Strange signals on the air. Strange radio signals from a nearby star. Russian Man. Levitan says

After listening to UVB-76, people get strange sensations. Someone experiences fear, trembling, cold. Some even say they feel the presence of something or someone nearby. Those who watched the series “Lost” compare this with what happened there. Something inexplicable and incomprehensible.

“Doomsday Station”, “mystical secret on short waves” - whatever they call UVB-76, or simply “Buzzer”. The Buzzer is her name in English. Over the 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” - you can constantly hear a buzz on the air of UVB-76.

And everything would be fine, but from time to time “Buzzer” broadcasts messages that many find mysterious and creepy. For example, a monotone voice may spit out a series of numbers and letters.

By the way, this is precisely why such radio stations are called “number”, or, more accurately translated from English, “numerical”. Radio amateurs are wondering what these numbers mean.

Conspiracy theories are popular: they say that the “Buzzer” is a guarantor of the possibility of a retaliatory nuclear strike, part of the so-called “Dead Hand” system, and the end of it
broadcast will automatically launch the rockets. Others believe that UVB-76 transmits encrypted messages to Russian spies abroad. By the way, she is technically capable of this - the broadcast works on a low-frequency wave, the “Buzzers” signal is caught by enthusiasts from all over the world. Among them is radio amateur Kirill, who has been tuning to the UVB-76 frequency for several years.

Western media are haunted by secret Russian radio. The UVB-76 frequency has been broadcasting for decades - since the Cold War - and no one has ever understood why. The radio transmits a sound signal, which is occasionally interrupted by mysterious encryption. The BBC speculates that the broadcast may be related to Russian nuclear weapons.

“I came across it four or five years ago purely by chance on the Internet, listened to it, and it became interesting. “I decided to try it myself - I simply bought a receiver that supports the frequency, threw an ordinary aluminum wire out the window, caught it that way and heard a couple of recordings,” he says.

A mysterious radio station broadcasting on a frequency of 4625 kHz, supposedly from a swamp near St. Petersburg, has put the whole world at a standstill. Anyone can listen to the mysterious wave, but for a longer period of time it is unlikely to catch anything more meaningful than white noise. It happens that words in Russian like “agronomist” or “inflatable rescue boat” break into the air, but this happens very rarely.

According to the BBC, the radio station, nicknamed “The Buzzer,” has been broadcasting since 1970. Since then, many people from different parts of the planet have turned it on from time to time, but no one can say for sure what is happening. On YouTube you can find many recordings of different 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, the airwaves used to be filled with a series of tonal signals, occasionally interrupted by numbers or a list of Russian names - Anna, Nikolai, Ivan, Tatyana, Roman. The first voice broadcast, as Zhuzhalka listeners 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 controversy 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 confident in 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 there is a rectangular rusty gate. Behind them are radio towers, abandoned buildings and wires... This ominous place is shrouded in mystery, born at the height of the Cold War.” And so on.

There are many different theories about the purpose of radio waves, says the BBC. The most common one is that this station was created during the Cold War for military purposes. “Buzzer” uses short waves, which allows its signal to spread over vast distances almost throughout the world. This means that the frequency may well be used for transmitting secret intelligence data, coordinating submarines, or some other not-so-peaceful purposes.

But there is an even more frightening assumption related to the possibility of a nuclear strike on Russia. As stated in 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 Buzzer broadcast will become an automatic signal for the use of nuclear weapons.

There are also those who doubt that the radio station is broadcasting anything secret now. For example, encryption expert David Stupples 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 wavelength.

From this statement it follows that perhaps nothing special is happening on the radio wave right now. Constant noise is broadcast so that no one takes up 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 “Buzzer” frequency, claims that in 2013 the Russians already tested such an emergency use of the wave.

In 2013, they sent a special message “ORDER 135”, perhaps this is a command of full combat readiness.

“Zhuzhalka” is not the only mysterious radio station supposedly broadcasting from Russia. On YouTube you can find recordings of the broadcast of “Squeaker” or “Squeaky Wheel”.
But if on these radio stations it is rare to hear anything other than noise, then the Lincolnshire Poacher wave was much scarier to listen to. At the beginning of each hour, she played an excerpt from an English folk song 12 times. After this, a synthesized female voice read five-digit combinations. No one knew why this radio station, which existed from the 70s until 2008, was needed, although some suspected that it was used by British intelligence.

Unlike Britain and Russia, North Korea makes little effort 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 intelligence officers, but decided that in this way North Korea wanted to intimidate the rest of the world.

Fans of “Zhuzhalka”, who unite in communities on social networks, believe that there are no secrets around the radio station. Radio amateur Kirill is confident that the true purpose of UVB-76 is communication between military command and control authorities: “My version is simply the frequency of military communication. More than once I have come across such versions, which are confirmed by some documents that this is the frequency for communication of military registration and enlistment offices in the Western Military District.”

This version is supported by an interesting fact: fans of secret radio on social networks are mostly teenagers. And many of them admit that, to their surprise, they sometimes hear it in military registration and enlistment offices. Enthusiasts even found transcripts of radio messages. For example, the number 98 is “an order has been received,” 99 is “to report readiness,” 45 is “to conduct a training session,” and 23 is “personnel.” And noise is a kind of signal “this is my frequency.”

Sources:

The so-called numbered radio stations broadcast on short waves and mostly broadcast hissing, ringing or wheezing sounds, but sometimes they give out something truly mysterious - codes and names read out in a cold announcer's voice. There are many theories about the purpose of numbered radio stations, but the most popular speculations revolve around spy theories. Moreover, in some cases the spy origin of the stations was (or almost was) proven. Afisha Daily has compiled a conspiracy list of the most mysterious, frightening and curious numbered radio stations, and also found several recordings of their broadcasts (think twice before listening).

"Buzzer." Ciphers from the St. Petersburg swamp

The radio station, codenamed UVB-76, transmits mysterious signals that have never been deciphered, and its first one dates back to 1982. Basically, “Buzzer” broadcasts hissing sounds (you can), but sometimes sets of numbers, letters and names appear on the air. At first, radio amateurs thought that this was a repeating recording, but then they noticed that the codes were new every time, but . So, in 1997, “Buzzer” transmitted the following message:

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

Like the BBC, the most popular theory about the origins of UVB-76 is that the Buzzer was created during the Cold War to transmit military intelligence. Short waves allow information to spread throughout the world, so UVB can be used to broadcast secret data. True, encryption expert David Stupples in an interview with the BBC suggested that “Buzzer” is not doing anything like that now, because there is no special signal on the air that precedes the cipher.

Radio amateurs established that in 2010 the signal source moved from the Moscow region to near St. Petersburg. They also compiled all the known buzzer codes, where different terms are mainly used, and also that the mysterious radio station from the St. Petersburg swamp did not react in any way to perestroika, Gorbachev, the end of the Afghan war, the shelling of parliament, the Chechen campaigns, financial crises and other important events in history countries.

Despite the fact that not a single UVB-76 signal has been associated with a single fatal event, radio amateurs continue to patiently record strange broadcasts and try to analyze them. Listen for yourself: for example, here at 1.52 a male voice says: “I allow you to press the “Reset” button.”

"Squeaker." Letters and weather forecast

A lesser-known, but no less mysterious radio station, the main difference of which is that it produces sharper and more unpleasant sounds. Also, for some unknown reason, it broadcasts on two frequencies - day and night. since 1986, and its location is determined in Rostov-on-Don.

The main purpose of the Tweeter is also considered to be the transmission of military data. Radio amateurs know that it beeps approximately 50 times per minute, and voice messages are transmitted most often in two formats. The first is a set of complex phonetically combined letters and the preposition “for”:

For YHYY ZH1B NI9V DMTs3 49FT Ts2ZA LI27 INNTs SHGYP 8TSSHY

The second is numbers interspersed with words that, in general, also have no obvious meaning:

8С1Ш 73373 DRESSING 84 56 22 35

True, sometimes “Squeaker” behaves in a very unusual way - for example, it transmits a weather forecast (you can listen to it) and leaves unencrypted messages - for example, “Squeaker” asks to “limit the use of troops and the massive release of equipment in connection with the beginning of the opening of the Olympic Games.”

Russian Man. Levitan says

The Russian Man shortwave station is interesting because it has a voice very similar to the voice of Yuri Levitan himself, which gives rise to some not only conspiracy theories, but also mystical assumptions.

The station mainly transmits numbers. Perhaps she would have gained fame similar to that of "Buzzer", but the problem is that she has a very complex schedule, and the frequency changes every time depending on the month, week and day. So only the most diligent and dedicated radio amateurs can monitor the broadcasts.

Radio amateurs around the world are wondering what the hiss, names and numbers mean, broadcast since the 1970s by a radio station believed to originate near St. Petersburg. Some believe that the wave is coordinating the actions of Russian intelligence, others think that it can launch nuclear missiles if necessary. No one knows the exact purpose of the radio station, like many others similar to it, located in different parts of the world.

A mysterious radio station broadcasting on a frequency of 4625 kHz, supposedly from a swamp near St. Petersburg, has put the whole world at a standstill. Anyone can listen to the mysterious wave, but for a longer period of time it is unlikely to catch anything more meaningful than white noise. It happens that words in Russian like “agronomist” or “inflatable rescue boat” break into the air, but this happens very rarely.

According to the publication, the radio station, nicknamed “Buzzer,” has been broadcasting since 1970. Since then, many people from different parts of the planet have turned it on from time to time, but no one can say for sure what is happening. On YouTube you can find many recordings of different 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, the airwaves used to be filled with a series of tonal signals, occasionally interrupted by numbers or a list of Russian names - Anna, Nikolai, Ivan, Tatyana, Roman. The first voice broadcast, as Zhuzhalka listeners 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.

The call sign of the radio station “UVB-76” gave it its second name. There are people who constantly monitor the broadcast, and they even unite in kind of fan clubs on social networks.

There are many different theories about the purpose of radio waves, says the BBC. The most common one is that this station was created during the Cold War for military purposes. “Buzzer” uses short waves, which allows its signal to spread over vast distances almost throughout the world. This means that the frequency may well be used for transmitting secret intelligence data, coordinating submarines, or some other not-so-peaceful purposes.

But there is an even more frightening assumption related to the possibility of a nuclear strike on Russia. As stated in 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 Buzzer broadcast will become an automatic signal for the use of nuclear weapons.

There are also those who doubt that the radio station is broadcasting anything secret now. For example, encryption expert David Stupples 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 wavelength.

From this statement it follows that perhaps nothing special is happening on the radio wave right now. Constant noise is broadcast so that no one takes up 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 “Buzzer” frequency, claims that in 2013 the Russians already tested such an emergency use of the wave.

In 2013, they sent a special message “ORDER 135”, perhaps this is a command of full combat readiness.

“Zhuzhalka” is not the only mysterious radio station supposedly broadcasting from Russia. On YouTube you can find recordings of the broadcast of “Squeaker” or “Squeaky Wheel”.

But if on these radio stations it is rare to hear anything other than noise, then the Lincolnshire Poacher wave was much scarier to listen to. At the beginning of each hour, she played an excerpt from an English folk song 12 times. After this, a synthesized female voice read five-digit combinations. No one knew why this radio station, which existed from the 70s until 2008, was needed, although some suspected that it was used by British intelligence.

Unlike Britain and Russia, North Korea makes little effort to hide the transmission of encrypted messages. In 2016, it was broadcast on the country's state radio station. Not all encryption experts believed that Pyongyang was so obviously giving signals to its intelligence officers, but decided that in this way North Korea wanted to intimidate the rest of the world.

Illustration copyright iStock

This radio station has been broadcasting its strange shortwave broadcasts since 1982. Who is this buzzing and reading out on air in Russian of meaningless numbers and words intended for?

Somewhere in the middle of the isthmus that separates Lake Ladoga and the Gulf of Finland, among lakes and swamps, there are rusted iron gates. Behind them are several radio towers and abandoned buildings surrounded by a stone wall.

In this rather ominous-looking place, as many believe, there was one of the transmitters of an unknown shortwave radio station with the call sign MJB (as Wikipedia notes, since December 28, 2015, the call sign of this mysterious station has changed to ZHUOZ - Note translator).

24 hours a day, seven days a week - and so over the past 35 years, this station has been broadcasting a monotonous signal, an intermittent buzz.

Once or twice a week, a male or female voice reads a meaningless set of Russian words, for example, “zhito”, “textolite”, “fence”... That’s all. Anyone tuned to the 4625 kHz frequency can listen to these strange radio broadcasts almost anywhere in the world.

This station seems to be specially created for conspiracy theory lovers. Today she has fans all over the world, Wikipedia writes about her (both in Russian and English), she has your pages on social networks, they are filming about her TV spots.

For all her fans, she is the Buzzer. In addition, she currently has at least two more "sisters" - the Pip and the Squeaky Wheel. As many of their listeners honestly admit, it is completely unclear what the point of the programs is.

Indeed, "the signal carries absolutely no information," says David Stupples, an electronic intelligence expert at City University in London.

What is this?

This frequency is believed to belong to the Russian military, although they have never confirmed this. (According to the authors of the article in the Russian-language Wikipedia, this is a warning station reserved for the civil defense system and in case of disasters. - Note translator.)

The radio broadcasts began when the communist system was on its last legs and it was already obvious who was winning the Cold War. Interestingly, after the Soviet Union collapsed, the activity of radio broadcasts only increased.

Nowadays, transmissions are carried out from several places - different sources give different numbers of them. (For example, transmitters are named in Naro-Fominsk, PDRTs 69 communication center and in Kerro, Leningrad region, PDRTs 60 communication center. There is also evidence that broadcast centers are located in Voronezh, Pskov and in the village of Bugry, Leningrad region. - Note translator.)

Naturally, there is no shortage of different versions and theories trying to explain what the Buzzer is for. Their scope extends from negotiations with nuclear submarines to communication with aliens.

One idea is this: this is the so-called “dead man's hand” (or “dead hand”). If Russia is struck by a nuclear attack, the signals will stop, and this will act as a trigger for a retaliatory strike.

As a result, no one will be left alive on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Some conclusions can be drawn from the signal itself

As crazy as it may sound, there is a grain of wisdom in this explanation.

This computer system was created during Soviet times to scan the airwaves and search for signs of life in emergency situations or in the event of a nuclear strike. Many experts believe that it is still in effect today.

(In 2011, in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, the commander of the Strategic Missile Forces, Lieutenant General Sergei Karakaev, said that the Perimeter system still exists today, “it is on combat duty.” The Perimeter system - or, as it was called in the West, “ Dead Hand" - was created in the USSR to ensure the transmission of combat orders from the highest echelons of command to command posts and individual launchers of strategic missiles on combat duty, in the event of a state of emergency, when communication lines may be damaged. - Note translator.)

As Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this year, no one would survive a nuclear war between Russia and the United States. Maybe "Buzzer" has something to do with this?

Some conclusions can be drawn from the signal itself. Like all international radio stations, "Zhuzhalka" broadcasts on short waves, which, unlike long and medium waves that travel in a straight line, are reflected from the ionosphere and the Earth's surface with low losses and can propagate over long distances.

It is short waves that make it possible to listen to the BBC World Service in Africa or Singapore. But try to catch BBC London Radio somewhere in Birmingham - most likely you won't get anything, because it's FM, a different range of radio waves that don't travel that far...

And here we return to the "dead man's hand". Short waves are used by ships, aircraft and the military to send signals across continents, oceans and mountain ranges. However, there is one "but".

The quality of reception depends on various processes in the ionosphere related to the level of solar activity, time of year and time of day. For example, shorter waves propagate better during the day, longer ones at night, and so on.

If you want to guarantee that your radio station will be heard on the far side of the planet (or if you plan to use its signals in the event of a nuclear war!), you need to change the frequency from time to time throughout the day.

That's what the BBC World Service does. But "Buzzer" doesn't do that.

Another theory: This station sends signals to find out how far away the layer of charged particles is. "For cruise missile detection radar systems to work successfully, you need to know this," Stupples says.

Alas, it doesn’t add up here either. To analyze the height of the layer, the signal must have a very specific sound, reminiscent of a car alarm. Nothing like the Buzzer.

What Poacher broadcast sounded strange and creepy

Interestingly, there was another station that was surprisingly similar to Buzzer. Lincolnshire Poacher ran from the mid-1970s to 2008.

Just like “Buzzer,” you could listen to it everywhere, even on the opposite side of the planet.

Just like “Buzzer,” it broadcast from an unspecified location, apparently somewhere in Cyprus.

Like “Buzzer,” what “Poacher” broadcast sounded strange and creepy.

At the beginning of each hour, this station played the first two bars of an English folk song called: "The Poacher of Lincolnshire":

"Oh "tis my delight on a shining night

In the season of the year

When I was bound apprentice in famous Lincolnshire

"Twas well I served my master for nigh on seven years..."

After playing the same two-bar passage 12 times in a row, the radio station moved on to messages that were read out in a disembodied female voice with an upper-class English accent and contained groups of five numbers: “1-2-0-3-6” ...

To understand even a little what all this means, we need to go back even further into the past, to the 1920s. The ARCOS company, the All-Russian Cooperative Joint Stock Company, was a Soviet business organization registered in Great Britain and created to conduct trade between the RSFSR and England. At least that's what they said.

In May 1927, British police raided ARCOS' headquarters in London, trying to find documents confirming the espionage activities of some of the company's employees.

The basement they were searching was studded with all sorts of protective devices. As a result, they discovered a door without a handle leading to a secret room where employees had hastily burned some documents.

It all looked impressive, but the police did not find anything that the British did not already know about the activities of ARCOS.

That search (which in Soviet propaganda was called a raid - Note translator) turned out to be more useful for Soviet intelligence, which unexpectedly discovered that MI5 had been bugging the so-called “All-Russian Cooperative Joint Stock Company” for several years.

To confirm the need for that search, the British Prime Minister even read several intercepted and decrypted telegrams in the House of Commons.

The result of the high-profile story was that the Russians completely changed the way they encrypt messages. Almost immediately they switched to a one-time table system.

In this system, the key was randomly generated by the sender and passed only to the recipient. With this method, the messages became practically undecipherable. The Russians did not have to be afraid that someone was listening to them.

And here short-wave numbered (numerical) radio stations come onto the scene, broadcasting coded messages consisting of a series of numbers, as it is believed - for intelligence officers working in foreign countries.

Britain did this too. However, generating a completely random series of numbers turned out to be difficult, so London came up with an ingenious solution.

They hung a microphone outside the window and recorded the street noise of Oxford Street: the sounds of honking buses, the screams of a policeman - everything that was completely unique and never repeated in the same order. After that, they translated what was written down into a one-time code.

All this, of course, did not stop those who tried to decipher such messages. During World War II, the British realized that in order to crack the Soviet code, they had to somehow get to the Russian one-time tables.

Now North Korea is doing it too

“We suddenly discovered that in their military hospitals in East Germany, the Russians were using old one-time encryption tables as toilet paper,” says Anthony Glees, director of the Center for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham.

about the details of that case - Ed.).

So, according to the FBI, agents received orders from Moscow through coded messages transmitted on short waves by a number station on a frequency of 7887 kHz.

Now North Korea is doing this too. On April 14, 2017, the host of Radio Pyongyang said something tongue-tied and poorly disguised on the air: “I’m giving review papers in elementary information technology classes at the University of Distance Education for Freight Forwarders No. 27.”

Numbers and pages were then transmitted (“number 69 on page 823,” “page 957”) in what appeared to be a coded message.

Some may be surprised that number stations are still used in the era of the Internet and high technology, but they have one very important advantage.

You can guess who is transmitting these messages, but it is absolutely impossible to understand to whom they are sent - after all, anyone can listen to them.

Only at a moment of crisis (let’s say, when someone attacked Russia) will “Zhuzhalka” turn into a number station

Probably, by mobile phone or via the Internet it would be faster and more convenient, but for intelligence services it is easier to establish who exactly opened this or that email message.

It's tempting, of course, to conclude that Buzzer is passing orders to Russian spies around the world.

There's just one problem: Buzzer never transmits long strings of numbers. (Actually, “Buzzer” conveys a mixture of numbers and Russian words - only, perhaps, not to the extent that it could be mistaken for a message to an agent abroad - Ed.)

So what is “Buzzer” buzzing about? Many people believe that this radio station is some kind of hybrid. The constant buzzing sound is simply a marker that says, “this is my frequency, this is my frequency...”, making it clear that the frequency is occupied and preventing anyone else from using it.

And only at the moment of crisis (let’s say, when someone attacked Russia) will “Zhuzhalka” turn into a number station.

Then she will transmit orders - both to the spy network around the world and to the military units that are on combat duty in remote corners of the country (Russia's territory is approximately 70 times larger than the territory of Great Britain).

• This article in English is available on the website .