• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Sonic Weapons / Acoustic Weapons

Gadzooks3 said:
I vaguely remember (sorry I can't be more specific!) reading about some sonic weapon that the French had invented back in the 1970s that was patented in France but has never been used since its original test...

Gavreau's device - described in detail here -

borderlands.com/archives/arch/gavreaus.htm
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090209002132/https://borderlands.com/archives/arch/gavreaus.htm


- unfortunately with perhaps a little too much imagination. Like Tesla, the myth is greater than the man and nobody has replicated any of this stuff.

A more realistic (if much drier) assessment of the known effects of sound, infrasound and ultrasound for weapon applications is provided by Dr Altmann's piece -

princeton.edu/~globsec/publi ... ltmann.pdf
Link is dead. The MIA PDF document can be retrieved from the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/2006061....edu/~globsec/publications/pdf/9_3altmann.pdf


Any acoustic weapon is going to be relatively short range for obvious reasons, and you certainly can't destroy a bridge with one!

AFAIK all current US acoustic weapon research is into nonlethal weapons for crowd control, although there's an underwater one which may be dual nonlethal/lethal if the taget doesn't get the hint.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Call to scrap 'anti-teen' device

Call to scrap 'anti-teen' device
A high-pitched device used to disperse teenagers is being challenged by campaigners, who say it is not a fair way to treat young people.
There are estimated to be 3,500 of the devices, known as the mosquito, in use across the country.

Their sound causes discomfort to young ears - but their frequency is above the normal hearing range of people over 25.

The Children's Commissioner for England says they should be scrapped as they infringe the rights of young people.

Negative views

The devices have proved popular with councils and police who use them to disperse groups of youths engaged in anti-social behaviour.

But a new campaign called "Buzz off", led by the Children's Commissioner for England and backed by groups including civil liberties group Liberty, is calling for them to be scrapped.

The organisations want to highlight what they call the "increasingly negative" way society views and deals with children and young people.

Sir Al Aynsley-Green, Children's Commissioner for England, said he had spoken to many young people who had been "deeply affected" by the deterrents.

He said: "These devices are indiscriminate and target all children and young people, including babies, regardless of whether they are behaving or misbehaving.
 
On the one hand, it's obviously pretty handy to be able to use something like that, to stop gangs of kids congregating, however, on the other hand, it does seem to rely on the premise that congregating kids are a variety of pest, like vermin, feral cats, or pigeons.

The local train station, here in Holland, uses classical music, usually Mozart, to do the same job (as I mentioned earlier on in the Thread). Much more humane. ;)
 
Some truly mind-boggling comments on the Have Your Say bit of the BBC website.

Source

As a parent with a 14 year old son (who doesn't hang around outside shops) I find it difficult to approve of a device which targets young people and relies on hearing decay which may not affect everyone. More police? Some hope for the kids might be good too.
 
It's always seemed a little self-defeating to me, in that using the Mosquito tars all youngsters (or indeed anyone who can hear it, which might include me, as I have exceptionally good hearing!) with the same 'menace' brush.

As it's used outside places which rely on customers' goodwill, it follows that teenagers - tomorrow's customers - are likely to take their money elsewhere.

Insulting or potentially harming future customers makes poor business sense. ;)
 
There is a house in my neighbourhood that has their mosquito buzzing constantly.. I'm 29 and can hear it.

Grr
 
True to the way everything else seems to be going, we now have a non discriminatory version of the mosquito.

It pisses everyone off equally (apart from deaf people i guess)

Now crime gadget can annoy us all

The original alarm was attacked for infringing young people's rights
A device designed to move on would-be criminals has been updated so as not to discriminate against the young.

But it is still being criticised by civil liberty campaigners.

The Mosquito emits a high-pitched sound and has been designed for use in potential crime hotspots such as subways and underground car parks.

The idea is that the noise it produces is so annoying that criminals will not want to hang around.

The Mosquito Mark 4 is a new version of the original Mosquito launched in 2005 - which was criticised for targeting only young people.

'Unwanted youths'

That version emitted a noise at such a high frequency that it was usually only audible to those under the age of 25.

Over 3,000 have been sold for use in the UK. Many have been placed outside shops, fast-food outlets and transport hubs - places where owners feel groups of unwanted youths are gathering.

However, their use has led to a national campaign - backed by the Children's Commissioner, the National Youth Agency and Liberty - calling for them to be banned.

They argue that even if the devices cause no damage to hearing they are an unfair attack on young people's human rights.

Would this noise annoy you?

The makers, Compound Security Systems, have come up with a solution - a Mosquito which is annoying whatever people's age.

The new Mark 4 has an additional setting which allows the user to lower the frequency enabling the sound to be heard by people of any age.

The sound is emitted at 100 decibels - according to its inventor Howard Stapleton, it does not have to be loud to move people on.

He said: "It is quieter than a child playing the violin. What makes it appear loud is the fact that it is going on and off four times a second. That's what makes it very annoying."

'Buzz off' campaign

The new Mosquito, which went on sale last month, has already been selling well abroad.

According to the company, a major chain of hotels in Canada sees them as a way to keep homeless people out of their car parks.

In the UK, it is understood that one police force is about to start testing its Mosquito in an underpass favoured by muggers. A national car park chain is also said to be interested in trying the device out.

The "Buzz Off" campaign targeting the "anti-teen" device continues, with several councils in the UK banning its use.


So called 'Mosquito' deterrents could break the law but only if they're deemed to be causing a nuisance
Local Government Association
There are now calls for the authorities to look at regulating against the new version.

Shami Chakrabati, Director of human rights group Liberty, said: "I think we need urgent research and regulation by the authorities. It's not going to stop determined criminals.

"It could cause damage to the rest of us and certainly make our lives a bit of a misery."

There is currently no specific legislation against the Mosquito.

According to the Local Government Association there are a number of ways currently being used to disperse potentially anti-social groups including talking CCTV and playing music.

A spokesman told the BBC: "So called 'Mosquito' deterrents could break the law but only if they're deemed to be causing a nuisance.

"If a council thinks there is a nuisance, either because they've received a complaint, or have detected it themselves, they have a duty under nuisance laws to investigate it."

On sale for less than £500, the sound of the new Mosquito has the potential to become annoyingly familiar - whatever your age.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7759818.stm
 
OldTimeRadio said:
I was thinking (vaguely) along the lines that maybe there was some sort of a prehistoric, poisonous animal which was much more dangerous to children than to adults, and which had a high-pitched whine.
There could be something in that. I read not long ago that tigers have a two-tone roar, one being the growl with which we are all familiar, and another subsonic one that the nervous system detects on a subconcious level. Apparently tigger lets go with the latter first, and when his prey stands startled he then attacks with the audible roar which frightens the prey into utter submission.
 
recall some interesting stuff about this in the ft a year or two ago.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/03/03/sonic.weapon.ap/index.html

The CNN article is MIA (not avaiable @ CNN.com). Here's a condensed version dredged from the Wayback Machine:

Troops get high-tech noisemaker
U.S. soldiers in Iraq have new gear for dispersing hostile crowds and warding off potential enemy combatants. It blasts earsplitting noise in a directed beam.

The equipment, called a Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, is a so-called "non-lethal weapon" developed after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole off Yemen as a way to keep operators of small boats from approaching U.S. warships.

The devices have been used on some U.S. ships since last summer as part of a suite of protection devices.

Now, the Army and Marines have added this auditory barrage dispenser to their arms ensembles. Troops in Fallujah, a center of insurgency west of Baghdad, and other areas of central Iraq in particular often deal with crowds in which lethal foes intermingle with non-hostile civilians. ...

Though not officially part of the military's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, the 45-pound, dish-shaped device belongs to a developing arsenal of technologies intended not to kill but to deter. ...

Carl Gruenler, vice president of military and government operations for American Technology Corp., said LRADs are "in the beginnings of being used in Baghdad," though he said he lacked "initial feedback" on how they are working.

Dubbed "The Sound of Force Protection" in a company brochure, the devices can broadcast sound files containing warning messages. Or they can be used with electronic translating devices for what amounts to "narrowcasting."

If crowds or potential foes don't respond to the verbal messages, the sonic weapon, which measures 33 inches in diameter, can direct a high-pitched, piercing tone with a tight beam. Neither the LRAD's operators or others in the immediate area are affected. ...

Gruenler compares the LRAD's shrill tone to that of smoke detectors, only much louder. It can be as loud as about 150 decibels; smoke detectors are in the 80 to 90 decibel range.

"Inside 100 yards, you definitely don't want to be there," said Gruenler, adding that the device is recommended for a range of 300 yards or less.

Hearing experts say sound that loud and of that high a frequency -- about 2,100 to 3,100 hertz -- could be dangerous if someone were exposed to it long enough.

"That's a sensitive region for developing hearing loss," said Richard Salvi, director of the Center for Hearing and Deafness at the University at Buffalo. "The longer the duration, the more serious it is."

Gruenler concedes that permanent hearing damage is possible if someone were exposed to the sound for lengthy periods.

But he said the high-pitched tone is intended to only be used for a few seconds at a time.

SOURCE (Wayback Machine): http://web.archive.org/web/20040402...4/TECH/ptech/03/03/sonic.weapon.ap/index.html
 
Many years ago we had at a remote location Rover, so call as it looked like K9's
head from Doctor Who, the ears being tow high intensity spot lamps and nose
very technical looking speaker, once armed any noise would set this beast off
and it was physically painful to be within many yards of it if it went off you had
to fit earplugs or defenders the steel your self to dive into the room and switch it
off, one day some bod turned up and took it away apparently some scroat had
got his self trapped with one and died, most likely why I suffer from tinnitus now.
 
Many years ago we had at a remote location Rover, so call as it looked like K9's
head from Doctor Who, the ears being tow high intensity spot lamps and nose
very technical looking speaker, once armed any noise would set this beast off
and it was physically painful to be within many yards of it if it went off you had
to fit earplugs or defenders the steel your self to dive into the room and switch it
off, one day some bod turned up and took it away apparently some scroat had
got his self trapped with one and died, most likely why I suffer from tinnitus now.
A remote location rover? A security system? Not quite clear.
 
Many years ago the Americans did some test on supersonic propeller driven aircraft,
they removed the jet engine from I think a Thunderchief fighter bomber and stuck
a big turbo prop on the front fitted with a propeller designed to go supersonic,
the tests were cut short as with the engine running on the ground the noise
sent anyone anywhere near the thing into convulsions.
It was nick named the Thunder Screech.
 
... It was nick named the Thunder Screech.

That would be the Republic XF-84H, based on the F-84 'Thunderstreak'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_XF-84H

I've seen the last surviving specimen, and it's an odd beast. It had a miserable reputation among the few test pilots who ever flew it, and its sonic effects on people within a few hundred yards were widely reported.
 
The US Military Is Making Lasers That Create Voices out of Thin Air:

Within three years, the Pentagon's non-lethal weapons lab hopes to have a direct energy weapon that can produce an effect like a haunted walkie-talkie or the biblical burning bush.


Watch the video above and listen carefully for what sounds like a human voice during the second spin. That’s not an audio recording or a broadcast transmitted over radio…it’s not human at all. It’s an auditory effect that’s created by military scientists who manipulated the air with lasers — and it’s the Pentagon’s most interesting idea for stopping people charging checkpoints, or just scaring the crap out of them.

The U.S. military’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program, or JNLWD, is inching closer to a weapon that alters atoms to literally create words from thin air. It’s called the Laser-Induced Plasma Effect and, fingers crossed, they hope to be able to say intelligible words within the next three years.

The weapon is composed of two parts: first, a femtosecond laser, which shoots a burst of focused light for 10−15 seconds, just long enough to rip the electrons from air molecules and create a ball of plasma. (Sometimes called the fourth state of matter, plasma is a field of electrified gas, highly responsive to electromagnetic effects.) The scientists then hit that plasma field with a second nanolaser, tuned to an extremely narrow range of wavelengths. They use that to manipulate the plasma field in a way that can produce light and noise. Get the interaction precise enough and you get something that sounds like a haunted walkie-talkie.

“We’re this close to getting it to speak to us. I need three or four more kilohertz,” says David Law, who runs JNLWD’s technology division.

maximus otter
 
Last edited:
I would suspect that a lot of matters Fortean can be explained by Infrasound, the science of which is only now being investigated. Here is a document regarding some of its effects:
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/htdocs/chem_background/exsumpdf/infrasound_508.pdf
It's also the case the rooms in buildings are about the right size to act as Helmholtz cavities at infra-sound frequencies (with 10Hz waves having a wavelength of about 34M) and that can be especially horrible I'd have thought.
 
So, it may not be a weapon, but, there are all these frequency videos on You Tube so yeah.... supposedly frequencies can trick, or activate the mind with binurial waves...


I mean, if stuff like this really appeals to the brain, then could stuff like this also destroy the brain?
 
The sonic weapon(s) most relevant to your everyday life may be right in front of you ... The means for hacking computers so as to induce or transmit intense and / or inaudible high- and low-frequency sounds through your connected / controlled speakers has now been demonstrated.
HACKERS CAN TURN EVERYDAY SPEAKERS INTO ACOUSTIC CYBERWEAPONS

SPEAKERS ARE EVERYWHERE, whether it's expensive, standalone sound systems, laptops, smart home devices, or cheap portables. And while you rely on them for music or conversation, researchers have long known that commercial speakers are also physically able to emit frequencies outside of audible range for humans. At the Defcon security conference in Las Vegas on Sunday, one researcher is warning that this capability has the potential to be weaponized.

It’s creepy enough that companies have experimented with tracking user browsing by playing inaudible, ultrasonic beacons through their computer and phone speakers when they visit certain websites. But Matt Wixey, cybersecurity research lead at the technology consulting firm PWC UK, says that it’s surprisingly easy to write custom malware that can induce all sorts of embedded speakers to emit inaudible frequencies at high intensity, or blast out audible sounds at high volume. Those aural barrages can potentially harm human hearing, cause tinnitus, or even possibly have psychological effects. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.wired.com/story/acoustic-cyberweapons-defcon/
 
There's an interesting article here about ultrasonics & whether some people are affected by them.

It has a video of a tone generator running continuously from 20hz to 20khz if you want to see what you can hear. I've got high end loss & don't hear anything after 12khz.
 
I can't hear anything over 9.5 kHz. I used to be able to hear very high pitched sounds, but my deafness and tinnitus put paid to that.
 
The sonic weapon(s) most relevant to your everyday life may be right in front of you ... The means for hacking computers so as to induce or transmit intense and / or inaudible high- and low-frequency sounds through your connected / controlled speakers has now been demonstrated.

FULL STORY: https://www.wired.com/story/acoustic-cyberweapons-defcon/
Seen something similar occur believe it or not. Experiments using a microwave traveling wave tube transmitter which transmitted 10's of Kw. The transmitter translated audio communications up to microwave frequencies which came across the base juke box and nearby stereo systems. The individual who did this got into considerable issue with the authorities for transmitting dangerously high levels of power in a non-restricted area.
 
China has developed the world’s first portable sonic gun for riot control, the Chinese Academy of Sciences said.
The rifle-shaped instrument, which was jointly developed with military and law enforcement, is designed to disperse crowds using focused waves of low frequency sound, the academy's Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry website said on Wednesday.
The device’s “biological effect” would cause extreme discomfort, with vibrations in the eardrums, eyeballs, stomach, liver, and brain, scientists said.


https://www.scmp.com/news/china/sci...s-develop-handheld-sonic-weapon-crowd-control
 
... recall some interesting stuff about this in the ft a year or two ago.

I suspect you're referring to this article - once available online at the old FT website, but now accessible only via the Wayback Machine:

Sonic Weapons
An acoustic weapon disorients rioters and afflicts an invading army with nausea. It can create ‘ghosts’ and arouse animal passions. Fantastic? Jack Sargeant, delving into the possible uses and abuses of infrasound, isn’t so sure. Additional material by David Sutton.
By Jack Sargeant December 2001

https://web.archive.org/web/2008050....com/features/articles/256/sonic_weapons.html
 
Gavreau's apparatus was discussed years ago in:

Sonic Weapons / Acoustic Weapons
https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/sonic-weapons-acoustic-weapons.30364/

The cited web article is worth reviewing ...

Gavreau's device - described in detail here -

borderlands.com/archives/arch/gavreaus.htm
Link is dead. The MIA webpage can be accessed via the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090209002132/https://borderlands.com/archives/arch/gavreaus.htm


- unfortunately with perhaps a little too much imagination. Like Tesla, the myth is greater than the man and nobody has replicated any of this stuff. ...
 
Back
Top