The Inkoo Superbunker

There's a big contrast between warm summer evening in the countryside, and what you find a few meters under your feet: a massive, blown up Soviet-era bunker. Damp darkness, rebar that is difficult to crawl through. And we're here to practice photography!

At the EuroSpeleo photography workshop we learned to use backlight and flashes to take great photos. I bought radio triggers for my flashes and wanted to see if I could use the same techniques in bunkers.

But it is not easy, not easy technically and particularly not easy in the artistic sense. This will take practice.

Some of the difficulties we encountered include even more cramped space than in caves; getting my flashes to fire reliably (some debugging to do here); we may have also hit the power limits of my relatively small flashes. But most importantly, not all spots and setups are equally photogenic. More artistic thinking is needed. But, the good news is that if one realises how far ahead the possibilities are from where you are, then you can at least try to improve :-)

The Soviet Union bunkers in the occupied Porkkala area come in various different models. The most common one is small, but there are a couple of other models. The ZIF-25 bunkers are two storey with a round gun port to the side. And then we've two other, very large bunker models that are huge in area but one storey, with a large, rotating gun system on top. The Inkoo bunker is one of these, and the best preserved that we know of.

Well, preserved; it has been blown up and burned, but is still mostly accessible with careful crawling.

I will only give approximate coordinates to the general area: N 60.07 E 24.14. WARNING! This is a dangerous place and possibly includes unexploded ordnance. Do NOT visit this place, it is truly dangerous.

First we saw a wonderful countryside:

Then we saw some holes...

And soon we were crawling inside:

Some interesting details. A hook:

And then some worrisome details. What is this? An unexploded, corroded shell? Or a part of the ventilation piping? We were careful to not touch it...

In the meanwhile, the sun was setting outside. An aerial view to the sunset:

This article has also appeared in TGR. And all urban exploration articles can be found from theurbanexplorer.net.

Photos (c) 2018 by Jari Arkko, Jarmo Ruuth, and Olli Arkko. All rights reserved.