evidence: Former island in the Aral Sea used to be a top-secret Russian bio-weapons facility. Imagine an American-centric, worst nightmare portrayal of the peak of the Cold War. It probably looks a little like hazard-suited Soviets, tinkering with terrifying diseases we long thought were extinct. And that probably looks a lot like Vozrozhdeniye Island just a few decades ago. [...] After the fall of the Soviet Union, the island facility was abandoned, and the remnants of the weaponized diseases were buried quickly. As the island slowly became desert and the sea slowly disappeared due to Soviet irrigation projects, the once isolated island became a part of the mainland.