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Text: Jiang Qingtong
Editor|Jiang Qingtong
Preface
Who would have thought that before the collapse of the Soviet Union, it would do a very crazy move, that is, "dig through the earth", which also created the title of "the deepest well" in the world.
If the Soviet plan had been successful, the current superpower would have been the Soviet Union, but to everyone's surprise, the project was declared to be halted indefinitely before it was halfway through.
And the rumors about it are also chilling, it is said that the local construction workers actually heard a voice that does not belong to the earth, so they announced the stop, so is this really the case, and is there any connection with the collapse of the Soviet Union?
Soviet Super Drilling
Some people will wonder what is going on in this underground that fascinates the Soviet Union so much that it spends a lot of manpower and material resources to explore it.
After the end of World War II, the world was not at peace, and the Soviet Union and the United States were the most powerful countries in the world.
As the saying goes, one mountain cannot tolerate two tigers, and when two superpowers are born in the same era, they will inevitably spark, and the United States and the Soviet Union are no exception.
In this way, the two countries entered the period of the Cold War, during which although the two sides were incompatible and the conflict became more and more serious, they tried their best to avoid the possibility of another world-class large-scale war.
However, local proxy wars and "cold treatment" methods such as technology, arms race, and space race have gradually increased, and in layman's terms, it is to defeat you with things other than force.
However, time changed in 1969, and the American astronaut Armstrong successfully landed on the moon, which was an instant that completely conquered all countries.
What is the concept, when other countries can only launch rockets into space, the United States suddenly pops up and says that it can already land on the moon.
And you must know that the power of rockets at that time means that the missiles are powerful, and the United States was able to send people to the moon back then, and their missile technology may have developed to a certain extent.
At the same time, in order to convince everyone, the United States also held a global live broadcast, which overtook everyone's limelight for a while.
At the same time, this also means that in this space race, the Soviet Union lost the opportunity to compete with the United States, and when the title of world hegemon was about to be snatched away, the Soviet Union wanted to compete again, so it decided to change its plan.
Since you in the United States are developing upwards, then the Soviet Union is developing downwards, and no one has excavated the depths of the earth, and if you dig them out, you may be able to dig out some materials, and then they will definitely not be comparable to the United States.
The Soviet Union immediately launched this operation, and in 1070 the "Kola Ultra-Deep Drilling" program was officially launched in the Soviet Union.
At that time, it was expected to take 20 years, and there was no regulation on how many meters to dig, only to keep digging down, and Soviet scientists at the time believed that human beings still knew too little about the earth.
Perhaps this operation will be able to get more opportunities, so a team of up to 10,000 people composed of geologists, drilling experts, mechanical experts and maintenance personnel in various fields began the operation in a mighty way.
At one point, the Soviets also prioritized this plan ahead of other activities, giving them a lot of financial help.
Not only that, but all the people who participated were guaranteed by the Soviet government, so being able to participate in this event was a dream of many people at that time.
With the funds and manpower, the project started quickly, and in just a few years, the borehole went 5,000 meters underground, followed by 6,000 meters and 9,000 meters.
Everyone's confidence was greatly increased, and even the Soviet people shouted at that time, celebrating their feat in advance.
According to researchers at the time, the ultimate goal of the project was to be able to dig into the mantle and collect it in the core of the most central part of the earth.
However, what everyone didn't expect was that when they dug to 12,262 meters, they didn't dig a meter deeper, and the project was completely stopped.
There was no announcement, and the Soviet side did not announce the exact reason for this, so it began in 1970 and ended in 1994.
But the Soviet side didn't say anything, and the talk about them stopping mining became louder and louder, and in the end, the rumors became more and more evil, and the bulls, ghosts, gods and snakes all came out.
The reason for the closure of drilling in the USSR
The biggest cry in this is that there is no technical support, let alone the technical environment at that time, even today, no country dares to pat its chest to guarantee that it can drill into the mantle.
Compared to the outside, the deeper you dig the temperature, the higher the pressure becomes, which is beyond people's imagination, which is a huge challenge for drilling and material use.
Some people have revealed that when the Soviet Union dug the last few meters, it needed to replace a drill bit almost every other distance, and it was already so difficult to even touch the edge of the ground, and it was hard to imagine how difficult it would be if it kept digging.
And that's not all, there is another challenge to drilling at such a deep level, which is that the geological conditions are becoming more and more uncertain, after all, no one has dug this deep before.
Therefore, there is a high risk of collapse, fracture, etc., and everyone who works next to the drilling will be in danger.
On the other hand, there are economic reasons, as we said at the beginning, the reason why the Soviet Union went to war was an unprecedented project.
It is entirely to compete with the United States for resources, which requires a large amount of capital investment, and the Soviet Union has been developing with heavy industry and light agriculture as its national condition after World War II.
This leads to a problem, that is, the follow-up forces cannot keep up, and the fiscal revenue is gradually decreasing at a speed that is visible to the naked eye.
However, the year was not as good as the year, and even in the end, due to financial problems, even the most basic construction could not be maintained.
The U.S. space race brought them fame and a steady stream of money to follow, and they did.
But on the other hand, the Soviet Union has not gained anything after investing a lot of money, and there is no end in sight in the follow-up, so in this way, the Soviet Union must not choose to give up and continue to dig deeper.
Of course, it would not be right to blame the Soviet economy for all its regression on the drills, which had already begun to explode.
In the past, there was the war launched by the Soviet Union against Afghanistan, and then there was the excessive industrial centralization of the domestic economic system, and in this way, the Soviet Union came to the precipice step by step.
Perhaps drilling was the last straw that broke the camel of the Soviet Union, because for these reasons, the Soviet Union was ridiculed for being a face-saving project with large investment and low returns.
If you want to say that the Soviet Union did not receive the goods, you can't say that, at a depth of 9,000 meters, a large amount of gold was discovered, and if it could be mined in its entirety, it would certainly be a lot of money.
But this mining is no less difficult than drilling a borehole into the mantle, and the feeling of holding on to wealth but not getting it is very uncomfortable.
In fact, there is also a folk legend that the Soviet Union stopped digging deeper, not because of financial and technical problems, but because they dug into "hell".
Folklore
Some insiders revealed many years later that the engineering team had discovered a supernatural phenomenon, and when it reached a depth of more than 12,000 meters, a cry suddenly came from the depths.
The sounds came and went, seemingly far away in the sky, and as if they were not far away, when the researchers unanimously decided to put a recording device under the well in order to find out.
Everyone was shocked when they brought it up, because the sound coming from the tape recorder seemed to be something that the human world could have.
It includes screaming, wailing, and crying, and although there is no picture, everyone feels like hell down there.
If you are interested, you can also search for the sound of drilling in the Soviet Union on your own, and you can imagine this picture for yourself.
However, soon some people came out to make hypotheses, saying that these are all fake, and they are just some folk rumors.
Until now, there has been no unified answer to why drilling in the Soviet Union stopped, and this answer seems to be completely buried in the long river of history after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
summary
Although the project ended in failure, it does not mean that it is a meaningless action, for example, Russia still retains the old drill.
Moreover, some underground data dug up by the Soviets at that time also left valuable reference opinions for future generations.