Talk:Novaya Zemlya

Untitled

Approaches the size of Tasmania, yet nothing on the natural attributes? The strait sounds potentially amazing to paddle through. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 211.31.103.98 (talk) 09:40, 30 October 2009 (UTC)

265 megatons?

One of the latter paragraphs is: "Over its entire history as a nuclear test site, Novaya Zemlya hosted 224 nuclear detonations with a total of 265 megatons of explosive energy. For comparison, all explosives used in World War II, including the detonations of two U.S. nuclear bombs, amounted to only two megatons." First of all, a citation is really needed for that. Second, "265 megatons of explosive energy" doesn't say much - it should be "with a total explosive equivalent of 265 megatons of TNT". I'll change it to that, and also add a "citation needed" note.

Emphasis markers

Hello all. I have noticed that many transliterations of Russian names or words are done using auxilliary accent marks to denote stress. However, these accents aigus systematically get placed over the following letter, which usually happen to be a consonant (which is what happens when the letter and the accent are typed in the wrong order on the keyboard). I have only changed it in this article, but maybe someone could go through others with Russian transliteration? Cheers. =] //Big Adamsky 15:56, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps this discussion answers your questions?—Ëzhiki (erinaceus amurensis) 15:19, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for advising, it did! Big Adamsky 17:36, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Civilization

Any one *actually* live here, if even research scientists? Seems like a real cool place to live, or at least visit, once you get past 20 years of nuclear radiation. ;) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.202.9.222 (talk • contribs)

Place for living / Nuclear testing place

Isn't is a little mean to shape this whole article like it was only a Nuclear Testing Facilty? People actually live there, but there is almost no focus on them. --Ysangkok 20:49, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

it was a testing Facility, there is no other way to go around 200+ nuclear tests "it's excessive" Markthemac 15:28, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Climate, Flora & Fauna, Physical description

Not much is said either about how the place looks, about its climate and what else lives there beside humans. Mohonu 03:42, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Hoax: Pak Mozg

Section 2.2 describing the "Pak Mozg," a crab with an "exceptionally large brain, which dangles exposed beneath its dorsal shell," contains zero references. A Google search for "Pak Mozg" and "Professor Ichbonnsen," the referenced discoverer of the crab, brings up nothing more than a science fiction novel, "Monster Month: Thirty-One Days, Thirty-One Monsters," and a link to a related weblog. "Pak Mozg" is stated as "roughly translating from Russian to English as brain crab," which is also incorrect. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.210.220.79 (talk) 16:33, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Already removed precisely on these grounds. Thanks!—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 17:03, April 24, 2009 (UTC)

(Above section entry would have been signed, but my browser crashed mid-post) — Aeröwyn (talk) 19:24, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

This is indeed a hoax, though "Pak Mozg" would be read as "Raak Mohzg", wherein the Russian letter P ("R" sound) is retained among the Latin script, just as all remaining letters are roughly equivalent in Cyrillic writing to their Latin counterparts, with the exception of the letters 'z' and 'g', which are not found in the Russian alphabet; such a spelling method is sometimes used when communicating in Russian using Latin script (e.g., in online settings or, more commonly, via SMS text messaging), in which the non-Cyrillic font is used to convey Cyrillic letters that are the same in appearance, while substituting for Cyrillic-only letters with equivalent transliterated letters. Thus, "Pak Mozg", literally "Crab, Brain" (due to the often reversed word order in the Russian language when compared to English) can indeed be translated as 'Brain Crab'. Silly, I know...but just because it is a "spoof" or hoax does not mean that simple transliteration/translation is invented too. 208.78.64.238 (talk) 03:59, 16 June 2013 (UTC)

This Pak Mozg is also referenced in the Tom Clancy novel Dead or Alive. AndrewK760 (talk) 16:11, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Norwegian Gåselandet (Goose Land)

The normal Norwegian name of the island is the Russian name "Novaya Zemlya", and is what you will find on the maps. It may be that "Gåselandet" have been used in earlier ages, since it was more common to give specific norwegian names to places earlier, but it is not in use any more. Does anyone have any evidence that this name has been used? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.187.188.26 (talk) 18:19, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Avars?

Avars (people from the North Caucasus, if the editor didn't mean elves from Silmarillion) are referred in the article as people resettled (together with Nenets) to Novaya Zemlya in 19th century. Absolutely impossible. It seems that this strange information origins from this Tom Clancy's novel. --V1adis1av (talk) 16:56, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

Dutch name?

Aside from the fact that there is a film with the same title (which is linked later in the article), it doesn't seem to be useful or relevant to include the Dutch name of the island at the beginning of the page. 18:06, 10 January 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.56.12.65 (talk)

• It is not even clear where the word Zembla was used. The Dutch New Map of Tartary from 1626 uses name Nova Zemla. Here is photo of 1705 edition of the map. Pavel Vozenilek (talk) 20:43, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
• Source for the Dutch name: map currently held by Rijksmuseum using the name Nova Zembla from 1597 --2001:1C03:3F0B:FB00:6C7C:7F1A:B384:C478 (talk) 12:17, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Environmental effects?

I'm surprised that there is no information here about radiation effects on this area of Russia from over 200 nuclear test blasts. How can it even be habitable? Or is all of this information still classified? Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:46, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

There were several test sites throughout the islands, and many or even most tests were performed underground, reducing the environmental effects. Furthermore, as far as I understand, the radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons has a relatively short half-life (compared to, say, the fallout from a Chernobyl-type disaster.) Hiroshima and Nagasaki were never rendered uninhabitable (although, of course, the size and number of weapons used there was a minute fraction of those used in Novaya Zemlya.) –Saruwine (talk) 22:24, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

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Is Severny inhabited?

I can see that there are settlements on the southern island, but is the northern one uninhabited? This would be useful to know! john k (talk) 13:02, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

@John K: The answer really depends on how you define "inhabited". There is a military base there and a port, so people can be found there at any given time, but there are no permanent civilian settlements (so a Census population count, for example, would report zero).—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); July 10, 2017; 13:34 (UTC)

Nobody has said anything about the strait in between the two islands

Nobody has said anything about the strait in between the two islands.
How wide is it? How long is it? Can you see across it, like you can see across the Cook Strait in the middle of New Zealand, or you can see across the English Channel in good weather. No photo of the strait is provided. Is the strait navigable like the Cook Strait is?
How far is it from the southern tip of Yuzhny Island to the mainland of Asia? Can you see across that?
Very basic and obvious information is missing.
For example, I can get a photo of Adolf Hitler looking through a telescope from Calais, France, to the White Cliffs of Dover.24.121.195.165 (talk) 06:10, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Two large islands !

You must not say "the island" when there are Two large islands, Yuzhny Island and Severny Island! It make you look as dumb as a stone!24.121.195.165 (talk) 06:45, 20 June 2018 (UTC)

Insults have no place on wikipedia. It doesn't make your point any more valid to insult somebody, and is a juvenile, purposefully hurtful act which discourages people making contributions. Thus hurting Wikipedia as a community, and as an open source encyclopedia.

Whether right or wrong, all good faith contributions are not only welcome, but encouraged whole-heartedly. Even an incorrect contribution gets corrected, as evidenced by this very page.

As tempting as it is to treat talk pages as a forum, that's not what they are. They are not a place to express personal opinions or trade insults and vitriol. They are meant to be a means of exchanging objective ideas in an open JUDGEMENT-FREE environment.

When you insult somebody in this way, it makes a person feel bad about contributing, and certainly isn't going to encourage them to do so in the future.

And with just 120,000 users who were activebin the last 30 days out of 46 million registered users. Wikipedia needs every contributor they can get.

I know this post is 6 years old and the author will probably never see this. But, I still feel it could serve as a useful reminder to somebody. At some point. You never know. And it doesn't hurt.

VoidHalo (talk) 21:55, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

area

The header has the area as 90,650 km². List of European islands by area has the combined area of the two islands as 80,325 km², and the individual island articles total to 82,179 km². 90,650 - 82,179 equals 8,471, and the third island (Mezhdusharsky Island) is 742 km². Over 7,700 square km is missing, so what actually is included in that ~90,000 figure? 91.154.188.185 (talk) 06:27, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

PQ 17

Found some citations and altered some details, more to follow. Keith-264 (talk) 18:12, 12 February 2019 (UTC)

If I can change the subject slightly:

The passage is shot through with inaccuracies, as catalogued in this discussion, but I suggest there is a bigger issue, which tweaking the content or citations isn't going to help.

The piece was added in December 2018 by a one-edit contributor, quoting a source that is barely verifiable (just three libraries in the world seem to have copy), and either the contributor has just made a load of stuff up or the source is decidedly unreliable.

But in any event it looks like its been copied verbatim (or, more sloppily, scanned and pasted in); the tell-tale is the (fig.40) mentioned in the Breakout section (Anticipating the breakout, Rear Admiral Hubert Schmundt (Fig. 40) had positioned several U-boats) which doesn't refer to anything, making some or all of it quite probably a copyright violation.

Also, I wonder if we really need it; all this information can (or should) be detailed more accurately in the PQ 17 article, so this doesn't add anything to that story; and as it occupies about a week in the history of NZ during the Second World War (the Russian WP article, which has a fairly detailed history section, doesn't even mention it) it's hardly pivotal.

So unless anyone objects, I suggest dumping the lot, and (if anything) putting in a sentence of two summarizing the PQ 17 angle. And it may be worth cribbing some history from the Russian article to tell the broader story of the place. Thoughts? Xyl 54 (talk) 23:10, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Was it really 15 days ago? The passage is so full of howlers it needs re-writing or suppressing. Shame that someone's work ends in the bin but there are limits. Regards Keith-264 (talk) 23:14, 27 February 2019 (UTC)

Hello Keith-264 I object. While I have not read thru all the recent changes, there are elements of your post that raise flags that require analysis. One must not always be skeptical of one-edit contributors, or new editors, or IP editors, sometimes they have useful content. Secondly, just what do you you mean by "barely verifiable" - to whom, and by which authoritarian standards can this statement be made? "Just three libraries" is not a rule or policy is it? There is not a lot of available content on NZ in the english language, and three libraries is still three libraries, not zero. Wording such as "looks like" "sloppily" "tell-tale" are ambiguous and subjective and not criteria. Words like "wonder""should""suggest dumping a lot" and "cribbing" are somewhat cringe-worthy, no? How about taking some time for a more thoughtful discussion and additional research. It is difficult to find sources in the English language, and the subject of this article has global impact. Maybe we can slow down a bit to the speed of life before ripping things apart, and agree to collective research? I'm not criticizing you, but to my opinion, editing is not a race to the finish line, it is a process. Respectfully, Netherzone (talk) 04:45, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Greetings, as I wrote, I am reluctant to waste someone's work but the section on PQ 17 is riddled with inaccuracies. If you look at my edits (and the citations) you can see that if I continue, there won't be much left of the author's contribution. Have you had a look at the PQ 17 article? Regards Keith-264 (talk) 08:57, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

I think there are two points here. Firstly is the amount of coverage about PQ 17 disproportionate in this article - I think it is. Secondly is the information given true and can be shown as such? The edit summary sates "Section added by Michael Adler from his book "Dreaded Island: A History of Novaya Zemlya" ie Adler has added it himself! Lyndaship (talk) 15:22, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Actually, Netherzone, it was me that added those disparaging comments; my apologies if you felt them to be too intemperate.

The inaccuracies in this piece have been detailed by Lyndaship in a different conversation, if you wish to see them; I've checked in a couple of reliable (and accessible) sources and the stuff here is in error. My observation about three libraries was only that if I wanted to check what the source book actually says, I'd need to trek to London, or Munich, or Washington DC; hence, 'barely verifiable'. Do you live in either of those places, to have a look? But it is academic which of them (the contributor or the source) is wrong; the information is still wrong. It also, for the reason I've given, looks like a cut-and-paste job, which is a copyright violation (and thus grounds for deletion).

The facts are that for about a fortnight after the PQ 17 debacle, some surviving ships and lifeboats fetched up at various places on the west coast of NZ before heading south to Archangel.

It would be possible to write an accurate account of all the comings and goings, but do we really need one here? It is peripheral to the story of NZ (and, as already mentioned) the Russian WP article, which has a full History section, doesn't mention it at all. But that is why we are having the conversation; what do you think yourself? Xyl 54 (talk) 19:00, 28 February 2019 (UTC)

Xyl 54, Keith-264 and other editors on this thread. I've changed my position. I've reviewed the section in depth and indeed agree it's substandard. It needs many citations, and as mentioned above it seems likely to have come from Michael Adler's book, "Dreaded Island: A History of Novaya Zemlya", published by "Gulag Research Press." A quick Google search shows that GRP has published one book, Michael Adler's above mentioned book. While we don't know with 100% certainty if the single edit IP user is in fact Adler, we can see where they geolocate to, and I am now inclined to agree with you all, that there is a very good possibility Adler added the section. Making it both a COI and original research. I don't own the book myself, and it is not in the library collection of the university where I teach. So I cannot check research references or bibliography that may or may not be included in the book. And I'm not going to spend $50 buying it to find out! So in other words, I have changed my position on this, and agree with the above editors. I no longer object to trimming the section way back. When I find time in the future, hope to help expand the article. Netherzone (talk) 16:18, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

Plutonium

Marilynne Robinson has a piece in the The Guardian today. Her style was odd, so I began to investigate.

I soon went from Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989) to here:

• Irish Sea radioactivity 'worse than at nuclear site' — 10 June 1998

There is more radioactive plutonium in the sediments off the Sellafield plant in the Irish Sea than at the underwater Russian Novaya Zemlya nuclear weapons test site, according to Greenpeace. The environmental group yesterday released further data arising from its ongoing survey of the Irish Sea.

It has been measuring radioactive contamination in sediments and seaweed along British and Irish coasts for several weeks. Last week it visited Dundalk bay, retrieving seaweed as part of this activity. The data released yesterday related to the plutonium and caesium content of sediment taken adjacent to a Sellafield waste-discharge pipe two kilometres off the Cumbrian coast.

Laboratories in Britain and Germany measured caesium levels of 1.2 and 2.3 million becquerels per kilogram of sediment. Plutonium analysis completed in Britain recorded levels of 35,554 becquerels per kilogram, according to Greenpeace. This exceeded levels recorded at the Novaya Zemlya site by a joint US, Canadian and Russian expedition, the group stated.

It didn't take much time on Wikipedia to determine that 35,000 Bq/kg is chickenshit. You have to scale 1 Bq by about a billion to get into the range of 1 Curie. So what about this Greenpeace comparison with Novaya Zemlya, used to make the meagre 35,000 Bq/kg sound ominous?

I see in the article that Zemlya is no stranger to thermonuclear warheads. But for these, the primary mover is hydrogen fusion, which is not known for plutonium byproducts (depends on the initiation device, I suppose). Unfortunately, this article says nothing at all about whether a plutonium-based device has ever been detonated at Novaya Zemlya. Was there ever a plutonium Fat Man at Novaya Zemlya? Or was it mostly uranium Little Boys, before upgrading to thermonuclear? In the second scenario, there's no particular reason to use Novaya Zemlya as a baseline for tragic plutonium contamination (unless uranium bombs are far dirtier than I suppose).

Would be nice if this article said a bit more about plutonium. I'm not particularly opposed to Greenpeace, but I have seen them indulge in some terrible journalistic ethics from time to time. — MaxEnt 04:38, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

In answer to your question, yes, there was very specifically a plutonium Fat Man bomb tested, but at Semipalatinsk - the very first one tested there, as a matter of fact. Stalin and Lavarenty Beria were very suspicious of Russian scientists. They required that the first bomb produced had to slavishly copy the stolen plans of the Trinity test article to the nut/bolt level. It most certainly used plutonium, which is much easier to produce than U-235. The bombs tested at NZ were not different from those at Semipalatinsk, other than NZ got the larger tests. The Russians knew as well as the US the relative economic and engineering differences between U-235 and Pu-239, and they made their bombs almost entirely of plutonium, just as the US did. Russia never did any Little Boys (U-235) bombs, as far as I know. Perhaps in their atomic torpedoes, as we did in our cannon projectiles. Plutonium and U-235 are identically dirty on a mass basis, but a Pu-239 core uses a factor of 4-5 less material to attain criticality, so will be correspondingly less "dirty"; that is probably largely overridden by the U-238 fissioning tamper, anyway. I agree with your assessment of radioactivity measurements. BTW, a touchpoint - Finnish well water was measured at 220 Bc/liter due to radon. SkoreKeep (talk) 12:18, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

About my chickenshit verdict

Quickly grabbed from a Google search synopsis:

For example, the human body has an activity of 8000 Bq – a value which may seem high but is in reality very small. It corresponds a few microcuries.

Seeing activities written down in becquerels often gives the impression that such activities are exceptionally high and thus very dangerous.

With this frame of reference, not more than 35,000 Bq/kg from a carefully selected sample from a legendary nuclear test site does not especially alarm me. — MaxEnt 04:42, 11 January 2021 (UTC)

Still an active nuclear test site according to CNN

This page talks about Novaya Zemlya being a test site in the past tense. But the explosive testing is just one small aspect of nuclear weapons testing, and the site is still being actively used for these purposes, it seems.

CNN just published a story mentioning current activity increasing at the site, linked here: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/09/22/asia/nuclear-testing-china-russia-us-exclusive-intl-hnk-ml/index.html

It explains how activity at the testing site at Novaya Zemlya has increased recently. As well as in the American Nevada National Security Site, and the Lop Nur dry lakebed test site in China.

Even though explosive tests are no longer conducted, it seems the sites are still used for, at the very least, testing functionality of old nuclear weapons from prior decades.

I will provide the article, and video from CNN. And leave it to the community as a whole to decide if this warrants any changes to the article as it currently is. Or whether additional information can (or should) be added. VoidHalo (talk) 21:40, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

Gulag

One of Robert Conquest's books on the Stalinist Soviet Union mentions internment camps on N.Z., of which there were no known survivors among those imprisoned. Here, Stalin went one better than the Nazis. Unfortunately, I can't remember which book, possibly The Great Terror. Someone might like to follow that up, since the History section of this article is very scant Chrismorey (talk) 19:59, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Weird Blank Map

On the right side bar/infobox near the top of the page there is a blue square with nothing in it, except a white thing in the upper left corner. Is this a map of the middle of the ocean, and if so, why? Is there some way to re-center that map on the actual islands? If not, I think the map should just be deleted. 2601:441:5000:13E0:0:0:0:78AA (talk) 22:19, 25 January 2024 (UTC)