Pokrov Biologics Plant
The Pokrov Biologics Plant was ostensibly a vaccine factory for farm animals. As a civilian institute of the Agriculture Ministry, Pokrov had no overt links to the Soviet military, nor did it have any official link to Biopreparat. The sprawling campus, located 50 miles east of Moscow, features a row of nuclear-hardened bunkers. Along with a sister plant across town, Pokrov specialized in livestock pathogens, such as foot-and-mouth disease, that could be put into weapons. Under the Soviet Union, as many as six agricultural research centers and up to 10,000 scientists and technicians were believed to have been developing anti-livestock or anti-agriculture weapons. Pokrov's five underground bunkers were equipped as standby production facilities that could manufacture smallpox virus at a rate of 200 tons a year. Pokrov could produce the virus, weaponize it and fill the bombs.
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