Mystery of Sonic Weapon Attacks At US Embassy In Cuba Deepens (theguardian.com) 215
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence. He climbed back into bed. Inexplicably, the agonizing sound hit him again. It was as if he'd walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room. Soon came the hearing loss, and the speech problems, symptoms both similar and altogether different from others among at least 21 U.S. victims in an astonishing international mystery still unfolding in Cuba. The top U.S. diplomat has called them "health attacks." New details learned by the Associated Press indicate at least some of the incidents were confined to specific rooms or even parts of rooms with laser-like specificity, baffling U.S. officials who say the facts and the physics don't add up.
Suspicion initially focused on a sonic weapon, and on the Cubans. Yet the diagnosis of mild brain injury, considered unlikely to result from sound, has confounded the FBI, the state department and U.S. intelligence agencies involved in the investigation. Some victims now have problems concentrating or recalling specific words, several officials said, the latest signs of more serious damage than the U.S. government initially realized. The United States first acknowledged the attacks in August -- nine months after symptoms were first reported.
Suspicion initially focused on a sonic weapon, and on the Cubans. Yet the diagnosis of mild brain injury, considered unlikely to result from sound, has confounded the FBI, the state department and U.S. intelligence agencies involved in the investigation. Some victims now have problems concentrating or recalling specific words, several officials said, the latest signs of more serious damage than the U.S. government initially realized. The United States first acknowledged the attacks in August -- nine months after symptoms were first reported.
Not Cuba (Score:5, Interesting)
I commented on this story in the past, and I'll say it again now. It doesn't make any sense that the Cuban government is doing this. They are a dictatorship, and if they didn't want US diplomats there, or didn't want to try and reconnect with the US, then they simply wouldn't do it. For them to try and injure US diplomats makes no sense at all. I believe this is being done by some 3rd party nation to try and cause problems between the US and Cuba. Why? Because they want to maintain the status quo (the US and Cuba not having diplomatic relations) because they stand to gain either financially and / or in regional influence and power. Several South American countries, as well as Russia, come to mind...
From an excerpt from a 2016 article discussing the US restoring some relations with the Cuban Government:
As if that wasn’t remarkable enough, this has occurred with Cuban-Russian relations at their strongest since the demise of the Soviet Union. Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev has visited Cuba twice since February 2008 while Vladimir Putin visited in July 2014. Meanwhile Raúl Castro has been to Moscow three times in recent years. Can these two relationships really keep improving in parallel?
http://theconversation.com/cub... [theconversation.com]
Re: Not Cuba (Score:5, Insightful)
The real mystery isn't who did it, but how. There's always somebody nefarious; but this particular somebody seems to have invented a weapon that nobody else has even thought of.
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Maybe a neurotoxin in the water? Nerve damage may cause people to hear phantom noises.
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Targeted sonic weapons were thought of a long time ago. There are examples in science fiction literature from before WWII, and even hack writers like Ayn Rand used the idea in one of her trashy dime novels (Atlas Shrugged).
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Re: Not Cuba (Score:4, Interesting)
if you bothered to read the details they don't believe it is a targeted sonic weapon as the physics combined with the brain damage mean it is likely something else.
There's really only two possibilities. One, directed sound. Two, directed RF. As it turns out, you can stimulate human hearing with certain radio frequencies [xcorr.net].
Either way, having the effect be strong at some points and weak at others is a classic sign of an interference pattern. Two identical, synchronized point emission sources of sound (or RF) will create both valleys of zero signal strength, and peaks of double strength.
Either way, the effect should be measurable.
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If only there were some kind of device that could accurately capture and record soundwaves, even those outside of normal human hearing.
Re: Not Cuba (Score:2)
Talkin' bout smartphones dude.
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Wow, brilliant plan. Attack the leaders of a nuclear armed country with a weapon that causes...mild inconveniences. We survived the USSR and North Korea is nothing in comparison.
Re:Not Cuba (Score:5, Interesting)
It doesn't make any sense that the Cuban government is doing this.
Yes it does. People have this weird blindspot where they readily accept that their own society has factions, but are far more willing to believe that their adversaries are monolithic. Obama opened up relations with Cuba, and there is opposition to that by hardliners in America. But there is also OPPOSITION IN CUBA, because they have their own hardliners, who see Raul's opening to the imperialists as a betrayal of the ideals of the revolution. Some of those rejectionist hardliners are in powerful positions, and it is likely that they are doing this to sabotage relations between America and Cuba, and possibly even get rid of Raul and the Castro dynasty.
Re:Not Cuba (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't make any sense that the Cuban government is doing this.
Yes it does. People have this weird blindspot where they readily accept that their own society has factions, but are far more willing to believe that their adversaries are monolithic. Obama opened up relations with Cuba, and there is opposition to that by hardliners in America. But there is also OPPOSITION IN CUBA, because they have their own hardliners, who see Raul's opening to the imperialists as a betrayal of the ideals of the revolution. Some of those rejectionist hardliners are in powerful positions, and it is likely that they are doing this to sabotage relations between America and Cuba, and possibly even get rid of Raul and the Castro dynasty.
Alternately this was a surveillance operation gone awry, they were trying to spy on the diplomats using some kind of ultrasonic imaging device and screwed up. Either the tech was way more dangerous than they thought or the operators miscalibrated it.
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You seem to have this weird capitalist blindspot, where you think such people couldn't go for a conventional bombing/poisoning/assass
Re:Not Cuba (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't make any sense that the Cuban government is doing this.
From the looks of it even U.S. officials don't believe that the official Cuban government has anything to do it. I have even seen stories about Cuba willing to accommodate an FBI investigation. That would have been unthinkable in the not too distant past.
However there are a few parties around that are absolutely livid over the idea of relations between U.S. and Cuba being normalized. My money is on it turning out to be U.S.-based Cuban group whose families hated Castro for one reason or another possibly in partnership with counter-revolutionaries still in Cuba.
Less likely is someone in Cuba who thinks Raul Castro is betraying the Revolution by engaging with the U.S. But it is possible.
Could it be some rogue operation from some die-hard cold-warrior types either in some U.S. agency or an alumni of one? That would be too stupid to be believable if it weren't for the example of Oliver North and his ilk. I hope it isn't that.
Re:Not Cuba (Score:5, Interesting)
However there are a few parties around that are absolutely livid over the idea of relations between U.S. and Cuba being normalized. My money is on it turning out to be U.S.-based Cuban group whose families hated Castro for one reason or another possibly in partnership with counter-revolutionaries still in Cuba. Less likely is someone in Cuba who thinks Raul Castro is betraying the Revolution by engaging with the U.S. But it is possible.
Those people exist. But who of them would think we hate that, let's create a secret sonic screwdriver to give US diplomats hearing loss and light brain damage. I mean whatever is creating this must have gone through a pretty big R&D project with a non-trivial chance of failure. It must have been tweaked and tested pretty well to both be strong enough to cause damage and weak enough to remain stealthy for quite some time. That sounds to me like a secret intelligence/military program, not some ragtag rebels. Even if they stole a prototype, somebody would know and using it correctly would not be easy - look at the rebels in Eastern Ukraine who couldn't tell the difference between military jets and a civilian airliner.
The second thing that doesn't add up is motivation, if you're trying to sabotage US-Cuba relations you'd better not look like a third party trying to do just that. You'd try to discredit or frame Cuba, you might stage some blatant attack like a car bomb or poison their food to say the US is not wanted but this FUD? Let's be honest, diplomats are an archaic leftover from when they were trusted emissaries and negotiators because getting instructions from home took days and weeks. Even if they pulled out physically, the US could maintain normal diplomatic relations virtually. You'd only need a booth to handle physical matters, though you could probably move most things like visa applications online too. The actual embassy is today mostly for show.
My guess is that this is an intelligence project gone wrong. This is supposed to be a form of scanner, picking up on something trying to punch through some countermeasures that are in place and causing long term damage that wasn't caught in testing. To me that's by far the most plausible explanation for why this would exist and why they'd target diplomats in particular. I mean there are probably other ways you could damage economic ties, tourism or whatever that could damage relations but only diplomats would have political information of any real value. Everything else seems a bit contrived, like you could but it wouldn't really make any sense.
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Why place the transmitter/scanner right next to the diplomats bed? Wouldn't that be the place the diplomats keep a mobile phone at all times? The Russians used microwaves in conjunction with a RFID type activated microphone and membrane concealed inside a wooden carving.
If it were microwaves, he would have heard a crackling sound and his hair looking as if he was hit by static. That happened to people walking past Google's office in London.
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My guess is Russia. Russia and the US have long argued over Cuba. They're probably the only ones in the world besides us who have developed the technology to do this sort of thing. Remember that HAARP project that people are always theorizing over? Russia has their own. The only people who might know more about RF than Russia would be us.
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My guess is Russia.
The technology involved is not that exotic. The argument against it being Russia is that the operation seems too amateurish and botched. That just doesn't fit with what we know of Russian covert ops. Of course they could have intentionally made it seem that way but the intended purpose in that case seems wholly obscure.
If the intent was to drive a wedge (further) between the US and Cuba then the effect of the discovery that it was not Cuba that carried out the attack then the operation will have the opp
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Consider Russia as a likely culprit, not because of the tide of anti-Russian paranoia in the US right now, but simply because of the politics of it.
The US has in the last 9 months (since this started happening) expelled more and more Russian diplomats from it's soil and denied it access to a number of it's buildings in the US that were typically used as listening stations. The US/Russia tacitly accepted these in each others countries as it meant they had less secrets from each other and built trust post-col
Monolithic (Score:2)
You're assuming the Cuban government is one monolithic entity. There might be a faction of the government that wants to mess with Cuban-US relations.
A huge chunk of their GDP, roughly 20%, comes from assistance from Venezuela. Thawing US relations might be a threat to that income stream. Then again, Venezuela might see thawing US-Cuban relations as a threat, as well, though I don't think a Venezuelan attack on US diplomats in Cuba would happen without someone in the Cuban government, at the very least, know
Neyt Cuba, comrade.... (Score:2)
Also, what countries are willing to commit outlandish and almost comic book esq plots against people they don't like? The KGB springs to mind, with their strange assassination techniques that they have employed in the past. (Look up details on their radiation poisoning of people. Rather than just hit somebody with a car when they walk across the street, t
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You think that the entire Cuban regime is of one mind about things? It would be quite remarkable if you were correct.
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It's against Cuba's apparent interest, yes.
False flag is one of 3 big possibilities I can think of. Another is something that was intended to be a more subtle operation of some kind that was badly fucked up. Last, there could be rogue elements in Cuba's intelligence apparatus that would rather relations not improve.
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China is the last country that would risk targeting US and Canadian diplomats. They have too many diplomats of their own and too much vested monetary interest in stability of relations (for trade) to take even the tiniest risk of the kind of worldwide condemnation that action would bring if discovered. Venezuela is a possibility because they're desperate. But a non-governmental group is more likely.
It can't be a false flag operation, because there's no flag and no clear attempt to implicate a country. It ca
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Of course there's a flag. What country is it happening in?
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It's not definitely a false flag operation. It's not even definitely a real effect. It could be a neurologic problem, and allergy, a disease, or even plumbing noises and lack of sleep.
That it's something real is quite believable. That it's a sonic weapon is a bit dubious. That it's an attack by someone is plausible.
If it were a sonic weapon, where would that weapon need to be located? How big would it need to be? Would it need a clear air path? What could it use for reflectors, and are such things pr
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Well, that's the myth at least. We won't know for sure until we see those tax returns.
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He didn't show shit, you liar.
Re:I actually agree (Score:4, Informative)
Well, that's the myth at least. We won't know for sure until we see those tax returns.
He's already shown them, and caused the Hillary loving media to weep. Trump's black-mark in business is a casino hotel in NV needing to go into administration (chapter 11), which it soon left to continue as business as normal. The bank that held a significant part of the debt were happy to take a large number of shares in the business as principal repayment. Hillary's media chums won't tell you that, it doesn't fit their rhetoric. It happens hundreds of times per day across the land.
Here's an annotated list of Donald Trump black-marks in business (aka. bankruptcies). And yes, there's more than one of them: http://www.politifact.com/trut... [politifact.com] It's worth keeping in mind that this does not count his other failed business ventures that petered out into nothing or ended up being quietly euthanized in a hailstorm of lawsuits and even fraud and racketeering allegations without actually declaring bankruptcy.
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Actually you may be garbling the story that Meuller *might* have Trump's tax returns.
Nobody but the IRS has seen any of Trump's recent tax returns.
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The US isn't invading Cuba.
Oh, please. Invasion is so twentieth-century. The modern approach is to sabotage them economically and then buy them out when they're too weak to fight back and are begging for help.
Re:I actually agree (Score:4, Interesting)
This is commonly referred to as "Missing the joke". It is common among people who are told one thing and hear something else.
Of course, I don't have a good vocabulary entry regarding when it's about politics rather than jokes, but I believe you have just experienced it. There are actually therapists (not to be confused with "the rapists") who specialize in trying to help you with this disorder.
Trump is and always has been about monuments. I've seen many of his monuments. As a real-estate developer, he was generally willing to build things just about everywhere and anywhere so long as it would have his name on it. His gift has generally always been to gather business people and investors together to pool their money for a development project. He would then make provisions that said that he really didn't care whether he made money or not himself... it was only important his name was on it. He likes big shiny things with his name on it.
Watch every single thing he has done in D.C. so far... every deal, every negotiation. Consistently, it's been about gaining leverage for the "Trump Wall" or "Great Wall of Trump". No other topic causes him to become so impassioned as building a wall. He is backing off of dreamers now because he realized "I have to admit that there are some Mexicans that actually should be sent back"... he really doesn't care one way or the other. Hell, if he did, Trump would never have employed dreamers himself. What he does care about is that he will get one of the biggest monuments in the world with his name on it.
So... stop thinking about Trump in terms of politics. He will (as he has so far) do absolutely anything to gain support for his new monument. Congress could get tons of stuff out of him if all they did was use 1 mile of wall as a form of payment for him
Then there's Cuba.
Cuba is an excellent opportunity for :
a) Land grabs. Greece, Southern Italy, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, Mallorca, Malta, Gozo, etc... are covered with hotels... almost all sea front real-estate is owned by opportunist land grabbers from elsewhere. This is probably Greece's #1 financial problem. Their most valuable industry... tourism is completely owned by external entities.
b) Tax haven.... Trump has always loved a great tax haven... I'd bash him.. but he would be stupid if he didn't.
c) Monuments.... the cost of building in Cuba is low enough now that Trump could build and furnish the world's largest casino for pennies on the dollar. It's not about profit. It's about making a hotel with a sign so big you'd be able to read "Trump" from the Florida Keys.
Trump is done padding his bottom line. Even if he loses everything now, he will still get the presidential retirement package which is pretty good from what I hear. He doesn't have to make more money. He simply needs to relocate it to maximize the visibility of Trump for as long as possible.
He wants the monuments. Casinos come and go... but with some luck, we can keep his name on one
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When you have a weapon with a range of 27i you can't shoot somebody who's 34i away.
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You just aptly described how Trump made his money by turning his own name into a brand, rather than actual real estate investment, and then followed it with "stop thinking of Trump in terms of politics," politics being that game where it's all about turning your name into a brand...
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You just aptly described how Trump made his money by turning his own name into a brand, rather than actual real estate investment, and then followed it with "stop thinking of Trump in terms of politics," politics being that game where it's all about turning your name into a brand...
Politics is a means to an end to Trump, not the game itself. He doesn't love to play the game. He loves to see his name in gold.
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Not just his name... daddy's too...
One can only wonder (Score:2)
what goes on in some people's minds and the underlying cause for it - assuming this is human activity - to cause this kind of injury to someone.
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It's just experemental weapons testing by a third party. The oppertunity to disrupt relations between the US and Cuba is just the icing on the cake.
Personally, my bet is on NK or China.
Well, if that's the case - experimental, injuring unrelated people - pretty sick. Fits right into the current state of affairs.
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Experimental weapons testing has almost always targeted "innocents". Quite often their own soldiers or citizens. Go ahead and read about some of the atrocities the US government has (then) secretly committed against US citizens in the last century. It'll break your heart.
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Experimental weapons testing has almost always targeted "innocents". Quite often their own soldiers or citizens. Go ahead and read about some of the atrocities the US government has (then) secretly committed against US citizens in the last century. It'll break your heart.
It still needs a certain frame of mind, callousness and lack of empathy - just think of torture - enhanced interrogations - "allowed" under certain circumstances, and the permission comes from where? This goes for "civilized" areas where laws supposed to exist, like the USA.
OK, and then there was this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
How early does it start in a human?
Mind Control Beams (Score:3, Funny)
This time the CIA is on the receiving end and it's the Communists' fault.
Fifty points to Slytherin for irony.
the Sonic Projector (Score:2)
Cripes, it's not all that big a secret. Here you go - https://www.wired.com/2007/06/... [wired.com]
What doesn't make much sense is why it's being done. Keeping the embassy staff on edge must look like a good idea to someone of significant power in Cuba because putting the requisite technology together isn't something that average Cuban could do.
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I wonder if there was actual sound involved, or if that was just a symptom of nerve/brain stimulation, for example by radio or microwave stimulation.
Even if it were sound, it seems to me that strong enough intensity pressure waves could indeed cause cell damage as they passed through the skull - especially if there were infra-/ultra-sound involved, so that the "agonizing sound" was actually a fringe effect of much louder inaudible sounds.
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The ultrasound devices are fairly tight beams. The microwave ones probably are too, and it doesn't take much energy to shake up someone's brain, if you're depositing it effectively on the inside.
If you got a constructive node in a wall it might shake some dust loose. Your chances of hitting something fragile would be pretty small.
If you took that DARPA device that's designed to communicate over a kilometre and aimed it at someone's head from the other side of a hotel wall....
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Audible sound can damage nerves in the ear. Ultrasonic waves might be audible if they're powerful enough to drive the ear (or the air) into nonlinearity, but if the subject moves his head away from a local maximum or just turns his head to that the waves don't enter his ear well then they become inaudible. Perhaps the ultrasonics can cause localized heating in the ear's nerves and damage them, without being audible.
Deep brain damage? The shape of the skull might focus the ultrasonic waves.
A good argument ca
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There seems to be an assumption by many that only one method is being used by the perpetrators. It is of course quite possible that both neurotoxins and sonic devices are being used.
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Brain damage is usually caused by burst capillaries. Which is due to high blood pressure. That's either the blood vessels being constricted, or the heart pumping at super high pressures. Alternatively, the water in the blood could have been cooked by microwaves, causing them to burst.
CBC also has a story (Score:5, Interesting)
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If true, this has to be one of the dumbest operations ever greenlit. Diplomats are well-accustomed to espionage efforts, and its pretty much de rigueur for all the big nations to play Spy-vs-Spy. Embassies regularly sweep for bugs and such.
But using energy weapons on the personnel? It's cartoonishly bad. Such a terrible idea I have difficulty attributing it to anyone, including North Korea. Any nation could scrape up much better [disposable] live test subjects if needed.
Energy weapons on US diplomats is ask
Re:CBC also has a story (Score:5, Insightful)
anyone, including North Korea
Actually, NK really are that reckless. They deployed VX gas in the national airport of a friendly country.
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Canada has better relations with Cuba it's unlikely the Cuban government is behind this
Thought experiment: Why would the Cuban government do this?
1. Get rid of diplomats? They can do that anytime they want.
2. Don't like the renewed ties with USA? They can do this anytime they want.
3. Don't like US politics interfering? They are a dictatorship, also see 1.
Initially a lot of people claimed Cuba, but it just makes no sense.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
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seriously unlikely, Russia are more likely to do such an attack in far better locations where they are not going to be a prime suspect. Similar to the Cuban's it makes no sense for the Russians to be the source of the attacks either.
The motive for Russia wouldn't be to spy or harm Americans, the motive would be to sour the relationship between Cuba and the US, so that Cuba remains under Russian influence.
worms (Score:5, Funny)
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Chairman Meow?
Don't care who.... (Score:2)
But somebody has really showed their hand.
What neato tech!
I doubt a western nation would burn such hot shit abilities to screw with a couple diplomats unless there's a bit of Tom Clancy style shit going on in the background.
And who else was checked into the hotel at the time? I bet there's a pretty limited range.. any remote device would have been found already. Search the housekeepers.
This was foreseen (Score:2)
For American diplomats who may worry that they have no protocols in place to survive sonic attack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=go0JMX3zNeA
Wireless access points (Score:5, Informative)
Let's talk Cisco for a moment. Cisco delivers a technology known as "CleanAir" which Aruba also has for the most part. It's designed for site survey and is able to scan large chunks of the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz spectrum.
Turn the feature on... then look at the map and see if there's microwave near by. It will assign pseudo MAC addresses to unknown signals and attempt to identify them by radio pattern.
Now, if CleanAir isn't picking it up, then install some spectrum analyzers.
As others had mentioned... you don't need to transmit audible signals into someones head to make them hear it. You simply need to transmit signals which trigger the mind to believe they are audible. Microwave and others are perfectly capable of having this effect. In fact, some people believe that the reason why some people claim to be susceptible to wireless networking is because it causes a ringing like tinnitus. Of course like Tinnitus (which I recently began suffering... Merry Christmas 2016) it's not possible to diagnose properly.
As for targeted signals.... all frequencies can be targeted. It's not as if there's something somewhere which says audio absolutely must be as close to isotropic as possible. Any frequency can quite easily be targeted.
As a cheap but effective example... sound showers are an example of this.
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As others had mentioned... you don't need to transmit audible signals into someones head to make them hear it. You simply need to transmit signals which trigger the mind to believe they are audible. Microwave and others are perfectly capable of having this effect. .
Here is a citation [wikipedia.org] (I didn't believe you, TBH).
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What's a sound shower?
Titles (Score:2)
Likely ultrasonic based (Score:2)
Visit New York New York® Las Vegas hotel. Visit the Cirque show. Visit the bathrooms associated with the show. Listen to the strange voices you hear. But, only you can hear it. This is done with modulated ultrasonic sound waves, a shaped reflector, and your ears.
And if the State Department people are so dumb they cannot turn around and sleep with their feet where their head would normally be to escape something specific to where the head normally rests, they have earned their headaches. And, yes, I bel
North Korea? (Score:4, Informative)
Gee, what if there was a country that has high tensions with the United States right now and is also obsessed with attacking, injuring or harming the United States as a matter of ideological zealotry, and actually has a goddamned physical embassy in Cuba to base agents out of? [wikipedia.org] Gee, I fuckin wonder.
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I wonder if they tested this same technology on that young American prisoner who died of severe brain damage...
psychogenic illness (Score:2)
symptoms that have no plausible organic basis;
symptoms that are transient and benign;
symptoms with rapid onset and recovery;
occurrence in a segregated group;
the presence of extraordinary anxiety;
symptoms that are spread via sight, sound or oral communication;
a spread that moves down the age scale, beginning with older or higher-status people;
a preponderance of female participants
Infrasound from mains hum (Score:2)
Infrasound from mains hum would not surprise me as a trigger and attributing it to malicious intent down to the stressful situation, elsewhere people attribute this to ghosts or electronics hypersensitivity.
I would try swap out all the power supply transformers in effected areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Mains hum at 50/60Hz, not particularly infrasound.
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It's the dirty hippies! (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Smartphones (Score:2)
We live in a world where virtually everyone has a camera and audio recording device on them at all times. It's no coincidence that people's willingness to believe in UFO reports, for example, has dropped sharply.
Even if some of this is outside the hearing range, any phone should be able to record at least *something*.
Not a single piece of recorded evidence? Count me as extremely skeptical.
Vindicated (Score:2)
Dial M for Mystery (Score:2)
Everyone has probably heard stories (urban legends) about gaslighting high-strung couch potatoes with adjustable rabbit ears who are too addicted to sports or sitcoms for their own good.
(I once tried this on my younger siblings using an antique frequency generator wired to a small yagi under my bed—we lived on an isolated hilltop acreage—but it only caused minor snow and zigzag patterns, despite being just one room away; we generally had bad reception anyway, and they found the effect unremarkab
Why No State Department Cooperation? (Score:2)
I see in the national news last night (Friday) that the Cuban Premier honestly admitted they don't know what's going on. And they invited the FBI to send down teams to investigated (although no idea if the FBI teams are still there). AND they invited the US State Department to join them in a bilateral investigation. Which invitation, naturally, the State Department didn't even bother responding to.
Sure sounds like they're innocent. Unless there's some rogue agency doing this, of course. The Cubans have
Same thing, new name (Score:2)
They get a group to assault a targeted person, torture and interrogate the victim, then pay the group to keep quiet and the result is they have a group of spies for life.
Bet it's a disease (Score:2)
Would not surprise me if it is some disease.
The lack of an explanation does not.... (Score:2)
Sure, nobody seems to know what happened or how or why, but the most you can do at this point is try and be watchful to see if it happens again, and hopefully be prepared enough for it to take measurements and from that, isolate a cause.
Past events for which the only existing record is human recollection, regardless of the number of people who appear to have been affected, cannot be objectively scrutinized and there is no scientifically
A new thing? (Score:2)
Sounds to me like old-school resonate microwave cavity spy bugs gone awry.
My guess is modern variants use extremely focused transmitters to avoid detection and idiots who installed them were not thinking placing transmitter in path where people would be dwelling for prolonged periods of time resulting in RF enriched brain cells of surveillance targets.
Get a grip! (Score:2)
Been a niche market toy for years.
Now it's used as a torture device?
Well call Beyonce, she needs more through-wall exposure
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Yeah, but does the target know that it's the targeting target being targeted?
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Ultrasonic is a reasonable guess because the wavelength would be short enough to aim and meet the other characteristics described in the summary.
What's screwy is that the source of the problem has not been tracked down and eliminated. This should not be a difficult technical problem.
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Well, not really. The ability of air to transmit ultrasound is limited (it disperses into heat quickly), and for brain damage to result, the ultrasound has to get inside the skull. If the events happened in a water tank, ultrasound would be more credible. Infrasound has range, but requires large generating structures, and would have done things (like rattlin
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Beta radiation beam from a smoke detector? Presumably the diplomats were sleeping with their pillows next to the wall. So it would be something that was either in the bedframe, mattress, in or behind the wall.
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Re: Microwave weapons (Score:3, Interesting)
A microwave weapon seems to be the most likely hypothesis because of its ability to explain all of the symptoms observed. I haven't seen evidence that sonic weapons could explain the full range of symptoms. Microwaves can and do pass through walls, so I'm wondering about why people staying in other rooms in the direction of the microwaves wouldn't also report symptoms as well. You'd need to be fairly close in order to direct a beam that narrowly and precisely. Higher frequencies would require smaller parabo
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this also opens up the possibility that it could have merely been faulty microwave ovens in adjacent rooms.
Re: Microwave weapons (Score:4, Informative)
I also suspect it is a microwave / RF based weapon. It would be extremely difficult to focus sonic energy and have it pass through walls in a building. Sound waves are, after all, vibrations through a physical medium, and every time you transition from one physical medium to another (air to wall, through the things in the wall, back to air, etc), the sound would be diffracted and reflected all over the place.
Because the energy was very highly focused, that pretty much rules out an acoustic device unless the device was right in the room or perhaps embedded in the wall of the room. Due to the number of people affected in various locations, I don't think it is realistic that there would have been so many of these devices in so many places. Plus they would be discovered once an investigation began if they were in the buildings.
There are many studies showing that RF energy with enough power, directed through the brain, will manifest as sound. The energy will also cause various kinds of damage to the structures in the head and brain.
So that really only leaves RF energy as a source that can be focused to that extent ("It was as if he'd walked through some invisible wall cutting straight through his room."), which can pass through walls with little or no refraction / reflection, be operated from some distance away (even outside the building), manifests as sound when the head is directly in the path of the energy, and can cause injuries more than just hearing loss.
It sounds like the attacks were done while people were asleep in bed. If the attacker knew the general layout of the rooms (where the bed was relative to the window) then they could easily direct the weapon to the head area of the bed and leave it for a few minutes, perhaps very slowly sweeping it across that general area. If a light was turned on, then they would probably move to the next target room because they knew they had achieved the desired result.
Here's a study going into the specifics of RF energy being perceived as sound:
http://grouper.ieee.org/groups... [ieee.org]
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Given it's an office space as well as a living space, if what you're saying is correct, the sounds are most likely emanating from the CIA goon in the basement making hot pockets while he's burning the midnight oil, not international interference.
Re: Bullshit. CIA did this. (Score:2)
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This stuff is older than Trump's presidency. I doubt the CIA would do this. The tech seems to be refined enough to say this is likely Russian and not Cuban, so KGB. They have all the motive (eliminate suspected enemy agents) and ability to pull this trick.
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Maybe it was Toxoplasma gondii https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]
It's not a "sonic attack"... (Score:3)