SOCKS

An online magazine of Art, Architecture, Media, Culture, Sounds, Territories, Technology)

  • Media
  • Art
  • Architecture
  • Culture
  • Sounds
  • Territories
  • Visual Atlas

Duga-3, a Giant Abandoned Radio Structure Within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone

July 10, 2012 by Fosco Lucarelli 2 Comments

Just a few miles away from the exploded nuclear power plant of Chernobyl, stands a huge Soviet abandoned rectangular antenna made by an array of cylindrical/conical cages fed by a ladder line suspended from stand-off platforms.

The structure, named Duga-3, (Arc-3) was the mysterious origin of a peculiar woodpecker-like radio signal that could be heard all over the world between 1976 to 1989. The unclaimed signal, sporadically disrupting radio broadcasts, amateur transmission, commercial aviation communications was a source for much speculation (weather control? mind control?).

Only after its abandon it was confirmed that the giant structure was an extremely powerful military (10MW) over-the-horizon radar (OTH) system, a radar capable to provide early warning of a ballistic missile launch, giving the Soviet defense time to study the attack and plan a response. NATO military intelligence discovered and photographed the system and given it the NATO reporting name Steel Yard.

Three structures have been built in USSR territory, and the Duga-3 lied within what was later called zone of alienation, with a distance of 60km between the receiver and the transmitter. Deactivated in 1989 at the end of the Cold War, the antenna still stands and it is a photographic wonder.

Further infos:

Wikia abandoned places – Duga-3 site (Russian Woodpecker)

Via: English Russia

Related Posts

  • dOCUMENTA 13: Czechoslovak Radio 1968, by Tamás St. Turba

    When Czechoslovakia was invaded by Soviet army in 1968, people resisted to the repression of…

  • Matter, Structure and Form of Life: Der Fels ist mein Haus, by Werner Blaser (1976)

    In “Der Fels ist mein Haus = La rocher est ma demeure = The rock…

  • The Limits of Rationality: Impossibly Thin Table by Junya Ishigami (2006)

    Japanese architect Junya Ishigami was able to stress the potential of architectural thinking at every scale,…

  • Inhabiting a Three-Dimensional Grid: The "Railway Sleeper House" by Shin Takasuga

    In 1970, Japanese architect Shin Takasuga designed a house in the middle of the forest…

  • The Field and the Nave: the Mezquita of Córdoba

      The Mosque–Cathedral of Córdoba, also called the Mezquita, is a medieval Islamic mosque that…

Comments

  1. L.A.West says

    October 12, 2016 at 2:32 am

    I don’t want to be anywhere near that calamity once it rusts and rots and collapses under it’s own weight. . . with a territory the size of Russia to watch over . . . they need to build things super big!

Trackbacks

  1. the steel woodpecker | underneath the open sky says:
    September 7, 2015 at 12:11 am

    […] the “Woodpecker”.* A selection of photos which better get across the scale can be found here; the transmitter station itself is miles away, outside the […]

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Tumblr

Socks is a non-linear journey through distant territories of human imagination.

About | Visual Atlas | Topics

We are Mariabruna Fabrizi and Fosco Lucarelli from Microcities. Ask us anything

  • Instagram
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Tumblr


SOCKS is a project by Fosco Lucarelli and Mariabruna Fabrizi of MICROCITIES, Architecture Cityscape, Landscape.
Except where otherwise noted, the content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.
Whenever possible we try to attribute content (images, videos, and quotes) to their creators and original sources. Please feel free to write us if you notice misattributions or wish something to be removed.
SOCKS is powered by WordPress.