of withstanding a direct nuclear hit and subsequently opening its massive blast doors to release its subs and unleash from the waters of the Criman Black Sea a devastating nuclear “second-strike.”

Times have changed, the Soviet Union is no more, the last Russian submarine departed in 1996, the base in what is now Ukraine has been decommissioned and opened as a museum, and tourists can now put their Tom Clancy book down and marvel at the sight of the real thing: what once was one of the most secret and dangerous locations of the Cold War arms race.