The Secret Soviet town that produced 100,000 tons of NUCLEAR warheads ⚠️

Silemai, the secret Soviet city that produced all the nuclear warheads. They didn't want to give away that it was a secret city producing uranium. Even like the pillars aren't real, they're just facades. Hello! Where is this? This one? Okay, thank you. Oh, a piano! Hello! Are you American? Yes, I'm an American. About 70,000 nuclear warheads were produced here, which is mind-boggling. Hello! What's your name? My name is Luke. The Soviets scrubbed this place off the map, you couldn't find it. A brazen example of Soviet propaganda to build something like this right after Chernobyl. Hello guys, welcome back to the channel. Today we're going on a very fascinating adventure, an exploration. Today we're going to an old Soviet closed-off city, the little city of Silemai. This is in northeastern Estonia, near the Russian border, the former Soviet region. So, it's a very fascinating city. The real quick explanation is that it was a secret city because they produced uranium. And actually the Soviet Union produced, of their 70,000 nuclear weapons, the uranium came from here in Silemai. And actually their very first nuclear bomb was also uranium from Silemai. So it was a secretive town, it didn't show up on the maps. And we're going to go explore. We're going to see what still remains in the little town of Silemai. Okay, so we're starting on the outer flanks of the city of Silemai. So what's perhaps a really interesting part of the history here is that this region was like the crux of the line, right where the Nazis were pushing against the Soviets. The Nazis were trying to lay siege to Leningrad, St. Petersburg, that's the old name of St. Petersburg. And this is where they got stopped. And the part of history that everybody knows about is that that's where the Germans were stopped. And also because they were going in at the winter time, fighting Russia at winter time is not a good idea. Because they happen to be experts at winter fighting. So everybody knows about all the German losses. And so this is kind of an unknown, or kind of a not very much visited memorial to the Estonians and the Russians that died in all of the battles of Leningrad. So it's out in the middle of the forest here, and it's this memorial. So we'll go up there. And then also in this whole region, this is where now where all the summit, like this is the big cemetery of the area. And there's some Soviet memorials over there. So we'll go to those in just a sec. But first I want to see this one. My feet are going to be soaked by the time I'm done with this. But it's the least you can do. Oh, I'm falling in. It's the least you can do to pay respect to the people that died here. Altogether about 100,000 people died here. For the, this is technically like the Battle of Narva is over there. Farther down, this is the Battle of Blue Mountains. This is what it's called. These Blue Mountains. But like I said, 100,000 people that died here. And this cross. Pretty fascinating. With all the swords going through it. For the Estonian soldiers here. And you can see 1944. It's interesting how the sign is in Estonian. Maybe it was changed back to Estonian after the Soviets left. But it's not in Russian. Here. For the German soldiers. The Germans that died in Russia. Is what it says. Interesting little memorial. Little. Big memorial. Yeah, okay. Let's go check out the Soviet memorials. That are down in the, down this way is the other cemeteries. Okay, so here's one of the Soviet memorials. To the victims of war. And interestingly, I'll zoom in. You can see of course the Hamburg sickle. That it's respected and you can stay here. This is all the huge cemetery. There's another big cemetery over there. And what's kind of interesting. Actually yeah, here's. What I keep talking about. This is like the Russian style. Of a grave site. Where it's got a table and a chair. So you can come. Have vodka or something or lunch. With the person. And this is a memorial to all of the. Estonians that died. 1918 to 1920. And so. With that we enter the little town of Suleme. And you can tell that we're in a very Soviet town. Because of all of these Soviet apartments. All just completely surrounded by them. And what's kind of interesting about them. Is that they're purposely built. You get free housing under Soviets. After you work for so long. But they're built to be kind of uncomfortable. Like the ceilings are only like 7 feet high. And so it's free. But it's meant not to spend much time at home. You should be outside doing work. Contributing to the community. I'm really hungry. We're going to go get some soup. That's the first order of business. Hello. Food. Thank you. Coffee. Piano. It does work. Hello. Food. Potatoes. I know a little bit of Russian. I'm American. So this is the soup that we get. Some salad. And potatoes. I'm asking if they have juice. She says no. But they have this. No idea what it is. Olives and everything in it. But she said it's tasty. I trust her. Yeah, it is tasty. It is tasty. Thank you. Very tasty. Selimi. It actually used to be a resort town. Going this way we have the coast. The Gulf of Finland. For many years that's all this place was. It was a small town on the coast. It was a resort town really. Two of its most famous residents that had dachas here were both Tchaikovsky. The piece I just played, the Russian dance by Tchaikovsky. It was also Ivan Pavlov. Ivan Pavlov. Two very important people in Russian history. Like I said, they used to live here because it was just a normal little resort town. Pavlov, by the way, is the guy that proved that humans have, like all animals, we have instincts. And the way that he proved that is to test if dogs could know when a treat was going to come. So he'd ring a bell and then give them the food five seconds later. Okay, it worked. Ring the bell, five minutes later give them food, and to prove that they were actually knowing that food was going to be coming he drilled holes, cut holes into the necks of the dog and then saliva would come out from the neck. And so then he could use that to measure that, okay, the dog is salivating so it knows that food is coming. Anyway, yeah, so he's one of the most famous residents here. But this place then was taken over by the Nazis. And that's an important part of history. They set up concentration camps here, and the concentration camps they were basically doing mining. And so that's what this place was known for. And then when the Soviets took it over, then they took over those mines as well. But then something very important happened in history at that time. When the United States was fighting with Japan at the exact same time, what stopped Japan from fighting was that the United States dropped an atomic bomb, the first atomic bomb. And so then that became a really important part of history. Nuclear programs were very critical. It became apparent. And so then the Soviets started building nuclear plants as well. And so then this place they found out that when the Germans were doing the mining here that it actually had a byproduct of uranium. And so that uranium ding ding ding ding ding, and so then this whole city sprung to life. So it didn't, it used to be a resort town but then they built all of these huge Soviet-style buildings, and even this one. But this one for example, what does it look like? Of course it looks like a church, right? It's not a church though. Everything here was kind of built in a, I guess, it's a very Stalinistic, neoclassical style. You can see the two stories, the flat face, and then the Easter egg kind of colors. Easter egg colors I like to call it. So this is actually the city hall. But they built it in the style of like an Estonian, like Lutheran kind of church. And that's why it looks so interesting. It's all new, but so the Soviets built an entire new city because now there's a huge workforce of people coming here to mine uranium, and they needed places for the people, but they wanted this to be an inconspicuous place. They didn't want to give away that it was a secret city producing uranium. And so then they tried to model it and make it look kind of like a nice Soviet city, but also kind of like not too unique, not too nice. Привет! Как тебя зовут? Меня зовут Лук. Очень приятно. Anyway, but they didn't want this place to be known, and so then it kind of blends in, but it's kind of like a fake facade. And so even a building like this, for example, it does look very Soviet style, but even the pillars aren't real, they're just facades. Because obviously this entire city, they were just like springing it up as quickly as possible, and they had to cut on some details like that. Down there there's some more of those Easter egg kind of buildings, the orange buildings, but I want to focus on the main promenade, so we're going to go down this way actually. Later on we will go to the chemical factory that put this place on the map for the good or the bad. For the bad mostly, but the chemical plant that put this place on the map. But one thing that's kind of interesting about its history here though, is that this place, because of the secretive nature of what was going on here, that it was a closed city. And so, that being said, nobody was allowed to enter and nobody was allowed to just leave. You had to get permissions for all of this. The Soviets scrubbed this place off of the map, you couldn't find it. If you found anything it would just be a little indication that would call it Leningrad 1 or Moscow 500 is what they called it. But nothing more on the map. Just like, most of the time it was just a blank spot. And so, like I said, it was all because of this uranium enrichment. It was a very top secret program. We'll go to the chemical factory and I'll show you where they produced about 100,000 tons of uranium. It's like mind-boggling. But because of that there's also this kind of weird, like nuclear kind of history to this place. And so then you find a place such as this. This is all in Russian. This is the Prometheus statue for the nuclear conquering. One thing that's really interesting about this though, we see things like this in, there's actually one of these in Chernobyl as well. I think there's like three of these all together. But what I want to point out is the date that this was built. 1987. Now, something else happened in April of 1986. A few countries over in another Soviet country. A little place called Chernobyl. And so Chernobyl happened one year before this. And so the boldness of them building a statue less than a year after the Chernobyl disaster where it's like we're conquering the idea of the Prometheus is like we're holding up the atomic. Man can overdo this. We can be stronger than atomic power. And so it's really like a brazen example of Soviet propaganda to build something like this right after Chernobyl. So this is the big promenade. It's really fascinating because this, like I said, this all sprung up so quickly. And the Soviet architectures, like the architects, they could put kind of whatever they wanted. And so it's kind of like an ideal Soviet city. This huge promenade used to be called like Lenin Street. All these engineers and all these people that were coming in to live here, the workers itself, not the prisoners that were doing all the mining. The engineers that were doing the process to convert it into enriched uranium. Those people, they needed a place to live and they needed a place to stay because they weren't allowed to necessarily leave. It wasn't that easy. And so the Soviet architects, they decided to try and make it like kind of nice, kind of like interesting. And so that's why you find an interesting thing like this big boulevard. But a lot of these buildings were constructed right at that heart of the right after the bomb was dropped in Japan, those atomic bombs. The next few years after that, they started mining like crazy here. And then probably within about the first four years they were able to make their first enriched uranium nuclear bomb. But a building like this, this one was made in, you see up there, in 1955. Because it's all made during the Soviet style. Take a look at this. It's so hard to find these in Estonia, but some hammers and sickles and the Russian star. It's a very, very rare sight actually to find that in Estonia. Let's keep walking down the promenade. We'll go to the Gulf of Finland. Some of these areas really do feel like Pripyat. Pripyat and Chernobyl. Pripyat was built around the same kind of time, and so it's got that same architectural kind of style. So this is the Gulf of Finland. It's really interesting that they tried to make it like a nice relaxable enough town. A watchful eye though would see that over there, you see the big towers? That is where the chemical plant is. So, that is our next destination. Let's head over there. Okay, we made it over to the chemical factory. I tried getting inside, but the security guard stopped me. He said that I need a special permission. He only speaks Russian. There's no Estonian here, no English of course, but everybody here is Russian. It feels really like I'm in Russia. Anyway, this is our final stop, because as you can see behind me, this is the chemical plant. I'm not sure if they're recording me, so I'm going to come walk over in the parking lot. There's video cameras all over the place here. Like I was saying, during the Nazi occupation, when Nazis were here, that they made it into a concentration camp, and they were mining for basically shale. Then, when the Soviets took over, after they defeated the Nazis, they took over this land then. That's when they found out that uranium was a byproduct of what they were doing. With their new nuclear program, this turned into a huge city. They were mining uranium here for a long time, and then Soviets left in the 1990s, 1991, and that's about the time that this factory stopped then too. This is where they produced almost all the uranium, 100,000 tons of it, and about 1% of it turns into enriched nuclear warhead uranium. Of all of that, about 70,000 nuclear warheads were produced here, which is mind-boggling to think about that. Anyway, so then after they left, the factory closed, but they found out that it was a very dangerous place, because nearby here, I think it's over here, this area right here, there is a cesspool, a pond where they would dump off all of the excess factory water. For a long time, they were just dumping it straight into the Gulf of Finland, so it was just absolutely horrible for the biology there. So they started putting it into a pond, but the pond was only 30 meters away, and there was no protection between it, so it was seeping in. So then after they left the European Union in the last 20 years or so, they built a concrete barrier to stop it from flowing in, but it's still problematic here. And perhaps the kicker to the story is that here at the end, that the factory closed and everything, and it wasn't being touched, because it was dangerous, and then it was bought out by an American firm. An American firm now operates here, and so that's why these buildings, I was trying to go inside and get the permission to go in, but it's an American company, but all Russians that are here, of course, and the Russian guy was saying, no, you can't go inside unless you have the permission paper. So, that's where our tour ends here of Sillimäe, the secret Soviet city that produced all the nuclear warheads, but a secret place that's oddly trying to integrate into Estonian society. So, okay, goodbye. See you guys later on the next adventure.