The Voices in My Head

February 20, 2008 by dave

I saw this item on Slashdot this morning. Now I know where the voices in my head are coming from.

The report explained several types of non-lethal laser applications, including microwave hearing, disrupted neural control, and microwave heating. For the first type, short pulses of RF energy (2450 MHz) [FOD note: Conspiracy theorists, can you say Wifi or 2.4 GHz cordless phones? That's the same frequency range.] can generate a pressure wave in solids and liquids. When exposed to pulsed RF energy, humans experience the immediate sensation of "microwave hearing" - sounds that may include buzzing, ticking, hissing, or knocking that originate within the head.

Studies with guinea pigs and cats suggest that the mechanism responsible for the phenomenon is thermoelastic expansion. Exposure to the RF pulses doesn´t cause any permanent effects, as all effects cease almost immediately after exposure ceases. As the report explains, tuning microwave hearing could enable communicating with individuals from a distance of up to several hundred meters.

"The phenomenon is tunable in that the characteristic sounds and intensities of those sounds depend on the characteristics of the RF energy as delivered," the report explains. "Because the frequency of the sound heard is dependent on the pulse characteristics of the RF energy, it seems possible that this technology could be developed to the point where words could be transmitted to be heard like the spoken word, except that it could only be heard within a person´s head. In one experiment, communication of the words from one to ten using ´speech modulated´ microwave energy was successfully demonstrated. Microphones next to the person experiencing the voice could not pick up these sounds. Additional development of this would open up a wide range of possibilities."

The report predicts that communicating at longer distances would be possible with larger equipment, while shorter range signals could be generated with portable equipment. Putting voices in people´s heads could cause what the report calls "psychologically devastating" effects. The technology might even allow for communicating with an individual hostage surrounded by captors, although this would require "extreme directional specificity."

Now that I know how they're doing it, I can fight it. Oh, I guess not. The voice in my head told me that I can't. I have another idea. "Honey, where's that box of aluminum foil?"

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