The Lazo Disaster
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| Lazo, Soviet Union |
After the development of the vampire vaccine, the United States and the Soviet Union began pouring enormous resources into vampire research. The stakes were great, as it was thought that the keys to immortality lay in vampire DNA. The Soviets based their research at a secret lab outside the small village of Lazo in Siberia. Unbeknownst to the Americans, they made significant progress in the lab and in 1967, under a veil of utmost secrecy, they began animal trials, using chimpanzees as the test subjects.
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Premier Brezhnev
explains the disaster
to the Politburo |
Sometime in mid-February, disaster struck at the lab when an infected chimpanzee bit a technician. The unfortunate man was vaccinated, but the experimentally-altered virus he was infected with proved to be immune to the vaccine. As a blizzard descended on the village, cutting off communication with the outside world, the technician came to life and ran amok, biting everyone in the lab. The scientific team, transformed into vampires, left the lab and went to the village to hunt. By the time the storm cleared, the entire town of Lazo was infected.
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| Lazo after the blast |
Faced with an uncontrollable vampire plague, Russian President Leonid Brezhnev was forced to take extreme measures. So, on a bright winter day, a transport rolled into Lazo and left a nuclear weapon in the middle of the town square, while the vampires slept. Once the team was safely out of range, they detonated the bomb.
American officials detected the explosion via satellite and launched an inquiry. The Russians claimed accidental detonation, but American intelligence knew that there were no nuclear installations in that part of the country. The mystery ended in the Summer of '68, when one of the soldiers who had planted the bomb defected to West Germany and told the whole story. The 750 people of Lazo were among the last casualties of the war on vampires.
The mishap created a backlash against vampire research in the United States and thoughout the world. On October 14th, 1970, President Nixon signed into law the Muskie-Fineman Act, halting research on vampire blood. It would be 16 years before the ban was overturned, and vampire blood research began anew, with rigorous safety provisions in place to avoid a repeat of the Lazo Disaster.
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