Military Interference
The Associated Press reports:
A secretive Air Force facility in Colorado Springs tested a radio frequency this past week that it would use to communicate with first responders in the event of a homeland security threat. But the frequency also controls an estimated 50 million garage door openers, and hundreds of residents in the area found that theirs had suddenly stopped working.
"It would have been nice not to have to get out of the car and open the door manually," said Dewey Rinehard, pointing out that the outage happened during the first cold snap of the year, with lows in the teens.
Conspiracy theory: That first-responders stuff is a cover story. They're actually testing a secret weapon that locks the enemy's cars in their garages.
It's sort of a low-key secret weapon, for less threatening enemies.
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In unrelated news, Karl Rove has announced plans to buy automatic garage door openers as a welcoming gift for the incoming congress.
Well, no politico could ever use the excuse that their "systems weren't able to talk to each other," etc. A million garage doors opening and slamming should get even the worst late responder's attention.
Ever since the government nationalized radio communications, it has allowed private operators to build devices to transmit radio waves so long as they meet one of two criteria
1) Pay money to the government to site a transmitter that transmits on a certain frequency at a certain location at a certain power.
2) The device transmits on one of a few frequency bands, has low power, and does not interfere with the signal of a class 1 licensee.
Guess what happens when a licensee or the govt interferes with a 2nd tier transmitter? Yep, the 2nd tier guys are out of luck.
Your conpiracy theory is way off. The Air Force actually did it because they thought it was, you know, funny. They're working on a project that will make everyone's pants fall down. Laugh if you like, but as I write this I'm wearing suspenders.
I'd just like to take this opportunity to send out a "boo-frickin-hoo" to Dewey Rinehard.
You know, a couple years ago when the villain on 24 had a remote control for every nuclear power plant I thought "Yeah, what's next, remote controls for every garage door as part of a plan to confuse the American people?"
I've been hearing references for a few years to people in Hawaii experiencing the same thing when aircraft carriers docked. I don't know the authenticity of that report offhand, though, and I can't be bothered to look into it today. 🙂
Eric, it's true.
When I was on my carrier, we had radios worn by various officers and watchstanders. It was called MOMS (Man On the Move System). TO punch through the metal on the ship, we had some pretty powerful repeaters.
Whenever we transitted through Puget Sound, people would complain.