Did you know that there's a ‘Doomsday’ radio station operating in Russia?

No songs, no music, no DJ chatter. Radio station ‘UVB-76’ broadcasts a mechanical buzz almost 24/7, periodically interrupted by seemingly random voice messages in Russian. The male announcer utters incoherent phrases and some words aren’t even real and simply a jumble of letters.

The mysterious radio station has been operating on 4625 kHz since the 1970s. No one knows what it transmits or why. All that's known is that it's affiliated with the Armed Forces of Russia and broadcasts from Moscow Region.

There have been suggestions that the station serves as a backup communications channel for the military or is used to check combat readiness. The most popular theory is that UVB-76 is part of the ‘Perimeter’ automatic response system for a nuclear strike.

According to this theory, if an enemy successfully uses nuclear weapons and destroys the country's military and political leadership, the buzzing on 4625 kHz will suddenly cease and the UVB will automatically order the nuclear forces to retaliate. This is where the nickname ‘Doomsday’ radio station originated from.

State Duma Committee Chairman Andrei Kartapolov, however, refuted this theory in an interview with ‘Parlamentskaya Gazeta’ newspaper: "The UVB-76 has no connection to the ‘Perimeter’ system, nor to the nuclear shield system, in general. This radio station does indeed have its own function and its own rather important mission, but it has nothing to do with nuclear deterrence forces." However, he declined to elaborate on its actual mission.