Unlike other Soviet mines in the Kyshtym region the ones in the photographs at least aren’t radioactive. The ones shown here date back to the days of the Gulags and have been abandoned since the 1960s. A cooling tank explosion around that time contaminated almost 20 square miles around this and other local mines and caused the evacuation of nearly 300,000 residents. This incident was long hidden by the Soviet government before a scientist leaked the information in 1980. Other intrepid urban explorers, however, have braved even the nearby radioactive mines at their own risk.
