Entries Tagged 'Russia' ↓

Found an incredible post on English Russia. There are a ton of pictures of an underground Russian submarine base. Check it out Russian Underground Submarine Base. Really amazing.

English Russia has a great post about a ship graveyard in Kamchatka, Russia. The ships are frozen in place and have been abandoned to rust away. Really spooky looking seeing all those ships just stuck there. Click through to see all the pictures. English Russia: Abandoned Frozen Ships

Edit: Here is a link to a google maps satellite view of the ship graveyard.

When I was a kid, I had a computer game called SimCity. It was fun game where you built and managed a small city. You supplied power, zoning, roads, and utilities. As your city grew, you would start to run out of land area to keep the growth going. That was when a futuristic type of building would become available. The arcology. basically it was a city within a single building.

Well, when I first saw the pictures for this new building that was what I thought of. The Crystal Island is the latest in a series of major construction projects being built in Moscow. When completed it will contain 27 million square feet of floor space. It will be over 1500 ft. tall and will feature 900 apartments, 3000 hotel rooms, an international school for 500 students, cinemas, a theater, sports complex and a parking garage for over 16,500 vehicles.
Follow the link for more pictures and details. World’s Biggest Building Coming to Moscow: Crystal Island

Well, it’s nearly Christmas. So I thought I should do a Christmas themed post. So imagine my excitement when I found this site.

The makers of Mazaika, a photo mosaic tool, have amassed an amazing collection of vintage Soviet Christmas cards. Some of these are really interesting. And for some reason, a lot of them are space themed.

I only posted a few of them here, but there are lots more. So check out the site.
Mazaika: Old Soviet Christmas card collection via Presurfer

Picture courtesy of Martin Trolle

Found this great Flickr set of an abandoned Soviet missile silo in Latvia. With the recent news about US missile silos for sale, I thought this was a bit interesting.

Check out the entire set
at Flickr: Soviet Nuclear Missile Silo

Found this very strange and absolutely hilarious site by Elena Marus an art student in Moscow. Check out this quote from the site.

“Russia is the biggest country in the world… Everybody knows there are two cities in Russia - Moscow and St. Petersburg… The rest of the country is called Siberia…

So what else do we have in Russia? We have bears, of course. Lots of different bears… We do have the biggest problems with the street bears. For they cause the greatest traffic jams ever, especially in Moscow. So we have the special bear-movement schedule and our government has to keep special shoulder strap werewolves on duty to control the bears.”

Lots of other weird and satirical information on Russia, can be found on the site. You really should check it out.

Wow Russia

Found this very interesting photo blog with a bunch of weapons that have been confiscated from rebels in Chechnya. Most of the weapons are hand made from materials not originally meant to be weapons. Chechnya rebelled against the Russian Federation shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union. While the rebellion was ultimately a failure, there is still a great deal of unrest.
Check it out: Chechen Self-Made Weapons
For a little history on the fighting in Chechnya, read this Wikipedia Article: Chechnya

Found this article about a diamond mine in Russia. The thing is seriously massive. The picture above hardly gives it justice. The mine is so big, that it generates a downdraft into it, that caused several helicopter crashes before overflights were banned. Check the article out for more pictures.

Via BLDGBlog: Worlds largest diamond mine
Here is a link to the Google satellite map page: Diamond Mine

Russia has proposed the building of a tunnel connecting Siberia with Alaska in the Bering strait. The project is estimated to take between 10 and 15 years to complete. It will also cost about $65 Billion to build. The tunnel, if built, would be huge. It would contain a high speed rail line, a full size highway, an oil pipeline, a natural gas pipeline, electricity cables, and fiber optic data cables. The tunnel would be 64 miles long. which makes it twice as long as the UK France tunnel under the English channel.
Currently the project has strong supporters in the Russian government, and supporters in the Alaskan state government. It hasn’t really been pitched to the US federal government. So there is no time table on when this will happen or if it will happen.

Via Gizmodo:Tunnel Between Russia and Alaska in the Works and Bloomberg: Russia Plans World’s Longest Tunnel, a Link to Alaska

Found this amazing image of a pocket watch made entirely of Bone. The only things in the watch that aren’t bone, are the metal springs. Apparently the Bronnikov family from Vjatka, Russia made these watches back in the 1800s. The watches today can command up to $25,000 at auction. Each watch was hand carved and painstakingly put together.

Here is the blog where I found the original story Watchismo
Check out the history of the watch here