So, I’m on a reading kick about the technical side of the cold war. Books such as Command and Control, technical data on the different systems and more. Awesomely scary reading, but when watching some movies about the C2 systems on YouTube, I really fell in love with the sounds of the cold war. They are extremely practical in nature, made to be heard and impossible to ignore, and also the sounds of impeding doom. They are the sounds of missile control centers and operation centers.
My thought: They would make awesome ringtones.
So,while the rest of Norway was vacationing, I spent some quality time in Audacity to analyze and create / replicate three specific sounds from the cold war and beyond.
The cool cold war
The first sound is from cold war heyday, when Russians were really Soviet and American colonels were square-jawed, upright citizens with a housewife waiting at home with dinner at 1900 hours sharp. This tone is part of the Bell-made Primary Alert System (PAS), fixed-line network of hardened and leased phone lines criss-crossing the USA. There were several different users of this system, but critically the Commander in Chief (The President), and the staff at Strategic Air Command (SAC).
In a bunker, deep under the Nebraska ground, an Air Force colonel would wait for the presidential order to launch a nuclear strike on Russia. Or China. Day and night, all year, they were ready to relay the launch order. Note that we are talking about an launch order, not a launch code. There were no codes at that time, only authentication that the Air Force colonel where in fact talking to the president, and that the order given through the loudspeaker in the silos were in fact coming from the SAC. All missile codes were set to 000000 in order to expedite a launch.
This sound is made as a warble tone, 900/1400 Hz, and part of the integrated system made by Bell. A standard has been drawn up, and you can read it here. The sound would start as soon as the colonel picked up a special red phone receiver and pushed the ALERT button. He could then give a one-way message to all missile squadrons at once, they would acknowledge by pushing a button and extinguish a light on the Primary Alert System console. Until now, there have only been test messages and drills passed along the PAS save for once where the missileers were told to open their locked safes in order to stand ready quicker.
After the thawing
Second and third are the sounds of the modern missile force. Things have become computerized, but still use floppies in 2016. These days, the messages do not necessarily come as voice commands but as Emergency Action Messages through digital networks. They may also come as voice message, but then the digital EAM system would be out of business and the shit really hit the fan.
The EAM sound has no public specs, but I’ve analyzed the sound track from a Northrop Grumman bragging video and replicated the sounds. It’s the first tone in this video, and now my message (SMS / iMessage) tone.
Lastly, we have the more subtle sounds of the REACT console. That would be the interface missileers use to interact with missile systems directly. Think of it as a really advanced version of the big red button that fires the missiles. These days, it takes several steps to accomplish a launch, entering different codes, selecting targets and more. There are in fact at least two different codes that must be entered, performing different unlocking of the missile and warhead. That means no-one can fire the missile without both codes, and the warhead won’t detonate without the one correct code. In an extremely hypothetical case, you could detonate the warhead on site with only the one code, but where is the fun in that?
The REACT console often alerts the crew of different actions that need to be performed and will sound off in a softer tone than the PAS and EAM. Not all messages are equally urgent, and more of an informative nature. That sound is now my You’ve Got Mail sound.
So to sum up, got a bit bored, made som ringtones that now scare and creep people out.
You can download the ringtones here:
SAC-PAS ringtone
EAM message ringtone
REACT console message ringtone