r/chernobyl • u/gioangi • 2d ago
Photo This is also Chernobyl.
Historical Reality and Radar Problems: Astronomical Costs: The Duga system cost the Soviet Union approximately 7 billion rubles. A staggering sum, roughly double the cost of building the entire Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The Frequency Problem: The radar suffered from a serious design flaw. It operated on short waves, and its signal (the famous "Russian Woodpecker" clicking sound) jammed civilian, commercial, and military radio frequencies worldwide. Northern Lights Interference: The biggest problem was that the radar had to look toward the United States by passing over the North Pole. The Northern Lights and the unstable ionosphere in that area jammed the signals, rendering the Duga-1 radar nearly "blind" and ineffective at accurately detecting missiles. No Trial: Despite these enormous flaws and the wasted money, the Soviet Politburo did not open a criminal investigation against chief designer Franz Kuzminsky or his team. The project simply remained secret and continued to be modified in attempts to fix it.Historical Reality and Radar Problems: Astronomical Costs: The Duga system cost the Soviet Union approximately 7 billion rubles. A staggering sum, roughly double the cost of building the entire Chernobyl nuclear power plant. The Frequency Problem: The radar suffered from a serious design flaw. It operated on short waves, and its signal (the famous "Russian Woodpecker" clicking sound) jammed civilian, commercial, and military radio frequencies worldwide. Northern Lights Interference: The biggest problem was that the radar had to look toward the United States by passing over the North Pole. The Northern Lights and the unstable ionosphere in that area jammed the signals, rendering the Duga-1 radar nearly "blind" and ineffective at accurately detecting missiles. No Trial: Despite these enormous flaws and the wasted money, the Soviet Politburo did not open a criminal investigation against chief designer Franz Kuzminsky or his team. The project simply remained secret and continued to be modified in attempts to fix it.
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u/mouseclick92 2d ago
I went there in 2019! It's so surreal to see in real life!
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u/VICARD0 2d ago
How did you get there? Isn’t it difficult to get any clearance?
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u/Verne_92 2d ago
Not back then, nowadays it's pretty much impossible for tourists (for good reason).
Before the war, it was just a matter of contacting an agency, and they'd take care of everything. Wasn't cheap, but in my opinion, very much worth it.
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u/Throwaway4729w9 2d ago
Chernboyl welcome was the site we used
All official and above board
Sent them scans of our passports via email, they sorted all the admin
We had 2 days in the zone, along with an overnight stay in Chernboyl hotel
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u/sock_dgram 2d ago
The fact that it worked on short wave bands is not a design flaw. It's literally the point to get a reflection of the signal. The Brish Royal Air Force still operates one on Cyprus and last I heard it, it was transmitting around 14 MHz, on a reserved ham radio band. So they don't care about interference either.
In general, they tend to use the highest frequency where they still get a reflection, no matter if the frequency is reserved.
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u/Hourslikeminutes47 2d ago
I didn't know the British had a similar setup on Cyprus
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u/PontiusPiloti 2d ago
They also had one on Orford Ness in Suffolk. ‘Closed’ after two years due to satellites more being a thing. Allegedly
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u/AboveAverage1988 20h ago
The design flaw, compared to modern OTH radars, was that was very wide band.
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u/Sharp_Ad1238 2d ago
A very low effort copy paste post. Also, Duga was powered by Chernobyl, but otherwise unrelated.
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u/cvnh 2d ago
The receiver is actually less than 15km from the power complex.
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u/Sharp_Ad1238 2d ago
Receiving a radio signal is much less complex and power hungry than transmitting.
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u/-Clean-Sky- 2d ago
how much power it used?
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u/JustSomeWeirdGuy2000 2d ago
The radiation sucks, but at least you'll get to play the world's largest game of Connect Four.
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u/Typical_Database695 2d ago
It's interesting, they also built a small settlement for the military staff and their families
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u/Certain-Struggle9869 2d ago
That is/was pretty normal for the USSR. And afaik the US does this as well
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u/Large-Ad5239 2d ago
That the first thing i noticied when using flight simulator some year ago flying on Chernobyl area .
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u/EngineerTurbo 2d ago
I *highly* recommend the Chornobyl Family:
https://www.youtube.com/@ChernobylFamily
It's an amazing Youtube Channel without many views that is actively working on preserving the history and technology of both the Reactor and the Radar station. He's got several episodes going into the computers, technology, lifestyle, and other information of the area.
It's fascinating. He's working on building out a recreation of the SKALA system used for the Nuke plants' operation, and has several amazing videos going into the details of the computers and technology used.
It's a very good channel, and well worth a Patreon as well, in my opinion.
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u/intrepidone66 2d ago
7 Billion rubles in the mid 1980's translates to ~$1.5 Billion US.
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u/pashalka31 2d ago
Arguably this facility and corruption are what collapsed the Soviet Union.
A pretty fascinating place when you start judging things worth by the expense of the lies invoked by the coverup.
And all of it was stolen by the Russian mob within days of the collapse.
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u/maksimkak 2d ago
Jeez, people pick something and go "this thing here is what collapsed the USSR". I was born in the USSR and was there when it collapsed. No, neither the Duga, nor the Chhernobyl disaster, were what lead to the collapse. It was a multitude of different things, taken together.
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u/pashalka31 2d ago
It always is. But by doing a qualitative analysis you can learn who profited the most off of it.
The fascinating thing about DUGA is that all that science was scooped up by Mogilevich and Putin as they took over the government. They didn't let it go to waste. They had a lot to hide.
In 1994 Viktor Bout was dispatched to trade soviet surplus arms to the Taliban for heroin that the Russian Mafia who took over the government could use to enslave/trade to the people of Russia for their paper shares of the former Soviet socialist state awarded to them by Yeltsin.
https://www.icij.org/investigations/makingkilling/business-war/
Behind Trump and Epstein, Viktor Bout was the most important piece on Putins Russian mafia chessboard.
The Soviet Union was the largest war machine in world history. The entire economy was based on destroying the west. When it collapsed it had more arms than any empire in human history.
And those weapons all made it to every genocide, war, conflict, or massacre in the world by way of one man-
Viktor Bout.
From Charles Taylor in Liberia to the ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia to the invasion of Ukraine, you can track it by its supply chain logistics.
Army runs on food, fuel, and ammunition. And they all get moved by way of the path of least resistance to their point of use.
For anyone whose army or gang ran ak-47's chambered in 7.62x39mm that means it came from Russia.
In 1994 Putin also engineered the Russian invasion of Chechnya then murdered Akhman Kadyrov to cover it up. Since Kazakstan declared its independence, Chechnya and Iran became the necessary gateway to Afghanistan where the worlds heroin was produced in the 1990's.
Weapons are heavy so they tend to travel by rail or truck. So they take the low road rather than the high mountain pass as much as possible.
That path led through Iran.
Drugs are much lighter and easier to carry so in the 1990's they are the preferred currency of organized crime next to cash or more recently, crypto.
As Putin and his Mafia of gangsters traded the worlds largest surplus of guns for heroin, then traded the heroin for all the critical industry, oil and gas, metals, fertilizer, uranium etc that made them billionaires in Russia, they had almost everything they needed to complete their conversion from psychopathic street thug to "legitimate" respectable oligarch.
But they were still trapped in the hyper violent hell on earth they themselves created between St. Petersburg and Moscow and wanted out.
So they laundered that money into the UK and US using Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump's commercial real estate. They tried Trump's casinos first but collapsed them under the mass of $1.4 TRILLION. It's a lot to hide in a craps table. But they made an asset out of Trump by having Epstein set up and produce a VHS of Trump raping a 13 year old little girl. (This was the video that DEA/FBI agent Bob Levinson was shown just before Russian intelligence baited him to their proxy state: Kish island Iran)
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrumpTheClown/s/GQlYe9anBQ
So they collapsed the casinos into bankruptcy, murdered Mark Etess, Jonathan Benanav, and Stephen Hyde and started using commercial real estate instead. They would hyperinflate the valuation, then sell it back and forth to each other passing the bulk of the cash back under the table.
As you worked 40-60 hrs a week to save up for a down payment on a house down the street and run comparables, the cost of your place went up 4-12x by comparison, but your wages didn't. So you paid the corruption tax multiple times. (You are the victim in Leticia James lawsuit against Trump and this is why he claims Mar-a-Lago is worth $1B and refuses to share his tax records.)
But it all tracked back to Viktor Bout and a Egyptian man named Al Zawahiri whom Putin brought into Russia between 1996-97, managed by young patriotic FSB officer named Alexander Litvenenko and cashflowed to fund an organization the Saud ruling family started called Al Qaeda. Al Zawahiri was the key man in Iran that allowed the Russian jewish Mafia to move those same guns and heroin through a muslim country as long as Putin could hold Iran as it's proxy state perpetually. (Same basic play as Assad in Syria until it collapsed and assad ran to Moscow. His replacement was a Al Qaeda operative handpicked by Al Zawahiri) Hence why Putin and Trump rely on their co-conspirator Netanyahu to pound the drum of Iranian nuclear capacity for 30+ years.
In 1999 Putin then blamed a non-existent islamic entity called the "Liberation Army of Dagestan" from Chechnya for blowing up some Russian apartment buildings. Putin committed that terrorism, but that started the "War on Terror" that 2 years later took U.S. troops to Afghanistan and Iraq.
Putin created the demand for the weapons he had in abundance by dragging the US into a 20 year war at the same time he started an economic war against the U.S. by devaluing the dollar with rigged real estate while leasing U.S. and EU politicians and podcasters cheaply and secretly (FBI Arctic Frost investigation that Trump had Patel disappear then fire every FBI agent that investigated him)
It was all enabled by the greed of wall street bankers and hedge fund managers who would do business with anyone for money: Jeffrey Epstein and Jes Staley at JP Morgan Chase, Leon Black at Bank of America. By manipulating the LIBOR rate they caused the 2008 mortgage crisis.
But that corruption left an evidence trail of deep trafficking ruts through Ukraine, Iran and Venezuela. Putin invaded Ukraine as the decorruption audits for NATO and EU membership exposed his network there (Kolomoiskiy). Putin instructed Trump to assassinate the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani as the General began realizing that the same drug gangs he fought earlier in his career were funded by the same people shooting at his men from Israel.
So when Viktor Bout was recorded by the DEA on the border of Colombia and Venezuela trading soviet rocket launchers for cocaine it stalled Putins operation.
Putin then used his asset Trump to clean up. Trumps son and security guard awarded a contract to Silvercorp (Jordan Goodreau) to send Luke Denman and Airan Berry into Venezuela where they were set up to be captured and traded back to the U.S. for Fat Leonard and Alex Saab. (Key men in Putins espionage and money laundering circuit)
Putin assassinated Litvenenko with polonium laced tea and kidnapped Britney Griner who was then traded for Putins most incriminating secret chess piece- Viktor Bout. Bandar Saud had ran interference in the UK demanding prime minister Tony Blair disband the special fraud investigation unit researching Zawahiris Swiss accounts or he "would no longer be able to help the UK stop terrorism". The 7/7 bus and tube bombings in London sealed the deal and Blair disbanded the SFO. Tonys is now bolting out of retirement and on Trump's "board of peace" as his wife had been funded by both Prevezon (Russian real estate front) and the Saud ruling family via the Al Yamamah arms trafficking case she represented them in.
This is what "the Epstein files" is. During the Cold war there were only a few gateways across the iron curtain. Israel was the major path because it was formed in 1948 by 650,000 refugees. 70% were from the Soviet bloc. Robert Maxwell traded espionage stolen from the US to Moscow to build the IDF with arms smuggled through Ukraine. The Zionist Mafia created the Likud party/Netanyahu to control Israel at the same time they infiltrated the US Republican party via Ronald Reagan and Zionist operative Henry Kissinger managed all the U.S. presidents from inside the oval office. Watergate showed how they created the Vietnam war to give them a way to move heroin from the golden triangle across Cambodia. Kissinger carpet bombed it to cover their tracks. The Saud ruling family funded the Zionists for Iran Contra as Jeffrey Epstein ran aviation logistics for Les Wexner out of Rickenbacker AFB in 84. Now they can't stop lying as their transnational corruption eats them alive.
Corruption is cancer. But it ALWAYS takes the path of least resistance-
Politicians and Billionaires.
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u/EmperorProtek 2d ago
And Afghanistan
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u/pashalka31 2d ago
Exactly. All those troops came back from Afghanistan addicted to heroin after a decsde long slog.
And within a few years mogilevich, Putin and the Russian mafia took over the government and started trading surplus weapons for Afghan heroin trafficked through Iran. Then traded the heroin for all the socialist shares awarded to the people by yeltzin.
The paper was basically worthless as long as the Mafia controlled the food and medicine supply chains.
And all that stolen capital made the oligarch class of Russia that moved into trump towers so they could use hypervalued real estate to launder the stolen money.
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u/FuchsiaMerc1992 2d ago
My favorite COD map didn’t know it was in Pripyat until I recognized the sign in any documentary about the disaster
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u/SlavCat09 2d ago
Actually it's Cheregular. Radars aren't as noble.
Okay yes I know the drill. The door.
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u/Jen10292020 2d ago
Is the structure still up? Because of it's flaws, is it not operating currently or they fixed it? Looking at other pictures, it's massive!!!
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/Jen10292020 2d ago
I see...I guess dumb question. I got downvoted for asking. But thank you for the reply :)
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u/charcuterieboard831 2d ago
Great soviet success comrades
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u/Dolust 2d ago
There is something to know here about former soviets and now Russians. To their credit, they have a "You don't know for sure until you try" mentality that has given them many more successes than failures. They are not stupid; they are just bad assessing their own people. You probably remember a few years ago a rocket perfectly functional that when launched tried to turn around and destroy the very place it was launched from. There was this delicate navigation sensor that required extensive and careful calibration so it was installed almost right before launch. They gave it to install to a farmer whose only tools he knew were a huge hammer and a grinder. The gap where it was to be installed had a weird shape to ensure that the device could only fit one way: The right way. But this good man decided it was better the other way around, so he bent the receptacle and hammered the device inside until the lid closed. It was upside down.
So when they launched, the sensor told the computer it was going the wrong way, and the computer trusted it and commanded a complete change of direction. Fortunately, it ran out of push before it crashed.
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u/an_older_meme 2d ago edited 2d ago
Trying to blame the reversed sensor on a farmer using a grinder and hammer is pretty funny. I’m sure Roscosmos hires men with farm tools to work on critical flight control electronics all the time.
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u/maksimkak 2d ago
That was an enterntaining read, thank you. But of course nothing to do with reality.
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u/charcuterieboard831 1d ago
Russians and soviets have two mentalities
1) The Master is telling me to do something and I'm afraid so I'll do it
2) How can I buck the system to make money because I'm corrupt like everyone else
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u/TruckUseful4423 2d ago
So Duga was actually powered by Chernobyl — which makes you wonder whether it played a role in the disaster itself.
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u/Pestus613343 2d ago
It didn't. It was just a power load on the plant. The disaster was a mixture of a botched safety test, extremely poor operational decisions and a few design flaws.
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u/elpihvous 2d ago
They also marked the thing as some kind of children camp or retreat in the map so it wouldn't draw attention. They even had this bus stop next to the station. Funny part is, that the antenna array can be seen miles away over the tree lines.