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Radioactive Duga Towers

The towers of the incredible Soviet era Duga ionospheric radar installation remain standing to this day. Slighty radioactive due to the explosion of the nearby Chernobyl reactor, this radar was capable of detecting US ICBM launches from halfway around the globe. An accompanying supercomputer (of the day) processed the radar information to generate a picture of foreign ICBM launches.

 

This installation nearly bankrupted the Soviet Union and is credited, along with Chernobyl, with accelerating the downfall of the USSR.

 

 

Check out my other photos from Pripyat on my Photostream.

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Uploaded on January 9, 2018
Taken on June 4, 2016