In December 1963, Soviet prospectors drilling at the Urtabulak gas field in southern Uzbekistan breached an ultra-high-pressure natural gas reservoir at a depth of 2. 4 kilometers. The gas burst through the drill hole at over 300 atmospheres of pressure, destroying the rig and igniting a roaring column of flame.
The blowout consumed over 12 million cubic meters of natural gas daily—enough to supply a large city—and burned continuously for nearly three years. Conventional firefighting methods, including high-explosives, artillery fire, hydraulic capping attempts, and flooding, failed utterly due to the immense heat, which melted surrounding equipment and turned sand into glass. In 1966, under Program No.
7—the Soviet program for Peaceful Nuclear Explosions—engineers devised an unprecedented solution: squeeze the well shaft closed using the seismic shockwave of a nuclear detonation. Workers drilled a slanted 1. 5-kilometer relief shaft that reached within 35 meters of the raging well shaft deep underground.
On September 3, 1966, a specially designed 30-kiloton nuclear charge was lowered into the borehole and detonated. The shockwave crushed the surrounding rock layers, permanently squeezing the steel well pipe flat and severing the gas supply. Just 23 seconds after the subsurface nuclear blast, the towering inferno at the surface went out completely.