The Duga radar station is one of those objects that, due to its size, is now visible from almost anywhere in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Around this object, as well as around everything that is somehow connected with Chernobyl, a lot of folk myths and misconceptions have appeared. Today, on the Internet, you can find the opinion that "Duga" was nicknamed the "Brain Burner". Let's try to figure out where this legend came from.
In the second half of the 20th century, the two superpowers represented by the USA and the USSR were constantly waiting for the start of the Third World Nuclear War. Both blocks looked at each other with a wolf look through the fence of the "Iron Curtain", riveted tens and hundreds ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines, nuclear warheads and, of course, radar stations to detect flying missiles. Surely, if you count the resources and man-hours spent by earthlings on the Cold War, it would turn out that all this would allow people to live somewhere on Alpha Centauri.
Both in the USSR and in the USA there were many radar stations. They have been constantly improving. In the 1970s, the development of technology made it possible to create, among other things, over-the-horizon radar stations - systems for the early detection of ballistic missiles. The construction of the first such Soviet station began in 1975. In total, three of these were built in the Union. One of the stations was installed in Chernobyl and until the 1980s, despite its impressive appearance, it was a strictly secret facility.
The Duga complex consisted of two antennas. The first is a low-frequency one with a mast height of up to 150 meters and a length of up to 500 meters. The second is a high-frequency one with a mast height of up to 250 meters and a height of up to 100 meters. The operating frequency range of the complex was 5-28 MHz. It is curious that in the operating mode the station left a very specific sound on the radio, reminiscent of the operation of helicopter blades. For this, the Americans, who served on their radar stations, nicknamed "Duga" "Russian Woodpecker" ("Russian woodpecker"). The station was intended to detect missiles, including in the subpolar zone.
The Duga station in Chernobyl ceased to carry out combat duty to detect missiles after the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Already in 1987, the radar station was mothballed, and a year later, the military unit that was involved in its maintenance was disbanded. The main systems and most of the equipment were removed from the station and taken to Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
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Although today in the open spaces of the network you can often find the name "Brain Burner" in relation to the "Duga", neither the Americans nor the Soviets ever called the station that way in the 1980s. Apparently, the nickname stuck to the complex in the late 1990s or early 2000s due to speculation about the effects of radio waves on the human body. Such a nickname for any radar was finally fixed in the minds of the youth thanks to the once popular video game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Ukrainian studio GSC Game World, which took place in the Chernobyl zone artistically reworked based on the works of the Strugatsky brothers alienation.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about how in the USSR a swimming pool was built on the site of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviorand what happened to him afterwards.
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/230921/60644/
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