We had been eagerly waiting for this spring to investigate new information about the underground communication center beneath the military city of Chernobyl-2, which had been hidden from human eyes for more than 15 years. According to one of ANOTHER.KIEV’s informants, who had been an illegal metal thief in 1996, he had been inside a huge underground facility situated under the radar station, and he told us exactly where the entrance was. All winter we had been waiting for the snow to melt so we could go on illegal stalker hikes to check the information for ourselves.
The Duga-3 radar station, or “Russian Woodpecker,” was a Soviet over-the-horizon (OTH) radar system used as part of the Soviet anti-ballistic missile early-warning network. The system operated from July 1976 to December 1989. It is impossible to imagine that such a huge military complex did not have an underground bunker. Yet until now, no information about it had existed on the Internet, so we were the first.
I love spring in the Exclusion Zone, and every stalker trip makes me feel alive and connected to this post-apocalyptic, untouched nature. After a night of hiking through the forests and abandoned villages, we reached the DUGA-3 radar station, but today our goal was not to climb to the top, as on the summer illegal trips, but to check our new information.
The untouched nature of the Chernobyl Zone is waking up from its winter sleep.
The foresters’ house on our way from the border of the Exclusion Zone to the Chernobyl-2 military town.
Here, as usual, we spent a few hours resting and making tea.
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The Duga systems were extremely powerful, over 10 MW in some cases, and broadcast in the shortwave radio bands. They appeared without warning, sounding like a sharp, repetitive tapping noise at 10 Hz, which led to them being nicknamed the Russian Woodpecker by shortwave listeners. The random frequency hops disrupted legitimate broadcasts, amateur radio operations, oceanic commercial aviation communications, and utility transmissions, and resulted in thousands of complaints from many countries worldwide. The signal became such a nuisance that some receivers, such as amateur radios and televisions, actually began including ‘Woodpecker Blankers’ in their circuit designs in an effort to filter out the interference.
We spent the whole day searching for the hole dug by looters. There are two communication tunnels leading to the bunker, and the entrances to both of them had been covered up by looters for some unknown reason.
The entrance from the basement of the nearby building to the covered communication tunnel was well protected by 5 blast doors.
Inside the main hall, the looters had not left anything behind.
But the command center looked good. There was a lot of old machinery.
The room with the diesel engines had been completely stripped.
But in other rooms there were still a lot of interesting military devices.
