In April 1979, dozens of people in the Soviet city of Sverdlovsk fell mysteriously ill.
asserted
dozens → fall → Sverdlovsk
Patients poured into hospitals, and with each ambulance came people coughing up blood and frothing at the mouth.
asserted
people → pour → mouth
Others said their lungs felt as though they were on fire, while doctors recorded dangerously high temperatures.
asserted
doctors → say → temperatures
Within two days, they were dead, and panic gripped the city.
asserted
panic → grip → city
Workers began hosing down roofs and disinfecting the streets, while residents hid inside their homes, too afraid to get sick.
asserted
residents → begin → homes
Alevtina Nekrasova, whose father died after falling ill, told the Los Angeles Times: 'Everyone sat at home, with windows and doors shut tight, shivering with fear and waiting for the first symptoms to develop.
asserted
symptoms → die → fear
We all thought we were going to die.'
asserted
we → think → ?
The deadly outbreak claimed the lives of 66 people, and health officials put the illness down to food poisoning from contaminated meat.
asserted
officials → claim → meat
In reality, the disease was the result of an accident at a biological weapons lab that allowed toxic anthrax spores to contaminate Sverdlovsk's air.
asserted
spores → allow → air
The case would later be dubbed the 'biological Chernobyl', but it wasn't until more than a decade later that the truth came out.
asserted
truth → dub → ?
File image (edited into black and white) of Soviet scientists taking samples
Aerial view of Compound 19 - a bioweapons facility on the outskirts of Sverdlovsk
Doctors and relatives of those who died were the first to realise something was not right.
asserted
something → edit → those
Following the dozens of deaths, autopsies carried out on the victims reportedly found their lungs to be the consistency of jelly, while doctors were ordered to wrap their bodies in polythene and douse them in chlorine.
uncertain
doctors → follow → chlorine
Teams of men wearing hazmat suits began visiting the families of the people who had died and decontaminated their homes, while the city was put under a temporary curfew.
asserted
city → wear → curfew
Meanwhile, health officials ordered that all of the dead be buried together in a single section of the city's cemetery.
asserted
all → order → cemetery
But while Soviet officials worked to eliminate any trace of the outbreak, some foreign newspapers began reporting on rumours of anthrax leaking from a military facility at Sverdlovsk.
asserted
newspapers → work → Sverdlovsk
Western scientists, too, raised suspicions.
asserted
scientists → raise → suspicions
US intelligence services stepped in and began reviewing classified data, which led them to accuse the USSR of violating the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention.
asserted
which → step → Convention
Soviets denied the claims, and even travelled to the US in 1988 to give a presentation at the National Academy of Sciences, offering figures and slides of gut tissue from autopsies they claimed to have carried out in a bid to put an end to accusations of a biological weapons leak.
uncertain
they → deny → leak
However, US intelligence services kept a watchful eye.
asserted
services → keep → eye
Four years later, a team of American scientists travelled to Russia to investigate further and found that in Sverdlovsk, now renamed Yekaterinburg, not everything was as it seemed.
asserted
it → travel → Sverdlovsk
In 1979, Russian pathologists Faina Abramova and Lev Grinberg carried out the autopsies on those who died of the mystery illness.
asserted
who → carry → illness
But when they heard the KGB wanted to look at autopsy records, they defiantly hid tissue samples in jars and preserved them in formaldehyde.
asserted
they → hear → formaldehyde
When a team of American scientists led by biologist Matthew Meselson arrived in the Russian town over a decade later, they showed them their original samples.
asserted
they → lead → samples
With this evidence, US scientists were finally able to confirm the victims had died of inhalation anthrax - an infection caused by breathing in the spores of the Bacillus anthracis bacterium - and not intestinal anthrax from eating contaminated meat.
asserted
victims → confirm → meat
The Americans interviewed families of the victims and local doctors and managed to map out exactly where patients were when they fell ill.
asserted
they → interview → victims
Scientists quickly realised all victims lived downwind of Compound 19 - a bioweapons facility on the outskirts of the city.
asserted
victims → realise → city
And in 1992, when Soviet scientist Ken Alibek defected to the US, he revealed that anthrax had gotten out after an air filter at the Sverdlovsk plant was not replaced.
asserted
filter → defect → plant
Alibek was involved in the Soviet Union's Biopreparat germ-warfare machine, overseeing a secret network of laboratories developing deadly pathogens for use as weapons.
asserted
Alibek → involve → weapons
He confirmed that Compound 19 had been mass-producing a lethal, powdered variant known as Anthrax 836, which was being designed for use in ballistic missiles.
asserted
which → confirm → missiles
The pathogen contaminated sheep and cows and remains the largest documented outbreak of human inhalation anthrax in the world.
asserted
pathogen → contaminate → world
Pictured: American scientist Jeanne Guillamin and a Russian researcher with a family affected by the Sverdlovsk outbreak
Scientist Ken Alibek (pictured) defected to the US and revealed that anthrax had gotten out after an air filter at the Sverdlovsk plant was not replaced
While reports say 66 people died, the death toll is likely to be much higher due to Russian authorities trying to cover up the outbreak.
asserted
authorities → picture → outbreak
The 1979 anthrax leak serves as a warning of the catastrophic impacts the secret development of bioweapons poses to public safety.
asserted
development → serve → safety
Earlier this month, a young lab worker died after developing a mysterious form of pneumonia in Siberia, and speculation has turned to her place of work.
asserted
speculation → die → work
Darya Shipilova, 28, was working at the Irkutsk Anti-Plague Institute when she fell ill and died soon after, on October 2.
asserted
she → work → October
Nearly 200 people who had been in contact with her were placed under quarantine after it emerged that she had broken a test tube.
But while Russian authorities said her death was caused by pneumonia of unknown origin, speculation that she may have contracted the plague has continued to grow.
uncertain
she → place → plague
The uncertainty surrounding the young woman's death has revived memories of the mysterious outbreak in the former Soviet Union and raises questions over what could be happening inside the remote Siberian lab.
uncertain
what → surround → lab
The Anti-Plague Research Institute in Irkutsk is one of dozens of disease labs built to study pathogens.
asserted
Institute → build → pathogens
While on paper, these labs were purely for public health, Russia has been suspected of turning deadly diseases into weapons.
asserted
Russia → suspect → weapons
In an interview with the Daily Mail earlier this month, Alibek said: 'Russia is working on biological weapons, no doubt, otherwise they wouldn't have built such huge facilities,' pointing to a recent expansion of Russian biological facilities.
asserted
they → say → facilities
His remarks came after it emerged that a second person had died of the plague in the Irkutsk region earlier this week, according to local media.
uncertain
person → come → media
…and 17 more, not listed.
The Aporia
