Duga 1 – The military base that is not on the map
Like in the USA but in the USSR I have watched countless American movies, in which the action was happening in a secret military base like Duga 1. The cities that did not exist on the map where the military people and their families had all the comfort of the time, while serving for the American army. A city with a cinema, McDonald’s, stores, schools etc. The communist space had these types of places too, although they were more subtle and more military-oriented in comparison to the ones in the American movies. Today one of these places can be visited, in Ukraine, not very far from Kiev.
Chernobyl 2, it was built for soldiers serving for the military base with huge military radars. A road of many kms through a dense forest, a road which initially had 2 lanes but today in many places it only has one lane, leading to the Duga.
Its construction started somewhere around 1970, it got the name of 5H32-West and it was considered an ultra secret base. It worked until 1989 when they considered its maintenance was too expensive and other systems of radar tracking had been developed anyway.
One has 2 options regarding the Duga 1, depending on how patriotic the tour guide is. I visited it at the same time with another group and if our tour guide told us the bad version, the other one told them the patriotic one.
The good and the patriotic version
When the Challenger spaceship had its first flight, the radar here received the launch. The Americans were amazed by the immense power of this installation and did not dare to attack to Russia. The military basis was a huge factor of discouragement, securing the aerial space. The idea was that it would have intercepted any rocket or enemy flight and would have launched a devastating counter attack.
The bad and critical version
A huge Soviet type construction that met all the conditions imposed by Communism. Huge, with a height 100 m, built from concrete and steel with an absolutely useless 20 m deep foundation. Useless because it was never used to its full capacity and it would often give constant errors due to the round shape of the Earth. On the other hand, Americans had already developed satellite technology and they had started copying it, this technology being way more efficient than terrestrial radars.
Duga 1 today
The system was extremely pricey in time not only for its construction but also to maintain its functioning. A little while before the fall of Communism, in 1989, a factor also being its close location to Chernobyl and the nuclear accident had already happened and the exclusion area of Chernobyl had already been invented, then also because the launched satellites were already in space and perfectly functioning, the decision to close the base and conserve it was taken. When Ukraine became independent in 1911, even the conservation costs were considered too high. A regain of the used materials, although they were fairly rare would not have covered the costs of such an operation, so it was abandoned. Today, it has a guard, a simple entrance, buildings in ruins and the huge antennas still standing.
The fact that it is in an exclusion area, that it is deeply situated in the forest, it is protected from thieves, this area being hard to reach by the population. Time has brought ruins and collapse. It is an objective of agents organizing tours at Chernobyl, being a unique attraction on the way to the most famous nuclear accident. Crooked, with no windows, barely standing, the building where once upon a time soldiers lived with their families, are collapsing one by one. The control points where probably the access was made only with a special permission, are invaded by vegetation today. Much above the forest, still strong and still staying, the installations are in their place.
Only when you get closer to them you understand their grandeur and their complexity. The metal is breaking, the gathered sand is crashed and the atmosphere is apocalyptic. The system was swallowing a great deal of energy and the builders needed to bring electrical energy to the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl, also building a huge computer in a base building.
When it started working, the system emitted a specific sound that was similar to the one made by a woodpecker. The radio people quickly realized it was something military, the army forces in the West were convinced it was a military installation and only the population around thought it was an installation to spray substances above the forest.
It seems that, the energy consumption of the base was 20% from the nuclear power plant’s capacity when it was functioning and today the control post from the entrance it consumes the energy of a lightbulb.
If once upon a time it was ultra secret, it did not show up on a map, today it can be found on google maps in all its splendor. Now it’s only a touristic attraction for adventurous trips.