The Cold War's Accidental Whale Observatory

33 pointsposted 4 days ago
by pseudolus
(thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)

9 Comments

sm001

an hour ago

The author included, near the end, a paragraph about me and my best friend the sonar operator who taught me a lot of what I know about cetacean communication in the 1970s. He was hunting soviet subs in 1962 and he saved us from a nuclear war during the October Missile Crisis because he had detected a sub that the Russians were thinking was not detectable. My friend had also conducted experimental acoustic interactions with cetaceans at sea.

dmos62

33 minutes ago

Thanks for sharing. So much yet to learn about this topic.

lukan

27 minutes ago

"he saved us from a nuclear war during the October Missile Crisis because he had detected a sub that the Russians were thinking was not detectable"

How did this prevent nuclear war? Why would the soviets otherwise have launched a first strike?

dfc

an hour ago

If this article is interesting to you I highly recommend War of the Whales. It is an interesting look at Cold war science+politics and the environment. A decent part of the book is about SOSUS.

https://warofthewhales.com/

xg15

2 hours ago

> the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), a complex array of hydrophones fixed on the ocean floor and connected by cables to secret listening stations set up along coasts all over the world.

One for the conspiracy theorists...

wbl

9 minutes ago

Look up the local names for Tongue of the Ocean and you'll have even more gist for that mill.

hagbard_c

an hour ago

No conspiracy needed, SOSUS was a known fact, the Soviet Union made attempts to find and disable the hydrophones, Tom Clancy wrote many a novel in which SOSUS was mentioned or played a role, etc. It was the ocean equivalent of the Key Hole satellites, used to monitor the movements of Soviet 'boomers' - nuclear missile subs.