Secret Laboratory and Military Facility of the USSR: Secrets of the Ghost Town Map

The Ghost Town is the only map in the game that seems to be completely deserted. Desolation reigns everywhere in this small town located in the center of the map.

So it’s great that we visited this area in a tank. In the Soviet era, biological weapons were made in the town that was the prototype for this map. In the virtual copy of the town in World of Tanks, there is also a secret laboratory. 

What research is being done in this secret laboratory, what is hidden in abandoned houses, and what other secrets are hidden by the map? Read on to find out.

The Great Secret of the Soviet Union

At first glance, the settlement on the map seems typical of the Soviet period. But if you look closely at the buildings and the surrounding landscape, you can recognize the closed Soviet city of Aralsk-7 (Kantubek) in it. This town was so secret that it was not even on the maps. The military facility was located on the Vozrozhdeniya Island in the Aral Sea.

Today ,Aralsk-7 is completely abandoned.

Americans began to speculate about the existence of this city in the 1960s. Aerial photographs taken by the CIA in 1962 show barracks, a parade ground and other military facilities. On the other islands there were moorings and fishing huts.

Over time, the town grew. Almost 1,500 people lived there: the military, scientists and their families. They created the most comfortable living conditions for them: in the town, there were a kindergarten, a school, the House of Officers, a hospital. Many scarce goods were sold in stores, fresh water was delivered by barges and then stored in special huge tanks on the outskirts of the town. These structures (somewhat modified in World of Tanks) can be found on the map.

Three kilometers southwest of Kantubek was the so-called Laboratory building, where work was carried out with strains of the most dangerous diseases. Nearby, there was a military biochemical training ground with the code name "Barkhan" (Official name: 52nd Field Research Laboratory (PNIL-52) - military unit 04061.) Military boats were constantly cruising around the island for protection.

The sea that has disappeared

The military left the city in 1992. They left so hastily that they even left washing machines and colour TVs - all of which attracted looters. Today, Aralsk-7 is a ghost town: filled with broken buildings, abandoned laboratories and tanks. There is complete silence everywhere, silence which is broken only by the wind, and the sound of footsteps walking in the wreckage of old ships. There used to be a sea, but that has changed.

How the Aral Sea has changed from 1989 to 2014.

The Aral Sea was the fourth largest lake in the world, but after the construction of irrigation canals in Central Asia, it began to chalk. In 1989, it broke up into two isolated reservoirs, and in 2001, the island of Renaissance became a peninsula. Therefore, ships in the middle of the desert are not at all the stuff of fantasy. Our developers put two Easter eggs on the ships: find out what they are below!

What does Minsk have to do with it?

While working on the map, we used not only Aralsk-7 locations. Some of the scenery was borrowed from Belarus. For example, we used the exterior of typical Soviet barracks, located only a few blocks away in real life on Dzerzhinsky Avenue. The developers were able to photograph them literally two days before the demolition. On the map, the barracks are painted in green and blue.

The prototype of this hut stood on Dzerzhinsky Avenue in Minsk.

For lovers of retrotechnology, the ZIS-155 bus, which started productiomn in 1956, is on the map. For the first time in the Soviet automobile industry, this machine used an alternator. These buses operated in Belarus until the 1970s.

The tiles on the buildings in Ghost Town has a real life counterpart: you will see one on the walls of houses along Tsnyanskaya Street in Minsk. And also, if you try, you can find young Lenin on the map.

Attention! In every battle, we strongly recommend that you make every effort to achieve victory. Look for Easter eggs only when you're in training rooms.