Driving Inside the Soviets’ Secret Submarine Lair | Hacker News Reader

Driving Inside the Soviets’ Secret Submarine Lair

wired.com

50 pointstilt25 comments

"[...]the humidity in the room, which had to be critically maintained at 60 percent — deviation either way could have resulted in an explosion large enough to destroy the entire base, not to mention the mountain that housed it and much of the surrounding area."

I'm going to assume that anything large enough to destroy the surrounding mountain would require at least one of the missiles/warheads to go (thermo-)nuclear. But my understanding is that actually achieving the Big Bang is really rather difficult to do intentionally, let alone by accident - at worst you have a few kton fizzle. So how is a small change in humidity able to trigger one or more of these weapons? (And, if one did successfully trigger, is it possible that it could daisy-chain the rest, or would they be torn apart before achieving supercritical geometry?)

Then again, I guess it's maybe possible that the supplies of conventional munitions and maybe nasty missile/rocket propellants could do some major damage, but a whole mountain?

That part struck me as embellished writing (or perhaps the tour guide exaggerated that point). I hardly know a thing about the sensitivity of explosive weapons, but consider the importance the Soviets placed on secrecy. If there was such a danger, I can't imagine them working so hard to construct the place in near-total obscurity, and subsequently relegating the safety of up to six submarines and up to 3000 people to the accuracy of a single hair.

Although, having looked it up now, hair-tension hygrometers could be a bit more accurate than what I initially guessed, though there are more accurate alternatives.

I agree the writing was probably embellished but the challenge of low humidity is static charge. I suspect the threat was more that a static discharge would disable the weapon (it wouldn't actually work) rather than to cause it to spontaneously explode. ESD damage is a scourge in all weapon plants.

Can someone explain how the 'hair' monitors humidity?

Kind of meta, but what an absolutely horrible "slideshow".

Yes, it reloads the whole page and the dozen or so social widgets all while constantly moving the slideshow image further down the screen. I need to install one of those widget blocker addons again...

Odd that they'd have put this in the Black Sea, where the only salt-water egress is via the Bosporus & Dardanelles, i.e. through the narrow waters of a NATO member.

It's not odd because it worked the other way around - USSR sent ships onto the Black Sea to protect themselves from the ones approaching through Bosphor. Defence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreux_Convention_Regarding_t...

Under the treaty, they could send submarines through the straits but they had to notify Turkey:

Under Article 12, Black Sea states are also allowed to send submarines through the Straits, with prior notice, as long as the vessels have been constructed, purchased or sent for repair outside the Black Sea. The less restrictive rules applicable to Black Sea states were agreed as, effectively, a concession to the Soviet Union, the only Black Sea state other than Turkey with any significant number of capital ships or submarines.[8][14] The passage of civil aircraft between the Mediterranean and Black Seas is permitted, but only along routes authorised by the Turkish government.[15]

When I sailed through the Bosphorous, we had a tour guide who told us that once a Soviet sub was spotted outside of the black sea and later spotted inside but notice had never been given and the sub had never been seen going through. They later figured out that the sub had made the journey by shadowing underneath a large civilian ship to prevent from being spotted (by sonar I suppose). After that, they decided to run chains across the straight underneath the depth of a normal ship.

I'm not sure how true it is, but it makes a good story. :-)

I think you got that backwards.

Entertaining article. Now I want to buy a Land Rover so I can have the same kinds of adventures exploring old submarine bases!

Why do you need a land rover? It's located practically within the city.

You just get a trip there and that's what you do. Or you can hike.

There's also an out-of-service submarine base in montenegro, and you would not need land rover either since it's on island.

Balaklava is a nice place btw, didn't visit the museum but liked the town.

it's a land rover advert though, isn't it. they also sponsor the video.

Nice for them, but you can't live in an advert. You don't buy a land rover to go exploring (there was this case when it proved suboptimal), you get it to commute - sadly.

http://maps.yandex.ru/-/CJxiqPKM Here it goes I guess. Sadly the crane blocks the view on the submarine entrance.

Last year I finished driving from Alaska to Argentina in a Jeep...

If you are seriously interested in this kind of Overland travel, checkout http://wikioverland.org The Encyclopedia of Overland Travel which contains pretty much everything you need to know.

What did you do for the Darién Gap? :)

I loaded my Jeep into a shipping container and had it shipped from Colon (Panama) to Cartagena (Colombia). I flew.

I documented the whole process in great detail so others can do the same: http://theroadchoseme.com/shipping-across-the-darien-gap-pt-...

How do you afford this?

I saved every penny I had for 2 years working as a Software Engineer. During the trip I freelanced a little, managed a hostel for 5 months, and wound up with the balance on my credit card.

I've just finished paying off my Credit Card, so have started saving for the next one. I work full time and am just about to start my 2nd and 3rd concurrent jobs.

The whole price breakdown can be seen at http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure

Well according to his blog's subheader, hard work and luck.

The woman guide claims that she worked there at "level 2 security" (2nd to highest) in 1982. That would make her roughly 48 to 52 today. She doesn't look that age. She looks younger (lack of wrinkles and she isn't doing botox we can assume). But more importantly who would give somebody that young (about 18 to 22) that type of security clearance?

Why can we assume she hasn't had botox injections?

Actually, the visa regime in Ukraine is pretty soft now. Most people can stay up to 3 months without a visa.

And there are guided tours for the Balaklava Submarine base.

I was in town just last summer, didn't get to go to the base though.

Didn't realise that shot of the sub was a model until watching the video. How dishappointing.

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