Fallout 3 creepy

Many players of the evil persuasion know that you can kill Three Dog and
he will be replaced by the technician Margaret. She is not a
charismatic person and has very little it say, seeming to not enjoy her
new announcing duties. She also never appears in person, and therefore
cannot be killed. Once Three Dog is dead, you're stuck with Margaret.
What
most players do NOT know is that under certain circumstances, GNR will
become a "numbers station." A numbers station is a station that
broadcasts an unusual coded message. Many of these exist in real life
and some hypothesize that they are a nuclear retaliation control
network. Simply check Wikipedia for more information about these odd
broadcasts as they relate to the real world. Back to Fallout 3...
No
one is really sure which actions are needed to hear the numbers station
in Fallout 3. It appears that you must kill Three Dog, because no one
has reported hearing the numbers station with him still alive. It also
appears that you have to skip over the quest "Galaxy News Radio" where
you help boost the signal so that the station can be broadcast further
than just the immediate DC area. This is easy enough to do with either a
speech check or simply using the FalloutWiki to look up where to go
next and advance the main plot. Finally, you definitely have to destroy
Raven Rock. The is the actual trigger to turn GNR into a numbers station
and it will remain such for the rest of the game. However, the vast
majority of the players who perform these three actions still continue
hearing the standard GNR broadcasts, so there must be several more
requirements the community has yet to isolate.
If you're lucky enough
to have hit upon the right set of circumstances, just after destroying
Raven Rock, you will get the message, "Radio signal lost" and a few
seconds later, "Radio signal found." You cannot, however, actually
listen to GNR just yet because you didn't boost the signal, and are out
of range of the broadcast at the exit of Raven Rock. Luckily, Raven Rock
is situated in the mountains and is right near one of the few places
outside DC that you can get high enough to catch the signal. So far, the
confirmed location to hear the GNR numbers signal are:
1. Within the immediate DC area obviously...this is true for the regular GNR throughout the game.
2. At the top of the ferris wheel at point lookout
3. On the tops of some of the satcom arrays you can climb in the northwestern map area.
4.
On the roof of Tenpenny Tower, though this may be within normal
broadcast range anyway. Feel free to playtest and get back to me on
this.
5. On the highest point of the broken bridge around Arefu...again, may be within braodcast range anyway.
6.
On some of the highest points of the mountain tops in the area near
Raven Rock. This is obviously your easiest chance to first listen to the
numbers station.
When you tune in, you will hear an old familiar
voice...Three Dog, despite the fact that you killed him earlier.
However, you will quickly notice that he does not seem to be "in
character." So I guess it's not technically Three Dog, but just the
voice actor, Erik Dellums. He reads a series of numbers in a monotone,
depressed sounding voice. He always recites a list of single digits
between 9 and 12 characters long. For example,
"nine-three-seven-nine-one-seven-two-zero-three-four." Hever never uses a
multi-digit number like "eleven" or "forty." These numbers are followed
by widely varying lengths of Morse code. This is then followed by the
song "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire." All other music tracks
seem to be inactive on the numbers station.
The Morse code was the
easiest part of the mystery to crack, as the code is widely available
and many people actually know it by heart. We quickly had a list of a
great number of messages in English. Some sounded completely mundane and
even comical, such as "Washed the car today, maybe Chinese for dinner."
or "Have you watched my YouTube video yet, I uploaded myself kicking
bums in the nuts."
You may be saying, "But wait, YouTube doesn't
exist in the Fallout universe," and you are right. As far as we could
tell, all of the messages sounded like they were based in our reality
somewhere near present day.
Some of the messages, however, are quite
sinister, such as, "The Queen has died today. The world mourns, as on
days like these, we are all Brits." or "I can't believe they're actually
done it. Not long left. The noise. I can't take the noise anymore. I
have a pistol in the attic."
Just recently, a player on the
wikiforums noticed a message that brought to light the meaning of the
messages. He was reading a thread that collected all known messages,
transposed from Morse to English, and saw the line,
"one-two-zero-five-five-two-eight-two-zero-one-zero. What are you
talikn' about? You'll be missed." He realized this referred to the
recent death of Gary Coleman, and the quickly realized the numbers were
the time and date of death. He immediately scanned through the messages
to try and find more examples of this apparent future telling by a game
that's more than a year old. The next message he read shocked him and
pushed him to enlist the aid of the others to decipher the codes. The
message was "nine-four-five-four-two-zero-two-zero-one-zero. Accident in
the gulf, several dead. Oil spill apparently averted." He realized this
was the BP explosion and the erroneous day-one assessment that the well
was not leaking.
From this point on, all numbers will be transcribed
as times and dates. All times were given in game in military format and
remain so in this document.
Numerous members of the FalloutWiki
message board began looking over the messages to see what else we could
learn. We quickly found that most of the dates were after the game had
been released, yet oddly some were from the past. "22:15 April 15, 1865
He's dead and blame will probably be placed on that actor, Booth.
Johnson better not cheat me out of the payment." This shed new doubt on
the official version of the Lincoln assassination.
As the community
quickly started piling up interpretations of the messages, the mods of
the site summarily banned everyone who had posted in, or even read the
thread. All reference to the numbers station was removed from
FalloutWiki and filtering software was put in place to prevent reposting
of any relevant information. A few people, however, are trading emails
and slowly finishing the translation of the remaining messages and
putting dates to the existing ones.
"The Queen has died today. The world mourns, as on days like these, we are all Brits." 4:02 March 19, 2014
"Have you watched my YouTube video yet, I uploaded myself kicking bums in the nuts." 24:16 December 24, 2012
"I can't believe Britney's actually won an Oscar!" 21:33 February 27, 2023
"I
can't believe they've actually done it. Not long left. They were
warned, but they just had to keep pushing the boundaries of science. The
noise. I can't take the noise anymore. And the light, dear God! The
Universe is slowly unraveling around us. I'm not going to wait for
death. I have a pistol in the attic." This is actually the only message
not preceded by a string of numbers.
It may be worth noting that the latest date on any of the messages is 1:27 July 6, 2027.