“Then what?”
“Well, then you string your cables, which are actually the feed for your antenna. These cables may have to run for hundreds of miles-in a circle to save space-or, if the geological conditions are perfect, you could get away with, say, fifty miles or less.”
Kate said, “I’m not quite following the geological angle.”
“Oh, well… let me look this up… okay-a necessary ground condition to build an ELF antenna is an area where there are only a few meters of sand, or moraine gravel. Beneath that, you need a rock base of igneous granite, or metamorphic… what the hell is this?” He spelled, “G-N-E-I-S-S.”
I said, “I hope that’s not the code to launch.”
He chuckled. “I guess it’s a type of rock. Let’s see… areas of very old Precambrian mountain chains, such as the Laurentian Shield, where our ELF installations are located… the Kola Peninsula in Russia, where they have their ELF installation… this place in Scotland where the Brits decided not to build an ELF station… a place near the Baltic Sea… well, you get the picture.”
I didn’t hear him say, “The Adirondack Mountains,” and I was really listening closely.
He continued, “So, if someone wants to build an ELF station, he goes to one of these areas, buys enough land, then sinks telephone poles in the bedrock and strings antenna wire between them, in a circle. The better the geological conditions, the shorter the wire has to be to provide the same transmitting power. Then the antenna wire is connected to a thick copper grounding cable, which runs down one or more of the telephone poles into a deep borehole in the low-conductivity rock. Then, a powerful electrical generator-and this is a big expense-feeds the antenna cables, and the current runs around the antenna wire, then goes down the copper grounding cables into the rock. And
I replied, “Absolutely.”
I don’t think he believed me and he said, “This is a little technical for me, too. But it seems that if you have enough electrical generating capacity-thousands of kilowatts-and once you get the antenna right, the actual radio transmitter is not that difficult to build, and you can transmit ELF wave signals to your heart’s content.” He added, “Unfortunately, no one is listening.”
I reminded him, “The submarines are listening.”
“Only if they happen to be on the frequency that you’re transmitting. The Russians are transmitting on 82 herz, and we are transmitting on 76 herz. And even if the submarines are hearing something on the appropriate frequency, their ELF receiver would probably reject the signal.”
“Why?”
“Because, as I said, military signals are computer encrypted. Encrypted when transmitted, and decrypted at the receiving end. Otherwise,” he explained, “any nut-as you seem to be suggesting-could theoretically play havoc with the Russian and American nuclear submarine fleets. You know, like start World War III.”
I knew exactly what he meant without the explicit example.
Kate was standing now. “Has anyone ever tried something like that?” she asked.
Commander Nasseff was silent on that subject, so I asked the same question.
He came back with a question of his own. “What are you guys on to?”
I knew that was coming, and I didn’t want him sending a three-letter code to the Pentagon that meant, “Check out Corey and Mayfield.” I said to him, “Well, as you may know, we’re in the Mideast Section. That’s all I can say.”
He thought about that, then responded, “Well… these people may have, or may be able to acquire this technology… but I don’t think there’s a suitable geological area in any of those countries.”
“That’s good news,” I said. But this really wasn’t about our Mideast friends. I asked him once again, “Has anyone-in the past-ever tried to send a bogus signal to our submarine fleet?”
“I’ve heard a rumor to that effect.”
“When? How? What happened?”
“Well… if you can believe this rumor, about fifteen years ago, our nuclear sub fleet was receiving encoded ELF messages, but the onboard submarine computers weren’t able to verify the legitimacy of the encoded messages, so they were rejected.” He continued, “And when the sub commanders contacted naval operations in Pearl Harbor and Norfolk by other means, they were informed that no such messages had been sent by them via Wisconsin-Michigan hadn’t been built yet.” He stayed quiet for a few seconds, then added, “It appeared that some… entity was sending bogus messages, but the safeguards worked, and none of the subs took action based on those messages.”
I asked, “What action? What did the messages say?”
“Launch.”
The room was quiet for a while, then Kate asked, “Could it have been the Russians sending those messages?”
“No. First, the Russians didn’t even have ELF transmitting capabilities until about 1990, and even if they did, there was no logical reason for them to order U.S. subs to launch against the U.S.S.R.”
I agreed with that and asked, “So, who was it?”
He replied, “Look, this could be one of those apocryphal Cold War stories that submariners or communication personnel make up to impress their girlfriends or their bar friends.”
“Right,” I agreed. “That story’s worth a big hug or a free beer. But it could also be true.”
“Could be.”
“So,” I said, “apparently we have the ELF transmitter count wrong. I’m counting four now.”
He stayed silent awhile, then replied, “Actually, about fifteen or sixteen years ago, there was only one ELF station in the world-ours in Wisconsin. As I said, Michigan hadn’t been built yet, and neither had Zevs. That’s why I think this story has no basis. Who would build and operate an ELF transmitter with the purpose of starting a nuclear war?”
I thought maybe my crazy ex-father-in-law would do that, but he was too cheap to spend the bucks. So I suggested, “The Chinese? You know, telling us to launch against the Russkies, then sitting back and watching us destroy each other.”
“Well, that’s possible. But if they got caught at it, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Russians and Americans agreed to nuke them for that. That is a very dangerous game to play.”
It was, and if you were a country with skin in the game, like China or Russia, you’d think twice about it. But if you were a rich, private, and crazy individual sitting in the mountains, you might want to amuse yourself with an ELF transmitter. I pointed out to Commander Nasseff, “You said these ELF waves could be monitored, so I assume the transmission source can also be located.”
“That is a good assumption. But the truth is no. Remember, the Earth itself has become the antenna, so the signals seem to emanate from all around you.”
“Like a cosmic message?”
“Well… it would be more like the ground shaking because of an earthquake. The signal would seem to be coming from everywhere.”
“So there’s no way to trace the origin of an ELF signal?”
“Not in the sense that you’re thinking of. But ELF receivers could get a general idea of where the transmission source was by comparing the effective radiated power that they were receiving at their site. Like all energy sources, the farther away from the origin you are, the weaker the signal becomes. That’s how we learned about the Russian Zevs transmitter-we suspected that the Russians had an ELF transmitter to signal their submarines, so we put a receiving station in Greenland, and this station received strong signals. After a while, we were able to home in on its general location in the Kola Peninsula, and spy satellites confirmed. But that was only because the Russians happened to be transmitting continuously while we hunted for the signal source.”
I thought about that, then asked, “Was the Navy ever able to figure out where those bogus launch signals were coming from?”
“I have no idea. Although I would suspect not, or everyone involved in naval communication would have heard about it, officially or unofficially. I never heard about it.” He reminded me, “But again, these bogus transmissions may never have occurred.”
Well, I thought they had, and I suspected that Commander Nasseff thought so, too. I also thought I knew the source.
He switched to a happier thought. “Well, thank God the Cold War is over.”
