For decades, what message UVB-76 was broadcasting nonstop, to whom it was trying to communicate, and from where it originated was anyone’s guess. What has aired during that time has varied. From 1982, when the station was first recorded, to 1992, all The Buzzer ever seemed to transmit were beeps.
After ’92, it changed to a series of buzzes (thus the nickname “The Buzzer”) lasting about a second, followed by what can best be described as the foghorn of a ship. And if that wasn’t creepy enough, a Russian man or woman could be heard listing off things like names, words, or numbers every few weeks.
Furthermore, the amplitude and pitch of the tones varied randomly, but precisely once an hour — like clockwork – UVB-76 would send out two quick buzzes. There didn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason behind any of it, and according to one signal intelligence expert interviewed by the BBC, there was no information contained within any of the sounds being transmitted.
On June 5, 2010, UVB-76 stopped entirely, only to resume a day later. It was the first time it had stopped broadcasting for any amount of time since it was first “discovered” decades earlier. For the following several weeks, things went back to “normal.” But in the middle of August, it suddenly stopped and restarted a few times before going entirely off the rails on August 25.
