At the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union were both producing nuclear warheads at rates never seen before or since. Both countries bristled with tens of thousands of missiles, and they were willing to use them. In the USSR’s case, research, uranium enrichment and warhead assembly took place in Russia, but the bottom of the supply chain - uranium extraction - was centred in a few small towns in the mountains of Central Asia. For these towns, those were the good old days, marked by high wages and material support from the central government in Moscow. However, after stockpiles had started to reach practical limits, demand for fissile material gradually fell away. Along with that demand, life too slowly dwindled from the small mountain towns which once stole fire from the gods. Industry left, and the jobs too and the good times along with them. Moscow doesn’t send anything anymore. All that’s left for those who yet remain is the slow decay of waiting and remembering what came before.
Join me on an adventure through the Kyrgyz highlands to one of these towns, Min-Kush, to meet the people who remain there and hear their stories of their town and what is once was.
Pictures of the Min-Kush uranium mining infrastructure before it was demolished can be seen here: www.lostwithpurpose.com/min-k...
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00:00 Lost and found
01:14 Kojomkul and mystery liquid
03:22 The road to Min-Kush
05:32 English vocab revision
07:25 Arrival in Min-Kush
10:42 Finest guesthouse in town
14:08 La traviata
15:08 First impressions and a mural
17:25 Arstan: Uranium Man
20:59 A walk through Min-Kush’s past
24:39 Sportshall and Lenin
27:24 Uranium processing
30:52 Closing remarks