Shortwave radio enthusiasts spend countless hours listening in on radio stations broadcasting
messages from around the world.
The owners and even the purpose of many of these stations remain a mystery to those listening
- are these weird radio stations used by Russian spies?
Late one night in nineteen eight-three, Ary Boender, a fifty-seven year old financial
consultant from Rotterdam, Netherlands, was spending the evening indulging in his favourite
hobby - shortwave radio listening.
As he rolled across the dial searching for one of his favourite stations, he heard something
that stopped him in his tracks.
At first it didn’t sound like much - just some crackly beeping - but Ary was transfixed.
Over the following months and years he continued to listen, and what he heard shocked him and
other shortwave enthusiasts around the world.
Ary, like many others before him, had stumbled across “The Buzzer”, the nickname of a
mysterious station under the call signal UVB-6.
Like Ary, most people who discovered The Buzzer didn’t mean to find it, but once they came
across the mysterious signal emanating from a lonely radio tower in the northern Russian
wilderness, they just couldn’t stop listening, and these dedicated listeners recorded every
beep and crackle.
For decades, there really wasn’t much to record.
The monotonous buzzing constantly droned on at all hours of the day and night, although
occasionally the amplitude and pitch of the buzzing would shift, and the intervals between
tones would fluctuate.
Every hour on the hour listeners would hear two quick beeps, before the buzzing resumed.
As mysterious as this was, it wasn’t what kept the listeners hooked - ominously, every
few weeks, the monotony would be broken when a male voice would recite a brief sequence
of numbers and words, often Russian names like Anna, Nikolai and Ivan.
This pattern continued uninterrupted for nearly three decades.
Nothing seemed to impact the signal - not the end of the Cold War, not the Chechen and
Afgan wars, not the bombing of the Russian parliament, not even the dissolution of the
Soviet Union in 1991!
And then, everything changed.
After decades of uninterrupted and monotonous signals, on June fifth, twenty-ten, the signal
abruptly went silent.
Listeners were perplexed, but the next day the signal resumed as if nothing had happened,
and continued to operate normally for most of June and July, except for a few new tones
that sounded like bits of morse code.
In August of that year, the signal disappeared and reappeared a number of times before things
got really weird.
On August twenty-fifth, twenty-ten, at ten-thirteen A.M., the station went crazy.
First there was silence again, and then listeners could hear a series of knocks and shuffles
that sounded disturbingly like someone was moving around in the room.
Throughout the first week of September the transmission was frequently interrupted with
snippets of a recording of Dance of the Little Swans from Tchaikovsky’s famous ballet,
Swan Lake.
Then, on September seventh at eight forty-eight P.M.
Moscow time, a male voice transmitted a message - “Mikail, Dmitri, Zhenya, Boris” - the
station’s new call signal, MDZhB.
This was followed by one of the standard messages that listeners had been hearing for years
- “04 979 D-R-E-N-D-O-U-T”, the voice read out, followed by a long series of numbers;
then, “T-R-E-N-E-R-S-K-I-Y”, and more numbers.
After this, the signal returned to normal, but something else had changed - enthusiasts
realized that the signal was coming from a different location than before the strange
events of the summer of twenty-ten.
Dedicated enthusiasts had long ago figured out that this mysterious signal was coming
from Russia, and had even pinpointed it’s location to a small military city about forty
minutes drive north of Moscow.
The Soviets had built a radio station near Povarovo, a voyenni gorodok or mini military
city, nearly thirty years before, and when the Soviet Union collapsed in nineteen ninety-one,
it was revealed that the military controlled the top-secret area of Povarovo, although
no one knows exactly what went on there.
However, after the events of the summer of twenty-ten, the signal appeared to be coming
from a new location.
Although they couldn’t pinpoint the precise location, enthusiasts determined that the
tower must be close to the town of Pskov, near the Estonian border in northwest Russia.
Experts theorized that the location change was related to a Russian military reorganization
that happened in September of twenty-ten, but they were no closer to determining the
purpose of the signal than they had been for decades.
The strange events over the summer of twenty-ten also brought The Buzzer out of the realm of
niche radio hobbyists and into the mainstream when Estonian entrepreneur Andrus Aaslaid
created an online feed for the station.
Aaslaid, who is best known for his involvement in Skype, had been a shortwave radio enthusiast
since first grade, and his site is responsible for a huge growth in the number of people
listening in on The Buzzer - more than two-hundred thousand people had visited his site by the
end of the strange summer events, with more than forty-thousand people tuning in at the
height of the strangeness.
Before the online feed was available, shortwave enthusiasts would share information about
channels like The Buzzer in niche publications - photocopied newsletters like the Monitoring
Times were passed between hobbyists, and full-blown publications like Popular Communications magazine
covered the latest news in shortwave radio for hobbyists around the world.
Even if you don’t plan to take up the hobby of shortwave radio listening, it can be helpful
to know a bit about radio frequencies to understand the mystery of The Buzzer.
Shortwave is a type of low-frequency radio waves, meaning that more waves pass through
a single point every second compared to the higher frequencies used for local radio, TV
and mobile phones.
Higher frequencies can only travel in a straight line, whereas shortwave radio signals can
bounce off of charged particles in the upper atmosphere, allowing them to zigzag between
the earth and sky and travel much farther - up to thousands of miles.
For example, the BBC London radio station would be hard to pick up just across the channel
in France, since it’s broadcast on a higher, local frequency.
But the BBC World Service signal is broadcast on a shortwave frequency, and is aimed at
audiences around the world.
Both signals are broadcast from the same building, but only the shortwave signal can be heard
around the world.
Now that we know how The Buzzer’s signal can be heard around the world, let’s figure
out why it’s being broadcast.
No one knows for sure exactly why The Buzzer exists, but there are plenty of theories.
The most innocuous one is that the signal was a forgotten node in the Soviet’s military
communications network.
The Soviets were infamous for their complicated bureaucracy - among other things - and it’s
not hard to believe that after the fall of the Soviet union, some things would have gotten
lost in the confusion and paperwork.
However, since the events of twenty-ten and the relocation of the signal, this theory
seems highly unlikely.
Perhaps the most disturbing theory is the idea that The Buzzer is the epicentre of the
Soviet’s Dead Hand doomsday device.
Supposedly built during the height of the Cold War, the device was designed to guarantee
a Soviet counterattack should an enemy land a devastating blow on Russian soil.
This system had the genius feature of removing responsibility for such an attack from any
one politician or military leader, since, for example, if the Kremlin was destroyed,
ground-based sensors would detect the hit and automatically launch a counterattack,
firing enough nuclear weapons to ensure total destruction of both sides.
While most don’t believe that The Buzzer is linked to such a doomsday device, especially
after the interruptions during the summer of twenty-ten didn’t kickstart a nuclear
apocalypse, but no one is sure whether The Dead Hand actually exists at all.
Not a very comforting thought…
The most popular theory about The Buzzer is that it’s a numbers station, used to transmit
top secret signals to Russian spies in foreign countries.
The online group Enigma 2000 - ENIGMA stands for European Numbers Information Gathering
and Monitoring Association - collects and shares data about numbers stations.
According to ENIGMA, The Buzzer may not be a typical numbers station, but it definitely
is one.
It’s structure is different from other numbers stations - typically, these channels transmit
numbers in groups of five, making it impossible to detect patterns or breaks between words
and phrases, unless you happen to have the key to help you decode the messages.
The random beeps and buzzes, and the unpredictability of the transmissions on The Buzzer make it
unique among numbers stations.
The British and the Americans have been using numbers stations since World War One, and
other countries like Cuba and North Korea are thought to be using numbers stations currently.
Even drug runners have been known to use numbers stations to share encrypted info about drops!
Perhaps the most famous numbers station among enthusiasts is the Lincolnshire Poacher, a
station believed to have been run by British Intelligence agency MI6.
The station, which ran from the nineteen seventies until two-thousand and eight, got its name
from its unique transmissions - the start of each broadcast would begin with two bars
of music from a folk song called The Lincolnshire Poacher before broadcasting a string of random
numbers.
This is definitely the least sexy theory about The Buzzer, but many people believe that it’s
simply a means of measuring the thickness of the ionosphere.
As we just learned, shortwave radio frequencies are special because of their ability to bounce
off of charged particles in the upper atmosphere, or the ionosphere.
The ionosphere lies between forty-six and six-hundred and twenty-one miles above the
earth, and the atoms in the ionosphere have been stripped of one or more of their electrons,
becoming positively charged, or ionized, due to the sun’s energy and cosmic rays.
Because the sun’s rays can only reach half of the earth’s ionosphere at a time, it
is always fluctuating and moving like a wave - during the daytime, the ionosphere is thicker
than at night.
Other phenomena, like lightning and solar flares, can also impact the ionosphere, so
getting accurate measurements can be tricky.
To measure the equivalent slab thickness of the ionosphere, which is a ratio of the total
electron content and the peak electron density, we can use vertical sounding data - radio
signals - sent from different ionosonde stations on the earth.
While this may seem like a simple and fairly benign explanation for The Buzzer’s existence,
most experts don’t buy this theory - typical measuring signals are much more uniform and
consistent than the random beeps and buzzing that we can hear on The Buzzer.
The most likely scenario is that The Buzzer exists to transmit top-secret, encoded orders
to military units within Russia, not to agents outside of the country.
Proponents of this theory point to various features of the station that are common in
conventional military use.
The station is broadcast at a frequency of 4625 kiloHertz, a frequency band that is consistent
with military use.
Furthermore, experts can tell that the signal is transmitted by a horizontal dipole antenna,
and runs on a main twenty kilowatt transmitter with a five kilowatt backup, all common traits
of a military communications installation.
This theory also claims to explain the strange events that happened during the summer of
twenty-ten - those strange noises and disruptions were all consistent with what military communications
experts call “pink noise” - sounds used to recalibrate equipment after an upgrade
or relocation.
They also think that the buzzing and beeping that fills the airwaves between transmissions
is simply an attempt to reserve the frequency for when it’s needed to send important messages.
While this theory is certainly less exciting than imagining spies listening to coded messages,
it’s definitely preferable to the idea of a Dead Hand doomsday device!
Journalist Peter Savoonik actually visited Povarovo, the original home of The Buzzer,
for a piece he wrote for Wired.com about the station in two-thousand eleven.
When he asked locals about the radio tower located in the middle of their town, he was
told that no one ever goes there.
Peter decided to take the risk and visit the tower.
After passing through a foreboding chain link fence he approached the rusting one-hundred
and fifty foot high tower and explored the area around it, including a creepy nearby
building.
The door was ajar, revealing a black hole at least thirty-two feet deep - Peter tested
this by dropping a rock into the hole and counting the seconds before it reached bottom.
Although the place appeared completely abandoned, there was one other building that he wasn’t
able to access, due to the fact that it was guarded by a very ferocious-looking dog tied
to a tree.
According to Peter, “The front door appeared to be locked.
There was no light on inside; no one came in or out.
But someone had been there.
The dog, after all, must be fed.”
We may not know exactly what The Buzzer is and why it exists, but with countless enthusiasts
monitoring the station twenty-four seven, we’re sure that we’ll hear more about
this mystery as it unfolds.
In fact, as recently as February twenty-twenty, some followers of the Buzzer posted clips
on YouTube and Reddit of what appeared to be screaming coming through on the station.
Maybe this is one mystery we’re better off not solving...
So, what do you think about The Buzzer?
Which theory do you think has the right idea about this mysterious station?
What other theories do you have?
Be sure and let us know in the comments!
If this video has left you fascinated with the world of spies and secret communications,
be sure and check out our other videos, like this one titled “Can You Crack the CIA’s
Impossible Secret Code?”.
We promise, these videos will help you keep your mind off of any Doomsday Devices that
might be hidden around the world.
As always, thanks for watching, and don’t forget to like, share and subscribe!
See you next time!