After listening to UVB-76, people have strange sensations. Someone experiences fear, trembling, cold. Some even say they feel the presence of something or someone nearby. Who watched the series "Lost" compare it to what happened there. Something inexplicable and incomprehensible.
"Doomsday station", "mystical secret on short waves" - as soon as they call UVB-76, or simply "Buzzbox". The Buzzer is her name in English. For almost 40 years of its existence, it has gained cult status among radio amateurs from all over the world. It's all about the "content" - there is always a buzz on the UVB-76 air.
And all would be fine, but from time to time "Buzzbox" broadcasts messages that many find mysterious and creepy. For example, a monotonous voice can produce a series of numbers and letters.
By the way, it is for this that such radio stations are called "numbered", or, if translated from English more precisely, "numeric". Radio amateurs are wondering what these numbers mean.
Conspiracy theories are popular: they say, "Buzzbox" is a guarantor of the possibility of a retaliatory nuclear strike, part of the so-called "Dead Hand" system, and its termination
broadcast will automatically launch rockets. Others believe UVB-76 is transmitting encrypted messages to Russian spies abroad. By the way, she is technically capable of this - the broadcast works on a low-frequency wave, the signal of the Buzzbox is caught by enthusiasts from all over the world. Among them is the radio amateur Kirill, who has been tuning to the UVB-76 frequency for several years.
Western media are haunted by the secret Russian radio. The UVB-76 frequency has been broadcasting for decades - since the Cold War - and no one has understood why. The radio transmits an audio signal, which is occasionally interrupted by mysterious encryptions. The BBC suggests that the broadcast may be related to Russian nuclear weapons.
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“I came across four or five years ago purely by accident on the Internet, listened, it became interesting. I decided to try it myself - I simply bought a receiver that maintains the frequency, threw an ordinary aluminum wire into the window, caught it in this way and heard a couple of records,”he says.
A mysterious radio station, broadcasting from a frequency of 4625 kHz, presumably from a swamp near St. Petersburg, has put the whole world in a dead end. Anyone can listen to the mysterious wave, but for more time it is hardly possible to catch something more meaningful than white noise. It happens that words in Russian like “agronomist” or “inflatable lifeboat” break through the air, but this happens very rarely.
According to the BBC, the radio station, nicknamed "Buzzbox", has been broadcasting since 1970. Since then, it has been included from time to time by many people from different parts of the planet, but no one can say for sure what is happening. On YouTube, you can find many recordings of various moments of her broadcast, for example, this one with a strange sound.
But the radio station didn't always broadcast the buzz. According to radio amateurs, earlier the broadcast was filled with a series of tones, occasionally interrupted by numbers or a list of Russian names - Anna, Nikolai, Ivan, Tatiana, Roman. The first voice broadcast, as the listeners of "Zhuzhzhalka" write, took place in 1997 and sounded like this:
“I am UVB-76, I am UVB-76. 180 08 BROMAL 74 27 99 14. Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikhail, Anna, Larisa. 7 4 2 7 9 9 1 4."
There is also debate about the location of the transmitter. Previously, the radio station operated at the communications center of the General Staff near Povarovo near Moscow. Now radio amateurs are sure of the existence of another transmitter in the Leningrad Region on the Karelian Isthmus. The BBC writes about this: “among the Russian swamps not far from St. Petersburg, a rectangular rusty gate. Behind them - radio towers, abandoned buildings and wires … This ominous place is shrouded in mystery, born in the midst of the Cold War. Etc.
There are many different theories about the purpose of the radio wave, according to the BBC. The most common is that this station was created during the Cold War for military purposes. The Buzzbox uses short wavelengths, which allows its signal to travel over great distances, almost all over the world. This means that the frequency may well be used to transmit secret intelligence data, coordinate submarines, or some other not very peaceful purposes.
But there is an even more frightening assumption related to the possibility of a nuclear strike on Russia. According to the investigation, some think that in this case, the radio wave will serve as a kind of guarantor that our country will strike back. If all other communication lines are damaged and there is no one to give the order for a nuclear attack, then the cessation of the broadcast of the "Buzzbox" will become an automatic signal for the use of nuclear weapons.
There are also those who doubt that the radio station is broadcasting something secret now. For example, encryption expert David Stapples expressed his doubts to the BBC.
If the messages were encrypted, then this could be understood by the signal. But nothing like that can be heard on this wave.
From such a statement it follows that, perhaps, now nothing special is happening on the radio wave. Constant noise is broadcast so that no one occupies the frequency, and at the right moment the buzzing will stop, and some kind of military command will be given.
Radio amateur Maris Goldmanis, who regularly tunes his receiver to the Zhuzhzhalka frequency, claims that in 2013 the Russians had already tested such an emergency use of the wave.
In 2013, they sent a special message "ORDER 135", possibly a command of full combat readiness.
Zhuzhzhalka is not the only mysterious radio station supposedly broadcasting from Russia. On YouTube you can find recordings of "Squeaky" or "Squeaky Wheel" broadcast.
But if on these radio stations it is rarely possible to catch something other than noise, then the "Lincolnshire Poacher" wave was much worse to listen to. At the beginning of each hour, she played a portion of an English folk song 12 times. After that, a synthesized female voice read combinations of five numbers. No one knew why this radio station was needed, which existed from the 70s to 2008, although some suspected that it was being used by British intelligence.
Unlike Britain and Russia, North Korea does little to hide the transmission of encrypted messages. In 2016, strange inserts with numbers began to appear on the air of the country's state radio station. Not all encryption experts believed that Pyongyang was so obviously giving signals to its scouts, but decided that in this way North Korea wanted to intimidate the rest of the world.
Fans of "Zhuzhzhalka", who unite in communities with social networks, believe that there are no secrets around the radio station. Radio amateur Kirill is sure that the true purpose of UVB-76 is communication between military command bodies: “My version is just the frequency of military communication. I have come across such versions more than once, which are confirmed by some documents that this is the frequency for communication of military enlistment offices in the Western Military District."
An interesting fact speaks in favor of this version: fans of the secret radio on social networks are mostly teenagers. And many of them admit that, to their surprise, they sometimes hear it in military enlistment offices. Enthusiasts have even found transcripts of radio messages. For example, the number 98 - "an order has been received", 99 - "to report readiness", 45 - "to conduct a training camp", and 23 - "personnel". And the noise is a kind of “this is my frequency” signal.