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.

What makes these cute, innocent, eager puppies so dangerous?

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They are among the roughly 900 strays who live in and around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where descendants of the pets live after being left behind in the hasty evacuation.

A recent study found the canines had accumulations of radioisotopes, and visitors are warned not to touch the dogs as their fur likely contains radioactive particles that are dangerous to human health. Researchers explain that most of the meat and water the dogs ingest every day is itself radioactive, and these particles accumulate to potentially dangerous levels in their bodies over time.

In addition, nearly every object or surface they touch in their habitat is contaminated with radiation. And as these particles attach themselves to the fur, the cuddly strays into cuddly, free-roaming radioactive potential pets to unsuspecting families. Fearing the growing population has already begun venturing outside of the exclusion area to come into contact with humans, an effort has begun to spay or neuter and release the radioactive pups to control their population.

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In the summer of 2013, Timothy Koeth, a physicist at the University of Maryland, received a mystery birthday gift in the form of a mysteriously heavy metal cube. He had agreed to go to a parking lot for an unspecified delivery. Inside a blue cloth sack left in the lot for him, swathed in paper towels, he found what he immediately identified as a small chunk of uranium. The cube of uranium was a sight to behold. Held under ultraviolet light, it glows an eerie cerulean blue, with cracks and ridges of jet black...

How close was Germany to developing an atomic bomb in World War 2? Learn the story of the secret commando raid to destroy Germany's Heavy Water facility. Subscribe now: bit.ly/DarkDocs

Just why was Germany so interested in the remote Vemork hydroelectric facility? Nestled in the southern mountains of Norway, and perched on a ledge overlooking a deep valley, the site harbored a dark secret. In the 1930’s and 40’s, it was the only plant commercially manufacturing heavy water, a key component in the production of nuclear weapons.

When Norway was invaded by Germany in 1940, concerns mounted that the Germans would seize the plant and its heavy water facilities and control most of the global supply. Tensions were high, as German scientists had already discovered nuclear fission two years earlier. Due to the extreme secrecy, no one knew how close the German weapons program was to successfully producing an atomic bomb, but the Allied Powers were not about to wait around to find out.