hidden among the forests in istra outside of Moscow is a series of bizarre metal structures called the Marx generator designed to generate artificial lightning this machine has One Singular purpose to strike down incoming American missiles in the 1970s it's very important for protecting one's uh nuclear deterrent force uh in the Homeland and remember also they're building anti-missile defenses against ballistic missiles but one side effect of exploding nuclear weapons is that they generate a massive surge of power called an electromagnetic pulse or EMP which can knock out all kinds of electronics including the guidance systems of
missiles we didn't quite understand the electromagnetic pulse that would have very likely have damaged our Weaponry but as we move to more sophisticated systems actually become more vulnerable to electromagnetic pulses the technology is developed and developed and developed you know it's not as simple as just creating a wave you know how do you turn you know electrical power into an electromagnetic power that you can then transmit the Soviet military takes on this engineering challenge because lightning naturally generates an electromagnetic pulse Soviet scientists try to create a machine to harness that power and paralyze America's missile
arsenal we had cruise missiles which were possibly our most effective weapon for targeting Soviet airspace because they flew nap of the earth and they are extremely difficult to pick up on any kind of radar and certainly The Radars they had in the 1970s this vulnerability makes the Marx generator even more crucial for the soviet's defenses what makes the lightning generator work are its coils these coils create powerful electromagnetic pulses which can be directed at incoming nuclear missiles disabling them before hitting their targets the machine works the same as Lightning planes are instructed to fly no
more than 30 km from a thundercloud this is because strong electric Fields reside in the atmosphere of the Thundercloud and a plane can conduct lightning the lightning will cause an EMP and knock out the plane's electrics coils are actually great at that's sending electromagnetic waves it's developed you sort of new techniques to be able to harness essentially just just these Wiggles of electricity and magnetism into something useful though it's never ultimately used to strike down incoming us missiles the engineers keep the Marx machine in operation for 20 years but there's a significant cost because the
Marx machine must use 6 million volts of energy to work it's very expensive to run and when the Soviet Union collapses in 1991 finances for the Marx generator simply run out today what could have been one of the world's ultimate weapons of defense is now left abandoned in a remote Forest lair Rising above the Oka River in Western Russia is a revolutionary engineering [Music] Landmark this abandoned Tower stands nearly 420 ft high is only 98 ft wide at its base and is made entirely out of steel despite its massive height and narrow base this lce
work of interwoven Steel still stands as a true engineering Marvel you look at it and you're not entirely sure why but you know there's something different about it it's got a curved profile it has a curved shape to it yet all the members and the constituents of it are long and straight it's a work of art it's a work of engineering it's a work of maths it's almost mindbending looking at that thing looks like there's all this curving steel got to remember every piece in there is straight how do you work out how strong this
structure is going to be how resilient it's going to be to wind and all these sorts of things but who built this stunning piece of architectural engineering what was its purpose and why was it abandoned in the late 1920s the newly founded Soviet Union has an electricity problem in its city of nitzki narod east of Moscow both its military and Industrial resources need more power but to deliver on that they must create an unprecedented electrical Tower with far reaching capacity the man who dreams up designs and builds this groundbreaking structure his Russian engineer and scientist
Vladimir gregovich shukov I think the shukov design is very pioneering because a lot of these masks were there to be practical and we just needed to get the height and we wanted to do it with as little steel as possible and just get up there but I think shukov thought a little bit deeper about the problem he thought about how we could actually make it look beautiful how it could be mathematically very precise and he came up with what I think is a very very beautiful and unusual structure this is the Revolutionary shukov Tower it
is one of six built in 1927 to carry power lines across the Oka River to vital Soviet Industries in the city of nitzki nooro 260 Mi east of Moscow Engineers begin working on one of two towers standing on the North Bank of the river but at a staggering 420 ft high will shukov revolutionary design be able to cope with the weight of the cables and the effect of the wind blasting against [Music] it any engineer designing a tower that's going to be hundreds of meters up in the air needs to consider the effect of wind
that wind is going to be striking even if you can't feel anything on the ground up there there's going to be forces acting against your Tower effectively trying to bring the thing down if you look at an example like the Eiffel Tower you can take a look at that and say it's quite a squat structure it's got a wide base and it kind of tapers in towards the top that looks pretty solid shov Towers don't have that they're much more graceful yet somehow using his mathematical mind and putting that into practice he's created towers that
that have that grace and elegance but still do the [Music] job
