The Mysterious and Fascinating World of ‘Numbers Stations’ 

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That's a fantastic thumbnail Simon. Massive props. Edit: I have been informed that Simon does not make the thumbnails. Still a good thumbnail though.

When Russia invaded the Ukraine, the buzzer was going crazy. Every time there’s an international incident involving Russia, UVB 76 starts sending messages. It’s fascinating.

I really thought this was about why Simon has 83 different RU-vid and Podcast stations.

In the 1980s, there was nothing more bone-chilling than scanning through the bands at night to hear the Cuban numbers station reading those numbers in your headphones. Creepy.

A note about the end of the video; my grandfather was a paramedic for 25 years. Early on in training, he would often pose a question to newbies on the job, and it went something like this; you get to a scene where three people are harmed. One is screaming for help, one is moaning audibly but softly in pain, and the other is silent. Which person do you check on first? The answer, he would say, was always the one who is silent, because you have no idea what kind of condition they are in and may need the most immediate attention or take the longest to figure out. So, truly, if something goes silent, be concerned about that first.

My grandparents had a portable radio that picked up TV and some shortwave stations. I loved to play with it, and my favorite one to fall asleep to was the "train station": it literally sounded like someone placed a transmitter in a subway tunnel, as all you heard was a constant thrumming echo and the occasional approaching and passing train. Now you got me wondering if it was a spy channel lol.

*That's objectively the best thumbnail I have seen.*

My family has an heirloom story about how my great grandfather was approached during the mid 1960's to keep a possible numbers station in the attic. He was a multilingual marine corps veteran from the signal Corp. He never spoke about it but once to a relative. He refused the request of the two plain suited men that came to the house that day.

The episode about number stations in “Fringe”, was a great one.

Wish there was at least one time in the video you'd yell "The numbers mason! What do they mean?!" All jokes aside, cod black ops 1 story is what made me interested in number stations.

As a licensed radio amateur this was a lovely video. 73, M6LRU.

I don't know why, but I always have seen Number Stations as creepy. It might be odd to think, but if people can be afraid that ducks are somewhere watching them, I'm allowed to believe they are terrifying

I used to hear some of the mysterious "number stations" on shortwave when I was a teen in the 1960s. I would synchronize my watch every few days with the signal at WWV in Fort Collins, Colorado (I can not recall the exact frequency.). I also listened to "number and tone stations", which I suspected to be a Cuban station as it was broadcast in Spanish. I always enjoyed hearing the Soviet propaganda stations boasting of the Communist achievements late at night on "skip". Of course, the US would also counter by broadcasting on "Radio Free Europe" the US achievements.

I have no idea, but Numbers Stations always spook me out. Give me spine shivers. There's one that plays distorted childrens music and then reads something in swedish, and my brain is just like "NO! GO BACK TO BED!"

The Conet Project is an absolutely brilliant album of numbers stations. A weird listen, but a fascinating one.

Great tumbnail reference fam. Dragovich... Kravchenko... Steiner... Keep the good work fam.

As long as the number stations are on the air, everything is fine. It's when they all go dark on the same day that one may take pause. The numbers, voices, tones and other gibberish is just to let the listener know they the stations they monitor is the real thing. The sequence that stations go dark is the real message. US Navy has a 'pilot signal' for attack submarines. No orders are being transmitted on this signal, but if the signal stops, the missiles are launched. ELF, extreme low frequency, can't be jammed, spoofed or blocked in any way. If the ELF stops, US is under attack.

The best part of the Buzzer is that it's not a recording playing into the radio transmitter. It's a recording playing on a speaker into a microphone that is then transmitted. Quality Russian pragmatism.

Wow, imagine checking that number station for years, hearing the same things over and over and all of a sudden it says "command 153 issued"... I think I would wee a little. O.o

Pretty bold of part trained Czech spy Simon to reveal how he gets his instructions.

Imagine if UVB-76 ever went "execute order 66".

This reminds me of this odd radio signal I found when I was camping in the Sequoia's in California on a vacation. It was back in 1995 and I had just gotten the new Smashing Pumpkins cassette "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness". I was 12 years old at the time visiting my aunt so it was kind of a vacation we were on. But with my cassette player I could also listen to AM/FM radio so when I got tired of listening to the album I would try to find songs on the radio. But being out in the middle of a national park in the forest in the mid 90's you can guess there weren't many radio stations to find. I don't remember if it was on the AM or FM stations, but there was this 1 station that came in crystal clear and it was only playing 1 song and an odd one at that. It was playing "Heard it through the grapevine" by the California Raisins, that goofy commercial band from the Raisinets commercial. Once the song was over there would be static for about 20 seconds and then it would start all over again. For the whole week we were out there camping it was the only thing that played on that station every time we checked in on it. Over and over and over without ever changing or anything else being said. No host or announcements or any kind of information whatsoever except playing that goofy song. Still to this day I cannot figure out what its purpose was or what it meant. We always thought it must have been some kind of coded message or secret signal meant for someone to hear that no one else could decipher. Strange stuff back in those days with the radio hahaha.

There have also been instances of faint voices heard during the Buzzer, indicating it's a live mic with something making the noise, as opposed to the noise being a radio signal standalone

*I greatly enjoy watching your videos Simon! As a long-haul truck driver back in 1988, I was coming down interstate 77 south off of I-81 south one night, and I began picking up on the FM radio, a computer voice counting down like, two hundred thousand, one hundred and 78...two hundred thousand, one hundred and 77, etc. Pretty weird*

For an RC hobbyist it is interesting that the number stations operate within the frequency range that includes 27 MHz which is one of the most commonly used RC hobby frequencies.

Number stations always make me think of the podcast Welcome to Nightvale. The town has its own numbers station.

I would LOVE to see you cover the insane history of the Soviet Vostok Research Station in the middle of the Antarctic.

"FREEDOM REZNOV!" "FOR YOU MASON, NOT FOR ME..."

I agree that the most likely explanation for UVB 76 is that its a dead man's hand/switch whichever phrase you prefer, it makes sense, the "command 135" was probably a sychronised update to a new schedule possibly or like a "go to plan B" kinda thing, definitely one to monitor, I find numbers stations fascinating despite how super creepy they are like whenever you listen to one even just a recording on youtube its like you've found something you should not be listening to like its really freaky, its like real life psychological horror

I'd watch out for weird broadcasts from the Buzzer station in the next 2 to 3 weeks. With the troops buildup near Ukraine's border, it's likely that a war between Ukraine and Russia will occur.

Danny's short wave radio doesn't work from deep in the basement.. no matter what he does. It could be the Faraday cage installed by Fact Boi to ensure Danny never communicates with the outside world ever again!

I’ve listened to Simon talk about things I never would have given a second thought to otherwise. Always learn something new thanks to fact boi

When stuff like this is real, can we TRULY blame people for getting caught up in conspiracy theories?

I was playing around with my SW radio a couple of years ago and randomly found what I think was the Cuban one, the lady speaking numbers in Spanish. Really creepy, but cool to find after hearing and reading so much about them. The tougher thing these days is finding a decent quality SW receiver that isn't junk right out of the box.

The show Lost is more than a few years old, but it has so many threads to the story, that every now and then I learn more about the inspiration for the show… any Lost fan would know what I’m talking about.

Happy Christmas/Happy Holidays to Simon and his team, Thanks for all your wonderful videos and making 2021 better and less difficult.

Listening to these number stations always scares the hell out of me. I can't explain it, I find them downright frightening O.o

Happy holidays to you Simon and everyone who works to bring us the content across your many (many) channels. Love you guys for making life more interesting. Thank you!

i love how @7:23 this guy's entire disguise involved shaving off his mustache. 😆

I listened to a podcast on Talking Till Dawn that when into number stations and other frequency interruption incidents. I believe they discussed UVB76 and a voice and woman's scream can be heard. Very interesting.

Hey Simon! Greetings from Seattle USA... Can you consider covering the Russian Woodpecker, a defunct over-the-horizon radar system used by the Soviets during the Cold War? It was based near Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, and while the signal did not carry any information, it was pretty unusual. It even is the subject of a documentary called Russian Woodpecker. I'd love to see this. Thanks for everything, and have a happy holidays!

Number stations are my personal nerdy obsession. The idea of this clandestine world still happening the the shadows fascinates me.

"Short wave" (3-30 MHz) is technically designated as the HF (High Frequency) spectrum, and takes a fair amount of knowledge to use effectively and even more to use tactically, especially at night.

This is still your best channel Simon and episodes like this prove it. Respect to you and the team.

I love how even if your videos topic doesn't seem like something I'm interested in, I'm never disappointed, I learned something interesting. Thank you for your diligence to research!

This is one of the best pieces on Number Stations I’ve seen. Great work. Subscribed!

Keep up the good work Simon!

I love how mysterious and creepy numbers stations are. Made me want to learn about cyphers and cryptography. PS: that beard is looking hella glorious.

I thought this was a brain blaze from the thumbnail. Still great!

I asked my grandpa about these once, a few years ago. around 2009 when CoD Black Ops came out. he was a researcher for Honeywell in the 60s through the 90s, and worked on projects like Have Blue and Tacit Blue. he and his team designed the avionics system for the F-117 Nighthawk. he told me to never mention them again. really piqued my interest, that. when you ask him about Aliens and such he'll say "I can't tell you, I'd have to kill you." with a devious smirk on his face. never told us not to ever talk about it. but the mention of the numbers stations spooked him. told us not to mention that again in his presence.

I am a huge nerd, and love WW2 history, mainly the weapons and radio stuff. Enigma and Bletchley Park and stuff. I have been huge into CB and Shortwave since I was 17, and find the lack of info on numbers stations kinda strange. I have heard some really odd stuff on the 27Mhz CB band also that wasn't atmospheric "skip" they call it. It sounded almost more like information packets sent in burps. Don't know why or what it was, but still neat.

I've been a fan of international broadcasting via shortwave for years. Listening to Radio Bejing during the Tienaman Square uprising was particularly disturbing and exciting. Most international broadcasters like DV, RFI International and BBC have either stopped using shortwave or stopped broadcasting entirely

The Lincolnshire Poacher has been used as the basis for the Netflix series Truth Seekers with Nick Frost and Simon Pegg. It's well worth a watch.

I have always been intrigued by this, love researching this subject! Thx Simon!

This video has a great flow that looped back to the start!

I found one of those broadcasts back in the 70s. It made no sense, mostly gibberish and various sounds, and not having any idea what was going on, it was just a momentary curiosity. It was years later before I found out what was going on.

Love the thumbnail. Black Ops 1 is my favorite CoD

Thank you Simon. This one was really, really cool!

The level of trolling that someone could achieve by setting up multiple fake number stations communicating with each other about totally mundane stuff

Woah, coming here from Brain Blaze I didn't know Simon could read ads this fast with no meandering...🤯

When Simon said "when the OGBU...." I totally translated that in my head to OGBB :D

I've always wondered about these. Thanks for enlightening me.

thx for doing this episode. when i first heard the buzzer, it was so eerie i had nightmares for days lol im sure they chose that audio frequency on purpose. i think it's pretty fun these mysteries still exist

I've heard numbers stations many times over the years. They're much more rare now, largely replaced with encrypted digital transmissions. But they're still out there. Cuba operates, sending the same message. Seemingly they still have a budget, somebody is being paid to broadcast even though there's no new message.

As someone who's name is Mason, its nice to finally know what the numbers mean

PS got a 2 year Magellan subscription for Christmas from my wife....its very good.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Numbers Stations one of my favorite topics!! Thank you Simon for this video, that I came across on christmas day :D

Huge Porcupine Tree fan, always wondered where that sample was from, thanks Simon!

It said mysterious world of simon!! I thought we were going into your story!! Youre amazing host! Good job!

I never thought it was going to be this... Today I truly found out about number stations. Well done Simon.

Loved this video

I've always been very interested in the Number Station phenomena, I hope there's some I can catch on my old AN/GRC 9 radio set that I still use

I learned about these after listening to the Porcupine Tree album. They also show up in some Chroma Key songs by Kevin Moore

I was born in 1969 and for my fifth or sixth birthday i received a radio and took to it right away. My father noticed i would listen to it every evening and listen to it to fall asleep and decided to give me a 1950’s Bakelite with new frequencies including short wave and that’s where i first heard a number station and it freaked me out at first but the intrigued me to the point I’d spend my weekends when we didn’t go out scanning the airwaves for different stations and found many. Growing up,getting married and having a family i forgot all about them until a few years ago after coming across a video on number stations and found myself back and this time it wasn’t just me it was hundreds on her and on forums from many different countries around the world and it took two words to have me diving deeper than ever before “Conet Project”

Thanks Simon, something I was absolutely unaware of to make me terrified!

Oh, this is one of those topics I've forgotten so much about. Time to see what I can re-learn. Lots of fun. The buzzer station has only broadcast a recognizable voice like twice, if I recall correctly.

I'm actually reading a Star Wars novel right now where Lando has to communicate using Radio waves.

As an electronic music and history lover, I've been a fan of "The Conet Project" since I discovered it in 2015 or so, there really is nothing else like it. The numbers stations and their continuous broadcasting tells the story of the tensions between nations better than any news report. They keep going, and more come on.

A UK band called 'Hostile Foreign Powers' did a song called Gongs & Chimes, sampling the famous German numbers station with the voice of Magdeburg Annie. Great track and video, search it on RU-vid!

Last night I heard a number station broadcast, _"Bearded bald brit now ordered to overthrow the world."_ I'm sure it wasn't anyone we know. :)

Couldn't an adversary just broadcast over the frequencies with a greater output, washing it out?

First watch a video about number stations by curious Droid...was waiting for you guys to come up with one!!

I have no clue why but UVB76’s buzzer always gives me the willies

My dad's radio could pick up short-wave frequencies. In the early 70s there were lots of stations, although they declined over the decade. Even then there were these frequencies that would send a continuous buzz where sometimes a voice could also be heard. My dad's theory was that the voice was a broadcast and the buzz was a foreign authority deliberately blocking the broadcast by rendering it inaudible.

Wow! Great video! Weirded me out. Worse yet, this could very well still be useful today. Agents could could be using old school means to send internet addresses passkey information.

Chilling stuff indeed.

This story is so great, and Simon makes it better :) Need more information about it, ahem :)

Lets be honest, these numbers broadcasts are probably one of Simon's many other projects he has going on!

These numbers stations are a good example of something that appears mysterious on face value but aren't mysterious at all - they're just misunderstood.. The best part is that if you wanted to you could triangulate and locate any of these broadcasts and just ask the operators what they're doing and most broadcasters would just tell you over a cup of coffee or a beer, lol.. Look, my dad is a "ham radio geek", lol.. He was a communications engineer in the US military during the 70's, he also an engineer for Northrup Grunman for a decade and has been a ham radio junkie his entire life - he's a licensed high power operator and has been involved in the ham radio culture/community for over 60 years so given his expertise about a decade ago I asked him about "numbers stations" - he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about, so I played him some examples of "numbers stations" and he started laughing - he said they're nothing more than "repeaters".. So I dug a bit deeper into the subject just out of curiosity and 99% of these "Numbers Stations" are just that - "repeaters" which are used to calibrate radios but they serve other technical purposes.. Obviously there are plenty of weird er mysterious stations out there, and no doubt these stations could and many presumably have been used for nefarious intent such as spying, however the reality is that there are weird people in this world that do weird, but benevolent things so I don't know why ham radio is any different - I mean the world and culture of ham radio IS WEIRD to begin with so, lol.. I mean ham radio culture really is a community within their own and the type of people involved in this community are "special" to say the least, lol.. So yea, like I pointed out - 99% of these "numbers stations" really are just benevolent repeaters that help ham radio operators calibrate their radios. They operate 24/7/365 and they use numbers, because why not? these repeaters are no different from a "mic check" so they need to broadcast something.... Now obviously as I stated - that doesn't mean there aren't spies out there using ham radio - because there almost certainly are - however if spies were going to use ham radio to pass messages it wouldn't be via numbers stations or repeaters -- I mean it's extremely easy to triangulate and locate these "numbers stations" - so their locations are not secret by any means...

Really interesting video!

This is so cool!!

Loving the black ops background. Black ops and bop2 are the best cod, change my mind. I'm a huge zombies player

Now you gotta do an episode on EAMs and Flashtraffic messages. Skyking Skyking do not answer, mainsail out

Good video 👍

Great video

Here to represent BrainBlaze...alledgedly

Didn’t Rockstar games put numbers stations in GTA:V? If I’m right, I think that says something about their place in society.

Beautiful Thumbnail. I'm in tears.

Scary funny fascinating enlightening Simon. Makes much sense. Thumbs up fact boi.