Number Stations

So to understand this whole concept, it's kind of important to know why shortwave radio was such a big deal, why that was so important.

So you work in radio, right? I do.

For the most part, it feels relatively local.

I know that sounds a bit silly when we're talking about something like the ABC, for example, which go over the country.

But if you're listening to FM stations, usually once you drive far enough away, it's going to get fuzzy and then it disappears.

Absolutely.

Whereas shortwave radio works very differently to that.

So...

In the shortwave band, they can travel really long distances because they bounce between the Earth and the ion sphere, which is basically a charged layer high up in the atmosphere.

And so it can go up, be reflected back down, bounce upwards again, which means that you can broadcast from one country to another, like that's thousands of kilometers away.

It could be on the other side of the world.

You can do that with shortwave radio, which is kind of cool.

Very cool.

Very useful for international broadcasting.

Potentially, if we are to believe this, also very, very useful for spy work.

Look, spy work sounds incredibly cool every time I hear anything about it.

I feel like the reality of it would be quite mundane, especially if your role is to just say numbers.

Or be listening for them as well, like 100%.

Yeah.

But that's what's really cool about this.

Like if we're to believe that this is what it was used for, potentially is still being used for, is that you can just put a powerful transmitter somewhere that's under your control.

And then let's say that you're trying to get a message out to an agent or agents.

All they need is a cheap radio.

And then to listen, they don't need to transmit anything back.

And because of that, they don't need to be worried about their signal being traced because they're not transmitting anything.