A new study predicts that in a dozen years from now, powerful people will be seeking refuge from evasive communication media. To preserve their privacy, those who can afford it will build IT-free fortresses.

Big Brother

The forecast, published in the Russian edition of Smart Money magazine, depicts the grim future it believes we are sliding towards. Even now, information technology can pry into a great deal of our private lives, says communication expert Yury Belsky. Our shopping lists are recorded as we pay with credit cards. Our movements can be traced through the mobile phones that we carry and CCTV cameras. Our internet search requests are stored on Google and Yahoo servers.

Belsky, who heads the Moscow branch of the Japan based IT services provider Allied Telesis, believes the increased amount of information that can be gathered and analysed about every person’s life will bring us straight into a totalitarian society. Elites will exploit this total control for their own interests.

Vladimir Kremlev for RT. Click to enlarge.

At the same time, people in power will look for ways to remove their own lives from prying electronic eyes. Belsky predicts that leaders of the future will create ‘islands of privacy’ that will be free from internet access, security cameras, and even satellite surveillance. In these IT-free fortresses they will hide from their rivals and take a rest from ruling the world.

The dystopian picture resembles that described by Irish science fiction author Bob Shaw. In his famous novel “Other Days, Other Eyes”, a special technology allowed to spy on virtually everyone and everywhere. It forced society to carry out their private lives in total darkness.

While we at RT have no information on the accuracy of this forecast, we give you a couple of ideas on where in Russia you can set up your private hideout to dodge Big Brother.

Wilderness

The most obvious way of hiding is to run away from civilization. Thankfully there are still a lot of places on Earth, from Amazonian rainforests to snow plains in Antarctic, where broadband Internet is unlikely to appear in our lifetime.

Approaching the Putoran Plateau
(Photo from the TNB hiking club website)

The geographical centre of Russia – the Putoran Mountains in the middle of Siberia – is one of those spots of wilderness. It’s a vast area about the size of Turkey, formed by basalt plateaus dissected with gorges and ravines and dotted with lakes. It’s very difficult to access, but if you manage to settle down there you won’t be bothered much.

A humble hut on the shores of the Keta Lake (or any of the other 25,000 lakes) is a perfect place to hide. You can hunt and fish for food and get an occasional message from the outside world with supplies dropped from a helicopter.

The only drawback is that the area is rich in nickel, so prospectors from Norilsk, which is located a couple of hundreds of kilometres to the west, may eventually come.

A more challenging option is the Sayan Mountains in Southern Siberia. There are actually two ranges there, and we suggest the Eastern Sayans right on Russia’s border with Mongolia. The Taiga on its slopes will cover you from the satellites above, and local people are the shamanistic Tyvians, who value community with nature and will not ask why you live here.

In the Sayans, the winters are pretty harsh and the summers are short. The landscape, which discourages travel, explains why this region is mostly uninhabited. On the bright side, it is home to the beautiful irbis, the snow leopard. The cat had been hunted for its fur with such success that it ended up as an endangered species along with the panda and the tiger. So seeing one in its natural habitat would be something to look forward to.

The Eastern Sayan Mountains are also the birthplace of one of the world’s biggest rivers, the Yenisey. So, if by some chance your rivals were to find your desolate mountain cabin, you would have the option to flee north all the way to the Arctic Ocean – the trip would be about 3,500km.

The many colours of Shantar Islands
(Photo by Igor Olkhovsky)

A classical hideout in fiction is a base on some uncharted island. We suggest a perfect location for one – the Shantar Archipelago in the Sea of Okhotsk, east of the Asian mainland. Its biggest island Bolshoy (which means ‘Big’ in Russian and tells much about the imagination of the guy who named it) is a natural bastion roughly the size of Liechtenstein. The sea around it is covered with ice floes almost all year round and has strong tidal currencies. The island itself has high rocky shores and is often covered by thick fog. The protection that Bolshoy enjoys probably extends to satellites, as the Google Maps close-up of its northern part is blurred.

The Shantars have no permanent population, just a meteorological station with a crew of four. But occasionally fishermen or trappers may land there. The ideal spot for a fortress is Bolshoy Island’s biggest lake in the north with a narrow passage to the sea – a possible route for your private submarine.

The islands are beautiful in a harsh kind of way with rocks coloured all shades ranging from red to green to white. It’s also home to traditional Russian entertainment – brown bears.

As a bonus, the archipelago is just 2,000km from Japan.

Dungeons

Future rulers of the world who have no sympathy for unspoilt Nature and who believe that the greatest things in life are hot water, good dentistry and soft lavatory paper, may consider hiding in a bunker or a dungeon.

Stalin’s bunker is a tourist attraction, but that may change

In the southern city of Samara on the Volga River there is a place that could, it is believed, survive a direct nuclear strike. It’s the underground shelter, which would have been the headquarters of Stalin’s wartime government should the Nazis have taken over Moscow.

Stalin’s bunker, as it’s commonly called, is a big facility. At its deepest, it is 34 metres below ground – an architectural miracle in its day. The shelter was built in 9 months in total secrecy using mine workers and the builders who dug out the Moscow metro system. In fact, the tunnel that connects the service premises of the bunker with the living quarters is identical to a metro tunnel and the conference hall is a scaled down replica of a central Moscow station.

The shelter could house the dictator himself, his family, government members and staff – more then a hundred people in all. Stalin’s private office still has the original furniture, lightning and telephone – just one. A big inconvenience is the lack of a shower in the washroom.

What was good enough for the former communist leader (although officially he never visited the place) may be good enough for you. The only problem is that the bunker was turned into a museum, but that certainly won’t stop a creative and daring person in his or her quest for total privacy.

For those who’d prefer to go beneath a bigger city, there is the decades-old urban legend of Moscow’s other underground system, dubbed “Metro-2”. The network, the existence of which has neither been confirmed nor denied by the government, will transport officials and valuables in case of an emergency. Emergency here means a full-scale nuclear war.

Moscow is rumoured to have a secret network of metro tunnels

According to more or less plausible reports, Metro-2 has up to four lines with the longest running to more than 60km. It leads to 'back up' military headquarters near the city. Unlike the normal network, most of the secret tunnels have no third rail and locomotives that use it are all self-powered. The system is well hidden with some of its parts lying as deep as 200 meters.

If you are lucky enough to find access to the mysterious network, you are naturally unlikely to find many people there. What could serve as a better hideout? There are power lines to tap into and good roadways – there are even speculations that the rails are levelled with a normal asphalt road and you can drive around the tunnels on a motorbike or even in a car. Just make sure occasional checks don’t uncover your lair and enjoy the luxury of total solitude.

And of course there is a low-cost solution for those who can’t afford a proper dungeon. In November last year, about three dozens religious people barricaded themselves in an underground cave in Penza, which they dug with their own hands. They were soon known as the Penza doomsday cult. This group expected the world to end in 2008 and wanted to spend their last days in prayer.

Their approach turned out to have flaws. The story became a major media attraction, and they drew much more attention from the ‘sinful world’ than they would have by simply going into the woods and building a village there. Also there was a construction defect in their bunker. When spring came, flood waters weakened the roof of the cave and it started to collapse. The cult members eventually returned to the surface when the expected Apocalypse failed to materialise.

Perhaps the same thing will happen to Yury Belsky’s forecast, and you won’t have to use our advice. But who knows.

Alexandre Antonov, RT