Swedish Fish

Sometimes We’re Not on the Brink of Nuclear War

Originally posted to: chenmark.com/weekly-thoughts

Right now, it seems like there is a lot of confirmation bias occurring in popular discourse.? We’re no experts, but it likely results from increasingly narrow social circles and news sources that enthusiastically reaffirm our already (clearly accurate)?social, political, and economic beliefs.? At a certain point, it becomes almost impossible to believe the “other side” has any reasonable thoughts.? The logical conclusion is to dismiss those who disagree as “evil” rather than just a person with a differing opinion.? As the saying goes, if you’re a hammer in search of a nail, you’ll probably find one.?

A lot of conversations over the past week have reminded us of a?2021 Radio Lab?episode about the dangers of making assumptions (particularly when assuming the worst in people).? Let’s go back to the early 1980s, the time of Madonna, The Walkman, Spandex, The Brat-Pack, Atari… and the final decade of The Cold War.? At the time, everybody was on edge about the dangers of communism and Russian containment (at least, when they were not rocking out to?Duran Duran).?

So, when in?1981 a Soviet nuclear sub washed up on the Swedish shores, it stoked fears of nuclear war, which is understandable since there are only 140 miles of water between Sweden and the Soviet Union.? The government responded in part by deploying?hydrophones?on buoys along the coast to listen for subs.? These hydrophones heard sounds of what sounded like Soviet submarine activity up and down the coastline, in harbors, and near secret military basis.? There was only one logical conclusion.? This was irrefutable evidence of Soviet incursion into Swedish waters, a salvo into nuclear annihilation.??

In defense, when the Army heard the unmistakable sound of a submarine (which was classified), they would?drop a bomb on the water from a helicopter.? Other times, when they heard the sound, it would raise an alarm to start a submarine chase.?

Despite all of this, no pieces of the submarine ever materialized (despite having bombs dropped on them), and the chases never found any evidence of a Soviet sub.? The prevailing theory was that this was due to the sophistication of the Soviet submarine technology.? For example, the Swedish military used sonar to investigate the sound.? On the sonar screen, they would watch the object split into two, then divide into four, and then go back into one again.? The thought was that Russia was able to build a super-high-tech sub that could decompose into four pieces and combine back into one unit.? Incredible (and unnerving).? So, what happened when the Berlin Wall fell?? From Radio Lab:?

WAHLBERG: So then the strange thing happens, right? In 1989… everything is changing.

MCEWEN: Because the Swedish military is continuing to report hearing the sounds of Russian submarines invading their waters.

WAHLBERG: Twenty, 30 incidents every year… At that time, we had the prime minister, Carl Bildt. And he got so upset about this, he wrote a very angry letter to Boris Yeltsin saying, now you really have to stop. Now you have created your own country, and the first thing you do is to try to occupy Sweden.

MCEWEN: But Boris Yeltsin’s like, I don’t know what you’re talking about.

WAHLBERG: Yeltsin said, well, we are, of course, not there. We don’t – you can see; all of our subs are on land. What are you talking about? You’re crazy.

So the Royal Swedish Navy started to do some digging, and invited?Magnus Wahlberg?and Hakan Westerberg – academics who studied underwater sound at the University of Southern Denmark – to a secretive military meeting to listen to the top-secret submarine sound the Navy had been using to identify the Soviet submarine incursions.? Keep in mind, this sound had been classified for 15 years, and no civilian had ever heard it before.? From Radio Lab:?

MCEWEN: So after they played the sound, the naval officers turned to the scientists and say basically, OK, now that you’ve heard the typical sound, we’d like each of you to try to figure out who or what is making it… And even in that moment sitting at the table, Hakan and Magnus turned to each other. And they don’t say anything, but they’re both thinking….

WAHLBERG: What – this is very strange. This is definitely not the sub.

MCEWEN: So after the meeting, Magnus and Hakan are standing outside…Talking about the sound.

WAHLBERG: It sounds a bit like a popping sound.

WESTERBERG: The sound when you fry bacon.

MCEWEN: And both of them thought…

WESTERBERG: …That these must be a biological sound.

MCEWEN: But what? … This sounds like air bubbles. So their question is, like, which animal releases air under the water?

WESTERBERG: And we had kind of this hunch.

WAHLBERG: Yeah, yeah. Herring.

WESTERBERG: Herring.

As it turns out, fish have a swim bladder, which is a tiny sac that fills with gas to regulate its buoyancy.??Herring are unique?in that their swim bladder sac empties straight into the anal opening which causes a lot of… farts.? Herrings also travel in large schools, sometimes as big as a square kilometer with billions of fish.? At that scale, when the sacs empty, it well, it makes quite a sound.? Again, from Radio Lab:?

MCEWEN: Their findings were harder for some members of the Navy than others to accept.

WESTERBERG: I mean, there were people that – their whole career was chasing submarines.

MCEWEN: But finally, in 1999, it became official. The typical sound that had haunted the Swedish Navy for over a decade was not made by Soviet submarines. Instead, for over a decade, the Swedish Navy had been straining their ears to hear the sound of thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of herring, all farting…together.

At moments of heightened tension, we always wonder what “Truths” we hold today will seem like laughably misguided fart jokes 20 years from now.? It seems to us that the whole herring debacle could have been avoided through some basic critical thinking, being open to exploring multiple opinions, and frankly, not making world-ending catastrophizing outcomes the baseline expectation.? Sometimes we’re not on the brink of nuclear annihilation.? Sometimes it’s just billions of Swedish fish farting in unison.

Have a great week,

Your Chenmark Team

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