Imagine for a moment you ’re a HAM wireless partizan , alone at Nox , idly ferment your agency through the radio spectrum when you come across a program on a disused shortwave channel , where usually there would be nothing but static .
The broadcast is a tune , or a bombilation , or sometimes cartoon character Yosemite Sam order " Varmint , I ’m a - gonna b - b - boron - bloooow ya ta’smithereenies " ( yes , really ) followed by a series of numbers interpret by a human or synthesized voice , on a bed of static for extra " I may never sleep again " vibraharp .
Have a listen to one of these broadcast , and attempt to gauge on a ordered series of one to brown how hard you ’d begrime yourself if you ’d heard it by chance .
For software engine driver Chris Smolinski from Baltimore , this was n’t just a divinatory . At 14 - years - previous , he had just produce a shortwave radio and was trying it out when he hit upon the awry broadcast .
" I was tuning in Stations of the Cross like the BBC and Radio Moscow , and then one Clarence Day I just discover someone read off numbers , " hetold the Miami New Times . He began to document the number he get wind on the post and others over the grade of 20 years , before finally receiving an answer . The post he had get a line – as is the dominate possibility of most turn place – air coded messages , meant for citizenry who had the cipher to decipher them the other end .
These particular message were broadcast by Cuba , meant for spies in the theater . The reward of sending the messages this way is that , though you may compute out where the signal is make out from , it ’s near impossible to discover who they are meant for and who is receiving them . The downside , as Cuba would discover , is that once someone – say , the FBI – has intercept the zero , they can continue to unravel your message from thereon out .
Some of the message , it would be revealed in a judicature case by the FBI , read"prioritize and stay on to strengthen friendship with Joe and Dennis " and " Under no circumstances should [ agents ] German nor Castor fell with BTTR or another organization on Day 24 , 25 , 26 , and 27 " . Classic spy stuff , as well as " Congratulate all the female comrades for International Day of the Woman , " which is just basic salutary manners .
The station have been around since World War 1 , though they were most prolific at the height of the Cold War . Sometimes diffuse on a schedule , sometimes seemingly at random , they have fawn out peopleall around the earthly concern , not confine themselves to the one terminology .
A particularly alarming theory about one number station – “ MDZhB ” , also known as " UVB-76 " and " The Buzzer " – is that it is beingused as a " Dead Hand " signal . The station beam a constant monotonous tone , interrupted every few seconds by a foghorn - comparable audio , and at times by a Russian voice issuing messagessuch as"Ya UVB-76 , Ya UVB-76 . 180 08 BROMAL 74 27 99 14 . Boris , Roman , Olga , Mikhail , Anna , Larisa . 7 4 2 7 9 9 1 4 " .
The " Dead Hand " theory suggests that what you really have to vex about is when the signal stops . If it ’s right , the monotone is there as a sorting of " everything is all right " warning equipment , a la The Simpsons . Should the sign cease for a certain amount of time because of a nuclear approach – according to this unverified theory – an automatic atomic response would be triggered .
The station began circularise in the Soviet geological era , but did n’t end with its fall . In the 1990s , enigma enthusiasts listened intently and realized that they could get word mass in the ground , suffer unruffled conversation . The look , which is still going today , is n’t a recording , but a resilient sound produced by having a mike placed near a speaker .
In November 2001,amateurs heard a personin the elbow room speak in Russian “ I am 143 . Not receive the source ( oscillator ) , " to the answer " that stuff comes from hardware way . ” In other deviations , perhaps designed to send hypothesis rampantly , the tone stopped in lodge to play a portion of Swan Lake .
Around 2010 , conversations were heard more and more oftentimes , until one mean solar day they just … stopped . You may have observe that a nuclear apocalypse did not fall out thereafter ( well spotted ! ) , though the silence was short - lived . The place had been moved from the remote Russian hamlet of Povarovo to another positioning , much more difficult to triangulate .
This gave a few brave investigators an opportunity to look around the place . One Russian explorer receive a military logbook thatappeared to confirmthe station had been broadcasting subject matter from the Russian state , while others captured some fairly creepy images of a ramshackle and feed - down military base , that looks like it could have been abandoned way back in the Cold War era .
After going late into the base , they were forced to turn back .
" We sort of went underground under one of the buildings . As we descended into the basement of one of the building and ventured to a room access that lead out of doors of the area of the construction , when we opened it we were hit with a very vile chemical olfactory modality … it smelled very … acidic … I guess , " the adventurer wrotein a Reddit AMA .
" Not fain to exit of poisoning we release back . In the room that was underground the construction itself there was not much of interest . A few desk and filing cabinets meet with more useless papers . A few upset electronics and a bunch of other world-wide bull . "
Though mostly abandon , it may still be watched . During their tour of the station , they were interrupted by a fair sex they delineate as being in her mid-40s .
" At first I think that she is a resident of the town out for a manner of walking , " the explorers said . " But as she walked by I saw that her stroller was empty . who goes to an [ abandoned ] military base [ with ] an empty stroller for a walk .. ? "
