Would Putin's Nuclear Bunker in Ural Mountains Save Him from Armageddon?

Mountain ranges are considered one of the best places to shelter from a nuclear attack. Several countries have a military refuge buried deep underneath mountains, including the U.S., which has Cheyenne Mountain Complex and Raven Rock Mountain Complex in Colorado and Pennsylvania, respectively.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin is also rumored to have a bunker deep within the Ural mountain range in Russia, underneath Mount Yamantau, as well as possibly several others in unknown locations. The Ural mountains are a long stretch of mountains spanning Russia from north to south, ending just north of the border with Kazakhstan. Mount Yamantau's military infrastructure could be seen being constructed in satellite images in 1995, but Russia refused to elaborate on what they were building when questioned by the U.S.

"It would not be surprising if Russia did have a facility like this, just as the U.S. does, and mountains are a logical place to put them," Seth Baum, executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, told Newsweek.

With Putin's rhetoric towards nuclear war in response to the Ukraine conflict, would having a place to hide be one of the most valuable resources of a world leader?

"In the event of an intercontinental nuclear war—while mountainous terrain would offer limited 'blast protection,' not even a mountain range would save the Russian president from the long-term aftermath of nuclear destruction. There's no hiding from the planetary and ecological Armageddon that large-scale nuclear conflict would cause," Thom Davies, an associate professor in geography at the University of Nottingham in the U.K., told Newsweek.

Mountain ranges in general are considered good locations to build nuclear refuges. The high slopes and low valleys of a mountainous region aids in absorbing the heat and light from the fireball of a nuclear blast, as well as the initial radiation. Additionally, the ground itself will also absorb the radiation and blast, so being underground is preferable: radiation can be decreased by a factor of 10 in basements as compared to levels in above-ground floors. In the aftermath, however, hiding beneath a mountain cannot last forever, and the outside world may be unrecognizable and uninhabitable depending on the scale of the nuclear war.

The Cheyenne Mountain Complex, for example, is built beneath 2,000 feet of granite, with blast doors capable of withstanding a 30-megaton nuclear explosion as close as 1.2 miles. The base formerly hosted the United States Space Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and is now under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Space Force.

However, there are some other places in the world that would be better to hide in, in terms of protection.

"The safest place in the world in the event of full-scale nuclear war would be isolated geographies like Antarctica or Pacific Islands like Easter Island, but even here - you can't outrun a so-called "nuclear winter"," Davies said.

In fact, during the Cold War, a huge U.S. nuclear base was secretly buried beneath Greenland, far into the Arctic Circle, as part of the so-called Project Iceworm.

However, Russia likely had laid the groundwork of bunkers and refuges in the Urals dating back to the Cold War and WWII, Davies said, making them a logical place for Putin's go-to shelter.

"The Russian president has access to a huge infrastructure of nuclear bunkers and military facilities dating back to the Cold War. It is likely that the Ural Mountains are one such place—and these mountains in particular have long played a strategic geopolitical role for Russia, stretching back to World War 2 when industry was relocated East of the Urals from western parts of the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa. In fact, the region of the Urals was also host to the 1957 Kyshtym disaster, which was the world's third worst nuclear accident (after Fukushima and Chernobyl)," he said.

The Kyshtym disaster occurred on September 29, 1957, at a plutonium production site for nuclear weapons named Mayak. An underground tank of liquid nuclear waste exploded, contaminating 20,000 square miles of land inhabited by at least 270,000 people. The event was covered up by the Soviet government, with few people even within Russia knowing about the disaster until the 1980s.

Regardless of whether the alleged Ural bunker would provide Putin much protection in the case of a nuclear armageddon, according to Davies, that is not what he is primarily worried about in terms of hiding places.

"If Putin is afraid of anything, it's probably not nuclear war. After all, he is the only person who would activate the chain of events that would lead to nuclear conflict – and although he has publicly threatened this (in September after annexing four regions of Ukraine), such an atomic event remains vanishingly unlikely. What the Russian president is far more afraid of—and has been for years—is a popular uprising against his leadership from within Russia, as have been witnessed in other ex-Soviet countries in recent decades."

Avoiding an Arab Spring-style uprising, or something like the 'Rose Revolution' in Georgia in 2003, 'Orange Revolution' in Ukraine in 2005, or 'Tulip Revolution' in Kyrgyzstan in 2005, is more likely to motivate where he hides, Davies said. As such, he probably has a lot of secure places away from large populations with this threat in mind, and isolated mountain ranges such as the Urals are as good as any.

In fact, Davies says that rumors of a secret nuclear bunker may make Putin seem more likely to pull the trigger on nuclear war, and therefore be perceived more powerful on the world stage.

"Reports that Vladimir Putin is in a bunker serve a useful *geopolitical* purpose for him; it's in his interest that NATO members *think* he might actually use nuclear weapons, and nothing says that more clearly than sitting in a bunker," he said.

Putin continues his invasion of Ukraine despite international condemnation. As of November 10, his forces retreated from the strategically important city of Kherson in southern Ukraine. Despite Putin's recent talk of nuclear war, Russia released a statement on November 2, saying that "a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought."