Electrifying: Giant futuristic 'Tesla Tower' in abandoned woods near Moscow

Year 2 Russian Blog Post 2

Look too strange to be true?  Well its not. Dubbed the “High Voltage Marx and Tesla Generators Research Facility,” this is this a Soviet-era “lightning machine” that has a capacity arguably equal to Russia’s entire electricity output.

Entire.

Electricity.

Output.

That’s kind of a big deal. It resides in the sleepy town of Istra, 40 kilometers west of Moscow. At its peak operating capacity the giant Marx generator, when lightning is discharged onto an isolated platform, has power equal to all power generation facilities in Russia – including thermoelectric, hydroelectric, nuclear, solar, and wind power stations combined. But only for about 100 microseconds, Rossiya-1 TV reported.

And it is also super hardcore and can kill things. Not sure if the story is true, but allegedly, a man intruded during one of the experiments and nearly died. Not sure if this is a real picture but here you go.

Strange? Absolutely. True? Probably. Apparently the system is excruciatingly expensive to run (go figure) so it’s only used for very important testing. For example, that of lightning’s affect on the operating systems of highly advanced Russian bombers. Yeah.

Moral of the story? Russia’s got interesting stuff and Tesla ain’t dead.

Thank you ladies and gentlemen.

https://www.rt.com/news/170704-tesla-tower-lightning-russia/