Speaker 1: Hey, guys, Steve here, you are listening to one of
Speaker 1: our original twenty six episodes. If you listen to any
Speaker 1: of our new episodes, you're gonna notice that we're sounding
Speaker 1: a little different in these ones. Yeah, there's a reason
Speaker 1: for that. There is they've been remastered. They have been
Speaker 1: remastered because they had a really annoying hum. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean a huge thanks to listener James for doing almost
Speaker 1: all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice
Speaker 1: if you had listened to what we're calling the last
Speaker 1: twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the
Speaker 1: music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone
Speaker 1: back to straight audio, So be warned. We sound a
Speaker 1: little different today than we do in what you're about
Speaker 1: to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, thinking sideways. I don't
Speaker 1: understand you never know what stories of things we simply
Speaker 1: don't know the answer to. Yeh wait, do you hear that?
Speaker 1: What is that? Ah? Know? Right? A little bit? So?
Speaker 1: Now imagine listening to that for hours or days or
Speaker 1: weeks or years. No, so so crazy. That's an annoying noise?
Speaker 1: What is that noise? Well, I'll tell you a minute.
Speaker 1: Welcome to thinking sideways. I'm Devin, I'm Steve. We're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about UVB seventy six or a buzzer today. That's
Speaker 1: what that noise is UVB s yeah. Um, So the
Speaker 1: station transmits a buzzing sound that lasts about a second,
Speaker 1: pauses for a second. You know you just heard it.
Speaker 1: It repeats to thirty four times a minute all day
Speaker 1: long for years twenty one? How much? Four? So about
Speaker 1: every other second or so about it's not exact. What's
Speaker 1: what's the arrange? I mean, where can we pick this
Speaker 1: up in the US? Or is it sometimes but not
Speaker 1: depending on the anverspheric conditions. Is it broadcasting to this day?
Speaker 1: And it's been broadcasting how long? So it's been broadcasting
Speaker 1: since at least nine two that's the first actual recording
Speaker 1: of it. But there have been reports of it as
Speaker 1: back as far as seventy six, which is apparently when
Speaker 1: the US started monitoring it, so maybe even longer than that.
Speaker 1: What is it? So? I listened to this thing a lot.
Speaker 1: It's been on my radar forever. Upon intended to it sometimes.
Speaker 1: Actually that's kind of the thing I would wake up to.
Speaker 1: That sounds a lot like after the first couple repetitions.
Speaker 1: It kind of has this soothing not like it's not
Speaker 1: like the ticking of a clock. It's not quite that repetitive,
Speaker 1: but it's still repetitive enough that it's soothing to me.
Speaker 1: And I understand I'm crazy. You can hear people talking
Speaker 1: in the distance behind this thing often, which means that
Speaker 1: it's a tone that comes from a device in front
Speaker 1: of a live microphone, not as in a speaker with
Speaker 1: a microphone in front of it. Yeah, as in like
Speaker 1: a maybe actually a fog horn that is there, and
Speaker 1: it goes back in front of a microphone that is
Speaker 1: connected to the broadcaster that broadcasted out. And actually the
Speaker 1: current theory is that it's two different transmitters, maybe likely
Speaker 1: within the same building, maybe within a couple of rooms
Speaker 1: of each other, because you can hear things in the
Speaker 1: background that are consistent, but that one goes back and
Speaker 1: then there's a pause, and the other one goes back
Speaker 1: and then there's a pausitive goes You can kind of
Speaker 1: hear that variation if you listen again, really closely, hold
Speaker 1: on listen, ah ah ah ah, A little a little
Speaker 1: bit slight. It's very slight. There are some recordings where
Speaker 1: it's way more apparent. Uh, and it will not surprise
Speaker 1: you to know that these come out of Mother Russia,
Speaker 1: of course, good old Mother Russia, a land of men
Speaker 1: chasing bears with bats. So we're not here to talk
Speaker 1: about this noise, although it is weird, We're not. We're
Speaker 1: here to talk about what happens when the noise stops?
Speaker 1: Nuclear warfare all bite, When and why did the noise stop?
Speaker 1: Hold on said shape? You said shape? You know which will? God?
Speaker 1: Do you mean that should say that your camp? Um?
Speaker 1: What is here reciting a bunch of numbers and letters
Speaker 1: in Russian? Or what he is? This transmission is from
Speaker 1: this specific one is from December. It was the first
Speaker 1: recorded vocal transmission of the stop of the buzzer Um
Speaker 1: And if you would really like to know, I can
Speaker 1: tell you what he says, but it's really doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: It's in code obviously. How long is the message go
Speaker 1: on for? How many characters? Um? So with the exception
Speaker 1: one exception, all of the messages are one or two
Speaker 1: call signs, which says where they're what they're broadcasting from,
Speaker 1: and then it's one or two more number sets of
Speaker 1: fletely varying length. It goes from that. I've heard some
Speaker 1: that are like five or six, and I've heard some
Speaker 1: that are like twenty or thirty UM, which is another
Speaker 1: thing that makes it a little creepy. I think that
Speaker 1: it's not just like the same message going out every time.
Speaker 1: So that one went out and then one went out
Speaker 1: on December nine, two thousand two. One went out on
Speaker 1: February two thousand and six, and that was it for
Speaker 1: four years. Those are the only vocal. Those are the
Speaker 1: only vocal. Has anybody like cross checked those days with
Speaker 1: the events in Russia and those particular days, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there they come up with nothing, nothing of any kind
Speaker 1: of consequences. It seems that way. Yeah, it's how to
Speaker 1: Russia is nothing. Three years ago, the transmission just disappeared,
Speaker 1: like actually disappeared, like just went off the air. The
Speaker 1: buzzer just went off. I don't know if you know,
Speaker 1: but they don't have electricity in Russia for about three Yeah.
Speaker 1: On June five, ten, uh UVB went silent for twenty
Speaker 1: four hours and then resumed normal buzzing UH And then
Speaker 1: on the tenth at approximately which is coordinated Universal time,
Speaker 1: there was a series of Morris code beeps admitted with
Speaker 1: the buzzer just for just under four minutes, and then
Speaker 1: a little bit later in that day they had another
Speaker 1: voice message that was very very short. Two days later,
Speaker 1: the signal went completely silent again, and then it was
Speaker 1: followed by a series of thumping sounds that were apparently
Speaker 1: in the same room at the open microphone, which was
Speaker 1: followed closely by a hail of electronic noises which faded
Speaker 1: quickly into the buzzer broadcast. Later that day, voices were
Speaker 1: heard conversing loudly behind the buzzer. So the janitor walked
Speaker 1: into the room, knock a bunch of stuff around, somebody
Speaker 1: fixed it, and then they were in there complaining about him.
Speaker 1: Is that what I'm kind of sounds like that, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: Or if somebody was having sex in there maybe, I mean,
Speaker 1: it could have been that too. Nobody really knows what
Speaker 1: happened there. And then on September one, the buzzer was
Speaker 1: interrupted by thirty eight seconds of dance of the Little
Speaker 1: Swans from Tchaikovsky's Ballet of the Swans, and a morrise
Speaker 1: code signal accompanied that fragment, so it was right underneath it.
Speaker 1: Um On September five, a female voice voice was heard
Speaker 1: counting from one to nine in Russian. About an hour later,
Speaker 1: the buzzing UH was silenced for a muffled male voice
Speaker 1: trying to read a message, but it was garbled UH.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like they were having some technical difficulties, right,
Speaker 1: A little bit based on the fact that it sounds
Speaker 1: like it's a microphone in front of the speaker. Didn't
Speaker 1: send high tech to me at all, So not shocking, right,
Speaker 1: And then on September seven, there was a male voice
Speaker 1: that made a broadcast. It was just you know, series
Speaker 1: of numbers and codes again, but it was one of
Speaker 1: UH voice messages that would be broadcast by September. So
Speaker 1: in twenty three days they sent out twenty five messages
Speaker 1: after being basically silent since seventy six? Did I say
Speaker 1: seventy two? So no no human voices on it. And
Speaker 1: then suddenly just a slew ofud yes. And then I
Speaker 1: thought you said that the broadcasts were cut off in
Speaker 1: like two thousands seven or something like that, or two
Speaker 1: they stopped for a while. Okay, So you said that,
Speaker 1: you said there were messages in September of what year? Okay,
Speaker 1: so pop back up and suddenly had a flurry of
Speaker 1: no longer just the buzzer, but people changed exactly lots
Speaker 1: of codes UM. And then between October and December of
Speaker 1: that same year there were another fifty six voice messages
Speaker 1: sent out odd yeah. Each of these with the exception
Speaker 1: of the one on September t UM replaced the familiar
Speaker 1: UVB seventy six call sign with a m d z
Speaker 1: HB call sign, So they changed the call signers to
Speaker 1: change their call sign, which suggests perhaps that during their
Speaker 1: times of radio silence of buzzer silence, they were relocating.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, or perhaps they were overrun by rival hand
Speaker 1: radio enthusiasts. That's that's definitely possible. On November ten, intermittent
Speaker 1: phone conversations were transmitted and recorded by a listener for
Speaker 1: a period of about thirty minutes. They were confidential messages.
Speaker 1: They have yet to be fully publicly translated. The phone
Speaker 1: calls mentioned the brigade operative officer on duty and communication
Speaker 1: nodes like debut nice, I can't say Russian words, but
Speaker 1: it's the Russian word for hope, and then a couple
Speaker 1: other code names are things UM and then a female
Speaker 1: officer says Officer on duty of Communication node Debut Senior
Speaker 1: and sin got the control call from someone okay, and
Speaker 1: then they cut off. And then on that same day
Speaker 1: there was a phone call that was out that said
Speaker 1: did you get the call, and the person responded yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and I was Since then, between January five and February five,
Speaker 1: two eleven um fourteen more voice messages, but no were
Speaker 1: buzzing buzzing in between. So the way that this works
Speaker 1: is that it buzzes, it buzzes, it buzzes, It goes
Speaker 1: silent for a minute, and then somebody talks and then
Speaker 1: it starts buzzing again. It's as if this whatever is
Speaker 1: honking or buzzing into the microphone just gets shut off
Speaker 1: for a minute, and they take the mic and they
Speaker 1: say their announcement, and then it gets turned back on
Speaker 1: as I say, it'll do, like this thing is buzzing,
Speaker 1: buzzing and buzzing, and they gets turned off and they
Speaker 1: hear this Russian voice saying, wow, that's really annoying. This
Speaker 1: is the most annoying thing. So the you know, there's
Speaker 1: there's a couple of theories out there about this. One
Speaker 1: is that it's a number station, which is fair. What
Speaker 1: exactly is a number stations? So a number station is
Speaker 1: a short wave radio station UM, which is used mostly
Speaker 1: by the military. UM. They're characterized by their quote unusual broadcasts,
Speaker 1: which is just of spoken words, mostly numbers. UM. They
Speaker 1: just you know, read a streaking of numbers or letters,
Speaker 1: usually by female voices UM, although sometimes men or sometimes
Speaker 1: children's voices are used. Used mostly by the military because
Speaker 1: you send them out on like a empty am short wavelength.
Speaker 1: You can just send your operative out with a tiny
Speaker 1: little handheld radio. They just tune it to that station
Speaker 1: and just listen to the silence all the time, and
Speaker 1: when something comes up, they'll have it. They'll hear the
Speaker 1: broadcast is happening. Usually the broadcast and this is true
Speaker 1: of uvb UH. When they do broadcast information, they repeat
Speaker 1: it twice, so they do call sign, call sign message,
Speaker 1: call sign, call sign pause, and they repeat that exact
Speaker 1: same message over again and then they go back to
Speaker 1: the buzzer. So do they when they do actual voices
Speaker 1: and everything like that is at the same time of
Speaker 1: the day every time, completely different times. There's no consistency
Speaker 1: within that, so it's just random. Nobody totally can figure
Speaker 1: out a pattern, right, which you know, if if you're
Speaker 1: an operative out in the field somewhere. Sure, you know
Speaker 1: that works great. The only thing is is that it's
Speaker 1: hard to understand why it would they would have a
Speaker 1: buzzer constantly, why they would have a sound constantly, Because
Speaker 1: it's so much easier if you're out in the field
Speaker 1: to just say, I I'm a tune around this time,
Speaker 1: I'm going to tune my radio and listen silence, and
Speaker 1: as soon as I hear something, I'll know that I
Speaker 1: need to start paying attention instead of a buzzer, and
Speaker 1: then it changes in tone. Shore you know there's a
Speaker 1: there's a distinct change, but it's nothing compared to silence. Additionally,
Speaker 1: it's an expense. Well you know what. You know what
Speaker 1: the beauty of it would be, though, is that if
Speaker 1: you want it, if you want that particular wavelength to
Speaker 1: be to be available for you and your operatives to use,
Speaker 1: then it's a good idea to occupied at all times,
Speaker 1: because otherwise somebody else might set up a radio station
Speaker 1: and broadcasting that particular wavelength and kind of like step
Speaker 1: all over your stuff. That's true. Also, couldn't you just
Speaker 1: broadcast dead air? Dead air is and what as in
Speaker 1: silence is? Well, you can't broadcast silence. Yeah, you have
Speaker 1: to broadcast some kind of noise. Yeah, I guess you
Speaker 1: could broadcast some kind of interference, just like static would
Speaker 1: have to be sort of jamming. But yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean, just just saw a really simple,
Speaker 1: low tech solution. And this is typical of the Russian
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're not going to go for the
Speaker 1: high tech solution where they can come up with something
Speaker 1: cheap and down or dirty that works. So you you
Speaker 1: broadcast an annoying buzz, an annoying loud buzz, and so
Speaker 1: nobody is going to think to try to set up
Speaker 1: a radio station broadcasting that particular wavelength that would interfere
Speaker 1: with your transmissions. That's fair, even though, even though yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: The other theory that people had was that it was
Speaker 1: a dead hand system. And before you ask, because I
Speaker 1: see that a little twitch of your head, a dead
Speaker 1: hand is a system that automatically triggers the launch of
Speaker 1: nuclear weapons in case of a devastating strike by the enemy.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's constantly broadcasting, and when the broadcast
Speaker 1: goes dead, it means that something devastating has happened to
Speaker 1: the country. There's been some kind of really horrible attack
Speaker 1: on it, So you launched weapons at whoever the likeliest
Speaker 1: person was. They were big in the Cold War that
Speaker 1: you know, we had them and Russia had them, and
Speaker 1: a bunch of people had them, and that you know,
Speaker 1: if that tone went dead, it meant that the president
Speaker 1: was dead, everyone was dead. They had we'd been attacked
Speaker 1: just horrifically. So it kind of depends on where the
Speaker 1: where the transmitter was located though, was it actually was
Speaker 1: it actually located anywhere near any nuclear missile silos. So
Speaker 1: that's the other kind of mysteries that nobody totally knows
Speaker 1: for sure where it is. They've never been able to
Speaker 1: pin it down, or something that seemed that seemed to
Speaker 1: recall something about how they were it actually broadcast from
Speaker 1: two different locations. Is that true? The theory is that
Speaker 1: they broadcast from two different speakers, not two different locations. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the same building, just different rooms or different speakers
Speaker 1: in the same room. Okay, that's the current. The problem
Speaker 1: with the dead hand theory is that it did go
Speaker 1: silent and nothing happened, So that's pretty much bunk. So
Speaker 1: you know, I guess the question kind of is what
Speaker 1: well this thing and why are the Russians still using
Speaker 1: this mechanical device? And yeah, well but the buzzing as
Speaker 1: a buzzing still occurring. I mean it's shut off into
Speaker 1: what two thou seven or when did the buzzing stuff.
Speaker 1: It's still going on. It stopped for just briefly went
Speaker 1: off the air for twenty four hours, but but it's
Speaker 1: still going on. It's still going on, and you can
Speaker 1: still tune in and listen to it today. Now, I
Speaker 1: seemed to remember something when I was going through and
Speaker 1: this this might just be a troll on the internet,
Speaker 1: that somebody was saying that they had figured out what
Speaker 1: the location that it was broadcasting from was and that
Speaker 1: when they went there, it was a derelict building that
Speaker 1: had some old decrepit recorder broadcasting equipment in it and
Speaker 1: some codebooks and stuff like that. But since the hand
Speaker 1: was going, this was I'm guessing after the point where
Speaker 1: it went dead for a bit and then pop back
Speaker 1: on the air, and so that was the transition period. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the theory. And that's you know, that's stuff that
Speaker 1: I've heard too, that they found, you know, that some
Speaker 1: urban explorers found that's exactly the total place. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know how much I believe it's I mean, everybody
Speaker 1: can make whatever story they want up and say I
Speaker 1: found all this stuff, but I've never disclosed it. I
Speaker 1: burned it for secrecy because I didn't want the KGIB
Speaker 1: after me. Yeah, monk, but I've heard those stories. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if if you've ever heard anything that
Speaker 1: seemed concrete evidence that it had actually shifted locale, No,
Speaker 1: the most concrete. I think that it's probably true if
Speaker 1: that story is true, which you know, it may well
Speaker 1: be that they found it. I you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I else it would go quiet for twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, technical difficulties, sure, but that should
Speaker 1: only take an hour or two, especially since the technology
Speaker 1: seems to be just pretty much the basics. Those vacuum
Speaker 1: tubes are hard to replace, like those old toys that
Speaker 1: you would yeah your head, yeah, or the recording of
Speaker 1: an air raid siren or something that the tape breaks
Speaker 1: and they've scotch taped together so many times that it
Speaker 1: just doesn't work. That's why that's why it animates from Russia.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like that's that's kind of their style.
Speaker 1: Have you heard of the other two stations that they
Speaker 1: have that does the same basically the same thing. They
Speaker 1: have two more stations in Russia that have been recorded,
Speaker 1: and the names are, i think it's their nickname, the
Speaker 1: Pipe and the Squeaky Wheel, and they have a very
Speaker 1: similar history of everything is just fine, constant buzz no
Speaker 1: big deal. And then there have been some interruptions where
Speaker 1: suddenly they're being used with verbal casts or audio being
Speaker 1: sent out, but nobody knows why that's happening, which adds
Speaker 1: a little more depth to the mystery of wait, what
Speaker 1: are they doing with this? Is this travel plans for
Speaker 1: the country's mascot or is this air rate scenarios or formations?
Speaker 1: I don't know. The pip sounds exactly like the buzzer
Speaker 1: used to sound. Oh really, it's gone through a couple
Speaker 1: of different incarnations throughout the years of what it sounded like,
Speaker 1: and the pip is what it's used to sound like
Speaker 1: in the eighties actually, so check out the squeaking. So
Speaker 1: the pip is it maybe may have been the same technology,
Speaker 1: which sounds to me almost as if it's a heart remotitor. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: what are they doing over there? So Joe, you you
Speaker 1: think that you might have had some ideas or some
Speaker 1: theories as to why these would be used. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I mean there was the one, which is that they're
Speaker 1: basically trying to keep the channel open for communication by
Speaker 1: keeping other people off the wavelength. The other one was
Speaker 1: why I asked about the wavelength. But it doesn't really
Speaker 1: actually make sense when you think about it, because if
Speaker 1: you wanted to say, use it as a dead hand,
Speaker 1: then communicates, say to your ballistic missile subs that Mother
Speaker 1: Russia has been nuked, time to go TYD, to go
Speaker 1: new to the US or whoever, then you know it's
Speaker 1: a dead hand. Would work really well except for one thing,
Speaker 1: which is that it's in a fairly short wavelength which
Speaker 1: doesn't penetrate water very well. So a longer way look wavelength,
Speaker 1: you know, like like VLF or e l F would
Speaker 1: actually be able to reach submarines way way far away
Speaker 1: deep onto the water. But if it's um, you know,
Speaker 1: that's all bets are off for that. So I don't
Speaker 1: think it's if it is a dead hand, it's not
Speaker 1: for communication with ballistic missile subs anyway. That's about it.
Speaker 1: So that kind of shoots that theory all the hell.
Speaker 1: But that's why I was asking what that wavelength was.
Speaker 1: So nobody really knows what this thing is for no,
Speaker 1: nor they do they know who runs it. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, the theory is that it's the Russian Armed Forces,
Speaker 1: but it's unconfirmed. You know, you can guess from the codes,
Speaker 1: you can guess from whatever you want to guess from,
Speaker 1: but nobody even knows for sure that it's actually the
Speaker 1: Russian military, just that it broadcasts out of Russia. I'm
Speaker 1: guessing that the entire thing is being broadcast from Stalin's coffin.
Speaker 1: That's where it's coming from his heart, and he's like grunts, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they've got you on life support, but he's it's it's
Speaker 1: really he's in hibernation, so it's his heart rate, and
Speaker 1: his heart rate is so bad because he's been into
Speaker 1: semented amination spending animation for so long. They instead of
Speaker 1: going b burb, it's that that that thing is going
Speaker 1: to break down. Somebody needs to change the distributor on him.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely, it's problem. Or you know, it could
Speaker 1: just be aliens. Well here's no, it could be aliens.
Speaker 1: But I think the most likely explanation is just probably
Speaker 1: a publicly funded probably by US dollars publicly funded sort
Speaker 1: of art installation. And yeah, they're probably still probably some
Speaker 1: Russian is probably probably you know, running rount request and
Speaker 1: they're probably getting a couple of million dollars a year
Speaker 1: to put on this art thing. So I would suggest
Speaker 1: that you go to they go to the fads and
Speaker 1: ask them what art stuff and rush of their funding,
Speaker 1: and you'll probably find the application in there. So there
Speaker 1: you go. It's good. They all right, as well as
Speaker 1: anything I don't know. Yeah, yeah, so I guess that
Speaker 1: does it. So if you want to hear any of
Speaker 1: these recordings or read any of the links that we
Speaker 1: have for you, they're all really exciting links. You can
Speaker 1: go to our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: If you have your own theory, please share it with
Speaker 1: us because there's so many theories out there and they're
Speaker 1: just so interesting. So thanks for sticking with us. Hey,
Speaker 1: could everybody boob