corn snake hatchling

Pictured: A photo of First Lightning, the first ever Soviet atomic bomb test. The United States assigned it the code-name Joe-1, in reference to Joseph Stalin. It was detonated on 29 August 1949 at 7:00 a.m., at Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR, after top-secret research and development as part of the Soviet atomic bomb project.

It was in 1939 that Winston Churchill famously defined Russia as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” The Soviet Union’s atom bomb project could certainly be considered a riddle, a mystery, and an enigma, such was its secrecy at the time.

Russia had been conducting independent research into radioactive elements as early as 1910, long before it even became the Soviet Union or USSR. By the 1930s Russian scientists had made remarkable efforts towards the advancement of physics research, even with setbacks such as the 1917 October Revolution and civil war of 1922.

Scientists tend to be a sharing community. That’s why Russian physicist, Georgy Flyorov, became suspicious in 1942 that the Allied powers were secretly developing an atomic super-weapon when his literature search showed that no one in the West was writing on nuclear fission. And so he wrote an urgent letter to Joseph Stalin pleading with him to start a Soviet atomic program.

Notable too is a report dated February 28th, 1945, and written for Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin’s right-hand man and the head of the NKVD, the country’s dreaded secret police. The report was titled “Progress of the Atomic Bomb Abroad” and stated that it was expected the United States would produce an atom bomb by July of that year.

During the Cold War arms race, both the US and USSR were testing top-secret, cutting-edge technologies that seemed beyond belief to deliver nuclear warheads effectively to the other side. The goal was to strike as quickly, quietly, and as devastatingly as possible. To accomplish this, in 1964 the Soviets began developing an audacious plan that turned their focus to a most unlikely place. While US attention was trained upwards towards aerial superiority, the USSR would instead target the ground beneath their feet. Underground, in fact… with a brand-new experimental vehicle nicknamed the "Battle Mole."

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As images and footage of actual events are not always available, Dark Docs sometimes utilizes similar historical images and footage for dramatic effect. All content on Dark Docs is researched, produced, and presented in historical context for educational purposes.

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As Cold War tensions grew in the 1950s, the U.S. relied upon the U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance spy planes and reconnaissance balloons from its Genetrix Program. But these tools, unable to surveil some of the darkest and farthest reaches deep within the USSR, did not provide enough aerial coverage to accurately determine Soviet military operations, movements, and capabilities.

Instead, the US was forced to reach even higher with its reconnaissance missions using the “Keyhole” series of satellites. Unlike modern digital spy satellites, the KH-series relied on the use of physical film that had to be secretly jettisoned and returned to Earth. To keep the film out of enemy hands, each KH satellite utilized a simple but effective trick. When their missions were complete, the KH satellites dumped their top-secret film into a reentry capsule and dropped it back to Earth. If the fiery descent went to plan, the capsule would jettison its heat shield and a parachute would deploy. All that would be left was for an airplane to hook it in mid-air some 60,000 feet above the ground...

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Pictured: the KH-9 Hexagon spy satellite. It is rumored the space shuttle specifically was built to carry it and other top-secret payloads at the behest of US intelligence and the military... At the height of the US Space Shuttle program in the 1980s and 90s, NASA was never really in full control of its missions. At least 11 top-secret shuttle flights were conducted to honor a deal that dated back to 1969 with the National Reconnaissance Office, or NRO, an organization within the Department of Defense so secretive that its name could not be published at the time. The NRO reportedly requested many classified modifications of the shuttle’s design to suit its clandestine objectives against the Soviet Union in the space race, and the military even hand-picked and trained its own team of 13 shuttle astronauts who would be embedded as payload specialists. Little is known about about their missions, even today...

Pictured: Finland's Sakkiluoto Island as seen from Google Earth... 9 piers and a (highlighted) helipad mysteriously purchased by a Russian oligarchic with deep military connections.

On September 22nd, 2018, Finnish retiree Leo Gastgivar was outside working in his garden on the tiny island in an archipelago between Finland and Sweden where he lived. Suddenly, his peaceful afternoon was interrupted by a most unusual presence. Gastgivar noticed two black speedboats packed with Finnish commandos in camouflage fatigues waiting in the bay short of his front door.

Awkward greetings were exchanged, as Gastgivar remained utterly at a loss as to what this somewhat sinister military presence signified for his peaceful island life. Seemingly satisfied with whatever they were observing, the commandos began to reverse their boats and continue onward. Gastgivar went inside his home, collected a pair of binoculars and watched in amazement as the commandos raced off toward another tiny island belonging to his nearest neighbor, a mysterious Russian businessman he had never met or even seen.

Mr. Gastgivar was certainly unnerved by the spectacle. He would later recall: “I thought: ‘Wow! That is certainly unusual,’” “Nobody ever visits that place...”

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It was the stuff of spy legends. Using stolen "ghost" identities, the suspects had managed to blend into the US, start families who had no idea of secret lives, and establish the appearance of being normal, law-abiding citizens...

Pictured: The aggressive take-off profile of the Soviet TU-144 supersonic passenger airplane (right) vs. the French-British Concorde (left).

At its peak, the Anglo-French Concorde was the epitome of technological prowess and super sleek design in 20th-century aviation. It was considered the most beautiful commercial plane the world had ever seen - and, being the West's first supersonic jet, it was also the fastest of its era. However, the Concorde was not the first supersonic plane to make it to market. This honor went to a Soviet aircraft that reached supersonic speed months before the Concorde, and one that briefly became the pride of the USSR, before its ultimate failure.

The communist version of the Concorde was the Tupolev Tu-144, and it was the first passenger aircraft to fly at more than twice the speed of sound. The Tupolev's first flight occurred three months before the Concorde took to the air on March 2, 1969. But the Tu-144, which was dubbed 'Concordski' by Western observers for its similarities to its Western rival, never became quite as popular.

It was perhaps most notable as the first commercial supersonic plane to have a crash landing - which it did not once but twice.

An unidentified fighter jet, a top-secret flight squadron, and a mysterious Russian connection... what just crashed in 2018 near Area 51? A classified black project aircraft? Or something even stranger...? Click to subscribe to Dark Docs: http://bit.ly/DarkDocs

At around 6 pm on Tuesday, September 5th, 2017, an undisclosed aircraft fell out of the evening sky and into the Nevada Desert below. The vast tract of empty land it crashed down in is known as the Nevada Test and Training Range, 5,000 square miles of dry wilderness used by the Air Force for bombing, training, and stealth exercises. The crash site was located 100 miles northwest of the Nellis Air Force Base, in the vicinity of both Groom Lake Area 51 and the Tonopah Test Range Airport, facilities notorious for housing top-secret aircraft and weapons programs.

The pilot of the downed aircraft, Lieutenant Colonel Eric Schultz, was lost in the incident, and photos and documentation of the event have been actively hidden from the public. Given the intense secrecy of many flight activities in the area, rumors have since emerged that Schultz may have been piloting a highly classified aircraft. In the absence of official details, questions loom: What kind of aircraft had Schultz been flying that day? Was it from one of the U.S.’s own black project programs? Or, even more intriguing, was there an unusual Russian connection?