Mankind has been building underground cities long before our era. With the outbreak of the First World War, the construction of underground cities for fortification purposes acquired a new dimension. It is known that on the territory of the former USSR there were more than 2 thousand underground settlements, some of them were built by our ancestors BC.

Catacomb settlements can be found all over the world. There are they in Paris, Rome, Cappadocia and other cities of the world. Each such underground structure contains many secrets and mysteries, but not everyone is able to withstand the devastating blow for which it was created.

The construction of underground cities in case was carried out under the heading "secret". Not every participant in this construction was able to keep state secrets as it should be, and information about such structures went to the masses, acquiring myths and legends.

Mysterious underground cities of Russia

Many people know exactly where the underground cities are located only by the name of the area and rumors. Some walk over them every day and don't even know it. How to get into the underground city is known only to those who have access to state secrets, live, work in them or guard. The entrance to such a city can be inside any ordinary city building.

All secret underground cities are supervised by the FSB of the Russian Federation and the Main Directorate of Joint Venture of the President of Russia. Talk about them began to be widely discussed in the early 90s of the last century. This was preceded by the declassification of some KGB archives.

Underground city in Ramenki

One of these mysterious underground cities is located in one of the metropolitan areas - Ramenki. It is believed that a city was built under them in case the Third World War broke out, designed for 12-15 thousand people. It is completely autonomous. It has its own power supply, sewerage, water and air supply system. The location of the underground city is determined between Moscow State University and Udaltsova Street. This area of ​​the capital has not been built up for a long time.

The underground city in Ramenki is associated with the mysterious Moscow Metro-2, which is sometimes called Stalin's subway. It was built in parallel with the existing subway of the capital. Articles have repeatedly appeared in the media that the depth of the location of underground Moscow buildings, which can become a shelter from the event of the Third World War, can reach 300 meters.

You can get into the underground city from the existing Moscow metro, which was built with the possibility of being used as a bomb shelter for residents and guests of the capital. There is an opinion that there are other ways to get into the city. You can do this from one of the buildings of Moscow State University, the Rossiya Hotel, the Kremlin and other places. In Ramenki themselves there are elevator shafts for descending into the depths of the earth.

In case, this underground city can be used as a command post. It has an underground connection to Vnukovo Airport and other strategic facilities.

Secret cities in Russia

In modern Russia, there are cities and closed-type production facilities. They are under the jurisdiction and control of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. All of them have ground and underground parts, which can go deep into the ground well below 10 floors. All such buildings are autonomous and have food and water supplies for at least three months. They are scattered throughout the country, but it is impossible to find them on the maps until the stamp of special secrecy is removed from them. Instead of a name, they have letters. An example is the well-known to many, the declassified city of Arzamas 16.

For a very long time on the map of the country it was impossible to find him in the Nizhny Novgorod region. Now the general public knows how. Near this closed city is a holy place for many believers - Diveevo. The relics of Seraphim of Sarov are kept in the local monastery, and Orthodox people from all over the world come to touch them. Despite the large number of tourists, not a single stranger can get behind the Sarov checkpoint, and one can only guess about the depth of underground buildings and their reliability.

There are 32 such closed cities in Russia. Most of them are located in the Moscow region, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Chelyabinsk Region and the Ural Region. The most famous of them are Zarechny in the Penza region, Lesnoy in the Sverdlovsk region on the banks of the Tura, Zheleznogorsk and Zelenogorsk in the Krasnoyarsk Territory.

Underground city of Yamantau

Sixty kilometers from Magnitogorsk is the mountain resort "Abzakovo". In the media of many countries of the world you can find articles about this remarkable place. This is due to rumors that there is an underground city near this resort in Mount Yamantau - the secret residence of Putin and a military headquarters in case of the Third World War.

For the first time, such a well-known American publication as The New York Times wrote about this secret residence of the Government of the Russian Federation. It happened in April 1996. The construction of the city itself has been rumored since the Cold War. From Beloretsk to Yamantau, a railway and a highway are connected, the top of the mountain is carefully guarded. Any nuclear weapon will not be able to break the strength of the shelter structure.

The official status of Yamantau is a repository of state values. Very often the mountain resort "Abzakovo" is visited by Putin. This gives rise to speculation about the President's secret bunker in case of a nuclear war.

Where will the Chinese government hide from a nuclear strike?

In 1969, Mao Tse-tung ordered the creation of a secure underground bunker for the Government. The third world war, in the understanding of the Chinese, is inevitable. It is very important to preserve the leadership of the army and the country as much as possible in case of use by the aggressor. Beijing was chosen to build such a shelter. The length of the government bunker underground is 30 kilometers. It's practically a city within a city. It has shops, schools and even an ice rink. There are plenty of similar bunkers in Beijing. 40% of the population of the Chinese capital will be able to escape in them if nuclear weapons are used.

In addition to the Beijing bunker, a network of secret tunnels has been created in the Celestial Empire, which has been called the “Great China Underground Wall”. The tunnels are connected to underground facilities where nuclear weapons are stored. They are located in the Urumqi region - in the direction of Russia, next to the Korean Peninsula - opposite Vietnam, India and Taiwan.

Where did the Americans build underground cities?

You can find a well-equipped bomb shelter in the United States even in the yard of a private house. The fear of the Third World War has been living in Americans since the Caribbean crisis and Khrushchev's promise to show them Kuz'kin's mother. The FSB probably knows where the American government will hide. Ordinary people can only speculate. A large number of articles have appeared in the media in the past few years about underground construction in the Denver Airport area. The pace of construction of the facility, many journalists define as feverish. Construction of the facility began in the 1950s.

Underground facilities in the United States can be found in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, in Virginia - the Greenbrier Bunker and Mount Weather, Massachusetts - Iron Mountain, Pennsylvania-Maryland - the Raven Rock mountain complex. All these shelters in the event of a nuclear war will be used by the American elites to save their lives. There is also a deep underground base at the US Air Force facility named Area 51, which became famous after the Rosewell UFO incident.

Underground Crimea

There are quite a lot of catacombs on the territory of the peninsula, which in the Second World War played the role of a reliable shelter. While being part of Ukraine, many secret underground facilities were declassified and lost their strategic relevance. Among such objects is the underground command post No. 221 near Sevastopol. On Cape Ak-Burun, there is facility No. 100 - an underground shelter for coastal ships. Between Sevastopol and Yalta there is a "Barrel of Death" and concrete casemates of the Southern Fort of Balaklava.

Between Sudak and Feodosia there is an underground facility number 76. During the Soviet era, nuclear weapons were stored in it.

Secret underground cities of the world

There are secret underground cities or bunkers in all the capitals of nuclear powers. All of them are equipped with systems of autonomous energy supply, communications, water supply, air supply, sewerage and food and water supplies. Information about the presence of such objects in any country of the world is secret. The internal security services of the state are engaged in the protection of such objects.

There is a high probability that in the event of the outbreak of the Third World War, underground cities will become the only objects in which humanity is possible. After all, a series of nuclear bombings will lead to such an effect as a nuclear winter, which will provoke a number of natural disasters, starting with earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, ending with large-scale tsunamis and, as a result, floods.

After the end of the Earth's atmosphere becomes unsuitable for human habitation, contaminated air and radioactive ash will cover the entire planet. Even those people who do not fall into the bombing zones, one way or another will be doomed to a slow death. Take care of your life and your loved ones, if you do not belong to the scientific, military or political elite of the country, you still have a chance to find shelter in one of the civilian bomb shelters that are available in almost every city. Civil objects are not classified as classified; they can be provided with a list at the regional Ministry of Emergency Situations.

Asgard underground city, Peru

At the edge of the forest, the Ganges River flows, and on its banks one can see massive, dilapidated marble steps, which were supposedly intended for giants. For many miles, the entire sandy shore is covered with bas-reliefs, idols, broken pedestals, fragments of columns.

The architectural remains, the carving pattern, the sheer size of the ruins are something unexpected and grandiose even for those who have visited Palmyra and Egyptian Memphis. It is completely incomprehensible why these ruins have not yet been described and studied by anyone.

The underground city of Asgard is also located here. It is a labyrinth of secret passages. The characteristics of the moves are given in the description of E. Blavatsky. The tunnels are at a depth of 14 feet, there are corridors five miles long that lead to living quarters carved into the rock.

In the very center of the underground city there is a huge cave with a small reservoir in the center and benches around. In the water stands a tall pillar of granite with a thick rusty chain wrapped around it.

Metal underground library, Ecuador

The system of caves and tunnels under Peru and Ecuador holds the oldest treasury, including two libraries. One of them consists of metal books, and the other contains many crystal tables.

Erich von Daniken, in 1973, enjoying the success of his book Chariots of the Gods, said that he had been in a giant tunnel system in Ecuador, which is rumored to cover the entire mainland. And in the tunnels he visited the library, the books in which were made of metal. It is amazing that the library is located in an area where only Indian tribes now live, who do not speak any script at all. It is possible that metal books are evidence of a lost civilization.

Extensive tunnel network, Los Angeles

The Hopi Indian tribe has legends that talk about lizard people. These creatures built three underground cities along the Pacific coast 5,000 years ago, one of which is located under modern Los Angeles.

Shelfeld, an engineer and geophysicist, decided in 1934 to test whether these cities actually existed. With the help of a patented device for finding metals, he began the search. The result was impressive! Under the city, he discovered an extensive network of tunnels. There is even a plan that was once published in the Los Angeles Times. Interestingly, Shufeld's device showed the presence of a huge amount of gold in rooms connected by tunnels.

The engineer was even able to obtain permission from the authorities to excavate. As soon as he began work on drilling the mine, the authorities were concerned about the threat of a collapse and the condition of nearby houses. Work was immediately interrupted and not resumed. Shufeld disappeared from the field of view of society, never to appear again. His subsequent fate remains unknown.

Beijing is one of the unique cities of our planet. It is striking in everything and medieval buildings, with its history going back to the depths of centuries and the architecture of a modern metropolis. However, hardly anyone knows that with all this external splendor, such as the Temple of Heaven, the Forbidden City or the famous Tiananmen Square, there is another, unknown and invisible to the eye Beijing, this is Beijing - underground (website).

The underground city (Dixia Cheng) appeared relatively recently, in the 70s of the 20th century. Its appearance is connected with the same notorious cold war. Relations with the USSR reached a critical point of heat, and China seriously feared a nuclear strike from an all-powerful neighbor. Then the leader of the Chinese Communist Party, Mao Zedong, decided to build an underground city, where, in the event of an attack, almost the entire population of Beijing could hide.

The city construction project was developed back in the 60s of the twentieth century, and after its approval in record time almost under the center of Beijing, on a total area of ​​​​more than 80 square kilometers, it completely arose, where about 800 thousand Beijingers could accommodate in fairly comfortable conditions.

This city is not just a temporary bomb shelter, it has all the infrastructure inherent in cities: streets, residential areas, places of deployment of troops and equipment; schools, hospitals, theaters, cinemas, cafes, markets, farms for growing animals, mushrooms and plants; food storage facilities and even sports facilities. Along the perimeter of the entire city, a system of wells has been established to provide the city's population with water, a specially designed ventilation system is impervious to radioactive and chemical waste.

Massive cement concrete walls and doors are able to withstand not only a nuclear strike, but also protect against earthquakes and floods. It is not known exactly how many floors deep the city was built, since the Chinese government has not made this information public.

In early 2000, after the end of the Cold War, the Chinese leadership opened up access to a small part of the city, allowing limited access for tourists. According to the reviews and descriptions of the first tourists, they were amazed by the scale of the buildings of the underground city. However, from 2008 to the present, Beijing Underground was officially closed by the authorities for reconstruction. Beijing is a modern metropolis with an acute problem and local unsecured residents have arbitrarily occupied some underground bunkers. Currently, this structure is the largest of the known modern underground cities.

Mankind was engaged in the construction of residential dungeons long before the advent of our era. Secret were needed by residents of large settlements for various needs. In the modern world, the construction of underground catacombs acquired a special scope during the First World War, when chemical weapons began to be actively used. On the territory of the Soviet Union, there were over two thousand underground settlements. Underground cities of Russia still exist today.

Mystery underfoot

Many have heard about the existence of bunkers. At the same time, people often do not think about the fact that every day they pass over mysterious cities, not suspecting anything. The entrance to the dungeon can be located in the most ordinary building, for example, in a residential building. Only a limited number of people have access to the secret. These are well-tested people who live underground for years and perform certain functions. Among the underground settlements are:

Secret underground cities of Russia

It is believed that the first underground buildings appeared in Russia during the time of Ivan the Terrible's grandmother Sophia Paleolog. Of course, underground structures could have existed before, but only in the time of Princess Sophia did their creation begin to take on a large scale. Most of the underground structures were not included in the registers. Only a select few knew about their whereabouts.

The creation of dungeons is directly related to Orthodoxy. The first Christians were forced to practice their religion in secret, gathering in caves and catacombs. In memory of the first followers of Christ, underground churches and monasteries were built. The catacombs served not only as a place for quiet solitary prayer. Here they hid from Muslim horsemen from the Golden Horde and from Catholic knights from the west. The construction of dungeons required special knowledge and sophisticated equipment. In Russia there was neither one nor the other. Grand Duke John was forced to invite Italian specialists Pietro Antonio Solari, Andrei Fioravanti and his father Aristotle.

Secret underground cities were necessary to protect not only from external, but also from internal enemies. Russia often suffered from princely strife. One ruler sought to destroy another in order to take a more advantageous throne. Even after the unification of Russia, the Grand Duke should have been wary of his close associates.

Another problem that underground structures helped to cope with was fires. Unlike Western Europe, where preference was given to stone during construction, wood was used in Russia. Every year there were strong fires, after which entire streets burned out. People lost not only houses, but also other property that had been accrued over the years. The richest residents of the capital began to build dungeons where they could store the most valuable things. After the tower burned down, the catacombs also became a temporary place of residence for the victims of the fire.

The underground cities of Russia, built several centuries ago, still exist today. They were not entered on the maps, and the entrance to them was kept in the strictest confidence. Sometimes the keeper of the secret died before he could pass on his secret to the next keeper. In this case, the underground city remained a secret forever. Probably, the secret will be revealed only by archaeologists of the future.

Underground cities: video

Now every modern city is a settlement with a huge number of buildings, streets and other infrastructure that we see on the surface. However, as it turned out, this whole organism may well exist underground. We bring to your attention a list of the ten most famous underground cities in the world.

Burlington

This city was built by the government of Foggy Albion during the Cold War. The bunker occupied 240 hectares and could accommodate approximately 3,600 statesmen. Burlington occupied the site of a former stone quarry. He could boast of having underground lakes. The conditions created in the city made it possible to stay in the bunker for three months. The Prime Minister took care of placing here not only a church, water purification facilities, but also a pub. A radio station was specially provided for communication between the government and the people. A huge number of roads even made it possible to place a railway station. The city existed in working condition for more than forty years.

Cappadocia, Turkey

Cappadocia is a whole complex of underground settlements, consisting of 36 cities. The purpose of building cities, first of all, was protection from the enemy. One of the largest cities consisted of 12 floors, and its population was approximately several thousand inhabitants. It's hard to believe, but underground there were even special rooms for livestock, as well as everything necessary for processing agricultural products. Thanks to the ventilation windows, it was possible to stay underground for quite a long time. Currently, these underground cities are in a dilapidated state, and local residents use the first floors for household needs.

Kish, Iran

Kish is a small island located in the Persian Gulf in southern Iran. It is the country's main beach resort. However, not everyone knows that there is an underground city under it, whose age is approximately two thousand five hundred years. The city is so shrouded in mystery that it doesn't even have a name. According to residents, it was previously used to manage water resources. Currently (as of 2013), hotels, restaurants, cinemas are being built in it, and very soon the underground city will be open to tourists.

Coober Pedy, Australia

Seventh place in the list of the most famous underground cities in the world is Coober Pedy. This underground city in Australia was built by residents at the beginning of the last century for their families. The main purpose of building the city was protection from the heat. Even underground, the temperature here reaches 26 degrees, so to get really cool, you need to go down to a depth of six meters. The owners of some houses boast private pools. The city has a gallery and a museum. You can also visit the Orthodox Church.

The age of this underground city is about 700 years. The mine consists of nine levels, on which there are huge halls, mysterious corridors and long tunnels. Each of these rooms is decorated with salt sculptures. The underground city in Wieliczka boasts not only a majestic chapel, but even lakes. This is the only mining facility that has been operating since its construction until today. Three levels of the mine are open to tourists. On the third level, you will descend to a depth of 130 meters and will be able to follow the history of salt mining from the 11th century to the present day.

Portland, Oregon, USA

In the center of this city there is a whole system of underground Shanghai tunnels. In the tunnels there were special hotels for sailors, where they could rest between flights. However, the walls of these tunnels seem to still remember all the horror of the past. According to the stories of Portland residents, human trafficking was previously carried out in the underground city. Recruiters were engaged in selling men as sailors on ships, and the captains paid them a large amount of money for this. Rumor has it that ghosts roam the tunnels at night. Most researchers have noted this underground town as the most mystical in the entire district. For the bravest tourists, there is a special opportunity to plunge into the past; excursions have recently been held in the tunnels.

City of the Gods

It is known that the only of the seven wonders of the world that have come down to us are the pyramids in Egypt. Not only are the pyramids of Giza already of great interest to tourists, but now they are talked about incessantly. The fact is that researchers believe that under these pyramids there is a whole underground city with a huge number of tunnels and passages. Scientists have already mapped a huge underground city that could potentially be located in this place. The City of the Gods is still shrouded in mystery and is the most mysterious of all the cities that are underground. However, given the interest in the pyramids of Giza in Egypt, which arose back in 1978, we can safely assume that all the secrets will soon be solved.

Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan , Canada

Unlike the beautiful underground city, which was built for protection during military conflicts, Moose Jo was supposed to protect residents from negative weather conditions. A whole network of tunnels and underground passages saved workers from severe frosts. However, soon after the construction, the crime bosses, who did not pass the dry law that came into force in January 1920 in the United States, found another use for the city. A casino, a brothel, and an institution where you could buy illegal alcohol appeared in it. That is why it is called mini-Las Vegas. There is evidence that even the most famous American gangster, Al Capone, appeared in these criminal gangs.

The Spanish town of Setenil de las Bodages

It is worth noting that this city is not underground, its location is even more interesting - it is located in the rock. As far as safety is concerned, the residents of the city are fine with that. Firstly, these rocks have stood motionless for several million years, and secondly, the city has been located in them for more than eight centuries. It is a small city with a population of three thousand inhabitants. The houses are so skillfully and competently built between the rocks that they look like a glove. In addition, the rocks are not only pleasing to the eye, but also perform a practical function - in winter they protect houses from cold winds, and in summer - from extreme heat.

A huge network of tunnels, 30 kilometers long, was dug during the reign of Mao Zedong. The construction of the city under the ground of the Northern capital took about 10 years. Not surprisingly, the result exceeded all expectations. The city boasted a huge number of cafes, restaurants, shops, theaters, schools, hairdressers and even special areas for ice skating. The main purpose of this city was to protect the population in the event of an attack by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Since 2000, the city has been open to the public and is currently a big hit with tourists from all over the world. And some of the premises are now used as hostels, hotels and even theaters.