Year Zero Numbers

Littered throughout much of the Year Zero information discovered thus far, sequences of numbers have been found. All the numbers so far have been in the format "24.x.y", where "x" has up to this point been a number between 1 and 20, and "y" a number between 1 and 8. While several theories have been posited as to their significance, no definite conclusion on their meaning has been reached.

An example of the hidden numbers.

The numbers

24.1.1

Found on http://www.themailstrom.com/

24.3.1

Found in the Morse Code at the end of recording found at phone number 1-216-333-1810.

24.3.2

Found in the ID3 tag of My Violent Heart.mp3

Another instance of this number was found from the name of a file on the USB drive that also contained the song Me, I'm Not. The file, 2432.mp3, also had 24.3.2 in its ID3 comments.

24.3.3

Found at http://www.uswiretap.com/

24.5.1

Found at The Price of Treason, coloured in light grey over the word "TREASON" in the title at the top left of the page.

24.5.2

Found at Open Source Resistance.

24.5.3

Found in an email from "Bureau of Morality - Year 0000 Search <DCS1000@thepriceoftreason.net>", sent to several followers of the World of Year Zero for an as-yet undetermined reason.

Text from the email:

date: 26 Mar 2007 22:58:35 -0700
from: Bureau of Morality - Year 0000 Search <DCS1000@thepriceoftreason.net>
subject: YOU HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED AS UN-AMERICAN
to: <muted>

<TRACE>
<INITIALIZE: DCS1000 v24.5.3>
<SEARCH>
<IDENTIFIED: http://www.iamtryingtobelieve.com>
<IDENTIFIED: http://www.anotherversionofthetruth.com>
<IDENTIFIED: http://www.artisresistance.com>
<ERROR: http://www.solutionsbackwardsinitiative.net/pilgrims>
||||| date-time failure |||||
<RESUME SEARCH>
<IDENTIFIED: muted>
<END TRACE>

rest of email cut

24.8.1

Found on the Grace The Teacher website

24.9.1

Found on the name of the video file from Red Horse Vector.

24.9.2

Found at Red Horse Vector.

24.10.1

Found in nohurry.mp3 as morse code

24.10.2

Found on http://churchofplano.com/

24.10.3

Found in opalo.mp3 as morse code

24.10.4

Warning code in the popup on the Consolidated Mail Systems website

24.10.5

Found in ballgameOver.mp3 as morse code

24.10.6

Found on http://www.105thairbornecrusaders.com/

24.10.7

Found on http://www.bethehammer.net/

24.10.8

Found on http://www.anotherversionofthetruth.com/

24.11.1

Found on One Country At A Time.

24.11.3

Found on the LA Mural [1]

24.12.2

Found through the phone number 18664456580, which is on the back of Year Zero packaging. In the transcript of the message it is implied that this number refers to the disclosure of surveillance, a statute of the United States Surveillance Law.

24.13.1

Found on http://www.artisresistance.com (The warning shows up after a few seconds)

24.13.2

Found on a flyer (http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=399108993&size=l) handed out at a show in Paris, France on February 21, 2007. Under the right side of the horizontal part of the T, there are a bunch of horizontal lines running down alongside it. If you count, there are 24 horizontal lines, then a vertical line, then 13 horizontal lines, then another vertical line, and finally 2 more horizontal lines. This gives 24.13.2.

24.14.1

Found on the Black/red 2007 tour t-shirt

24.14.2

Found in the auto-response email from http://iamtryingtobelieve.com/

Text of the email:

    "------------------------AUTO_RESPONSE--------------_--" 

Counting the consecutive hyphens results in 24.14.2.

24.14.3

Found on http://iamtryingtobelieve.com/index.html

24.15.1

Found on the White 2007 tour t-shirt

24.15.2

Found in the Morse Code at the end of the message heard at 1-310-295-1040

24.16.1

Found on http://www.thewaterturnedtoblood.net

24.16.2

Found on http://www.judsonogram.net

24.16.3

Found on http://www.thewaterturnedtoblood.net/bridge.htm

24.16.4

Found on the video for Survivalism - in the bottom-right corner of some of the monitors.

24.17.1

Found on http://www.hollywoodinmemoriam.org/memoriam.htm

24.18.1

Found on http://www.cedocore.com

24.19.1

From the Auto-Reply email from Francisco@securebroadcastinformatics.com. Counting the the ">" symbols in order gives a sequence of 2, 4, 0, 1, 9, 0, and 1. Reading the zeroes as dots gives 24.19.1.

Text from the email:

From: <blocked> To: Francisco@securebroadcastinformatics.com Content: hidden bandwidth

>>Dear Sir:

>>>>It has come to the attention of the Bureau of Morality's Internet Monitoring Taskforce that several of the clients for whom you handle IT seem to show bandwidth loads that do not match their formally submitted audit numbers.

We have asked for clarification of this matter on three occasions. Your replies have been either evasive or insufficient or simply late. Frankly, speaking as one human being to another, it has been as bad as dealing with a health insurance company.

>You may be aware of that frustration yourself, in the lengthy delays you have encountered trying to process the papers for your wife's breast cancer treatments. So I know you understand our frustration, and will be motivated to do your very best to explain these bandwidth discrepancies.

>>>>>>>>>You may submit any information in the full confidence that it will remain anonymous.

Perhaps your wife will start feeling better soon.

>A friend

24.19.2

From the http://www.solutionsbackwardsinitiative.net/pilgrims/ background.

24.20.1

Found on http://www.operationswamp0000.net

24.20.2

Found on http://www.operationchipsweep.net

24.20.3

Found on the Operation Swamp 0000 billboard.

24.20.4

Found on the Art Is Resistance flier that gave the location of the billboard.

The Theories

Pilgrim Streams

With the premature discovery of Free Rebel Art and Exterminal, a new theory has surfaced relating to the cryptic numbers. The following text was on freerebelart:

 Pilgrim Stream: 24.2
 Data in transit -

This brings up the notion that the Pilgrims separated the content they wished to send back into "streams" for categorization, and their machine farm is sending them back in no particular order.

This is currently the most likely theory.

Dates

One initial theory was that the numbers corresponded to dates; for example: 24.14.2 would translate to the 14th of February, 2024. However, this theory was quickly seen to be flawed; "Year Zero" itself has been determined to be 2022, and the frequency of the second and third numbers make the date theory unlikely. Also, efforts to link the numbers to the emerging Year Zero Timeline have proven fruitless.

Bible Verses

A second theory was developed by some who suspected a Biblical connection; in the King James Bible, the 24th book is the book of Jeremiah. Many reading it felt that it offered a fitting undertone to the overall Year Zero story.

For example: 24.14.2 would translate as book 24 (Jeremiah), chapter 14, verse 2.

So far, there have been no numbers that do not match up with bible verses; however, many numbers interpreted in this way do not seem to give any special insight.

For more information, see Year Zero Bible References.

Year Zero Tracklisting

One widely researched theory is that the numbers correspond to letters from the Year Zero song titles. The logic behind this is that the first number, 24, refers to Halo 24, the designation of Year Zero in the NIN catalog; the following numbers refer to a track number and a letter in the title of that track. For example: 24.14.2 would translate as: Halo 24 (Year Zero), song 14 (Another Version of the Truth), character 2 (n). In this theory, it has never been determined exactly what the purpose of the numbers would be. However, with the discovery of numbers which had a second value higher than 16, some doubt was cast on the validity of this theory. Because Year Zero only has 16 known tracks, one would have to then discount several well-established numbers.

The letters which, using this theory, have been referenced are:

h-sur-ves-m-th-godgiven-m-h-th-ano-in-zero

Federal Orderly Conduct Act

The number 24.13.1, found in the warning for accessing the Art Is Resistance website, is a section from the Federal Orderly Conduct Act which the user violates by visiting the page without proper authorization. This suggests that each of the found numbers correspond to a section of the Act. Also, 24.12.2 was found through a phone number found on Year Zero packaging, and is said to be a statute in the Disclosure of Surveillance section of the US Surveillance Laws.

This theory will be impossible to confirm, however, unless a copy of the Act is released.

Halos

Some theorists suspect that the second section of each number refers to the Halo number of previous NIN releases, with the third part of the number indicating a track. In this theory, the 24 at the beginning of the number serves only to link them all together as part of the world of Year Zero, which is, as stated above, Halo 24.

Some of the tracks referred to in this theory:

• Halo 1. Down In It

1. Down In It (Skin)

• Halo 3. Head Like a Hole

1. Head Like A Hole (Slate)
2. Head Like a Hole (Clay)
3. Terrible Lie (Sympathetic Mix)

• Halo 5. Broken

1. Pinion
2. Wish
3. Last

• Halo 8. The Downward Spiral

1. Mr. Self Destruct

• Halo 9. Closer To God

1. Closer To God
2. Closed (precursor)

• Halo 10. Further Down The Spiral

1. Piggy (Nothing Can Stop Me Now)
2. The Art Of Self Destruction, Part One
3. Self Destruction, Part Two
4. The Downward Spiral (The Bottom)
5. Hurt (Quiet)
6. Eraser (Denial, Realization)
7. At The Heart Of It All
8. Eraser (Polite)

• Halo 11. The Perfect Drug

1. The Perfect Drug (Remixed by Meat Beat Manifesto)

• Halo 12. Closure

1. Piggy

• Halo 13. The Day the World Went Away

1. Day the World Went Away
2. Starfuckers, Inc.

• Halo 14. The Fragile

1. Somewhat Damaged
2. The Day The World Went Away
3. The Frail

• Halo 15. We're in This Together, Pt. 1

1. We're In This Together
2. 10 Miles High

• Halo 16. Things Falling Apart

1. Slipping Away
2. The Great Collapse
3. The Wretched (version)
4. Starfuckers Inc. (version)

• Halo 17. And All That Could Have Been

1. Terrible Lie

• Halo 18. The Hand That Feeds

1. The Hand That Feeds

• Halo 19. With Teeth

1. All The Love In The World
2. You Know What You Are?

• Halo 20. Only

1. Only
2. The Hand That Feeds (DFA Mix)
3. Love Is Not Enough (Live At Rehearsals)
4. Only (Video) (??)

Supporters of this theory point to the following excerpt from the chat at the solutionsbackwardsinitiative website as suggesting there is a link between the materials with numbers on them and the music of NIN:

MIGUEL: What's our key text?
EVA: don't get me started.
. . .
JORDAN: We mined a few banned books/songs.
WAYNE: Eva didn't like my choice.
. . .
MIGUEL: Banned books? Oh, THAT was a good idea.
. . .
EVA: at least i used music from someone who's alive and fucking kicking.
MIGUEL: Was alive when he went to prison. Who knows now.

Catalog of Clues

Some suggest that the numbers are used simply as a way to catalog the clues to the World of Year Zero as they are found, either by the real-world World of Year Zero followers or by the in-game Solutions Backwards Initiative team. Evidence for this is that many numbers with the same second value are found through similar means; for example, all the numbers beginning with 24.16.y were found as a result of the Survivalism video.