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(Image: Erik Meijerink; abandoned Duga-3 radar in the radioactive forests of northern Ukraine)
It’s one of the most iconic technological marvels of the Cold War-era Soviet Union to still grace the skyline: a vast, imposing metal net stretching into the Ukrainian sky. The Duga-3 early warning system fell silent in 1989, and its prior top secret status – coupled with its location amid what became the notorious Chernobyl Exclusion Zone – have made it a mysterious landmark, a giant piece of abandoned radar technology that has fueled its fair share of legends over the years.
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(Image: Ingmar Runge; the early warning system was designed to detect incoming missiles)
During its operational years, the foreboding sight of Duga-3 spawned a whole host of far-out theories about what it could possibly be. Known as the Russian Woodpecker for the maddening, never-ending series of clicks that it gave off, some people claimed the vast structure represented an epic experiment in mind control technology.
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(Image: Erik Meijerink; the Soviet over-the-horizon radar stands deep in the Exclusion Zone)
Others, meanwhile, believed that the Soviet Union was using it in an effort to control the weather. But the official – and althogether more mundane – theory was the correct one. Duga-3 was an over-the-horizon radar system, a role that was only confirmed after the Soviet Union fell, after the tense decades of Cold War cat and mouse played out between the superpowers were finally over.
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(Image: Erik Meijerink; explorers trekked miles to document the defunct early warning radar)
Today, the radioactive Exclusion Zone around Chernobyl has, rather worryingly, become a popular destination for tourists and urban explorers eager to document the dystopian wasteland left behind, including the abandoned city of Pripyat and the graveyard of heavily contaminated rescue vehicles parked out in the barren landscape.
The mysterious area known as Chernobyl 2 – which includes Duga-3 – remained off-limits for longer than other parts of the Exclusion Zone because of its former military use. But didn’t stop the most audacious explorers from getting close enough to obtain haunting photographs and videos of the massive steel structure.
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(Image: Erik Meijerink)
Once a major and seemingly impenetrable defence system of the Soviet empire, able to detect incoming ballistic missiles by bouncing a signal off the planet’s ionosphere, Duga-3 now lies silent, abandoned and all but forgotten by the authorities. The epic mesh of steel is there for anyone willing to trek miles through the notorious Exclusion Zone around the ruptured nuclear reactor to climb it – there’s even a handy staircase.
Related – Cold Warning: The Abandoned Radar Stations of the Arctic Circle
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