Soviet Plokštinė Nuclear Missile Base Becomes Major Lithuanian Cold War Museum

The Plokštinė Missile Base in western Lithuania, once a secret Soviet underground nuclear missile site armed with R-12 Dvina missiles aimed at Western Europe, has been transformed into the Cold War Museum and attracted 35,000 visitors in 2024. Completed in 1962 after two years of construction with over 10,000 workers, the base was heavily fortified with barbed wire and electric fences, remaining undiscovered by the US until 1978 when satellites spotted it, though it had already been decommissioned under disarmament treaties. The base claimed the lives of three soldiers—one who fell to his death during a safety check and two others who died in a nitric acid spill while refueling a missile. After Lithuania regained independence in 1990, the base was abandoned, stripped for scrap, and reopened as a museum in 2012 with EU funding, offering visitors access to the eerie underground silos and tunnels. The site includes a nearby ghost town repurposed as a children’s summer camp, highlighting the region’s militarized past during the Cold War. This museum provides a chilling reminder of the nuclear arms race and the human cost embedded in these once top-secret military installations.