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US Embassy under seige from Sonic Superweapon

Started by Alberon, September 16, 2017, 02:06:10 PM

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Alberon

The US Embassy in Cuba has found itself being repeatedly attacked by a seemingly impossible sonic superweapon.

From the Guardian -

QuoteThe 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 US victims in an astonishing international mystery still unfolding in Cuba. The top US 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 US officials who say the facts and the physics don't add up.

"None of this has a reasonable explanation," said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA official who served in Havana long before America re-opened an embassy there. "It's just mystery after mystery after mystery."

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 US 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 US government initially realized. The United States first acknowledged the attacks in August – nine months after symptoms were first reported.

The Trump administration still hasn't identified a culprit or a device to explain the attacks, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former US officials, Cuban officials and others briefed on the investigation. Most weren't authorized to discuss the probe and demanded anonymity.

In fact, almost nothing about what went down in Havana is clear. Investigators have tested several theories about an intentional attack: by Cuba's government, a rogue faction of its security forces, a third country like Russia or some combination thereof. Yet they've left open the possibility an advanced espionage operation went horribly awry, or that some other, less nefarious explanation is to blame.

...

Even the potential motive is unclear. Investigators are at a loss to explain why Canadians were harmed, too, including some who reported nosebleeds. Fewer than 10 Canadian diplomatic households in Cuba were affected, a Canadian official said.

Unlike the US, Canada has maintained warm ties to Cuba for decades.

Sound and health experts are equally baffled. Targeted, localized beams of sound are possible, but the laws of acoustics suggest such a device would probably be large and not easily concealed. Officials said it's unclear whether the device's effects were localized by design or due to some other technical factor.

And no single, sonic gadget seems to explain such an odd, inconsistent array of physical responses.

"Brain damage and concussions, it's not possible," said Joseph Pompei, a former MIT researcher and psychoacoustics expert. "Somebody would have to submerge their head into a pool lined with very powerful ultrasound transducers."

Other symptoms have included brain swelling, dizziness, nausea, severe headaches, balance problems and tinnitus, or prolonged ringing in the ears. Many victims have shown improvement since leaving Cuba and some suffered only minor or temporary symptoms.

After the US complained to Cuba's government earlier this year and Canada detected its own cases, the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police traveled to Havana to investigate.

FBI investigators swept the rooms, looking for devices. They found nothing, several officials briefed on the investigation said.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-sonic-weapon-attacks-at-us-embassy-in-cuba-deepens

What the buggering hell is going on? It reads like an X-Files episode, but is it really another example of the strange alternate universe we find ourselves in these days?


Johnny Yesno

QuoteThe Royal Canadian Mounted Police traveled to Havana to investigate.

We're through the looking glass, here, people!

Johnny Yesno

My money's on it being ball lightning bouncing off a strut.

Johnny Yesno


Cuntbeaks


biggytitbo

QuoteIt was music we were making here until
They told us all they wanted
Was a sound that could kill someone from a distance
So we go ahead and the meters are over in the red
It's a mistake in the making

Sebastian Cobb

If you're making a sonic weapon that isn't tuned to 7hz (aka the 'Brown note') you're doing it wrong.

JesusAndYourBush

Quote from: Alberon on September 16, 2017, 02:06:10 PM
From the Guardian -
QuoteThe blaring, grinding noise jolted the American diplomat from his bed in a Havana hotel. He moved just a few feet, and there was silence.

I can definitely understand how sounds can be targeted like that.  A few years ago someone in our street had a van and when they started it up it made a really unpleasant low frequency rumble which I could hear when sitting on the sofa... but I only had to move a couple of feet in any direction to get away from it.

Steven

Reminds me of the 1960s microwave experiments in the US embassy, the Moscow Signal.

Head Gardener


Johnny Yesno

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on September 16, 2017, 03:18:58 PM
If you're making a sonic weapon that isn't tuned to 7hz (aka the 'Brown note') you're doing it wrong haven't fallen for an urban myth.

ftfy

Cerys

Hasn't this been recognised technology for some time now?  Long enough to make something small.  I know that when our noisy upstairs neighbour was being extra loud about ten years ago, I suggested that we get hold of one of the devices that does this, just so we could blast retaliation into his bedroom while he was trying to sleep and drive him mad.

Blumf

Quote from: Cerys on September 17, 2017, 04:42:09 PM
Hasn't this been recognised technology for some time now?

Yep, not even super-secret specialist tech:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directional_sound

Pretty sure any half-decent audio techie could isolate the source easily. Certainly any of the US's various security agencies should have the talent.

mothman

They're all under siege by a sonic superweapon by the time...

newbridge

Quote from: Cerys on September 17, 2017, 04:42:09 PM
Hasn't this been recognised technology for some time now?  Long enough to make something small.  I know that when our noisy upstairs neighbour was being extra loud about ten years ago, I suggested that we get hold of one of the devices that does this, just so we could blast retaliation into his bedroom while he was trying to sleep and drive him mad.

Sound weapons that disable/disorient people, but not sound weapons that cause physical brain damage. In fact that seems basically impossible, which is why all reputable sources have seemingly dismissed that as a possibility. Better headlines for the media though.

I wonder if this is some type of toxin that causes brain damage and, secondarily, hearing damage.

Black Ship

<tag> Dr. Robotnik enters thread taking notes. </tag>

Mister Six

Quote from: newbridge on September 17, 2017, 08:54:59 PM
Sound weapons that disable/disorient people, but not sound weapons that cause physical brain damage. In fact that seems basically impossible, which is why all reputable sources have seemingly dismissed that as a possibility. Better headlines for the media though.

I wonder if this is some type of toxin that causes brain damage and, secondarily, hearing damage.

Or a toxin combined with a directional sound generator to muddy the waters a bit.

Large Noise

Read this the other night before going to sleep. Almost raised it in conversation the next day but had to stop myself cause I wasn't sure if I'd dreamt it.

Johnny Yesno

Quote from: Large Noise on September 17, 2017, 10:30:01 PM
Read this the other night before going to sleep. Almost raised it in conversation the next day but had to stop myself cause I wasn't sure if I'd dreamt it.

Said Large Noise innocently.

steveh

Weird story gets even weirder:

QuoteDoctors treating the U.S. embassy victims of suspected attacks in Cuba have discovered brain abnormalities as they search for clues to explain hearing, vision, balance and memory damage, The Associated Press has learned.

It's the most specific finding to date about physical damage, showing that whatever it was that harmed the Americans, it led to perceptible changes in their brains. The finding is also one of several factors fueling growing skepticism that some kind of sonic weapon was involved.

...

Doctors still don't know how victims ended up with the white matter changes, nor how exactly those changes might relate to their symptoms. U.S. officials wouldn't say whether the changes were found in all 24 patients.

But acoustic waves have never been shown to alter the brain's white matter tracts, said Elisa Konofagou, a biomedical engineering professor at Columbia University who is not involved in the government's investigation.

"I would be very surprised," Konofagou said, adding that ultrasound in the brain is used frequently in modern medicine. "We never see white matter tract problems."

https://www.apnews.com/bbed1d7f6f1a4320a7e60abfdce67d4d

momatt


Alberon

It is happening again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-44223523

This time in China.

QuoteThe US state department has urged its staff in China to alert them to any abnormal hearing or vision issues after one employee reported mystery symptoms.

The person experienced "subtle and vague, but abnormal, sensations of sound and pressure", it said.

...

An embassy spokesperson told US media the employee suffered a mild traumatic brain injury while working at the US consulate in the city of Guangzhou.

"We do not currently know what caused the reported symptoms and we are not aware of any similar situations in China, either inside or outside of the diplomatic community," read a statement from the department.

"The US government is taking these reports seriously and has informed its official staff in China of this event," it said.

A warning on the website of the US Embassy and Consulate said: "While in China, if you experience any unusual acute auditory or sensory phenomena accompanied by unusual sounds or piercing noises, do not attempt to locate their source. Instead, move to a location where the sounds are not present."

"We cannot at this time connect it with what happened in Havana but we are investigating all possibilities," a US embassy official in Beijing told AFP news agency on the condition of anonymity.

momatt



mothman

[tag]Daily Mail reports Negasonic Teenage Warhead is All Grown Up[/tag]


biggytitbo

I thought this had been solved, wasnt it distortion/interference caused by a soup.of different signals overlapping? And some of those signals may have been covert, hence the 'mystery spin.

shh

Easy to pin it on foreign governments isn't it. Like trying to blame all the crashing warships on gps jamming.

Alberon

Quote from: biggytitbo on May 23, 2018, 05:11:58 PM
I thought this had been solved, wasnt it distortion/interference caused by a soup.of different signals overlapping? And some of those signals may have been covert, hence the 'mystery spin.

Didn't hear that explanation, but it could make sense. Perhaps the US is inadvertently doing it to themselves.