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Comment by jareklupinski | Hacker News Reader

maybe they're trying to tell their submarine fleet something

https://www.businessinsider.com/bbc-radio-show-may-be-preven...

> During their isolated missions, crews watch for signals that the UK still exists — and may launch a counter-attack if they believe their country has been destroyed. One of these signs is whether BBC Radio 4 is still broadcasting the "Today" programme, Britain's flagship news and politics show.

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Not generally known, but Radio 4 on LW is a highly stable frequency reference and also [0] carries a digital time signal (along with other broadcast data, like signals for electricity meters). It's done by phase-modulating the carrier and is pretty easy to extract using analogue techniques or simple SDR (e.g. downmix to audio and extract the phase using a soundcard).

Having said all that, looks like it's being turned off next year [1]. Let's hope someone tells the sub commanders!

[0] I presume it still does, been a while since I checked.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/articles/2023/bbc-radio-4-...

Part of the reasoning for that signal in particular is its low frequency: 198khz, so one of the best commercial signals under their control that might penetrate through a bit of water at least.

Wow, that is eerily reminiscent of the deterrence in Liu Cixin's _Three Body Problem_ novels.

A lot of the thinking in there is intellectually downstream of ideas invented by Cold War nuclear geostrategists, so that’s not too surprising. The desire to not get blown up drove some people to think deeply about how to deal with foreign civilizations that think differently from you, have conflicting interests, but also don’t want to get blown up.

Canada's largest sub is in a mall

> Canada's largest sub is in a mall

Your joke comment is a quarter century out of date

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_ships_of_the_R...

https://www.nsnews.com/local-news/north-van-firm-scraps-west...

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