UVB-76

Something cool I learned today:

In Russia, there's this AM radio station that's been playing a repeating beeping noise 24/7 since 1982, and that's just when someone happened to discover its broadcast frequency. Nobody can say for sure how long it'd been around for since before then.

photo for representation purposes only. Not actually UVB-76

Only three times in its 27 years of service has the beeping been interrupted, here's what Wikipedia had posted about it:

• At 21:58 GMT on December 24, 1997, the buzzing abruptly stopped to be replaced by a short series of beeps, and a male voice speaking Russian announced: "Ya — UVB-76. 18008. BROMAL: Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikhail, Anna, Larisa. 742, 799, 14."[6] The message was repeated verbatim several times before the beep sequence repeated and the buzzer resumed.

• A similar voice message was broadcast on September 12, 2002, but with extreme distortion (possibly as a result of the source being too close to the microphone head) that rendered comprehension very difficult. This second voice broadcast has been partially translated as "UVB-76, UVB-76. 62691 Izafet 3693 8270."

• The third voice message (and, as of January 2007, the latest one) was broadcast on February 21, 2006 at 7:57 GMT. (recording of the third voice transmission) Again, the speaking voice was highly distorted, but the message's content translates as: "75-59-75-59. 39-52-53-58. 5-5-2-5. Konstantin-1-9-0-9-0-8-9-8-Tatiana-Oksana-Anna-Elena-Pavel-Schuka. Konstantin 8-4. 9-7-5-5-9-Tatiana. Anna Larisa Uliyana-9-4-1-4-3-4-8."[7] These names are found in some Russian spelling alphabets, similar to the NATO phonetic alphabet.

That's creepy as all hell. Also, sometimes you can apparently hear people talking in the background, so it's definitely a manned station and not some piece of equipment hooked to a dusty old transmitter in a locked room. Once, this message was heard over the radio in the background:

"I'm 143rd. I don't receive the oscillator." "That's what the operating room is sending"

Who is 143rd? Why would someone come to him looking for an oscillator? Where is the operating room located? Who was talking to him?

What a mystery!

So we can tell it's constantly maintained, and has been since before the collapse of the USSR in '91, but the only messages anyone has caught have been well after the fall of the state. Nobody has been able to decode the meaning of the broadcasts, if there's a meaning at all.

Theories as to the purpose of the station are many. Some say it's a relay station for spies to receive information or orders, others claim it's a military operation that sends secret orders to some hidden HQ.

Finally, one of the big ones is that it's a leftover from the Cold War, originally built to be one of the stations that would activate the USSR's 'Dead Hand' plan. In the event nukes were fired at the capital, and the USSR's leadership was killed along with lots of other high ranking officers in what's called a 'decapitation strike,' Dead Hand would be activated by sending AM Radio waves to secret underground bunkers staffed by soldiers so the country could still retaliate and nuke the crap out of everyone else.

There's a really good chance that all the secret underground bunkers still exist (if they ever did in the first place) and there's no reason why the Russians wouldn't want to keep their own stash of nukes kept safely tucked away underneath the noses of everyone else.

Anyway, you can read more about UVB-76 here, as well as view it from google maps.

Would anyone be up for a road trip to Moscow to check it out?