Russia

Mirny Diamond Mine

The Mir mine, also called the Mirny mine, is an open pit diamond mine located in Mirny, Sakha Republic, in the Siberian region of eastern Russia. The mine is >525 meters (1,722 ft) deep (4th in the world) and has a diameter of 1,200 m (3,900 ft), and is one of the largest excavated holes in the world.

Kola Superdeep Borehole

The Kola Superdeep Borehole was a scientific project undertaken by the Soviet Union in the 1970s to better understand the Earth’s crust.

Glass Beach on Ussuri Bay

Known as ‘Glass Beach’, for many years the coastline looked the opposite of a pristine and perfect beauty spot. It was a Soviet era tip, where truckloads of broken vodka bottles and cracked porcelain were dumped. Over many years, the waves smoothed away the sharp edges as it turned the shards of glass and china over in the water. They have now become a tourist attraction on Ussuri Bay, near the naval port of Vladivostok in the east.

Verkhoyansk

In the remote Yakutia region of Siberia, more than a hundred kilometers inside the Arctic Circle, lies the small town of Verkhoyansk. Winter temperature here regularly drops to minus fifty degree Celsius. It’s so cold that “no one can stay outside for more than 15 minutes”. The only way to protect oneself from the bitter cold is to wrap themselves up in skins and furs of animals, and keep moving.

Metro-2

Metro-2 in Moscow, Russia, is the informal name for a purported secret underground metro system which parallels the public Moscow Metro. The system was supposedly built, or at least started, during the time of Joseph Stalin and was codenamed D-6 by the KGB.