A winter of silence

The snow outside makes the city quiet, but it’s not the kind of silence that comforts—it’s the kind that unsettles. I spent the evening with my SDR receiver, sweeping the HF bands, then jumping to VHF/UHF. Nothing but static and broken tones. Not random noise—this was structured, patterned, as if someone was deliberately flooding the spectrum.

It wasn’t always like this. Before 2020, the air was alive with voices: hams bouncing signals across the globe, number stations whispering strange codes, aircraft chatter bleeding through. Now it feels hollow, drained.

And then—21:17 UTC—I caught a faint fragment on 40 meters: “…still alive… keep… fighting…”. Just enough to hear, gone in an instant. I played it back again and again, slowing it, filtering it, until I could almost convince myself it was real.

If there are others out there, still resisting, then this silence isn’t just absence—it’s suppression. Someone doesn’t want us talking.