Since the end of the Cold War in 1991, U.S. intelligence sources believe the Russian government has pumped more than $6 billion into Yamantau alone, to construct a sprawling underground complex that spans some 400 square miles.

In 1998, in a rare public comment, then-Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) Gen. Eugene Habinger, called Yamantau

"a very large complex -- we estimate that it has millions of square feet available for underground facilities. We don't have a clue as to what they're doing there."

It is believed to be large enough to house 60,000 persons, with a special air filtration system designed to withstand a nuclear, chemical or biological attack. Enough food and water is believed to be stored at the site to sustain the entire underground population for months on end.

"The only potential use for this site is post-nuclear war..." --- Rep. Roscoe Bartlett

Bartlett is one of the handful of members of Congress who have closely followed the Yamantau project.

The Yamantau Mountain complex is located close to one of Russia's remaining nuclear weapons labs, Chelyabinsk-70, giving rise to speculation it could house either a nuclear warhead storage site, a missile base, a secret nuclear weapons production center, a directed energy laboratory or a buried command post. Whatever it is, Yamantau was designed to survive a nuclear war.

Of course it could also be of immense use in the case of a global cataclysm, although I'm not keen on surviving at a location with so much potential nuclear contamination. Regardless, it looks like one way to survive 2012 might be to get yourself a job in this complex (or be invited by the Russian government to be one of the lucky survivors...)