Soviet Tank Graveyard

In Kiev, there is a large tank grave yard filled with rotting cold war era tanks. They are side by side and stacked on top of each other. Space is apparently a premium there. As a kid I used to love to visit Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland. They have an outdoor tank museum that has nearly every WW2 tank a kid could want to see. Lots of cool German panzer tanks some of which are painted in their authentic colors. Back then you could even climb on them a bit. The hatches and gun ports were welded shut but it was easy to imagine those metal monsters springing to life and charging across the open Maryland countryside. Here is a picture of a Jagdtiger by Narayan Sangupta he has an excellent site on Aberdeen and has many pictures of the tanks there!

Abandoned Soviet Particle Accelerator

Another rotting monument to the cold war is a massive particle accelerator outside of Moscow. The site English/Russia has a photo essay on it complete with strangely worded captions. I love the scale of these old Soviet endeavors. They werent afraid to "go big" and try something bold. I have had to sift through a lot of old Soviet projects researching the Black Ops maps. I found some really interesting stuff out there including the site that the Black Ops map "Grid" is based on. This massive antennae was designed to give the Soviets an early warning on incoming NATO ballistic missiles. Another possible setting for a map that was eventually rejected was based on a strip mine located near Moscow. It had enourmous rusting excavation machines like this one below.

Chernobyl 25 Years Later

From TotallyCoolPix

Interesting photo essay on the area around Chernobyl. Prypiat is the name of the town and the setting for the COD: Modern Warfare mission "Ghillies in the Mist." Not far from here is the location for the COD: Black Ops MP map that I designed called "Grid." In fact for a while we were considering having the Chernobyl reactor as a landmark in the off map area called the sky box.

Comic about Soviet America....published in the 40's