Help! I’m a modern secret agent, and my highly secretive organisation has sent me back to the 1930s to surveille one of Hitler’s henchmen so I can find out where they’re hiding the Nazi gold.
If this was modern times I could plant a bug, or a GPS tracker or a small camera, all no bigger than a button and life would be easy. However, such things were not around or even workable back then.
If I wanted to remotely surveille and track someone 80 years ago what are my options, equipment-wise?
As context, like the Terminator, I have to go backwards in time stark bollock naked, so no smuggling modern technology with me. Also, I have found a young electronic wizkid nerd offsider. What he can do with a radio valve would make your eyes pop, so there is some capacity to build devices from scratch, as he has some sort of rudimentary lathe.
PS. I know about those weeny little spy cameras - they’ll come in handy at the right time once I’ve infiltrated the Nazi bunker, but I want to know if I can track someone beyond line of sight.
You could plant something with a distinctive smell on him, and have dogs or other animals trained to track that smell. IIRC, Sherlock Holmes did this at one point with peppermint oil.
I was going to go with radium in solution painted on the soles of shoes, with Geiger counters being invented prior to 1930. But then I remembered it glows in the dark, so the gig may be up come nightfall.
It wouldn’t matter because you wouldn’t be changing the future of the quantum universe you left, you would be determining the direction of an alternative quantum universe. From our perspective, you would simply disappear, never to return. Nothing would change in our universe other than the fact you were no longer here. Whether you were successful or died trying would only affect the universe you were in. In other words, anyone that goes to the past, immediately arrives in a new, alternative universe. It would have no causal link to the universe that the time travel action stemmed from. This is the only possibility that makes quantum sense, otherwise you would create time paradoxes that simply cannot happen according to the laws of physics.
If the OP simply wants to find out where Nazi gold is hidden, then there is no need to change history. Go to the past, see where the gold is, go back to the present, dig up the gold. No grandfather paradox or anything like that.
How remotely are you trying to track him? Something like radium on the shoes or a distinct smell will wear off pretty quickly, so you’d have to start close to the goal. Most will also get stymied if the henchman changes clothes, like going from his formal dress uniform when visiting ‘The Bunker’ to outdoor civilian clothes when going to ‘The secret gold stash’. I think you’re stuck having to follow the henchman pretty closely to keep tabs on him, not quite ‘line of sight’ but you’re definitely going to need to be within his immediate area, if he goes into the remote wilderness or takes a plane to Argentina you’re going to lose him unless you can follow along.
I also don’t think that tracking a strongman’s henchman in modern times is quite as easy as you laid out - there are a LOT of devices for finding tracers, and I’d expect a paranoid totalitarian leader to use them routinely. Anything sending a radio signal is likely to get picked up in a routine sweep for devices, for example. And knowing how many small devices exist, a policy of requiring henchman to switch outfits before going to the secret gold stash who’s location is a major secret is pretty likely.
Incidentally, another problem with GPS that people often overlook is that it requires satellites in place - even if you could bring a GPS receiver, it wouldn’t do you any good in the 1940s because it couldn’t get a signal.
The problems could be mitigated if the henchman has to make multiple trips to the secret location. That way, if you lose the trail partway there, you might pick it up again at that point on the next trip.
Just between us, my secret mission involves Herr Dokter von X. He usually leaves Nazi HQ at random times in one of those gigantic 1930s cars with a few motorcycle outriders and zig-zags his way through the streets of ~~~burg. They stop at one of a number of points leading into the subterranean maze of sewers, catacombs, forgotten sub-basements, service tunnels, bits of metro etc [think the bastard child of The Third Man and The Taking of Pelham 123], so some of the environment is wet and sloshy, sound echoes and he always has at least 2 armed goons with him. He emerges from a different exit every time.
I like the radium idea, but the environment isn’t likely to help, and neither will an interesting scent survive. Following them in the sewers is tricky - one of the goons sometimes steps away so may be doubling back to thwart pursuers or hunt CHUDs.
If I map the maze I thought I could at least narrow down the likely area, exclude some passages with string tripwires and so on, but within that still don’t see a way ahead.
Take an appropriately large sized gamma radiation source like yellow cake, found naturally in some places in Russia. Embed the source in a large piece of gold - like pour molten gold around it to form a cube.
Gift the gold cube to the Nazis and they will take it and store it in their “archives”. Now take your Geiger counter and drive around until your counter starts going crazy :). You’ve found the gold.
I think Geiger counters were invented in the early 1900 - a lot before 1930.
A vacuum tube based radio transmitter will be big and require a large battery based on 1930’s battery technology. Will not be easy to “plant” such a device anywhere.
One thing I thought of with a smallish transmitter - you can try hiding one of your ‘1940s minitaturized’ transmitters inside of something valuable they’ll want to add to the stash, preferably with a timer so it doesn’t transmit until a day later, so you don’t have to worry about battery life or then noticing the signal. You then use three guys with receivers to triangulate the stash location.I’m not sure how strong or small you can get a transmitter at the time though.
The fact that it’s underground is going to make it even harder, though, as that’s probably going to kill or weaken radio reception even if you can make and get a small transmitter on them.
I had to laugh at the “rudimentary lathe” callout. Maybe a 100 years earlier they were rudimentary. Well before the 1930s lathes could make multiple interrupted threads for cannon breaches that most people today would think it might take a 5 axis CNC center.
Scroll down to photo 5B10 and see if you can figure out how they did it on a lathe.
I think you’re out of business doing electronic tracking. It’s too early but here’s something a little more old school.
Plant a bag, bottle or can of paint/ink under the targets car. Perhaps the whiz kid can make a solenoid valve to drip a small amount when the car is started and moving (hooked to ignition?). Follow within a reasonable time on bicycle (easier to see the drops). Paint/ink will wear off quickly to not divulge your tracking method.
