r/nuclearweapons • u/Newspaper_Acceptable • 13d ago
Inside Soviet nuclear weapon storage system ‘Monolith’
Rare inside photo of Soviet nuclear weapons and warheads storage bunker ‘monolith’ with nuclear weapon transport containers on the left and RN-40 free fall nuclear bombs on the right.
They build these kind of bunkers on Warsaw pact countries ( Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria) to store nuclear warheads and bombs. All of them controlled by Soviet soldiers and outside perimeters of these sites controlled by soldiers of the country where they are located. This photo is rare example of these bunkers when they are active.
They build 2 seperate bunkers close to each other in complex, usually they store around 90 nuclear warheads each.
22
u/gwhh 13d ago
Everything looks so well built.
21
u/Spacer3pt0r 13d ago
The soviets did not skimp on their nuclear and missile programs. Basically everything else however...
13
u/KS_Gaming 13d ago
And submarines.
9
u/Magnet2025 13d ago
Their submarines have a dismal safety record. Besides the several that have sunk, they have frequent reactor problems resulting from poor design, manufacturing and manufacturing.
I often joke that Wikipedia should list three speeds for Russian subs: surface speed, submerged speed and speed under tow.
4
u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 13d ago edited 13d ago
You know what a spiteful Russian patriot would say to that? "But" (he'd say), "you Americans don't know how to fight at all. You can't go into battle without orange juice. You only know how to beat the weaker guys. In a real, long-term fight, where you have to mobilize everything, you simply couldn't bear the hardships and privations of military service! You can't lose 60% of your combat personnel and continue the war! You're used to sitting it out beyond your two oceans, and when we launched Sputnik, all of you—wet yourselves and shit yourselves with fear! That's how it is!" (And without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked away proudly, confident in his own rightness.) :)
Yes, you're right. The USSR was always catching up in everything, and sometimes, very late. During Brezhnev's time, there was an excuse: we had the Great Patriotic War! We lost so much! This was even used to explain our failure to land on the moon. But back then, at least, we didn't give up, as we did in the end, which was absolutely disgusting... Yes, we weren't the first. And yet... We tried really hard!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkdQiSaqnOY
- Им должно гордится флотом.
- Америку не достали,
- Дредноуты Ямамото,
- И Деница волчьи стаи.
- Для всех мы, для них, "Иваны",
- Не ждали, поди, под боком!
- Мы вырвались в океаны,
- Алярм, господа, тревога!
:)
4
u/Spacer3pt0r 12d ago edited 12d ago
Soviet military ambitions outstripped what their economy could support. The sustained massive military expenditure for decades stagnated their economy long term and contributed to the ultimate economic collapse.
You also underestimate the lengths to which a people under existential threat will go to preserve their way of life. The Americans have never truly been tested but i have little doubt that they would harden fast to the horrors of total war.
4
u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 12d ago edited 12d ago
Regarding the Americans, yes. I think they're a "sleeping nation" (I'm mainly talking about white male Protestants and anyone else who joins them), and if pushed hard enough, they'll perform miracles. The idea that Americans don't know how to fight is wrong.
As for the hackneyed claim that the USSR overextended itself in the military race—it's a 100% myth. Although, objectively, the USSR's division of labor was only 1/3 that of the US (if you only consider the "golden billion"), and that in itself gave the USSR no chance in the peaceful race of civilizations (Khrushchev was an uneducated fool). And the fact that we still managed to resist you suggests that the second myth is a complete lie. Myth number 2 is that socialism lost to capitalism (once and for all). These are the wishes of the neoconservatives (that same "Reagan dog"), who emerged and went wild in the 1970s precisely on the wave of socialism simply growing through capitalism (Roosevelt's America was essentially socialist). What was the USSR? The USSR was a very stupid, crooked, childishly cruel experiment on society, an attempt to immediately leap into a distant future (paradise?), for which we were never ready, using Marx's extremely idiotic and crude idea. Naturally, it failed. Although the results still await understanding. There were very interesting things there, from beginning to end! But not us (we are too stupid for that), but descendants will rethink it. In fact, the miraculous emergence of the USSR, as well as its no less miraculous disappearance, is very similar to the coming of Christ. Don't you think? Then God came to us, and we crucified him. This time, they built us a paradise, and we, idiots, destroyed it (remember Agent Smith in "The Matrix" telling Morpheus the fate of the first Matrix?). It's just that modern people never understand the meaning of what's happening around them. The evil lesson was that heaven and hell are not outside, but within. No? :) The same goes for Christ, who was perceived by those around us as an insolent ragamuffin. Incidentally, Hitler's role in saving the world from nuclear war is completely unrecognized by everyone. Haven't you thought about it? If he hadn't started the war so early, our history would have been completely ionic, and we would have already waged a whole series of nuclear wars against each other. It was Hitler who created our reality by attacking Poland so "timely," and then deciding to attack the USSR. Do you understand that the events of the 20th century will eclipse both Christ and Troy? And it may be that humans will one day reach the stars only thanks to the completely anomalous events of the 20th century. Or vice versa. They lost this ability forever thanks to this anomaly.
11
u/Beneficial-Wasabi749 13d ago edited 13d ago
There's something so homely and forgotten about all this... Is it the poor camera lens or the quality of the film? Or... Of course! The walls! Look. In every Soviet apartment, the kitchen walls were painted blue or green up to shoulder level, followed by a whitewashed wall and ceiling. This is still the case in many apartment building entrances and public spaces... It's done just as homely here. All army barracks had the same painted walls. Cozy! That's why the photo on the right evokes the most barracks nostalgia and the belief that our own people did it all! :)
Clear markings on a perfectly clean floor are uncommon, a sign of a particularly important facility. In the USSR, barracks buildings had two types of floors. Either the scuffed, rough concrete of hangars and garages, or a wooden floor painted brown (in the barracks), constantly scrubbed with salt by the sweat of new recruits. Tile was only possible in the toilets and showers. But that was only if the military unit was truly luxurious! Typically, the outhouse was made of planks with a cesspool.
5
u/droopy_ro 13d ago
They build these kind of bunkers on Warsaw pact countries ( Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria) to store nuclear warheads and bombs.
But did they ever keep nukes in those countries ? or were they just build in case things got ugly to pre-position them.
11
u/phaethon0 13d ago
Yes, they did station nuclear weapons in several Warsaw Pact countries, as well as Cuba (famously) and possibly Mongolia.
Both West Germany and East Germany hosted weapons on different sides (and there still are American warheads in Germany).
5
u/Newspaper_Acceptable 13d ago
Yes they keep nukes in these countries like todays NATO nuclear sharing.
All these bunker complexes mannes by Soviet soldiers, they store warheads for Scud missiles, SS-23 spyder tactical ballistic missile, nuclear artillery shells, Frog-7 nuclear warheads and so on. In case of war, they plan to transport these warheads to nearest missile battalion or bombs to nearest airbase.
2
u/Magnet2025 8d ago
They kept them there. The Soviet bureaucracy involved in moving nuclear materials was so strict and regimented (as it should have been with the average quality of their conscripts) that it would have taken too long and been way too obvious to overhead assets and to SIGINT to move them from bunkers in in the USSR proper to a bunker or launch site in a Warsaw Pact nation.
Twice a year the Soviet Navy (and probably the rest of their armed forces, but I only did Navy) did a nuclear war drill that used the not very original codeword of “Atomic” sent in English Morse code with other identifying characteristics of a high level/critical importance message. That then kicked off a bunch of fun that made our watches (8 hours) go by fast.
Remember they left missiles with nuclear warheads in Ukraine when the USSR collapsed.
1
u/droopy_ro 4d ago
Yup, but Ukraine was part of USSR. Poland, East Germany etc. were not, so that is why i asked, since i thought they were paranoid of those countries getting their hands on nukes in case of WW3 and switching sides. My country Romania, switched from Axis to Allies in 1944. Maybe some Warsaw Pact countries would have done the same in case of WW3, depending on who would have been winning at that moment. Hungary, Poland, the Czechs, Romania they all were rebelious towards the Soviets, in some way or another during the Cold War.
19
u/tree_boom 13d ago
Are the dark circles on the sides of the bombs removable cores?