A military bunker in Podborsko. During the Cold War, most Polish citizens were unaware that nuclear weapons were housed on their territory.
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Archaeology reveals Cold War nuclear bunkers in Poland
The clandestine sites were once home to hundreds of nuclear warheads—a lethal secret kept from the country's people.
Wander long enough in the forests of Poland, you may come across the remains of a Soviet nuclear base. Stripped down by locals in search of scrap metal and slowly being taken over by trees, their empty tunnels and sunken bunkers are all that remains of a Cold War scheme to turn the Soviet Bloc into a nuclear arsenal.
But history books don’t contain much, if any, information about the secretive sites. That inspired archaeologist Grzegorz Kiarszys to learn more about their mysterious past. His findings—and an impassioned argument for archaeology’s value in studying the Cold War—appear in the journal Antiquity.
Kiarszys used archaeology to study sites in Podborsko, Brzezńica-Kolonia and Templewo, all home to Soviet military installations that harbored
