Tune to shortwave radio frequency 4625 kHz and you’ll get a taste of a mystery that has confounded the world for over four decades. The station, located in Russia, has spent over 40 years broadcasting a mysterious range of beeps, buzzes, and spoken phrases. It’s been virtually nonstop, and nobody’s ever claimed ownership or given an official explanation. More than the obscure sounds, it’s the lack of information that continues to puzzle the world.
Known as UVB-76 for its first known call sign, and later nicknamed “The Buzzer,” the station has likely been broadcasting since at least the 1970s.
Trying to figure out why has been a difficult task.
Theories abound. Shortwave radio allows signals to travel farther—in this case they cover the whole of Russia, and beyond. Some believe the signals could be a piece of Russia’s military communication network, transmitting to submarines or troops. Maybe it’s some sort of “Dead Hand” doomsday device monitoring for nuclear attacks. The signal came to light during the Cold War, so it could be a spy network transmission.
One theory is that the signal is from a numbers station, which is a radio station set up to send coded messages via numbers or using voice, Morse code, or other digital code. These stations grew in popularity at the tail end of World War I. During the Cold War, they were a useful tool to send secret messages. UVB-76’s activity only grew following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Since enthusiasts began monitoring in 1982, the station has undergone a few changes. At first the signal was simply a series of beeps. In 1992 it switched to buzzes—hence the nickname, The Buzzer—mixed every couple of seconds with a foghorn-like tone. Every week or two, either a man or woman reads a list of names, words, or numbers. The randomness within the tones varies.
All this is strange in itself, but in 2010, a wildly unexpected thing happened.
The signal stopped broadcasting for a day. Pure silence. It resumed the next day as if nothing had happened. Then, in August 2010, multiple transmission pauses occurred, including on August 25, when listeners heard what some described as people moving around a room. These unusual transmissions included what could have been Morse code at one point. Then the station broadcast snippets of Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake,” and the call changed to saying “Mikhail Dumitri Zhengya Boris” (MDZhB).
Around the same time, the transmission site seemed to have switched locations. The signal originally came from what trackers believed was a Russian military base in the town of Povarovo, roughly 19 miles from Moscow. In September 2010 that all shifted, and the signal became harder to follow. Many now believe that responsibility for the station comes from multiple official government communications sites, including one in St. Petersburg and one in Moscow.
When unauthorized explorers visited the Povarovo site about a year after the signal became harder to track, they found the base abandoned, save for a single guard dog on a chain. They claimed they discovered a logbook detailing broadcasts from 2005. Locals said the Russian military deserted the site one night, in less than 90 minutes, according to the logbook.
The Buzzer is one of those still-unanswered mysteries, David Stupples, Ph.D., an expert in the research and development of space-based reconnaissance, surveillance, and navigation systems, believes. He’s also a professor of electronic and radio engineering at City University of London. “I think to find the whole truth—and nothing but the truth—I think it would have to come from the Russian Federation themselves,” he tells Popular Mechanics. “It is almost certainly the Russian government that is using it. If it is the Russian government, it wouldn’t be for peaceful purposes.”
He believes the station is likely being kept in play in case of nuclear war or a form of war that causes national communication loss. Alternatively, thanks to the powerful nature of the transmission, it may offer an emergency channel for communication during times of conflict, Stupples adds. “They may be just reserving the channel for air defense or some form of defense.”
Simply keeping control of the frequency is a task. “If they don’t actually use it, someone will poach it,” he explains. “The band is so crowded that people will look for a small opportunity for a channel of their own… They are keeping the channel available by broadcasting and saying, ‘this is ours.’”
Stupples says that when an organization wants to keep control of a frequency, it often plays a basic test message on repeat—which isn’t much cause for intrigue. However, that’s not the case with the UVB-76. Instead, the signal’s owners operate an omni-directional channel with an incredibly powerful transmitter—Stupples estimates that it is several thousand watts—broadcasting a seemingly unintelligible string of sounds.
“I have put it through my signal spectrum analyzers, and I can’t pick any intelligence out at all,” Stupples says.
- The Russian military owns and runs the channel.
- It uses unintelligible sounds and phrases to keep it active.
- It has a powerful transmitter behind it to ensure steady broadcast across the whole country.
- It will likely use the channel for communication in a time of utmost emergency.
However, several other theories fascinate Stupples too. One of the improbable ones is that UVB-76 is a “Dead Hand” system that can somehow trigger a retaliatory nuclear attack if Russia is ever wiped out. Another is that the setup is a way to beam radio signals into the atmosphere to search for UFOs.
Still other theories include: some form of ionosphere research, a scheme tied directly to the Chernobyl plant, a Russian submarine communication system, or an international spy network. And those are still just a handful of ideas people are throwing around.
“It is always entertaining, isn’t it?” Stupples says of the theories. “And you never know, one of those crank views may be right, and then we all eat humble pie.”
Tim Newcomb is a journalist based in the Pacific Northwest. He covers stadiums, sneakers, gear, infrastructure, and more for a variety of publications, including Popular Mechanics. His favorite interviews have included sit-downs with Roger Federer in Switzerland, Kobe Bryant in Los Angeles, and Tinker Hatfield in Portland.
