Tag: numbers stations

Russia’s mysterious ‘Doomsday Radio’ broadcasts two new codewords

Russia‘s mysterious ‘Doomsday Radio’ came to life on Monday, sending out two cryptic voice messages to unknown listeners.

The Cold War-era shortwave station has been broadcasting a continuous, monotonous buzzing sound since the 1970s.

Located about 18 miles from Moscow, it is believed to be part of a secret military communications network, possibly even a failsafe linked to Russia’s nuclear command system. 

Today, the usual buzzing was interrupted twice with cryptic messages in Russian, consisting of numbers, names or codewords. 

Among them were ‘NZHTI,’ a call sign the station has used before, and ‘HOTEL,’ along with a string of numbers, 38, 965, 78, 58, 88, 37, which some speculated could represent coordinates. 

A video of the broadcast has flooded social media, where users are fearing ‘something big is happening tonight.’ 

‘Those codewords sound straight out of a Cold War thriller. Who’s listening and why now,’ an X user shared. 

While the broadcasts seem random, some experts believe the Russian government is using the radio station.

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This Russian radio signal might end the world. Scared? Maybe you should be

At 4625 kHz, a dull mechanical buzz echoes endlessly – day and night, winter and summer, across borders and decades. The sound is steady, almost hypnotic. Sometimes it falters. A brief pause. Then a voice emerges through the static: “I am 143. Not receiving any response.”

Then – silence. And the buzz resumes.

No one has officially claimed responsibility for the transmission. There are no station identifications, no explanations, and no confirmed purpose. But it’s been broadcasting, almost without interruption, since the late 1970s. Radio enthusiasts around the world call it ‘The Buzzer’.

Over the years, the signal has inspired a growing mythology. Some believe it’s part of a Soviet-era dead man’s switch – a last-resort nuclear system designed to retaliate automatically if Russia’s leadership is wiped out. Others think it might be a tool for communicating with spies, or perhaps even extraterrestrials. Theories range from the plausible to the absurd.

Echoes from the Deep

Like all good Cold War mysteries, its real power lies not in what we know – but in what we don’t.

Like the Kola Superdeep Borehole – the real Soviet drilling project that inspired urban legends about ‘sounds from hell’ – The Buzzer lives in that fertile twilight between fact and fiction, secrecy and speculation.

In the West, Cold War history is often well-documented and declassified. But Soviet-era experiments remain buried under layers of myth, rumor, and deliberate silence. That opacity has given rise to a unique genre of post-Soviet folklore – eerie, atmospheric, and deeply compelling.

And few stories illustrate that better than the one about a drilling rig in the icy Siberian tundra, a descent into the Earth’s crust, and a scream from the abyss.

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The ghostly radio station that no one claims to run

In the middle of a Russian swampland, not far from the city of St Petersburg, is a rectangular iron gate. Beyond its rusted bars is a collection of radio towers, abandoned buildings and power lines bordered by a dry-stone wall. This sinister location is the focus of a mystery which stretches back to the height of the Cold War.

It is thought to be the headquarters of a radio station, “MDZhB”, that no-one has ever claimed to run. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, for the last three-and-a-half decades, it’s been broadcasting a dull, monotonous tone. Every few seconds it’s joined by a second sound, like some ghostly ship sounding its foghorn. Then the drone continues.

Once or twice a week, a man or woman will read out some words in Russian, such as “dinghy” or “farming specialist”. And that’s it. Anyone, anywhere in the world can listen in, simply by tuning a radio to the frequency 4625 kHz.

It’s so enigmatic, it’s as if it was designed with conspiracy theorists in mind. Today the station has an online following numbering in the tens of thousands, who know it affectionately as “the Buzzer”. It joins two similar mystery stations, “the Pip” and the “Squeaky Wheel”. As their fans readily admit themselves, they have absolutely no idea what they are listening to.

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