UVB-76 Broadcasts New Voice Message 560
Doug52392 writes "Following days of increased activity, the Russian numbers station UVB-76 has sent out a new voice transmission. The transmission, sent out on August 23, 2010 at 9:35AM PST, recited the following in Russian: 'UVB-76, UVB-76 — 93 882 naimina 74 14 35 74 — 9 3 8 8 2 nikolai, anna, ivan, michail, ivan, nikolai, anna, 7, 4, 1, 4, 3, 5, 7, 4' The station, believed to be a part of the former Soviet Union's dead man's switch system, has been continually broadcasting for over twenty years, and its purpose has never been fully explained."
Have to dial it in (Score:4, Interesting)
Unexplained broadcasts (Score:5, Interesting)
And for the conspiracy nuts out there, here [cracked.com] are 4 more unexplained broadcasts.
I actually monitor this station on occasion. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have it on right now in the background. There used to be an alternating tone at the top of the hour that kicked in suddenly and always gave me the shivers, but it stopped doing that a few years ago. Sometimes I tune in late at night, since the monotone drone of the buzzer can get pretty psychedelic. Good for coding. Never been lucky enough to catch a voice broadcast, though I did hear some crosstalk once. I even started work on a C daemon to autocorrelate the signal and auto-record any voice transmissions, but that got put on hold.
Pictures of the transmission site: http://alex-odn.livejournal.com/12148.html [livejournal.com]
hrm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Location (Score:5, Interesting)
Thanks. Apparently the Wiki picture was extracted from Google Earth's clock feature.
2009 is the obscured picture you linked to
2005 has white clouds badly obscuring half the area
2004 is exactly what you linked to
Maybe pay-for subscribers have newer imagery of the site and can repost. The clear picture is odd: can't distinguish ANY antenna shadows from all the building shadows. The long straight lines on the grass are just ground partitions of some sort and are unlikely to be parallel to the antenna's clock-like moving shadow exactly as the imaging satellite passed by. If you're in doubt, notice even gravestone cross's shadows are easily picked up from satellites [google.com]. Blurring are would not be different between the very crisp imagery for coordinates in question (aside from the stupid clouds!) and the Woodlawn Cemetery in my link.
Another poster did give out a link with ground pictures of the supposed site, though it's all in russian and has a bunch random nature pictures. For the lazy, the map DOES shut up anyone believing this is a remote area --there's several roads and towns near the forest for those coordinates. Then, again, I'm not sure how /. could validate b>anyone's coordinates or "translations" of these Russian-language sources... ;-)
Lat/Long (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Location (Score:5, Interesting)
Things at that zoom level are NOT from satellites. They're from aircraft areal photos. These photos only exist where there is an interesting market where someone can sell Google (or bing, or whoever) a license to show them.
Re:Idea (Score:3, Interesting)
How much does a shortwave transmitter cost?? I want to rickroll this frequency!
The gear would be available surplus for not much. Otherwise you could roll your own with transistors, capacitors, so forth.
Re:It is well known where it is (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing is, "where it is," is in Russia. They might object to the US breaking in, rather violently in fact.
Not sure he was suggesting the US do it. Maybe he was under the impression the Russians had forgotten about it.
Missing operator's manual (Score:3, Interesting)
The most concerning thing is... imagine a flawless setup for an automated retaliation system, and the exact location of every component and operation of the system was only known by key individuals, all of whom died and failed to pass on the information to the more peacefully minded.
Now I'm sure Dead Hand isn't flawless, but how can we ever be sure the fossils of the Cold War aren't at any moment already invoking armageddon?
I can imagine the cruel irony where one day all of Humanity finally reaches a perfect state of peace, and deciding to hunt down and dismantle these "I'm taking you down with me" networks all sentience is magnificently eradicated on Earth.
Re:Unexplained? (Score:1, Interesting)
Oddly enough, during the emergence of facts on the Gulf oil spill the most unbiased and fact laden reports on the incident I could find came from the 700 Club. They pushed no agenda, they just delivered the raw facts about what went wrong and what might be done to contain it. No rantings about Obama off shore drilling. No cries about big oil. So much for the goose steppers around here who think that anything religious is automatically an evil scheme by the neocons even at a time when neocons didn't exist.
In all seriousness, it gets old fast. The lack of honest dialog and intelligent rebuttals makes it damn near impossible to take either of the extremes seriously anymore.
Re:Lat/Long (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lat/Long (Score:2, Interesting)
More plausibly, 74.14N 35.74E is smack-bang in the middle of the Barents Sea, north of Russia.
"Dead man's kill switch" (Score:5, Interesting)
Really?
Although there are many conspiracy theorists out there, I'd say most people who have done basic research on "The Buzzer" have come to agree that it is a station used for Ionosphere research. Some details:
- Its frequency (4.625Mhz) is mentioned specifically in several scientific papers. One paper discusses a technique for ionosphere research using doppler shift measurements reflected from a high-frequency radio wave. (http://elpub.wdcb.ru/journals/rjes/v10/2007ES000227/2.shtml)
- This paper refers to the signal as coming from a "stable basic generator", sending a carrier wave from a standard radio transmitter.
- Several (supposed) radio experts have said that the signal being sent is the kind that would make sense for this kind of research - the tone sent at a fixed strength and amplitude/pitch, with a regular cutoff and regular repeat would be useful to measure doppler shift and falloff at the edge of the signal.
- The paper above was authored (partially) by "S V Anisimov".
- Sergei V Anisimov is the senior director of the "Borok Geophysical Observatory" (http://wwwbrk.adm.yar.ru/main_e.html), which does, among other things, Ionosphere research.
- Borok Geophysical Observatory is based not tremendously far from the CONFIRMED location of the UVB-76 transmitter. It is easy to imagine that they could have an agreement with the owners of this transmitter (the russian government?) or own it themselves, and be using it for this research.
Conspiracy nuts will say that this is just a cover story.
It doesn't explain why the voice messages occur occasionally (some have theorized that having the random tones of a human voice can be used for other doppler measurements). And even if this research is occurring, it doesn't mean that this transmitter isn't used for other purposes as well. But nobody seems to mention any of this. The dead man's switch theory of world destruction is way more exciting, I guess.
Re:I actually monitor this station on occasion. (Score:3, Interesting)
There are further pictures here, including ones of the building that is still being used:
http://kspzel.livejournal.com/55478.html [livejournal.com]
Really creepy stuff... I've been listening to a live stream of the signal for about two hours now, and at around 11:07 EST, I heard about 30 seconds of what distinctly sounded like high pitched morse code, which apparently a number of people have reported hearing over the last two days at various times.
Re:I actually monitor this station on occasion. (Score:3, Interesting)
2) Because the aforementioned station is just a repeater
3) Security thru obscurity = not having to pay guards with guns
Just some thoughts. There is an unmanned 100kw FM transmitter and 305m tower not far from where I grew up in the farm fields of central MN. Huge Pirate Radio can be yours by picking a 7-pin lock.
Conspiracy or not... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Lat/Long (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Location (Score:5, Interesting)
phew, that's nothing. try http://forums.gunbroker.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=421694 [gunbroker.com] ;)
obscured area in _all_ sattellite images, american, russian, whatever.
technical glitch, distraction or something important ? slashdot to the rescue ! (well, maybe. judging by some sources of information even the locals have no idea what's there)
Re:Location (Score:5, Interesting)
"The clear picture is odd: can't distinguish ANY antenna shadows from all the building shadows."
Don't zoom in, zoom out.
First thing I noticed is that the building is definitely the highest structure in the shot (Wikipedia image). Most objects have no shadow in this shot, so it must be mid-day. Judging by the size of the shadow of the main building, it is probably 3-5 stories tall. I am not sure of the size of the antenna used for this frequency, but it could be in the building if it is small enough...but I doubt this is the case.
Zoom out further.
Notice the disturbed soil in a near perfect square surrounding the base? See the "stepped", grassy area along the lower side of the square? Those stepped areas indicate a rise in elevation, terraced to prevent erosion (they are also inadvertently created by cattle grazing on slopes). If you look closely, you will see similar indications all the way around this square. What appears, at first glance, to be cleared areas are actually slopes--The base is underground, or rather it was built, then buried, then camouflaged.
You might have also noticed that there are NO ground vehicles parked anywhere in sight. My guess is that all vehicles simply drive into the main building and are either parked inside it, or elevatored underground to hide how many people are (or, are not) actually using the facility.
We Yanks have done the same, but on a grand scale.
http://www.taphilo.com/history/WWII/USAAF/Boeing/index.shtml [taphilo.com] (Interesting photos of American camouflage efforts)
What I find really interesting is the sheer number of OLD roads that seem to radiate outwards from this site. The Google image shows them clearly, as well as a nearby railhead. Those access roads are old and over-grown, some very much so. In short, people have been coming and going, from all directions, to this location for some time. What was here before the transmitter started up, to merit this much access?
Re:Unlikely (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Naimina (Score:2, Interesting)
Could it be a pun on words?
93 882 naimina 74 14 35 74
93 = Page 93
882 = Edition 882
naimina = at exactly = certainly
74 = D
14 = E
35 = A
74 = D
So the message is "Certainly dead." = Dead man's switch is dead for certain.