I remember reading Cecil’s article about short wave radio stations broadcasting number codes in one of his books and thinking it was a little disturbing. This article was written 18 years ago. Are these radio stations still broadcasting secret messages? Has anyone decoded what they are sending?
The column has probably already been updated once. The publication date was August of 89’, but Cecil goes on the explain why these stations still exist even after the end of the Cold War, which I believe ended later on the same year of the column.
I do agree though, a new update is in order. A lot has changed since the end of the Cold War. In the age of Terrorism and the Patriot Act it would be interesting to learn if the CIA still uses these methods, and maybe even if terror cells can use them as well.
Some numbers station sites:
I’d never heard of these before! Fascinating. Ignorance fought.
For some reason, I want want to start one of these stations, and broadcast a group of numbers that, when decoded, would read:
"one, two, three, four, five … "
Check out this place, The Conet Project collected these for a long time. You can also order 4 CD sets of recordings
You can listen to stations online or download MP3
“four, eight, fifteen, sixteen, twenty three, forty two …”
:eek:
A guy at work had a Ham Station and tuned one in for me once. Very creepy in many ways.
Heard it myself some years ago an emotionless male American voice sounding like the harbinger of doom and clear as a bell.
There were letters as well as numbers in the code as I recall.
We were told at the time that it was something to do with the U.S. nuclear strike programme(U.S. program)I always assumed that it was being transmitted to or from American air bases in Britain.
I just posted something on this in the general discussion thread (sorry; noob) anyway, I’ve heard a numbers station in South Carolina that doesn’t actually broadcast numbers, just electronic chatter like a broken Atari. It’s really creepy.
Then I made the mistake of heading further down the rabbit hole and clicking on the first link in Queen Bruin’s post. He makes mention of a Yosemite Sam numbers station first picked up in 2005; I remember hearing it during a brief experimentation with CB radio back in 1996. Spooky.
Sounds like it good be a packet radio link.