Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And you know most of us live. I feel in
Speaker 1: kind of a balanced world where on one hand, yes,
Speaker 1: you have the government doing heinous things, occasionally um careless things.
Speaker 1: Sometimes just very manipulate things. Uh you know the U.
Speaker 1: S Military love went flying flying around attack drones, US
Speaker 1: government sifting through our email. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: there's uh, there's also kind of a comedy of the
Speaker 1: errors to everything. Sure, this is a point that I
Speaker 1: remember Scully made it in at least one episode of
Speaker 1: The X Files, but I feel like should have been
Speaker 1: made more often. Though it guess it didn't apply in
Speaker 1: the X Files because in the X Files the conspiracy
Speaker 1: is always real. But but at least in one episode
Speaker 1: she makes the point that I think you're giving the
Speaker 1: government too much credit. Yeah, this is often a feeling
Speaker 1: I have when talking to somebody who believes that there's
Speaker 1: a vast conspiracy that's controlling world events through secret channels
Speaker 1: that are somehow always just just one step ahead of
Speaker 1: the people trying to find evidence of them. My feeling is,
Speaker 1: by and large, the government is so incompetent at everything,
Speaker 1: how could it possibly carry off this one thing? So? Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: there when you look at at various delusional situations that
Speaker 1: involve the government and persecution of an individual by the government, uh,
Speaker 1: there's this. The whole the whole governmental system has to
Speaker 1: be working like this perfect machine to target that individual.
Speaker 1: And then and then then, of course you have to
Speaker 1: raise questions like why this individual, why is so much
Speaker 1: work going on? Why are where's why, why are all
Speaker 1: these tag dollars going to say being thoughts into this
Speaker 1: random person's head. Well, now you have zeroed in on
Speaker 1: one particular conspiracy, the conspiracy to target a person and
Speaker 1: use some kind of electromagnetic radiation or you know, auditory
Speaker 1: electronic technology to put messages in their brain, to beam
Speaker 1: noises at them that make it impossible for them to sleep,
Speaker 1: to uh, to give them deafening booms and clicks and
Speaker 1: unpleasant sounds in the attempt ultimately to drive them crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This is often referred to as V two K or
Speaker 1: voice to skull. I'm not sure why it's not V
Speaker 1: two F. There are other terms that you'll see pop up.
Speaker 1: If you go into the corners of the Internet that
Speaker 1: explore this phenomenon, some of the things you'll hear are
Speaker 1: electromagnetic torture or electromagnetic harassment or auditory harassment. What are
Speaker 1: some others? Gang stalking is another one. Yeah, just just
Speaker 1: electronic mind can roll just the idea that there's generally
Speaker 1: like a cabal of shadowy individuals that are just outside
Speaker 1: of your reach, maybe at the van at either of
Speaker 1: the street, or in that apartment next to you, and
Speaker 1: they are just they've got all the technology and they're
Speaker 1: using it to infiltrate your thoughts. Yeah, so we don't
Speaker 1: want to mention or call out anyone directly, that's not
Speaker 1: our intention here. But if you are interested in what
Speaker 1: this looks like, you can google any of these terms
Speaker 1: we just mentioned and check out the websites, forums, message
Speaker 1: boards where people are propagating these ideas. This is a
Speaker 1: popular idea now, especially that you can find on the internet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I go to any one of these websites and you'll
Speaker 1: find a slew of them. If you're just throw in
Speaker 1: the search terminology and they you'll find that they serve
Speaker 1: as kind of each one is kind of like a
Speaker 1: Petri dish for paranoid delusion UM and and often it
Speaker 1: will involve V two k UM this voice to skull
Speaker 1: transmission we're discussing here. Sometimes it will also throw in
Speaker 1: things like brainstem implants that have been secretly implanted in
Speaker 1: your skull that are aiding the shadowy individuals in their
Speaker 1: persecution of you. Yeah, and these communities have been evident
Speaker 1: online for a while. There was actually a New York
Speaker 1: Times article I found all the way back in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight talking about the emergence of communities related
Speaker 1: to supposed gang stalking or mind control or electromagnetic torture
Speaker 1: emerging on the Internet, and it raised some interesting questions.
Speaker 1: I thought one of them was about whether these online
Speaker 1: groups overall have a positive or negative effect on the
Speaker 1: people suffering from the belief that they're being harassed by
Speaker 1: these devices. On one hand, sites like this can allow
Speaker 1: people to maintain harmful delusions through repetitive reinforcement, and obviously
Speaker 1: that's not a good thing. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: they do provide people with a sense of community support
Speaker 1: and positive psychological effects of validation, like in some cases
Speaker 1: it can help just to be told you're not crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just to have somebody else in the world who seems
Speaker 1: to be going through the same thing you are. UM.
Speaker 1: But then yeah, it's also in the article to make
Speaker 1: the comparison to a shark. It's like that the shark
Speaker 1: that has to keep moving to stay alive, and this um,
Speaker 1: these websites allow that shark to keep moving. It feeds
Speaker 1: the delusion and sometimes strengthen it give you, gives you
Speaker 1: a more script, more more mean, more pre existing trope
Speaker 1: to draw on, Like maybe you didn't even think about
Speaker 1: the prospect of having a brain stem implant, but now
Speaker 1: bad idea has been introduced. And when it's introduced with say,
Speaker 1: pictures of what the back of your your your your
Speaker 1: lobo look like if there was an incision there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we were looking at one of these websites before we
Speaker 1: recorded today, and they had images of the supposed scar
Speaker 1: tissue that forms after the implant is placed behind your
Speaker 1: ear and your skull. And we have the thought, how
Speaker 1: often do people look at the backs of their ears? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's that there are very few. Unless you're in a
Speaker 1: medical profession or what have you, you're you're probably looking
Speaker 1: at the backs of very few ears. You know, where
Speaker 1: you actually been back the ear and look and look there.
Speaker 1: And so in these particular photographs they were showing, you know,
Speaker 1: a popular implant they've taken place. Do you you see this
Speaker 1: big stitch there, and then showing you what I take
Speaker 1: to take to be just a normal ear. But they're
Speaker 1: they're trying to point out, oh, there's a line right here.
Speaker 1: This is clearly where the the implantation took place. So
Speaker 1: you might not have that in your head, but now
Speaker 1: you've gone to this place, you're you're sharing in these
Speaker 1: new delusions as well as strengthening your pre existing ones. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then there's also a complication that emerges when you're
Speaker 1: talking about the idea of a delusion because many psychological
Speaker 1: authorities historically have made exceptions for beliefs held by large
Speaker 1: communities of people. So there are often exceptions for religious beliefs.
Speaker 1: If if a belief is part of your religion, it's
Speaker 1: not considered a delusion. The same is true for cultural
Speaker 1: or subcultural beliefs. If you belong to a culture that
Speaker 1: shares these ideas, then it's not considered a delusion. But
Speaker 1: what happens if people experiencing similar delusions find each other
Speaker 1: on the Internet and form a community. Yeah, that's something
Speaker 1: British psychologist Dr Von Bell brought up in that New
Speaker 1: York Times article. Um, the author interviewed him, and he
Speaker 1: said that that if it's if it's a culture or subculture,
Speaker 1: it's not a delusion. According to the American Psychiatric Association. Uh,
Speaker 1: it kind of has the same occupies, the same space
Speaker 1: as say a religion, where a divine being may speak
Speaker 1: to you and you may speak to the divine being
Speaker 1: and it's perfectly acceptable. Uh. There's no technology involved. It's
Speaker 1: all mysticism, so we tend to give it a pass.
Speaker 1: But well, it happens when it's V two K right.
Speaker 1: The the idea of other voices appearing in your head
Speaker 1: is not new. I mean, this goes back thousands of years,
Speaker 1: but there's a new version of it. There's a new
Speaker 1: thing to attribute it to, which is this electromagnetic radiation
Speaker 1: coming from devices, which we will talk about in this episode. Personally,
Speaker 1: I think it's tough coming up with the right response
Speaker 1: to things like this, because I don't want to be
Speaker 1: insensitive to people suffering, even if what they believe is
Speaker 1: happening is probably not objectively true. They're they're subjective suffering
Speaker 1: is totally real, and so I don't think it's plausible
Speaker 1: that government agencies men in suits in the black cars,
Speaker 1: or I guess the white vans in this case, are
Speaker 1: secret secretly running a massive microwave torture campaign on random
Speaker 1: people throughout the population. But I also suspect it's not
Speaker 1: very helpful to these people just to have one more
Speaker 1: person tell them they're wrong. So my goal isn't just
Speaker 1: to tell these people they're wrong. Ultimately, I don't know
Speaker 1: what the most helpful thing to do is. But it's tough. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, on one level, we're definitely not doubting the
Speaker 1: the subjective experience of what's going on. I mean, anytime
Speaker 1: an individual is is experiencing something paranormal, the experience is
Speaker 1: still valid than the reasoning for that experience. Uh, that's
Speaker 1: open for discussion and generally leads one to a scientific explanation. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, what do you what do you do in
Speaker 1: a case like this, Because like the same person who
Speaker 1: is hearing voices, you wouldn't say, oh, well you should
Speaker 1: just go to your church about that, where someone might
Speaker 1: tell you, oh, well, that's the devil talking to you
Speaker 1: or God talking to you when clearly there's something else
Speaker 1: going on there that requires professional assistance. Yeah. And then,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, encouraging people's delusions can have actual
Speaker 1: negative consequences for the people suffering from them, because when
Speaker 1: someone is suffering from a persistent belief that is not
Speaker 1: supported by evidence, they are additionally vulnerable to predatory behavior
Speaker 1: by people who might be trying to exploit them or
Speaker 1: get money from them or something. Yeah. I mean I
Speaker 1: saw on some of these websites. Uh, and you know
Speaker 1: it was at times these websites are kind of a
Speaker 1: ramble and kind of just an explosion of text in
Speaker 1: a way that difficult to find a thread of what's
Speaker 1: being discussed. But I ran across one, whether it was
Speaker 1: talk of getting your your implant, your brain stem implant
Speaker 1: treated or deactivated by paying somebody like a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and going to stay in a hotel room in New
Speaker 1: Jersey or something to that effect. So someone is charging money. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you know, you get into and I'm not you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what the details are in that
Speaker 1: particular treatment, but it raises some questions from me, that's
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, and you you may actually have encountered
Speaker 1: some stories about people who claimed to be suffering from
Speaker 1: from V two K attacks in the media. One example
Speaker 1: was the Washington Navy yard shooter. Yes, Aaron Alexis and uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: this one came to light after the events that he
Speaker 1: had uh in the past, told police that some individual
Speaker 1: quote had sent three people to follow him and to talk,
Speaker 1: keep him awake, and send vibrations into his body. So, um,
Speaker 1: you know, that's a sobering reminder that that well, where
Speaker 1: these illusions can lead. I mean, certainly not in every case,
Speaker 1: but but the this is a this is a harmful
Speaker 1: um psychiatric condition. Yeah, so what is the actual mechanism
Speaker 1: that's being imagined here and how does it connect to
Speaker 1: real world technology that actually does exist? And then yeah,
Speaker 1: this is where it gets interesting and it uh and
Speaker 1: it again comes back to you know, your your imagined individual.
Speaker 1: Here are our prototypal individual who's maybe hearing voices, goes
Speaker 1: to one of these websites, and certainly there's a you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of of of ideas are throwing at them,
Speaker 1: a lot of conspiracy theories. But if they dig around enough,
Speaker 1: they'll also find um references to actual science, to the
Speaker 1: actual microwave auditory effect, which we're going to discuss here today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's sort of the central idea of this podcast.
Speaker 1: What is the microwave auditory effect, what causes it, and
Speaker 1: how can it be applied technological lee. Well, first, let's
Speaker 1: demystify microwaves in general. Right, If you read some of
Speaker 1: this literature, you can get a sense that microwaves almost
Speaker 1: have this magical kind of power, that there's something very
Speaker 1: special and sacred and dangerous about them. Microwaves are incredibly mundane.
Speaker 1: We use them in everything. They're in you know, ten
Speaker 1: pieces of technology that you can see right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your phone's using it, your computers using it, your WiFi router,
Speaker 1: the microwave ove, and in your kitchen. It's microwaves are
Speaker 1: all around us. Specifically, microwaves are a form of non
Speaker 1: ionizing radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum. So they're e M radiation.
Speaker 1: They're the same type of radiation as visible light, as ultraviolet,
Speaker 1: as gamma rays, X rays, and radio waves. And so
Speaker 1: what makes something a microwave is its wavelength where it
Speaker 1: falls on the wavelength spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: and I've read that the widespread use of microwave ovens
Speaker 1: helps color this kind of negative idea because if you're
Speaker 1: unfamiliar with any other use of microwave technology in your life,
Speaker 1: you're probably familiar with the one that is in your
Speaker 1: kitchen and you have seen it, say, incinerate a burrito before.
Speaker 1: So so if you failed to incinerate or failed to
Speaker 1: incinerate a brio, imperfectly heat up a burrito. So you've
Speaker 1: seen this. This kind of it's kind of nefarious if
Speaker 1: you start thinking of your brain inside the microwave oven.
Speaker 1: But but of course microwaves are not just invisible fire.
Speaker 1: You know, if you think of it like invisible fire,
Speaker 1: it can take on this scarier, uh, this scarier effect
Speaker 1: in your brain. But but actually the cooking effect of
Speaker 1: a microwave oven is just taking advantage of the fact
Speaker 1: that water is a polar molecule, and that microwaves can
Speaker 1: make water molecules vibrate, which creates heat. Now, is it
Speaker 1: worth noting that the technology does allow us to do
Speaker 1: something called power beaming or wireless power transmission, though that
Speaker 1: is substantially different than beaming thoughts into your brain, right,
Speaker 1: But it is very interesting. This is something i've talked
Speaker 1: about in my other podcast, Forward Thinking quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Wireless power transmission is a cool idea. So one of
Speaker 1: the ways you've probably heard of wireless power transmission working
Speaker 1: is through inductive coupling, and that that's going to be
Speaker 1: a different kind of thing. That's like how you might
Speaker 1: charge your toothbrush without actually having to plug it into
Speaker 1: any contacts. Instead, it just works by generating an electromagnetic
Speaker 1: field that stimulates a coil inside the toothbrush and charges
Speaker 1: it that way. But with wireless power transmission through microwaves,
Speaker 1: you're actually talking about beaming microwaves at an antenna called
Speaker 1: a rectifying antenna that receives the microwaves and converts them
Speaker 1: into DC energy. Yeah. The one of the more famous
Speaker 1: examples that like early tests of this was in ninet
Speaker 1: to be four, and I believe they're in there's their
Speaker 1: image there at least images, if not video of this
Speaker 1: online where you can see where they they use um
Speaker 1: microwave power transmission to being power to a miniature helicopter
Speaker 1: and keep it up in the air for ten hours.
Speaker 1: So it's that's pretty cool. Yeah, And I've seen some interesting,
Speaker 1: you know, things about the possibility of say permanent aircraft
Speaker 1: where you have them up in the air and they
Speaker 1: continually get recharged via wireless power transmission. It factors into
Speaker 1: various designs for spacecraft with use of lasers for even
Speaker 1: a long distance spacecraft. Oh yeah, yeah, lasers being the
Speaker 1: other common wave being makes power like that. One of
Speaker 1: the coolest ideas to me that involves wireless power transmission
Speaker 1: by microwaves is orbital solar power. Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: about this proposal? Yes? This is where you go ahead
Speaker 1: and just get the solar panels up there in orbit
Speaker 1: or even on another entity up there, um, you know,
Speaker 1: say the Moon, what have you, and then let it
Speaker 1: collect the energy there and then beam it back to
Speaker 1: the planet. Right. I mean, it's a big problem to
Speaker 1: have solar panels on the surface of the Earth because
Speaker 1: they're blocked by clouds they can you know, and it's
Speaker 1: nighttime a lot of the time. What if you just
Speaker 1: have them out at space where they're always getting direct
Speaker 1: sunlight that you don't have to worry about clouds your nighttime.
Speaker 1: That would be wonderful, But how do you get the power?
Speaker 1: And the idea is that they would beam the power
Speaker 1: back down to Earth via microwaves. And so you'd have
Speaker 1: this gigantic field of rectifying antennas to receive the power
Speaker 1: that's being beamed down to the surface, and then they
Speaker 1: could send that power out to places where we could
Speaker 1: use it. So microwaves are pretty fascinating. They go beyond
Speaker 1: cooking your burrito. They could power spaceships, they could they
Speaker 1: could power the planet. Um. And yet there's a there's
Speaker 1: a curious little side effect that we're gonna that we
Speaker 1: end up discussing here, the microwave auditory effect, which which
Speaker 1: came out of early investigations into well what are the
Speaker 1: effects of microwaves on an organism? Right, because because see
Speaker 1: not just cooking, not just cooking, you know, because as
Speaker 1: we're developing this technology, we're very interested in how how's
Speaker 1: it going to affect us the the human user. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should be upfront that a lot of these
Speaker 1: studies that we're gonna be talking about, I think very
Speaker 1: much did involve a military or weaponized focus. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: because like I mean, of course, anytime there is an
Speaker 1: invisible beam that can cause things to cook, you know,
Speaker 1: there there you've got a perfect weapon. Right. And plus
Speaker 1: also any anything you know a number of things in
Speaker 1: the post war and Cold War period were investigated that
Speaker 1: were far less wrap people than this. I mean, on
Speaker 1: this show before, we've talked about and I know I've
Speaker 1: blogged about military investigations of essentially paranormal um activities such
Speaker 1: as telepathy and remote viewing, just to see if it
Speaker 1: was valuable, because hey, you know, the Russians are gonna
Speaker 1: look at it, we might as well look at it too,
Speaker 1: And maybe there's probably nothing there, but what if there is, right,
Speaker 1: so you have to investigate it. I love to imagine
Speaker 1: what would have happened if things had gone the other
Speaker 1: way and they discovered that, oh yeah, all these phenomenon
Speaker 1: are great for warfare. They do exist and we can
Speaker 1: use them. And now we've got the Telekinesis brigades. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess they're the vanguard of our approaching forces and
Speaker 1: that they just like throw all the barbed wire out
Speaker 1: of the way exactly. Anyway, But this one was a legit.
Speaker 1: This one, this is this is real research into the
Speaker 1: microwave auditory effect. It is a totally verified phenomenon, and
Speaker 1: it goes back to a guy named Alan H. Fray. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a neuroscientist looking at the effects of microwaves
Speaker 1: on organisms. And in nineteen sixty two he discovered the
Speaker 1: microwave auditory effects. Sometimes it's even called the Fray effect.
Speaker 1: Um and uh and and he and he published this paper,
Speaker 1: which is easily available online in large part because it's
Speaker 1: a scientifically viable bit of evidence for the more deluded
Speaker 1: aspects of the two K. Well, you know, I think
Speaker 1: the version of the paper that I read, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: sure was hosted on a on a v two K
Speaker 1: attack website. Yeah, sadly that was like the best place
Speaker 1: to get it without paying for it. Um but but yeah,
Speaker 1: he's eh. Ray says in his says in his paper,
Speaker 1: he says, with appropriate modulation, the perception of various sounds
Speaker 1: can be induced in clinically deaf as well as normal
Speaker 1: human subjects at a distance of inches up to thousands
Speaker 1: of feet from the transmitter. With somewhat different transmitter parameters,
Speaker 1: we can induce the perception of severe buffeting of the
Speaker 1: head without such a parent vestibular symptoms as dizziness or nausea.
Speaker 1: Changing to transmitter parameters again, one can induce pins and
Speaker 1: pins and needles sensation. Yeah. So the effect he describes
Speaker 1: essentially is that they could aim pulses of microwave radiation
Speaker 1: at people's heads and induce the sensation that the person
Speaker 1: was hearing a sound. There was no sound, like if
Speaker 1: you weren't standing in this beam, you wouldn't hear anything.
Speaker 1: But based on how this beam was interacting with the
Speaker 1: people's bodies, specifically something in their heads, they thought they
Speaker 1: heard noise. And the noise was described as a buzzing
Speaker 1: or a clicking I think, And it seemed to originate
Speaker 1: from inside the head or from directly behind the head,
Speaker 1: And it didn't matter what direction you turned in, so
Speaker 1: you could walk all around in different directions and no
Speaker 1: matter what, it would seem to be coming from the
Speaker 1: same place inside your head or directly behind your skull. Now,
Speaker 1: for I thought the microwave auditory effet could possibly use
Speaker 1: as a tool to explore nervous system coding UH and
Speaker 1: for stimulating the nervous system without the without the damage
Speaker 1: caused by using say electrodes. Right, yeah, so, I think
Speaker 1: early on the some people hypothesized that it was coming
Speaker 1: from an interaction between the microwave pulses and auditory nerves
Speaker 1: or neurons. But I read in UH in an abstract
Speaker 1: research from Lynn and Wang that they eventually found instead
Speaker 1: that quote, the microwave pulse on absorption by soft tissues
Speaker 1: in the head launches a thermoelastic wave of acoustic pressure
Speaker 1: that travels by bone conduction to the inner ear. There
Speaker 1: it activates the co clear receptors via the same process
Speaker 1: involved in normal hearing. So it's creating a shock wave
Speaker 1: in the soft tissue inside your head that gets that
Speaker 1: the bone picks up and then says it sounds like
Speaker 1: a sound. Yeah. And you know this is related to
Speaker 1: some of the ways that we hear sounds, such as
Speaker 1: when you hear sound underwater. You know, the bone is
Speaker 1: involved in the hearing the interception of those sound waves. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen seventies, that's where this gets into
Speaker 1: the realm of whispers and voices. When Joseph Sharp and
Speaker 1: Mark Grove at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research,
Speaker 1: they took phrase work one step further and successfully transmitted
Speaker 1: a speech into the human skull using pulsed microwaves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so, first of all, that's unsettling, but number too,
Speaker 1: don't get carried away because it would be easy to
Speaker 1: overstate the effectiveness of this effect they observed because the
Speaker 1: idea is not necessarily that you hear normal speech in
Speaker 1: your head as as sent by these signals, but instead
Speaker 1: it was more that they could sent At least, this
Speaker 1: is the impression I get from what's available. I get
Speaker 1: the feeling that what they're saying is they could synthesize
Speaker 1: the sound of speech. Yes, that's what I got. It
Speaker 1: was kind of like a modulated voice like one might
Speaker 1: create through the use of a synthesize of So by
Speaker 1: using these different types of modulated pulses of microwave energy,
Speaker 1: they could create sort of clicks and buzzes that sound
Speaker 1: sort of like whispered words. So obviously a lot of
Speaker 1: this research is taking place um for the military, and
Speaker 1: the military is inherently interested in finding ways to utilize
Speaker 1: new technology for their their purposes. You can just imagine
Speaker 1: the scene in the movie where there are several you know,
Speaker 1: kind of like tough looking generals sitting around a table
Speaker 1: with their aviator sunglasses on, and they're like, oh, I
Speaker 1: just read about this microwave auditory effect. This will keep
Speaker 1: the troops in line, and we can really use it
Speaker 1: to undercut enemy moral by whispering what would you whisper
Speaker 1: to the enemy to undercut their morale? Um? I guess
Speaker 1: you could say, oh, you're gonna lose or you're wrong.
Speaker 1: L right. You know, any kind of basically anything that
Speaker 1: propaganda that we've dropped from senor uh, you know, any
Speaker 1: kind of propaganda that we've dumped on the on the
Speaker 1: enemy's head, you know, on leaflets. You could just inject
Speaker 1: directly under the skull be it's something, you know, something
Speaker 1: that's undermining the authority um of their government or their
Speaker 1: you know, their mission statement, etcetera. Yeah, or you could
Speaker 1: go a lot cruder with it and just say, well,
Speaker 1: these generals sitting around in the room instead, what they
Speaker 1: want is something that's going to cause the sensation of
Speaker 1: deafening noises in the heads of the enemy that would
Speaker 1: just incapacitate them and make them unable to fight. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When I was looking a two thousand four Navy Phase
Speaker 1: one summer report that went into some of this, they
Speaker 1: pointed out three potential applications. UM one as a perimeter
Speaker 1: protection sensor in deterrent systems for industrial and national sites. Okay,
Speaker 1: so if you're going up to the do not cross
Speaker 1: this line line, these start here lasted with the microwaves. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: be at a buzzing or even like a do not cross,
Speaker 1: do not enter a kind of modulated voice. Number two
Speaker 1: for youth in systems to assist communication with hearing impaired persons,
Speaker 1: which is is rather obvious. We're talking about a way
Speaker 1: that you can cause a death individual to hear, so
Speaker 1: obviously there would be some possible uses there that are
Speaker 1: that are not you know, military, exclusively in their their purpose. Now,
Speaker 1: I should say at this point we're going to offer
Speaker 1: some qualifications later the extent to which these things can
Speaker 1: actually be used, but sorry, go ahead. And then number
Speaker 1: three use by law enforcement and nearly military personnel for
Speaker 1: crowd control and asset protection. So this gives into the
Speaker 1: easily imagined scenario of turning it on dangerous crowd the
Speaker 1: proletariat's getting a little rowdy, You beam some microwaves at
Speaker 1: um and I don't know what, I guess they get
Speaker 1: some really awful clicking buzzing and they go home. Still,
Speaker 1: the the the effect has largely remained something of a curio.
Speaker 1: Uh though the U. S. Military you know again, has
Speaker 1: definitely looked into it, and they were a couple of
Speaker 1: of magazine ARTICLETS that came out around two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight from a journalist David Handling. One was published and
Speaker 1: Wired one was published a new Scientists will make sure
Speaker 1: we probably we linked to both of them on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode. But Handling looked into the
Speaker 1: US Army study of these technologies, this telepathic ray gun
Speaker 1: and the Medusa as well discussed and he actually interviewed
Speaker 1: a man by the name of Lev satov Nik who
Speaker 1: worked on the Medusa. The mob excess to Trent using
Speaker 1: silent audio device for thee oh, man, those acronyms, let's
Speaker 1: call it Medusa, you guys figure out how the words
Speaker 1: go together, um and uh sad. Sadovnik stated that the
Speaker 1: technology was effective, but here's the that the crucial underlying
Speaker 1: factor it comes with the risk of brain damage due
Speaker 1: to high intensity shock waves generated by the microwave pulse.
Speaker 1: And this is specifically when we're talking about the idea
Speaker 1: of oh, let's let's being some loud, annoying noise into
Speaker 1: that riot or skull. Well loud noise, of course, you
Speaker 1: need large vibrations, and the effects of these large vibrations
Speaker 1: on the brain can be rather startling. Yes. I also
Speaker 1: found some quotes along the same lines as cited in
Speaker 1: an I Tripoli Spectrum article also from two thousand and eight,
Speaker 1: so I think it was reacting to this story as
Speaker 1: published in The New Scientist. But they spoke with Kenneth Foster,
Speaker 1: who was a bioengineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: and Bill Guy, a former professor from University of Washington,
Speaker 1: who had both done research on the microwave auditory effect themselves,
Speaker 1: and both of these guys say that any microwave radiation
Speaker 1: that produced a sound loud enough to be a problem
Speaker 1: for the target would burn the target, so it would
Speaker 1: cook your flesh before it would deep purple you into submission.
Speaker 1: So it's evasically a brain melting death ray instead of
Speaker 1: the the peaceful crowd deterrent that that one would would
Speaker 1: be hoping to create peaceful crowd deterrent. That's a field
Speaker 1: I wish I was said. UM also ran across a
Speaker 1: report titled bio Effects have Selected nonleth the Weapons that
Speaker 1: was leased under the U S Freedom of Information Act
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, and this report mentioned a
Speaker 1: microwave weapon able to produce disabling artificial fever by hitting
Speaker 1: a person's body. That sounds like redesignating a bug as
Speaker 1: a feature. Yeah, they're like, well, you know, maybe it
Speaker 1: doesn't so much as annoy them as it makes them
Speaker 1: feel physically ill. Uh. But no tests were actually mentioned
Speaker 1: in the report, thank goodness. Um, but it did that.
Speaker 1: It did state that the the necessary equipment already existed,
Speaker 1: the necessary technology already existed, and that it would take
Speaker 1: at least fifteen minutes to achieve the desired incapacitating effect.
Speaker 1: So I guess in this case, you would just point
Speaker 1: the apparatus at the crowd and then just wait for
Speaker 1: people to give up, to get hot and fevery and
Speaker 1: wander off. Yeah. I don't know. I don't really know
Speaker 1: what happens inside the government weapons research, but just as
Speaker 1: an outsider, it kind of sounds like they found out
Speaker 1: that this cooks you before it makes the sound, and
Speaker 1: then they're like, how can we sell this? Yeah, and
Speaker 1: and it doesn't seem like it really went any further
Speaker 1: than that. Yeah, but we should talk about some of
Speaker 1: the details of this supposed MEDUSA device. Yes. Uh, that
Speaker 1: two thousand and four Navy Phase one Summer report that
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier said the quote through the combination of
Speaker 1: pulse parameters and pulse power, is possible to raise the
Speaker 1: auditory sensation to the discomfort level the touring personnel from
Speaker 1: entering a protected perimeter or if necessary, temper rarely incapacitating
Speaker 1: particular individuals, which again is the goal, but it it
Speaker 1: doesn't really match up with with what the technology will
Speaker 1: actually do individual So that was the phase one report.
Speaker 1: I think I read that it didn't actually proceed beyond that,
Speaker 1: did it. I don't believe though, because you know, it
Speaker 1: was all worded very much in the optimistic, you know,
Speaker 1: phrasing of you know, all right, this is gonna be portable,
Speaker 1: it's gonna require low power, it's gonna have a comfortable
Speaker 1: radius of coverage and switch from crowd to individual coverage
Speaker 1: at the flip of a switch. You know, it was
Speaker 1: very much selling the wonders of this and and and
Speaker 1: trying to you know, get it funded. But but as
Speaker 1: it turns out, of course, as we've discussed, there are
Speaker 1: some major health risks involved here, mainly brain melting, yes,
Speaker 1: cooking or melting or or at least brain damage created
Speaker 1: by this shock wave inside the soft tissues of the
Speaker 1: head that eventually is what conveys the sound to the ear.
Speaker 1: It's not gonna be good for the person who's on
Speaker 1: the receiving end of this. It may injure them, it
Speaker 1: may cause permanent disability or damage, or i'd imagine as
Speaker 1: a certain level of power, it could even kill you.
Speaker 1: So it leads us to them explore, well, what about
Speaker 1: the lower wave links. What if we just focus on whispers,
Speaker 1: something soft, something that wouldn't be you know, will probably
Speaker 1: not be that effective in calming like a raging, rioting
Speaker 1: individual down, but would have a more subtle effect. And indeed,
Speaker 1: doctor sadovnik Um in those papers that we discussed earlier
Speaker 1: from handling, he suggested that in that it might be used,
Speaker 1: this technology might be used at a low power to produce,
Speaker 1: you know, a whisper that you could you could certainly
Speaker 1: perceive consciously or even sudden. It might even be a
Speaker 1: subconscious effect if the power level were low enough, so
Speaker 1: you could have essentially a low whisper um manifesting in
Speaker 1: the skull of the targeted individual. Or it could be
Speaker 1: something just come pletely subconscious. They're not they don't even
Speaker 1: realize they're hearing a voice. Yeah, Now, just based on
Speaker 1: what I've read. I'm not convinced that it has been
Speaker 1: shown that you could do even a whisper without maybe
Speaker 1: risking some health effects. I'm not sure what the answer
Speaker 1: is on that, or certainly it hasn't been approved for
Speaker 1: such usage by any governmental body that you know. These
Speaker 1: are sort of lab conditions we're talking about, But I
Speaker 1: got to wondering, Okay, it's quite obvious, if you want
Speaker 1: to get really cynical, what somebody could do with a
Speaker 1: machine that causes the sound of whispers inside your head
Speaker 1: that nobody else can hear unless they're standing in the
Speaker 1: same microwave beam as you. But this could also possibly
Speaker 1: have some peaceful applications, right, Yeah, And they've been at
Speaker 1: least two different patents that have been filed for hearing devices.
Speaker 1: The first one was filed in December nineteenth nine three
Speaker 1: by UH Satellite by Philip Stockland of Satellite Beach, Florida.
Speaker 1: I'm reading, and apparently apparently this technology didn't pan out.
Speaker 1: But then a second pattern UH was filed by a
Speaker 1: private and entity in which was a hearing system that
Speaker 1: would use the microwave auditory effect to recreate sound in
Speaker 1: the human skull. That's interesting and I mean if that
Speaker 1: could be done for people with hearing impairments, obviously it
Speaker 1: would be great. Yeah, as long as it didn't cause
Speaker 1: brain damage. You're right, their heads, and then as long
Speaker 1: as there's some sort of block there to keep you
Speaker 1: from raising it to brain melting levels. And then uh.
Speaker 1: The U. S. Air Force filed a patent for method
Speaker 1: and Device for implementing the radio frequency hearing effect, which
Speaker 1: was accepted in two thousand two, and then they modified
Speaker 1: it to apparatus for audibly communicating speech using the radio
Speaker 1: frequency hearing effects. So, in other words, looking at it
Speaker 1: as a possible skull to skull um communication system, kind
Speaker 1: of a Twitter direct message from skull to skull. Right now,
Speaker 1: I can see how the decoding happens, but how does
Speaker 1: the encoding happen? I don't know. I guess you would
Speaker 1: have to you know, like you like, I see how
Speaker 1: you receive it, but how do you send it? Um?
Speaker 1: I mean maybe maybe it would work along the same
Speaker 1: lines as any kind of like speech to text, uh
Speaker 1: kind of programming, you know, speaking to a microphone and
Speaker 1: then it becomes text on the screen. You're essentially turning
Speaker 1: your own speech into electronic information that then is transformed
Speaker 1: into the correct modulation of of microwaves that are then
Speaker 1: sent to the receiving device. Yeah. I mean I'm wondering
Speaker 1: in what way this is better than just having a
Speaker 1: radio receiver with some with like a player that makes
Speaker 1: noise in your ear. Yeah, And I think, why is
Speaker 1: it better than headphones? And I think that's probably the
Speaker 1: issue here is when you start throwing in the technology
Speaker 1: necessary to make it work, you no longer really need
Speaker 1: the microwave auditory effect to utilize it. It's kind of
Speaker 1: I used to when I used to drive to a
Speaker 1: job about a decade ago. I used to pass this
Speaker 1: house where there was a trailer, and they built all
Speaker 1: this stuff around it. They kept adding onto the trailer,
Speaker 1: and then one day I drove past and they pulled
Speaker 1: the trailer out of the middle. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: the same scenario. I feel like the microwave auditory effect,
Speaker 1: by the time you build it up, by the time
Speaker 1: you add on to it and try to make something
Speaker 1: functional about it, you don't need the trailer anymore. The
Speaker 1: trailer is just something that could potentially melt your brain.
Speaker 1: Now that being said, um, you know, there there's still
Speaker 1: some other you know, military applications that are more on
Speaker 1: the the subtle side. Um, now, I think these are
Speaker 1: all these are all things that have been suggested, things
Speaker 1: that have been done in practice. Yeah, and again these
Speaker 1: are I have a feeling most of these that if
Speaker 1: you tried and you would still have a trailer effect,
Speaker 1: if you would have to pull the trailer out and
Speaker 1: realize it doesn't quite work. But what are they that
Speaker 1: you could use it to talk to selected adversaries in
Speaker 1: a fashion that would disturb them. So again, whisper into
Speaker 1: the enemy. Uh you know, presume really in that trench
Speaker 1: over there in your World War One style combat scenario. Um,
Speaker 1: you could you could inspire mutiny exactly. Yeah. Uh. You
Speaker 1: could also be used as a decoy and deception concept apparently. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, create the perception of noise in the head
Speaker 1: of enemy personnel, so you like try to create sound
Speaker 1: that would indicate an attack has started when it hasn't
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, or right. It makes me think of
Speaker 1: some sort of metal gear solid scenario where you use
Speaker 1: a little device to make the soldier walk the enemy
Speaker 1: soldier walk down the hallway and check out a box
Speaker 1: in the corner, and when you sneak path that's sort
Speaker 1: of um. And then again some sort of private messaging
Speaker 1: transmission system, which doesn't sound like it would really work
Speaker 1: all that well. As long as we're talking about military inventions,
Speaker 1: that they would surely have to invent some way to
Speaker 1: protect your brain from harmful microwaves, be it brain melting
Speaker 1: or just some sort of nefarious suggestion. You know, this
Speaker 1: is much easier to do than you might expect. I
Speaker 1: actually tried. I I did this based on some stuff
Speaker 1: I was reading on the internet last night and this
Speaker 1: morning about the V two K attacks, and I read
Speaker 1: about an experiment I decided I would try for myself.
Speaker 1: It goes like this, Your cell phone receives microwaves, that's
Speaker 1: how it gets the information coming in. So I got
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of aluminum foil and I wrapped my
Speaker 1: cell phone up in aluminum foil, and then I had
Speaker 1: Robert try to call it. Did it ring? No, it
Speaker 1: did not know it did successfully blocked my attempts to
Speaker 1: infiltrate it with microwaves. Yeah, and this is playing out now.
Speaker 1: This might not be exactly analogous to the microwave attacks
Speaker 1: that would be coming at your head from some kind
Speaker 1: of weapon like this because that you know, the power
Speaker 1: densities might be different, but if someone's aiming a microwave
Speaker 1: based weapon at you, you should be able to protect
Speaker 1: yourself with some kind of metal shielding. In most cases,
Speaker 1: a conductive material like metal can shield against all kinds
Speaker 1: of a ectromagnetic waves over a certain wavelength. So, for example,
Speaker 1: why does your microwave oven cook food on the inside
Speaker 1: of the oven but not stuff sitting right beside the
Speaker 1: oven on the outside. It's because the inside of the
Speaker 1: oven is, you know, the cooking cavity is a sort
Speaker 1: of inside out Faraday cage. It's made of metal and
Speaker 1: metal mesh in the window to prevent microwaves from escaping.
Speaker 1: So if you want to protect yourself from incoming microwaves,
Speaker 1: you can build a Faraday cage or just an enclosure
Speaker 1: of conductive metal. Yeah. That this the classic tinfoil hat scenario. Yeah,
Speaker 1: though from what I was reading, I think a tinfoil
Speaker 1: hat might not exactly work because it doesn't enclose fully.
Speaker 1: But you could make a tinfoil uh mask that goes
Speaker 1: all around your head and that would do this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So basically like Magneto's helmet made out of tinfoil, and
Speaker 1: then with a kind of a see through cage on
Speaker 1: the front. Also can made of tin. Yeah, it wouldn't
Speaker 1: even need to be solid, because like a ritate cage shows,
Speaker 1: if you're talking about certain types of electromagnetic radiation waves
Speaker 1: over a certain wavelength, a a mesh will do fine.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have to be solid, so you could see
Speaker 1: through it. You can put a mesh mask on your head. Like, what,
Speaker 1: what did you compare it to earlier? Oh? I guess
Speaker 1: like the like the face shackles and cages that you
Speaker 1: would say put around individuals heads and say medieval times,
Speaker 1: you're being punished for being awful, so you have to
Speaker 1: march through the town with this on your head. But
Speaker 1: you know I'm willing, so you're protected. Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: we actually did create these weapons bringing them onto the battlefield,
Speaker 1: vans that are transmitting microwave energy weapon pulses at the enemies,
Speaker 1: they can just put some screens over their heads and
Speaker 1: they should be okay, okay, at just I would think.
Speaker 1: So there might be aspects of this weapon that I'm
Speaker 1: not fully understanding. I fully admit I'm not an expert
Speaker 1: on directed beam energy weapons. Now, I noticed that most
Speaker 1: of these articles we're looking at. They don't really get
Speaker 1: into the you know, the more entertainment based uses for this,
Speaker 1: you know, um, you know, and a salesmanship too. You
Speaker 1: could have a store display that whispers in your ear.
Speaker 1: You could just have some sort of enhanced music listening experience,
Speaker 1: erotic movie posters that get way too personal. Oh no,
Speaker 1: Or how about this comes to the new Friday the
Speaker 1: thirteenth movie filmed in whisper vision. Yeah, you have the
Speaker 1: so you get a hold on you're there in the
Speaker 1: theater and suddenly, yes, directly into your skull. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: then again, what would be the benefit of that over
Speaker 1: just playing it on speakers? Well, what's the benefit of
Speaker 1: any blank slash vision or you know, any kind of
Speaker 1: B movie a gimmick to get people in the theaters.
Speaker 1: You don't really need to smell the movie or or
Speaker 1: have your seat tremble, but have your seat electric ket Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, you could go down in the history
Speaker 1: books like, remember remember whisper vision they used it like
Speaker 1: two times ever And remember when I got brain damage
Speaker 1: Friday exactly, And of course you know you can't remember,
Speaker 1: I can't, you got I have literally melted my brain
Speaker 1: that film. Um, then of course, finally, just to draw
Speaker 1: in a couple of past episodes that we've had, you
Speaker 1: could have potentially used this in your technology based religion.
Speaker 1: I want to come back to that, but go on.
Speaker 1: And then also for echo borgs, right, you need the
Speaker 1: your artificial intelligence to communicate its words through you. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe it could use the microwave auditory effect. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I like that. That would make it even harder to
Speaker 1: detect that you're getting some of your lines from a
Speaker 1: synthetic serrano. And also if you get out of line,
Speaker 1: it just melts your brain. If you if you if
Speaker 1: you betray the eco borg contract, if you violated to trust.
Speaker 1: Help me, I'm being controlled by a computer around melt
Speaker 1: you right there and on the podium, man, that's tough.
Speaker 1: Except the thing that we need to remember about this,
Speaker 1: and this is something that I think often gets lost
Speaker 1: in the shuffle, especially when people are talking about the
Speaker 1: people who believe in you know, v t K harassment
Speaker 1: and attacks, is that this is a beamed things. So
Speaker 1: even if you imagine that someone is really using technology
Speaker 1: like this on you, it would be a beam that
Speaker 1: anybody in the beam would receive it. It's not like
Speaker 1: it that can just synchronize to you and just you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would be exceedingly difficult to target an individual just
Speaker 1: throughout the course of his or her day, you know,
Speaker 1: to just if there was the shadowy caball of individuals
Speaker 1: and they had this device it, it would just be
Speaker 1: way too difficult for them to carry this out, Like,
Speaker 1: how would you effectively utilize it against them? Uh? Throughout
Speaker 1: their day? You just couldn't do it. You could maybe
Speaker 1: hit them while they're sleeping, like that wouldn't that would
Speaker 1: make it more You'd have to set up again and
Speaker 1: every time they move so and then why how come
Speaker 1: other people who just walked in front of them wouldn't
Speaker 1: hear it? Yeah, And again it just also comes back
Speaker 1: to why are they so interested in you? What is
Speaker 1: it about you? Why are they making your life miserable?
Speaker 1: Why are they why are they subjecting you to this
Speaker 1: electronic torture? Certainly a good question to ask, But I
Speaker 1: wanted to come back to the thing about the techno
Speaker 1: religion because, as we can observe throughout history, very often
Speaker 1: things that eventually become fairly accepted or even mainstream religions
Speaker 1: start off as small communities that are you know, propagating
Speaker 1: beliefs that almost no one else accepts or take seriously.
Speaker 1: But once they've been around for a while, people just
Speaker 1: accept their beliefs and say, Okay, this is part of
Speaker 1: our culture. Now they're these certain people who believe X.
Speaker 1: So because these people are coming together on the Internet
Speaker 1: now and have the ability to form communities based around
Speaker 1: the beliefs that they have, I wonder if overtime belief
Speaker 1: in electromagnetic voice propagation and electromagnetic torture will morph into
Speaker 1: a religion gin or fairly mainstream religion type belief. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We'll have to check back in a hundred years, two
Speaker 1: hundred years and see where we are, all right. So
Speaker 1: there you have it the two K. I do want
Speaker 1: to close out though, by seriously saying that if you
Speaker 1: find yourself hearing voices in your daily life, um I
Speaker 1: do go seek professional help because it's it's something that
Speaker 1: you need to get checked out with by a mental
Speaker 1: health professional. That's my that's my advice. Yeah, like I
Speaker 1: said at the beginning, it's not our goal just to
Speaker 1: tell you that what you think is happening to you
Speaker 1: is not happening to you. I know that that's not
Speaker 1: really helpful, but at least you should seek the help
Speaker 1: of someone who is a psychiatric health care professional. In
Speaker 1: the same way that the people on the online forum
Speaker 1: are going to make you feel as if you were
Speaker 1: not alone, I think you can get that same feeling
Speaker 1: and that same reassurance from mental health care professional because
Speaker 1: certainly you are not alone. There are other people who
Speaker 1: deal with this and and have have come out the
Speaker 1: other end of it, so there is hope. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: So if you want more on this particular topic, check
Speaker 1: out the landing page for this episode. It's stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind dot com. I'll bet we'll be sure
Speaker 1: to include some links out to some of these resources
Speaker 1: who we've discussed the key papers that for instance, and
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Also, that's all
Speaker 1: the other podcast episodes, videos, blog post links out to
Speaker 1: social media accounts, you name it. And if you want
Speaker 1: to send us any feedback, let us know about your
Speaker 1: experiences or share any positive applications you could think of
Speaker 1: for a voice to skull technology. If it wouldn't melt
Speaker 1: your brain, that is, you can let us know it.
Speaker 1: Blow the mind at how stuff works dot com for
Speaker 1: more on this and thousands of other topics, does it,
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