Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tex stuff fromt Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. This is Jonathan Strickland. I'm
Speaker 1: still sitting in a studio with only NOL to keep
Speaker 1: me company, never since he took a vow of silence.
Speaker 1: Makes a problematic podcast partner. But rather than go a
Speaker 1: week without an episode or have me droning on by myself,
Speaker 1: I thought I'd run another classic episode from the vaults.
Speaker 1: This one is from April two thousand twelve, and it's
Speaker 1: about one of the creepiest things in tech history, number stations.
Speaker 1: Enjoy So the topic recovering is numbers stations, which actually
Speaker 1: comes to us courtesy of some feedback we received on Facebook,
Speaker 1: which uh, fortunately, due to my computer being silly right now,
Speaker 1: I cannot pull up. However, this is Facebook feedback asking
Speaker 1: us to cover numbers stations. And you may wonder, oh, my,
Speaker 1: Drew Geese, what a number stations is? Things being so
Speaker 1: scory and people being quick to forget. That's that's like
Speaker 1: a double reference right there, since I throw in some
Speaker 1: clockwork orange. So here's what a number station is. It
Speaker 1: is a radio station using shortwave radio that blasts out
Speaker 1: a transmission, usually at a very regular interval that normally
Speaker 1: has some sort of tone or even music to it,
Speaker 1: followed by a series of numbers spoken in sort of
Speaker 1: a semi monotone voice, sometimes an automated voice, in fact,
Speaker 1: very often an automated voice. And it's just a seemingly
Speaker 1: random string of numbers that have no particular context or
Speaker 1: meaning to them, and it has created quite to kind
Speaker 1: of a well a hobbyist dream come true really for
Speaker 1: people who like mysteries, because there's no official explanation as
Speaker 1: to what these stations are and why why these numbers
Speaker 1: are being broadcast. Here's what we know. No, I'm kidding. Now,
Speaker 1: let's go to what we can speculate on. Um. We
Speaker 1: do know that official governments have there there's no official
Speaker 1: government that has spoken up and said, oh, yeah, we
Speaker 1: did that. Yeah. The closest was a Czechoslovakian official who
Speaker 1: acknowledge receipt of a message about numbers stations, but did
Speaker 1: not It did not go so far as to actually
Speaker 1: say what the number station was, what it was for.
Speaker 1: It essentially was just that I got your message. That
Speaker 1: was pretty much it. The check is in the mail.
Speaker 1: There you go, But gosh, I can't believe you were
Speaker 1: waiting the entire time for me to shut up, So
Speaker 1: you can use that. However, Uh, there are fewer now
Speaker 1: than their word during the Cold War. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: started the height of they started appearing during the World wars.
Speaker 1: So world War One, Yeah, not not. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the early part of the earlier part of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. Yeah, the first first couple of decades of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, that's when they start popping up. So
Speaker 1: let's talk a little bit about about why a number
Speaker 1: station is even possible before we get into what they
Speaker 1: were and what they sound like and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. So first, they are short wave radio, which
Speaker 1: we have talked about on a previous podcast many many
Speaker 1: years ago. Yeah, we'll do a quick we'll do a
Speaker 1: quick refresher course. So technically, a short wave is a
Speaker 1: is a radio wave with a wavelength shorter than two
Speaker 1: hundred meters. Two meters wavelength would have a frequency of
Speaker 1: around hurts uh, and it's typically these these radio waves
Speaker 1: are used to broadcast voice and music, but also for
Speaker 1: a long distance communication. The reason that you can have
Speaker 1: long distance community ptation is that these wavelengths are at
Speaker 1: sort of a sweet spot when it comes to the
Speaker 1: way the Earth works. So the Earth has the ionosphere,
Speaker 1: you know that surrounds it, binds it, and penetrates it.
Speaker 1: For no ionosphere just surrounds the Earth. And if you
Speaker 1: were to aim a short wave radio frequency at the ionosphere, uh,
Speaker 1: the ionosphere would refract that frequency and it would beam
Speaker 1: back down to Earth. So by bouncing it effectively off
Speaker 1: the ionosphere, you can send a radio signal much further
Speaker 1: than you could if it were to just broadcast out
Speaker 1: and radiate out from a tower. Yes, So with this
Speaker 1: in mind, with this long distance communication ability, it has
Speaker 1: opened up opportunities for lots of different applications. And you know,
Speaker 1: you'll hear about amateur radio enthusiasts who will just they'll
Speaker 1: they'll use their their radios to dial in and listen
Speaker 1: to the various broadcasts that go out there. And that's
Speaker 1: really a number stations were discovered. It was mainly hobbyists
Speaker 1: who as they were scanning the different bands and listening
Speaker 1: to what was out there, they were coming across these
Speaker 1: very odd sort of transmissions. And um, before I get
Speaker 1: too far, I should say the the whole refraction by
Speaker 1: the ionosphere, there's a specific name for that kind of
Speaker 1: transmission that I love. I love this term skywave propagation.
Speaker 1: It's a cool term. Right. So, yeah, you've got these
Speaker 1: hobbyists who are listening in and they would come across
Speaker 1: very unusual and frankly pretty creepy kind of transmission in
Speaker 1: some cases. And uh, I think we even have an
Speaker 1: example that we can listen to. So let's let's take
Speaker 1: a quick listen to what a typical number station might
Speaker 1: sound like. Uh, if you were to tune in on
Speaker 1: a shortwave radio, kind of gets you right here, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: If by the by right here, you mean now I'm
Speaker 1: looking over my shoulder and waiting for someone to break
Speaker 1: into the room. Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm thinking.
Speaker 1: There is something particularly creepy about hearing kind of a
Speaker 1: almost and almost like a harmonic. It sounds like there's
Speaker 1: been some harmonic supplied in some cases, like it's an
Speaker 1: automated voice or whatever, but hearing something like that monotone
Speaker 1: just delivering number after number, and then they really repetitious
Speaker 1: music that was used to introduce these So what could
Speaker 1: these be? And there's been a lot of people who
Speaker 1: have suggested what number stations might be all about? You
Speaker 1: know everything from it could just be uh stuff for
Speaker 1: people who are surveying areas for for cartography and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing, but it doesn't seem likely it's taking
Speaker 1: credit for it, not at all. So that's our cartography
Speaker 1: channel that has led to uh to some not so
Speaker 1: much conspiracy theories. It really does boil down to, well,
Speaker 1: if you're just broadcasting numbers with no other context, what
Speaker 1: could you possibly be doing that for. And one of
Speaker 1: the explanations is that it's a a way to communicate
Speaker 1: two spies to undercover operatives who might be uh invested
Speaker 1: in some foreign country, perhaps one that is unfriendly to
Speaker 1: the the the country of origin. So there and when
Speaker 1: we say there's number stations, there are number stations all
Speaker 1: over the world YEP. And they're broadcasting pretty much all
Speaker 1: the languages that you might expect. They would be in
Speaker 1: the major languages of the world. So it's not just that,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not just one country that's doing this. There,
Speaker 1: there's multiple countries that are doing it. And UH So
Speaker 1: the the speculation is that this is these are messages
Speaker 1: they're sent to government spies, uh and the you know,
Speaker 1: the governments aren't admitting to it for for pretty understandable reasons.
Speaker 1: I would say, well, if you or any of your
Speaker 1: team has captured the government will disavow any knowledge of
Speaker 1: this operation, message will self destructed fifteen seconds. The So
Speaker 1: these messages, the numbers those that's a code. It's an
Speaker 1: it's encoded message form of cryptography that is called the
Speaker 1: the the one pad note yeah, or or one time
Speaker 1: pad yeah. Um yeah. I'm interested in cryptography, uh and
Speaker 1: have been reading about it for many years. And this
Speaker 1: is not exactly a new thing. It doesn't even require
Speaker 1: the use of a computer. I mean, we talked about
Speaker 1: cryptography on many podcasts at different levels. Um and we
Speaker 1: even got into quantum cryptography, which is supposedly unbreakable, although
Speaker 1: I've seen reports recently that it may not necessarily be unbreakable. Well,
Speaker 1: one time pads are technically unbreakable if you follow the
Speaker 1: right procedure right because basically, um and they were called
Speaker 1: pads because at one time they were and probably still
Speaker 1: are a pad. So this pad is generated like a
Speaker 1: pad of paper. You uh write down your message and
Speaker 1: encode it on this paper using the tool. Um and
Speaker 1: it's a one time thing. And there's a part of
Speaker 1: the key is embedded in the message, So that tells
Speaker 1: the recipient use page. Well, let's just go for a
Speaker 1: reference here, use page sixteen of your pad. And that way,
Speaker 1: you know, you write down the message in the pad
Speaker 1: that you can decode it on that page and and
Speaker 1: that then becomes useless. You can't use it again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you then destroy that page. So here's here's how here's
Speaker 1: how it works. Let's say that I want to send
Speaker 1: a message to Chris, and I want to use this
Speaker 1: this one time pad method. All right, So we would
Speaker 1: each have a pad that would have a string of
Speaker 1: random letters across each line, all right, And let's say
Speaker 1: we group them in in groups of five, because that's
Speaker 1: pretty common terms of four or five. So we'll say
Speaker 1: we have groups of five letters. And these letters are
Speaker 1: truly random in that we've had some sort of well
Speaker 1: as close to truly random as we can get. We've
Speaker 1: had some sort of random number generator that has picked
Speaker 1: random letters, and it's just that we each have a
Speaker 1: copy of that output. So Chris's string of random letters
Speaker 1: is the same as my string of random letters. And
Speaker 1: then I write down my message in normal text, and
Speaker 1: I write my normal letters above the letters of the
Speaker 1: that's that's in the key. Then I convert my letters
Speaker 1: into numbers. So let's say that an A equals zero
Speaker 1: and B equals one, and the C equals three. It's
Speaker 1: not going to take them very long to pick this
Speaker 1: one apart. No, it's going to take them a long
Speaker 1: time because here's the here's the that that's just that.
Speaker 1: All that is is just uh, it's just a simple
Speaker 1: substitution cipher. Right. But here's the tricky part. So then
Speaker 1: I take my key, all right, and I convert all
Speaker 1: of those letters to numbers. That's when it gets harder.
Speaker 1: And then I add the two numbers together, all right,
Speaker 1: So I add the I add the number from my
Speaker 1: first letter. So let's say that my first letter is H,
Speaker 1: because I write, hey there, Chris. I take the number
Speaker 1: from H. Yeah, really, why not? You know, Hey there, Chris,
Speaker 1: there's a rusky on your tail. That's that's my message.
Speaker 1: So H is because I'm going back to the Cold War.
Speaker 1: So so H. We would convert H to a number,
Speaker 1: and then we look at the first letter in the key.
Speaker 1: Let's say that the first letter in the key is
Speaker 1: an N. Well, that M is going to have its
Speaker 1: own number of value. We add the H and the
Speaker 1: M values together and then we convert that into a
Speaker 1: new letter. So if it's anything up to if we
Speaker 1: if A is zero, if it's anything up to twenty five,
Speaker 1: then that's the letter that we would pick. If it's
Speaker 1: over and we just use number twenty six counts a
Speaker 1: zero again, so the number twenty six would be an A,
Speaker 1: seven would be a B, twenty eight would be a C.
Speaker 1: So we go up there and we we put in
Speaker 1: whatever the substitute letter will be. Well, the only way
Speaker 1: to know what the original letter is is if you
Speaker 1: have that one time pad in front of you where
Speaker 1: you take the value of the letter that is U
Speaker 1: that the represented letter, the ciphered letter. You subtract the
Speaker 1: value of the key from the ciphered letter, and that
Speaker 1: gives you the value of the original letter, and then
Speaker 1: you can convert that into the original letter. So the
Speaker 1: process of coding and decoding is pretty painstaking because you
Speaker 1: know you have to you have to convert all the
Speaker 1: letters to values, add and then make new letters. But
Speaker 1: the nice thing is is that because as long as
Speaker 1: you keep that that string of letters that acts as
Speaker 1: your key truly random and that you don't repeat, lets
Speaker 1: so that you don't or you don't repeat strings, like
Speaker 1: you don't go to the end of a page and
Speaker 1: then start at the top again. As long as you
Speaker 1: avoid that, it is impossible to crack that without without
Speaker 1: getting possession of one of those pads. So that's where
Speaker 1: we talk about if you follow this correctly, it is unbreakable.
Speaker 1: The correctly. By correctly we mean you you have truly
Speaker 1: random string for your key, You do not repeat the key,
Speaker 1: and you do not let the key fall into the
Speaker 1: wrong hands. As long as that happens, it is unbreakable.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of like when we talked about the
Speaker 1: the various ways of ciphering. You know, there always seems
Speaker 1: to be some way to crack the code. In this case,
Speaker 1: unless you have physical possession of the pad or if
Speaker 1: someone uses a key that repeats, it's just not practical.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the basis for the secret messages. Um,
Speaker 1: what those secret messages are, we can't say, because again,
Speaker 1: unless someone gets hold of one of those pads, then
Speaker 1: it is it's just meaningless numbers. I mean, you could
Speaker 1: convert those two letters, but all that's going to do
Speaker 1: is give you the product of those those two that
Speaker 1: like the original message and the key. Without having the key,
Speaker 1: you can't figure out what the original messages. Now. Um
Speaker 1: it is likely too that the uh, well we talked
Speaker 1: about that in the Enigma machine, how the German codes
Speaker 1: during World War Two were broken down into those um
Speaker 1: five letter combinations. Um as an added layer of security.
Speaker 1: These these combinations stand in for other words too, So
Speaker 1: it is possible that you know, even if you did
Speaker 1: break the code, you would also have to have the
Speaker 1: book that explains what these these letter combinations mean. But
Speaker 1: um so still would never Well, that's what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: If you, if you for some reason, if you maybe
Speaker 1: hold of the path right, or if they use a
Speaker 1: repeating key, because if they use a repeating key, then
Speaker 1: it would take a lot of ani You would have
Speaker 1: to analyze the heck out of the message, but you
Speaker 1: could potentially start detecting patterns. Well, that's what broke the
Speaker 1: Enigma cary exactly because they were they got lazy, lazy,
Speaker 1: and they started using repeating keys as opposed to using
Speaker 1: a key that just doesn't repeat, which would have been
Speaker 1: impossible to crack. So it's just an added layer of security.
Speaker 1: That's that just makes it much more difficult, so they
Speaker 1: do these repetitions over and over again. Um, and it's Uh.
Speaker 1: The thing is, the tone and the style of the
Speaker 1: broadcasts is really really creepy, especially when you add that
Speaker 1: spy layer in your head to it. You start going,
Speaker 1: this message is not intended for me, and and somebody
Speaker 1: could be doing something. You know, I could be listening, well,
Speaker 1: this is what I think, you know, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: listening to it, going I could be listening to a
Speaker 1: message that tells somebody to kill somebody else. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: could be a message saying to like And then think
Speaker 1: about this. You hear those messages and then maybe a
Speaker 1: week later, you hear about some massive political event that
Speaker 1: takes place in the country, and you think, is there
Speaker 1: any connection to what I heard and what just happened?
Speaker 1: Is what I heard? Was that? Was that? Ah? Essentially
Speaker 1: a prediction for what actually unfolded? And yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of I mean, it is definitely creepy. And um,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of really cool names for these
Speaker 1: various broadcasts, some of which are named after the music
Speaker 1: that they use. Yeah, and again, Um, in some cases,
Speaker 1: you could kind of some of them. The station's sort
Speaker 1: of semi identify themselves, and others I think are given
Speaker 1: sort of like stars, you know, or viruses. They're given
Speaker 1: the names of their discoverers want to name them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so there's um, there's One of the famous ones is
Speaker 1: the Lincolnshire Poacher. Yeah, which was was featured not too
Speaker 1: long ago as of the recording of this podcast on
Speaker 1: another podcast called The Skeptics Guide to the Universe. They
Speaker 1: have a little feature where it's called Who's that Noisy?
Speaker 1: And they which which is named after one of the
Speaker 1: one of the hosts has a daughter who would say,
Speaker 1: who's that noisy? As in what's making that noise? So anyway,
Speaker 1: Who's that Noisy is the name of the segment where
Speaker 1: they'll play a sound file and it's the listener's job
Speaker 1: to try and figure out what that sound file is.
Speaker 1: And they played the little musical uh prelude that would
Speaker 1: happen before the numbers broadcast on the number station Lincoln
Speaker 1: Sure poacher do do do Do Do Do Do Do
Speaker 1: Do Do Do do doo, And it's really creepy when
Speaker 1: you hear it over and over again. Um And anyway,
Speaker 1: that particular broadcast has been linked to Cyprus to the
Speaker 1: Royal Air Force base on Cyprus, and is believed, though
Speaker 1: there's no proof because there's no one actually coming out
Speaker 1: and saying this is true, that it was operated by
Speaker 1: the British Secret Intelligence Service out of Cyprus. Now that
Speaker 1: particular station is no longer active. I think it stopped
Speaker 1: broadcasting in neither two thousand or two thousand nine. But
Speaker 1: there are a few others that also were pretty famous.
Speaker 1: Cherry Ripe, there's the song Cherry Write, another British folk
Speaker 1: song which was a station somewhere in Australia or Australia
Speaker 1: if you prefer. There's Swedish Rhapsody, which is possibly the
Speaker 1: creepiest thing I have ever heard in my life, which
Speaker 1: is a there's a glockenspield that's playing and a ace.
Speaker 1: The voice is clearly that of a female child reading
Speaker 1: out numbers in Germany, and you just hear this glockenspield
Speaker 1: play and then this little girl reading out numbers in German,
Speaker 1: and it is you can't help but feel a deep
Speaker 1: sense of foreboding. But then there's also other ones called
Speaker 1: like the Mad Violinist and the Boardman, because apparently it's
Speaker 1: just for two seven eight that that's kind of how
Speaker 1: I would be like, like day one, I'd be all creepy,
Speaker 1: and day two I'd be you know, less creepy. Day three,
Speaker 1: I just be like three six. What am I gonna
Speaker 1: have for dinner tonight? For I gotta pick up the
Speaker 1: dry cleaning to read the message you're not getting anything
Speaker 1: for dinner. Um. Yeah, there are there are a number
Speaker 1: of places number um where you can if you don't
Speaker 1: happen to have a short wave radio, where you can
Speaker 1: pick up on these. Um. The Internet Archive, of course,
Speaker 1: which collects all sorts of strange and esoteric things. Um.
Speaker 1: There are many many recordings that you can listen to
Speaker 1: on there. And actually the first place that I encountered
Speaker 1: these was in an article in Wired magazine. Would I
Speaker 1: went back and revisited UM for for this, and they
Speaker 1: were categorizing this Russian station UVB seventy six, which had
Speaker 1: been broadcasting essentially the same thing for many, many years
Speaker 1: until one day it stopped and then started again, and
Speaker 1: then stopped again, and then you could hear so it
Speaker 1: sounded like somebody in the room with the microphone, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, just you know, too creepy stuffling stuff and
Speaker 1: banging around, and then it started broadcasting something else, and
Speaker 1: and they changed the call numbers at the station to
Speaker 1: something entirely different. So it maasically wonder if the guy
Speaker 1: was just asking for toilet paper and it finally arrived,
Speaker 1: he was like, now blue jeans and the blue ge
Speaker 1: Well you can you can still listen to this at
Speaker 1: UVB dash seven six dot net and you can go
Speaker 1: and visit that website and they will tell you. The
Speaker 1: enthusiasts who keep track of these things will will share
Speaker 1: information about the station and what it changed to, but
Speaker 1: very very weird stuff. Well, I think it is funny
Speaker 1: is that a lot of the people who are following
Speaker 1: numbers stations, who really have a passion for listening to
Speaker 1: them and finding them on on shortwave radio, they don't
Speaker 1: want to have the mystery solved because it would mean
Speaker 1: their hobby would be over. Well, I mean it even
Speaker 1: um information about this. This is kind of something that
Speaker 1: is operated for so many years. Uh, if you will
Speaker 1: pardon the radio punt under the radar, I mean it's
Speaker 1: it's not something that the general public knew anything about
Speaker 1: up until the last handful of years, which is kind
Speaker 1: of ironic considering it was going on through the cold war,
Speaker 1: and before that, and and and now after most of
Speaker 1: it has stopped anyhow. Uh. It even made an appearance
Speaker 1: in an episode of Lost. I understand. I never was
Speaker 1: really much of a fan of the show, but I
Speaker 1: think it's cool that they put that into the the
Speaker 1: show's um storyline, that there was a number station involved
Speaker 1: with uh, with the plot line UM. And of course
Speaker 1: that was about codes and code breaking and creepiness and
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff, so it fit right in. UM.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, it's it's fascinating. But the people
Speaker 1: who watched Lost, you know, wanted the mystery to unravel
Speaker 1: over time. They didn't want it solved immediately. And I
Speaker 1: think for for the people who followed the these number stations,
Speaker 1: it's the same kind of thing. They don't and you
Speaker 1: kind of want to know, But then I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've ever read a book where you didn't want
Speaker 1: the story to end and you just stopped reading because
Speaker 1: you just enjoyed the fact that it was still going on,
Speaker 1: and you didn't really want to know quite what was
Speaker 1: going on, although you knew it had an end and
Speaker 1: somebody was behind it. I don't want to know, So
Speaker 1: I've done that many times. Or slowed very very slow
Speaker 1: way down. You know, um, because you don't want to
Speaker 1: find out because then you know you're fun and so UM.
Speaker 1: I don't know very interesting stuff everything. I hope you
Speaker 1: guys like that classic episode. I still get creeped out
Speaker 1: by number station recordings. So what tech gives you? Guys?
Speaker 1: The heb gbs right, and let me know. My address
Speaker 1: is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com or
Speaker 1: give me a shout out on Tumbler, Twitter, or Facebook.
Speaker 1: You can find me at tech stuff hs w S.
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