Thinking Sideways: UVB76

all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice if you had listened to what we're calling the last twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone back to straight audio, So be warned. We sound a little different today than we do in what you're about to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, thinking sideways. I don't understand you never know what stories of things we simply don't know the answer to. Yeh wait, do you hear that?

What is that? Ah? Know? Right? A little bit? So? Now imagine listening to that for hours or days or weeks or years. No, so so crazy. That's an annoying noise? What is that noise? Well, I'll tell you a minute. Welcome to thinking sideways. I'm Devin, I'm Steve. We're gonna talk about UVB seventy six or a buzzer today. That's what that noise is UVB s yeah. Um, So the station transmits a buzzing sound that lasts about a second, pauses for a second. You know you just heard it.

It repeats to thirty four times a minute all day long for years twenty one? How much? Four? So about every other second or so about it's not exact. What's what's the arrange? I mean, where can we pick this up in the US? Or is it sometimes but not depending on the anverspheric conditions. Is it broadcasting to this day? And it's been broadcasting how long? So it's been broadcasting since at least nine two that's the first actual recording

of it. But there have been reports of it as back as far as seventy six, which is apparently when the US started monitoring it, so maybe even longer than that. What is it? So? I listened to this thing a lot. It's been on my radar forever. Upon intended to it sometimes. Actually that's kind of the thing I would wake up to. That sounds a lot like after the first couple repetitions. It kind of has this soothing not like it's not

like the ticking of a clock. It's not quite that repetitive, but it's still repetitive enough that it's soothing to me. And I understand I'm crazy. You can hear people talking in the distance behind this thing often, which means that it's a tone that comes from a device in front of a live microphone, not as in a speaker with a microphone in front of it. Yeah, as in like a maybe actually a fog horn that is there, and it goes back in front of a microphone that is

connected to the broadcaster that broadcasted out. And actually the current theory is that it's two different transmitters, maybe likely within the same building, maybe within a couple of rooms of each other, because you can hear things in the background that are consistent, but that one goes back and then there's a pause, and the other one goes back and then there's a pausitive goes You can kind of hear that variation if you listen again, really closely, hold

on listen, ah ah ah ah, A little a little bit slight. It's very slight. There are some recordings where it's way more apparent. Uh, and it will not surprise you to know that these come out of Mother Russia, of course, good old Mother Russia, a land of men chasing bears with bats. So we're not here to talk about this noise, although it is weird, We're not. We're here to talk about what happens when the noise stops? Nuclear warfare all bite, When and why did the noise stop?

Hold on said shape? You said shape? You know which will? God? Do you mean that should say that your camp? Um? What is here reciting a bunch of numbers and letters in Russian? Or what he is? This transmission is from this specific one is from December. It was the first recorded vocal transmission of the stop of the buzzer Um And if you would really like to know, I can tell you what he says, but it's really doesn't really matter. It's in code obviously. How long is the message go

on for? How many characters? Um? So with the exception one exception, all of the messages are one or two call signs, which says where they're what they're broadcasting from, and then it's one or two more number sets of fletely varying length. It goes from that. I've heard some that are like five or six, and I've heard some that are like twenty or thirty UM, which is another thing that makes it a little creepy. I think that it's not just like the same message going out every time.

So that one went out and then one went out on December nine, two thousand two. One went out on February two thousand and six, and that was it for four years. Those are the only vocal. Those are the only vocal. Has anybody like cross checked those days with the events in Russia and those particular days, Yeah, and there they come up with nothing, nothing of any kind of consequences. It seems that way. Yeah, it's how to Russia is nothing. Three years ago, the transmission just disappeared,

like actually disappeared, like just went off the air. The buzzer just went off. I don't know if you know, but they don't have electricity in Russia for about three Yeah. On June five, ten, uh UVB went silent for twenty four hours and then resumed normal buzzing UH And then on the tenth at approximately which is coordinated Universal time, there was a series of Morris code beeps admitted with the buzzer just for just under four minutes, and then a little bit later in that day they had another

voice message that was very very short. Two days later, the signal went completely silent again, and then it was followed by a series of thumping sounds that were apparently in the same room at the open microphone, which was followed closely by a hail of electronic noises which faded quickly into the buzzer broadcast. Later that day, voices were

heard conversing loudly behind the buzzer. So the janitor walked into the room, knock a bunch of stuff around, somebody fixed it, and then they were in there complaining about him. Is that what I'm kind of sounds like that, doesn't it? Or if somebody was having sex in there maybe, I mean, it could have been that too. Nobody really knows what

happened there. And then on September one, the buzzer was interrupted by thirty eight seconds of dance of the Little Swans from Tchaikovsky's Ballet of the Swans, and a morrise code signal accompanied that fragment, so it was right underneath it. Um On September five, a female voice voice was heard counting from one to nine in Russian. About an hour later, the buzzing UH was silenced for a muffled male voice trying to read a message, but it was garbled UH.

So it sounds like they were having some technical difficulties, right, A little bit based on the fact that it sounds like it's a microphone in front of the speaker. Didn't send high tech to me at all, So not shocking, right, And then on September seven, there was a male voice that made a broadcast. It was just you know, series of numbers and codes again, but it was one of UH voice messages that would be broadcast by September. So in twenty three days they sent out twenty five messages

after being basically silent since seventy six? Did I say seventy two? So no no human voices on it. And then suddenly just a slew ofud yes. And then I thought you said that the broadcasts were cut off in like two thousands seven or something like that, or two they stopped for a while. Okay, So you said that, you said there were messages in September of what year? Okay, so pop back up and suddenly had a flurry of no longer just the buzzer, but people changed exactly lots

of codes UM. And then between October and December of that same year there were another fifty six voice messages sent out odd yeah. Each of these with the exception of the one on September t UM replaced the familiar UVB seventy six call sign with a m d z HB call sign, So they changed the call signers to change their call sign, which suggests perhaps that during their times of radio silence of buzzer silence, they were relocating. Oh okay, or perhaps they were overrun by rival hand

radio enthusiasts. That's that's definitely possible. On November ten, intermittent phone conversations were transmitted and recorded by a listener for a period of about thirty minutes. They were confidential messages.

They have yet to be fully publicly translated. The phone calls mentioned the brigade operative officer on duty and communication nodes like debut nice, I can't say Russian words, but it's the Russian word for hope, and then a couple other code names are things UM and then a female officer says Officer on duty of Communication node Debut Senior and sin got the control call from someone okay, and

then they cut off. And then on that same day there was a phone call that was out that said did you get the call, and the person responded yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and I was Since then, between January five and February five, two eleven um fourteen more voice messages, but no were buzzing buzzing in between. So the way that this works is that it buzzes, it buzzes, it buzzes, It goes silent for a minute, and then somebody talks and then

it starts buzzing again. It's as if this whatever is honking or buzzing into the microphone just gets shut off for a minute, and they take the mic and they say their announcement, and then it gets turned back on as I say, it'll do, like this thing is buzzing, buzzing and buzzing, and they gets turned off and they hear this Russian voice saying, wow, that's really annoying. This is the most annoying thing. So the you know, there's there's a couple of theories out there about this. One

is that it's a number station, which is fair. What exactly is a number stations? So a number station is a short wave radio station UM, which is used mostly by the military. UM. They're characterized by their quote unusual broadcasts, which is just of spoken words, mostly numbers. UM. They just you know, read a streaking of numbers or letters, usually by female voices UM, although sometimes men or sometimes

children's voices are used. Used mostly by the military because you send them out on like a empty am short wavelength. You can just send your operative out with a tiny little handheld radio. They just tune it to that station and just listen to the silence all the time, and when something comes up, they'll have it. They'll hear the broadcast is happening. Usually the broadcast and this is true

of uvb UH. When they do broadcast information, they repeat it twice, so they do call sign, call sign message, call sign, call sign pause, and they repeat that exact same message over again and then they go back to the buzzer. So do they when they do actual voices and everything like that is at the same time of the day every time, completely different times. There's no consistency within that, so it's just random. Nobody totally can figure out a pattern, right, which you know, if if you're

an operative out in the field somewhere. Sure, you know that works great. The only thing is is that it's hard to understand why it would they would have a buzzer constantly, why they would have a sound constantly, Because it's so much easier if you're out in the field to just say, I I'm a tune around this time, I'm going to tune my radio and listen silence, and as soon as I hear something, I'll know that I need to start paying attention instead of a buzzer, and

then it changes in tone. Shore you know there's a there's a distinct change, but it's nothing compared to silence. Additionally,

it's an expense. Well you know what. You know what the beauty of it would be, though, is that if you want it, if you want that particular wavelength to be to be available for you and your operatives to use, then it's a good idea to occupied at all times, because otherwise somebody else might set up a radio station and broadcasting that particular wavelength and kind of like step all over your stuff. That's true. Also, couldn't you just broadcast dead air? Dead air is and what as in

silence is? Well, you can't broadcast silence. Yeah, you have to broadcast some kind of noise. Yeah, I guess you could broadcast some kind of interference, just like static would have to be sort of jamming. But yeah, I mean, but yeah, I mean, just just saw a really simple, low tech solution. And this is typical of the Russian you know, they're they're not going to go for the high tech solution where they can come up with something

cheap and down or dirty that works. So you you broadcast an annoying buzz, an annoying loud buzz, and so nobody is going to think to try to set up a radio station broadcasting that particular wavelength that would interfere with your transmissions. That's fair, even though, even though yeah, yeah. The other theory that people had was that it was

a dead hand system. And before you ask, because I see that a little twitch of your head, a dead hand is a system that automatically triggers the launch of nuclear weapons in case of a devastating strike by the enemy. So it's a it's constantly broadcasting, and when the broadcast goes dead, it means that something devastating has happened to the country. There's been some kind of really horrible attack on it, So you launched weapons at whoever the likeliest

person was. They were big in the Cold War that you know, we had them and Russia had them, and a bunch of people had them, and that you know, if that tone went dead, it meant that the president was dead, everyone was dead. They had we'd been attacked just horrifically. So it kind of depends on where the where the transmitter was located though, was it actually was it actually located anywhere near any nuclear missile silos. So that's the other kind of mysteries that nobody totally knows

for sure where it is. They've never been able to pin it down, or something that seemed that seemed to recall something about how they were it actually broadcast from two different locations. Is that true? The theory is that they broadcast from two different speakers, not two different locations. Okay, so the same building, just different rooms or different speakers in the same room. Okay, that's the current. The problem with the dead hand theory is that it did go

silent and nothing happened, So that's pretty much bunk. So you know, I guess the question kind of is what well this thing and why are the Russians still using this mechanical device? And yeah, well but the buzzing as a buzzing still occurring. I mean it's shut off into what two thou seven or when did the buzzing stuff. It's still going on. It stopped for just briefly went off the air for twenty four hours, but but it's still going on. It's still going on, and you can

still tune in and listen to it today. Now, I seemed to remember something when I was going through and this this might just be a troll on the internet, that somebody was saying that they had figured out what the location that it was broadcasting from was and that when they went there, it was a derelict building that had some old decrepit recorder broadcasting equipment in it and

some codebooks and stuff like that. But since the hand was going, this was I'm guessing after the point where it went dead for a bit and then pop back on the air, and so that was the transition period. Yeah, yeah, that's the theory. And that's you know, that's stuff that I've heard too, that they found, you know, that some urban explorers found that's exactly the total place. Yeah, I don't know how much I believe it's I mean, everybody can make whatever story they want up and say I

found all this stuff, but I've never disclosed it. I burned it for secrecy because I didn't want the KGIB after me. Yeah, monk, but I've heard those stories. So I don't know if if you've ever heard anything that seemed concrete evidence that it had actually shifted locale, No, the most concrete. I think that it's probably true if that story is true, which you know, it may well be that they found it. I you know, I don't know. I else it would go quiet for twenty four hours.

I mean, you know, technical difficulties, sure, but that should only take an hour or two, especially since the technology seems to be just pretty much the basics. Those vacuum tubes are hard to replace, like those old toys that you would yeah your head, yeah, or the recording of an air raid siren or something that the tape breaks and they've scotch taped together so many times that it just doesn't work. That's why that's why it animates from Russia.

You know, it's like that's that's kind of their style. Have you heard of the other two stations that they have that does the same basically the same thing. They have two more stations in Russia that have been recorded, and the names are, i think it's their nickname, the Pipe and the Squeaky Wheel, and they have a very similar history of everything is just fine, constant buzz no

big deal. And then there have been some interruptions where suddenly they're being used with verbal casts or audio being sent out, but nobody knows why that's happening, which adds a little more depth to the mystery of wait, what are they doing with this? Is this travel plans for the country's mascot or is this air rate scenarios or formations? I don't know. The pip sounds exactly like the buzzer

used to sound. Oh really, it's gone through a couple of different incarnations throughout the years of what it sounded like, and the pip is what it's used to sound like in the eighties actually, so check out the squeaking. So the pip is it maybe may have been the same technology, which sounds to me almost as if it's a heart remotitor. So, yeah, what are they doing over there? So Joe, you you think that you might have had some ideas or some

theories as to why these would be used. Well, no, I mean there was the one, which is that they're basically trying to keep the channel open for communication by keeping other people off the wavelength. The other one was

why I asked about the wavelength. But it doesn't really actually make sense when you think about it, because if you wanted to say, use it as a dead hand, then communicates, say to your ballistic missile subs that Mother Russia has been nuked, time to go TYD, to go new to the US or whoever, then you know it's a dead hand. Would work really well except for one thing, which is that it's in a fairly short wavelength which

doesn't penetrate water very well. So a longer way look wavelength, you know, like like VLF or e l F would actually be able to reach submarines way way far away deep onto the water. But if it's um, you know, that's all bets are off for that. So I don't think it's if it is a dead hand, it's not for communication with ballistic missile subs anyway. That's about it. So that kind of shoots that theory all the hell. But that's why I was asking what that wavelength was.

So nobody really knows what this thing is for no, nor they do they know who runs it. I mean, you know, the theory is that it's the Russian Armed Forces, but it's unconfirmed. You know, you can guess from the codes, you can guess from whatever you want to guess from, but nobody even knows for sure that it's actually the Russian military, just that it broadcasts out of Russia. I'm guessing that the entire thing is being broadcast from Stalin's coffin.

That's where it's coming from his heart, and he's like grunts, yeah, yeah, they've got you on life support, but he's it's it's really he's in hibernation, so it's his heart rate, and his heart rate is so bad because he's been into semented amination spending animation for so long. They instead of going b burb, it's that that that thing is going to break down. Somebody needs to change the distributor on him. Oh yeah, definitely, it's problem. Or you know, it could

just be aliens. Well here's no, it could be aliens. But I think the most likely explanation is just probably a publicly funded probably by US dollars publicly funded sort of art installation. And yeah, they're probably still probably some Russian is probably probably you know, running rount request and they're probably getting a couple of million dollars a year to put on this art thing. So I would suggest that you go to they go to the fads and ask them what art stuff and rush of their funding,

and you'll probably find the application in there. So there you go. It's good. They all right, as well as anything I don't know. Yeah, yeah, so I guess that does it. So if you want to hear any of these recordings or read any of the links that we have for you, they're all really exciting links. You can go to our website, which is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. If you have your own theory, please share it with us because there's so many theories out there and they're

just so interesting. So thanks for sticking with us. Hey, could everybody boob