August 25, 2015 • 44 mins
Voice-to-skull or V2K technology is generally the stuff of paranoid government conspiracies, and yet the microwave auditory effect is very real. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe consider the military and commercial applications for what some people call microwave telepathy.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick.
And you know most of us live. I feel in
kind of a balanced world where on one hand, yes,
(00:23):
you have the government doing heinous things, occasionally um careless things.
Sometimes just very manipulate things. Uh you know the U.
S Military love went flying flying around attack drones, US
government sifting through our email. But on the other hand,
there's uh, there's also kind of a comedy of the
errors to everything. Sure, this is a point that I
(00:47):
remember Scully made it in at least one episode of
The X Files, but I feel like should have been
made more often. Though it guess it didn't apply in
the X Files because in the X Files the conspiracy
is always real. But but at least in one episode
she makes the point that I think you're giving the
government too much credit. Yeah, this is often a feeling
(01:07):
I have when talking to somebody who believes that there's
a vast conspiracy that's controlling world events through secret channels
that are somehow always just just one step ahead of
the people trying to find evidence of them. My feeling is,
by and large, the government is so incompetent at everything,
(01:27):
how could it possibly carry off this one thing? So? Well, yeah,
there when you look at at various delusional situations that
involve the government and persecution of an individual by the government, uh,
there's this. The whole the whole governmental system has to
be working like this perfect machine to target that individual.
(01:51):
And then and then then, of course you have to
raise questions like why this individual, why is so much
work going on? Why are where's why, why are all
these tag dollars going to say being thoughts into this
random person's head. Well, now you have zeroed in on
one particular conspiracy, the conspiracy to target a person and
(02:13):
use some kind of electromagnetic radiation or you know, auditory
electronic technology to put messages in their brain, to beam
noises at them that make it impossible for them to sleep,
to uh, to give them deafening booms and clicks and
unpleasant sounds in the attempt ultimately to drive them crazy. Yeah.
(02:33):
This is often referred to as V two K or
voice to skull. I'm not sure why it's not V
two F. There are other terms that you'll see pop up.
If you go into the corners of the Internet that
explore this phenomenon, some of the things you'll hear are
electromagnetic torture or electromagnetic harassment or auditory harassment. What are
(02:54):
some others? Gang stalking is another one. Yeah, just just
electronic mind can roll just the idea that there's generally
like a cabal of shadowy individuals that are just outside
of your reach, maybe at the van at either of
the street, or in that apartment next to you, and
they are just they've got all the technology and they're
using it to infiltrate your thoughts. Yeah, so we don't
(03:16):
want to mention or call out anyone directly, that's not
our intention here. But if you are interested in what
this looks like, you can google any of these terms
we just mentioned and check out the websites, forums, message
boards where people are propagating these ideas. This is a
popular idea now, especially that you can find on the internet. Yeah,
I go to any one of these websites and you'll
(03:37):
find a slew of them. If you're just throw in
the search terminology and they you'll find that they serve
as kind of each one is kind of like a
Petri dish for paranoid delusion UM and and often it
will involve V two k UM this voice to skull
transmission we're discussing here. Sometimes it will also throw in
things like brainstem implants that have been secretly implanted in
(04:01):
your skull that are aiding the shadowy individuals in their
persecution of you. Yeah, and these communities have been evident
online for a while. There was actually a New York
Times article I found all the way back in two
thousand and eight talking about the emergence of communities related
to supposed gang stalking or mind control or electromagnetic torture
(04:22):
emerging on the Internet, and it raised some interesting questions.
I thought one of them was about whether these online
groups overall have a positive or negative effect on the
people suffering from the belief that they're being harassed by
these devices. On one hand, sites like this can allow
people to maintain harmful delusions through repetitive reinforcement, and obviously
(04:43):
that's not a good thing. But on the other hand,
they do provide people with a sense of community support
and positive psychological effects of validation, like in some cases
it can help just to be told you're not crazy. Yeah,
just to have somebody else in the world who seems
to be going through the same thing you are. UM.
But then yeah, it's also in the article to make
(05:04):
the comparison to a shark. It's like that the shark
that has to keep moving to stay alive, and this um,
these websites allow that shark to keep moving. It feeds
the delusion and sometimes strengthen it give you, gives you
a more script, more more mean, more pre existing trope
to draw on, Like maybe you didn't even think about
the prospect of having a brain stem implant, but now
(05:27):
bad idea has been introduced. And when it's introduced with say,
pictures of what the back of your your your your
lobo look like if there was an incision there. Yeah,
we were looking at one of these websites before we
recorded today, and they had images of the supposed scar
tissue that forms after the implant is placed behind your
ear and your skull. And we have the thought, how
(05:49):
often do people look at the backs of their ears? Yeah,
it's that there are very few. Unless you're in a
medical profession or what have you, you're you're probably looking
at the backs of very few ears. You know, where
you actually been back the ear and look and look there.
And so in these particular photographs they were showing, you know,
a popular implant they've taken place. Do you you see this
big stitch there, and then showing you what I take
(06:11):
to take to be just a normal ear. But they're
they're trying to point out, oh, there's a line right here.
This is clearly where the the implantation took place. So
you might not have that in your head, but now
you've gone to this place, you're you're sharing in these
new delusions as well as strengthening your pre existing ones. Yeah,
and then there's also a complication that emerges when you're
(06:33):
talking about the idea of a delusion because many psychological
authorities historically have made exceptions for beliefs held by large
communities of people. So there are often exceptions for religious beliefs.
If if a belief is part of your religion, it's
not considered a delusion. The same is true for cultural
or subcultural beliefs. If you belong to a culture that
(06:56):
shares these ideas, then it's not considered a delusion. But
what happens if people experiencing similar delusions find each other
on the Internet and form a community. Yeah, that's something
British psychologist Dr Von Bell brought up in that New
York Times article. Um, the author interviewed him, and he
said that that if it's if it's a culture or subculture,
(07:18):
it's not a delusion. According to the American Psychiatric Association. Uh,
it kind of has the same occupies, the same space
as say a religion, where a divine being may speak
to you and you may speak to the divine being
and it's perfectly acceptable. Uh. There's no technology involved. It's
all mysticism, so we tend to give it a pass.
(07:39):
But well, it happens when it's V two K right.
The the idea of other voices appearing in your head
is not new. I mean, this goes back thousands of years,
but there's a new version of it. There's a new
thing to attribute it to, which is this electromagnetic radiation
coming from devices, which we will talk about in this episode. Personally,
(07:59):
I think it's tough coming up with the right response
to things like this, because I don't want to be
insensitive to people suffering, even if what they believe is
happening is probably not objectively true. They're they're subjective suffering
is totally real, and so I don't think it's plausible
that government agencies men in suits in the black cars,
(08:22):
or I guess the white vans in this case, are
secret secretly running a massive microwave torture campaign on random
people throughout the population. But I also suspect it's not
very helpful to these people just to have one more
person tell them they're wrong. So my goal isn't just
to tell these people they're wrong. Ultimately, I don't know
(08:43):
what the most helpful thing to do is. But it's tough. Yeah,
I mean, on one level, we're definitely not doubting the
the subjective experience of what's going on. I mean, anytime
an individual is is experiencing something paranormal, the experience is
still valid than the reasoning for that experience. Uh, that's
(09:03):
open for discussion and generally leads one to a scientific explanation. Um,
but yeah, what do you what do you do in
a case like this, Because like the same person who
is hearing voices, you wouldn't say, oh, well you should
just go to your church about that, where someone might
tell you, oh, well, that's the devil talking to you
or God talking to you when clearly there's something else
(09:24):
going on there that requires professional assistance. Yeah. And then,
on the other hand, encouraging people's delusions can have actual
negative consequences for the people suffering from them, because when
someone is suffering from a persistent belief that is not
supported by evidence, they are additionally vulnerable to predatory behavior
(09:46):
by people who might be trying to exploit them or
get money from them or something. Yeah. I mean I
saw on some of these websites. Uh, and you know
it was at times these websites are kind of a
ramble and kind of just an explosion of text in
a way that difficult to find a thread of what's
being discussed. But I ran across one, whether it was
talk of getting your your implant, your brain stem implant
(10:09):
treated or deactivated by paying somebody like a thousand dollars
and going to stay in a hotel room in New
Jersey or something to that effect. So someone is charging money. Yeah,
so you know, you get into and I'm not you know,
I don't know exactly what the details are in that
particular treatment, but it raises some questions from me, that's
for sure. Yeah, and you you may actually have encountered
(10:31):
some stories about people who claimed to be suffering from
from V two K attacks in the media. One example
was the Washington Navy yard shooter. Yes, Aaron Alexis and uh, yeah,
this one came to light after the events that he
had uh in the past, told police that some individual
(10:52):
quote had sent three people to follow him and to talk,
keep him awake, and send vibrations into his body. So, um,
you know, that's a sobering reminder that that well, where
these illusions can lead. I mean, certainly not in every case,
but but the this is a this is a harmful
um psychiatric condition. Yeah, so what is the actual mechanism
(11:16):
that's being imagined here and how does it connect to
real world technology that actually does exist? And then yeah,
this is where it gets interesting and it uh and
it again comes back to you know, your your imagined individual.
Here are our prototypal individual who's maybe hearing voices, goes
to one of these websites, and certainly there's a you know,
a lot of of of ideas are throwing at them,
(11:38):
a lot of conspiracy theories. But if they dig around enough,
they'll also find um references to actual science, to the
actual microwave auditory effect, which we're going to discuss here today. Yeah,
so that's sort of the central idea of this podcast.
What is the microwave auditory effect, what causes it, and
how can it be applied technological lee. Well, first, let's
(12:01):
demystify microwaves in general. Right, If you read some of
this literature, you can get a sense that microwaves almost
have this magical kind of power, that there's something very
special and sacred and dangerous about them. Microwaves are incredibly mundane.
We use them in everything. They're in you know, ten
(12:24):
pieces of technology that you can see right now. Yeah,
your phone's using it, your computers using it, your WiFi router,
the microwave ove, and in your kitchen. It's microwaves are
all around us. Specifically, microwaves are a form of non
ionizing radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum. So they're e M radiation.
They're the same type of radiation as visible light, as ultraviolet,
(12:48):
as gamma rays, X rays, and radio waves. And so
what makes something a microwave is its wavelength where it
falls on the wavelength spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. Yeah. Now,
and I've read that the widespread use of microwave ovens
helps color this kind of negative idea because if you're
(13:08):
unfamiliar with any other use of microwave technology in your life,
you're probably familiar with the one that is in your
kitchen and you have seen it, say, incinerate a burrito before.
So so if you failed to incinerate or failed to
incinerate a brio, imperfectly heat up a burrito. So you've
seen this. This kind of it's kind of nefarious if
(13:29):
you start thinking of your brain inside the microwave oven.
But but of course microwaves are not just invisible fire.
You know, if you think of it like invisible fire,
it can take on this scarier, uh, this scarier effect
in your brain. But but actually the cooking effect of
a microwave oven is just taking advantage of the fact
that water is a polar molecule, and that microwaves can
(13:54):
make water molecules vibrate, which creates heat. Now, is it
worth noting that the technology does allow us to do
something called power beaming or wireless power transmission, though that
is substantially different than beaming thoughts into your brain, right,
But it is very interesting. This is something i've talked
about in my other podcast, Forward Thinking quite a bit.
(14:16):
Wireless power transmission is a cool idea. So one of
the ways you've probably heard of wireless power transmission working
is through inductive coupling, and that that's going to be
a different kind of thing. That's like how you might
charge your toothbrush without actually having to plug it into
any contacts. Instead, it just works by generating an electromagnetic
field that stimulates a coil inside the toothbrush and charges
(14:40):
it that way. But with wireless power transmission through microwaves,
you're actually talking about beaming microwaves at an antenna called
a rectifying antenna that receives the microwaves and converts them
into DC energy. Yeah. The one of the more famous
examples that like early tests of this was in ninet
to be four, and I believe they're in there's their
(15:02):
image there at least images, if not video of this
online where you can see where they they use um
microwave power transmission to being power to a miniature helicopter
and keep it up in the air for ten hours.
So it's that's pretty cool. Yeah, And I've seen some interesting,
you know, things about the possibility of say permanent aircraft
where you have them up in the air and they
(15:22):
continually get recharged via wireless power transmission. It factors into
various designs for spacecraft with use of lasers for even
a long distance spacecraft. Oh yeah, yeah, lasers being the
other common wave being makes power like that. One of
the coolest ideas to me that involves wireless power transmission
(15:44):
by microwaves is orbital solar power. Have you ever heard
about this proposal? Yes? This is where you go ahead
and just get the solar panels up there in orbit
or even on another entity up there, um, you know,
say the Moon, what have you, and then let it
collect the energy there and then beam it back to
the planet. Right. I mean, it's a big problem to
have solar panels on the surface of the Earth because
(16:05):
they're blocked by clouds they can you know, and it's
nighttime a lot of the time. What if you just
have them out at space where they're always getting direct
sunlight that you don't have to worry about clouds your nighttime.
That would be wonderful, But how do you get the power?
And the idea is that they would beam the power
back down to Earth via microwaves. And so you'd have
(16:25):
this gigantic field of rectifying antennas to receive the power
that's being beamed down to the surface, and then they
could send that power out to places where we could
use it. So microwaves are pretty fascinating. They go beyond
cooking your burrito. They could power spaceships, they could they
could power the planet. Um. And yet there's a there's
(16:46):
a curious little side effect that we're gonna that we
end up discussing here, the microwave auditory effect, which which
came out of early investigations into well what are the
effects of microwaves on an organism? Right, because because see
not just cooking, not just cooking, you know, because as
we're developing this technology, we're very interested in how how's
(17:06):
it going to affect us the the human user. Yeah,
and we should be upfront that a lot of these
studies that we're gonna be talking about, I think very
much did involve a military or weaponized focus. Yeah, I mean,
because like I mean, of course, anytime there is an
invisible beam that can cause things to cook, you know,
(17:28):
there there you've got a perfect weapon. Right. And plus
also any anything you know a number of things in
the post war and Cold War period were investigated that
were far less wrap people than this. I mean, on
this show before, we've talked about and I know I've
blogged about military investigations of essentially paranormal um activities such
as telepathy and remote viewing, just to see if it
(17:51):
was valuable, because hey, you know, the Russians are gonna
look at it, we might as well look at it too,
And maybe there's probably nothing there, but what if there is, right,
so you have to investigate it. I love to imagine
what would have happened if things had gone the other
way and they discovered that, oh yeah, all these phenomenon
are great for warfare. They do exist and we can
use them. And now we've got the Telekinesis brigades. Yeah,
(18:12):
I guess they're the vanguard of our approaching forces and
that they just like throw all the barbed wire out
of the way exactly. Anyway, But this one was a legit.
This one, this is this is real research into the
microwave auditory effect. It is a totally verified phenomenon, and
it goes back to a guy named Alan H. Fray. Yeah,
(18:33):
he was a neuroscientist looking at the effects of microwaves
on organisms. And in nineteen sixty two he discovered the
microwave auditory effects. Sometimes it's even called the Fray effect.
Um and uh and and he and he published this paper,
which is easily available online in large part because it's
a scientifically viable bit of evidence for the more deluded
(18:57):
aspects of the two K. Well, you know, I think
the version of the paper that I read, I'm pretty
sure was hosted on a on a v two K
attack website. Yeah, sadly that was like the best place
to get it without paying for it. Um but but yeah,
he's eh. Ray says in his says in his paper,
he says, with appropriate modulation, the perception of various sounds
(19:17):
can be induced in clinically deaf as well as normal
human subjects at a distance of inches up to thousands
of feet from the transmitter. With somewhat different transmitter parameters,
we can induce the perception of severe buffeting of the
head without such a parent vestibular symptoms as dizziness or nausea.
Changing to transmitter parameters again, one can induce pins and
(19:39):
pins and needles sensation. Yeah. So the effect he describes
essentially is that they could aim pulses of microwave radiation
at people's heads and induce the sensation that the person
was hearing a sound. There was no sound, like if
you weren't standing in this beam, you wouldn't hear anything.
(20:00):
But based on how this beam was interacting with the
people's bodies, specifically something in their heads, they thought they
heard noise. And the noise was described as a buzzing
or a clicking I think, And it seemed to originate
from inside the head or from directly behind the head,
And it didn't matter what direction you turned in, so
(20:21):
you could walk all around in different directions and no
matter what, it would seem to be coming from the
same place inside your head or directly behind your skull. Now,
for I thought the microwave auditory effet could possibly use
as a tool to explore nervous system coding UH and
for stimulating the nervous system without the without the damage
caused by using say electrodes. Right, yeah, so, I think
(20:41):
early on the some people hypothesized that it was coming
from an interaction between the microwave pulses and auditory nerves
or neurons. But I read in UH in an abstract
research from Lynn and Wang that they eventually found instead
that quote, the microwave pulse on absorption by soft tissues
in the head launches a thermoelastic wave of acoustic pressure
(21:05):
that travels by bone conduction to the inner ear. There
it activates the co clear receptors via the same process
involved in normal hearing. So it's creating a shock wave
in the soft tissue inside your head that gets that
the bone picks up and then says it sounds like
a sound. Yeah. And you know this is related to
(21:27):
some of the ways that we hear sounds, such as
when you hear sound underwater. You know, the bone is
involved in the hearing the interception of those sound waves. Um. Now,
in the early nineteen seventies, that's where this gets into
the realm of whispers and voices. When Joseph Sharp and
Mark Grove at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research,
they took phrase work one step further and successfully transmitted
(21:50):
a speech into the human skull using pulsed microwaves. Yeah,
and so, first of all, that's unsettling, but number too,
don't get carried away because it would be easy to
overstate the effectiveness of this effect they observed because the
idea is not necessarily that you hear normal speech in
(22:14):
your head as as sent by these signals, but instead
it was more that they could sent At least, this
is the impression I get from what's available. I get
the feeling that what they're saying is they could synthesize
the sound of speech. Yes, that's what I got. It
was kind of like a modulated voice like one might
create through the use of a synthesize of So by
using these different types of modulated pulses of microwave energy,
(22:38):
they could create sort of clicks and buzzes that sound
sort of like whispered words. So obviously a lot of
this research is taking place um for the military, and
the military is inherently interested in finding ways to utilize
new technology for their their purposes. You can just imagine
the scene in the movie where there are several you know,
(23:02):
kind of like tough looking generals sitting around a table
with their aviator sunglasses on, and they're like, oh, I
just read about this microwave auditory effect. This will keep
the troops in line, and we can really use it
to undercut enemy moral by whispering what would you whisper
to the enemy to undercut their morale? Um? I guess
you could say, oh, you're gonna lose or you're wrong.
(23:23):
L right. You know, any kind of basically anything that
propaganda that we've dropped from senor uh, you know, any
kind of propaganda that we've dumped on the on the
enemy's head, you know, on leaflets. You could just inject
directly under the skull be it's something, you know, something
that's undermining the authority um of their government or their
you know, their mission statement, etcetera. Yeah, or you could
(23:45):
go a lot cruder with it and just say, well,
these generals sitting around in the room instead, what they
want is something that's going to cause the sensation of
deafening noises in the heads of the enemy that would
just incapacitate them and make them unable to fight. Yeah.
When I was looking a two thousand four Navy Phase
one summer report that went into some of this, they
pointed out three potential applications. UM one as a perimeter
(24:09):
protection sensor in deterrent systems for industrial and national sites. Okay,
so if you're going up to the do not cross
this line line, these start here lasted with the microwaves. Yeah, yeah,
be at a buzzing or even like a do not cross,
do not enter a kind of modulated voice. Number two
for youth in systems to assist communication with hearing impaired persons,
(24:30):
which is is rather obvious. We're talking about a way
that you can cause a death individual to hear, so
obviously there would be some possible uses there that are
that are not you know, military, exclusively in their their purpose. Now,
I should say at this point we're going to offer
some qualifications later the extent to which these things can
actually be used, but sorry, go ahead. And then number
(24:52):
three use by law enforcement and nearly military personnel for
crowd control and asset protection. So this gives into the
easily imagined scenario of turning it on dangerous crowd the
proletariat's getting a little rowdy, You beam some microwaves at
um and I don't know what, I guess they get
some really awful clicking buzzing and they go home. Still,
(25:13):
the the the effect has largely remained something of a curio.
Uh though the U. S. Military you know again, has
definitely looked into it, and they were a couple of
of magazine ARTICLETS that came out around two thousand and
eight from a journalist David Handling. One was published and
Wired one was published a new Scientists will make sure
we probably we linked to both of them on the
landing page for this episode. But Handling looked into the
(25:37):
US Army study of these technologies, this telepathic ray gun
and the Medusa as well discussed and he actually interviewed
a man by the name of Lev satov Nik who
worked on the Medusa. The mob excess to Trent using
silent audio device for thee oh, man, those acronyms, let's
call it Medusa, you guys figure out how the words
(25:58):
go together, um and uh sad. Sadovnik stated that the
technology was effective, but here's the that the crucial underlying
factor it comes with the risk of brain damage due
to high intensity shock waves generated by the microwave pulse.
And this is specifically when we're talking about the idea
(26:19):
of oh, let's let's being some loud, annoying noise into
that riot or skull. Well loud noise, of course, you
need large vibrations, and the effects of these large vibrations
on the brain can be rather startling. Yes. I also
found some quotes along the same lines as cited in
an I Tripoli Spectrum article also from two thousand and eight,
so I think it was reacting to this story as
(26:41):
published in The New Scientist. But they spoke with Kenneth Foster,
who was a bioengineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania,
and Bill Guy, a former professor from University of Washington,
who had both done research on the microwave auditory effect themselves,
and both of these guys say that any microwave radiation
that produced a sound loud enough to be a problem
(27:04):
for the target would burn the target, so it would
cook your flesh before it would deep purple you into submission.
So it's evasically a brain melting death ray instead of
the the peaceful crowd deterrent that that one would would
be hoping to create peaceful crowd deterrent. That's a field
(27:26):
I wish I was said. UM also ran across a
report titled bio Effects have Selected nonleth the Weapons that
was leased under the U S Freedom of Information Act
in two thousand and eight, and this report mentioned a
microwave weapon able to produce disabling artificial fever by hitting
a person's body. That sounds like redesignating a bug as
(27:48):
a feature. Yeah, they're like, well, you know, maybe it
doesn't so much as annoy them as it makes them
feel physically ill. Uh. But no tests were actually mentioned
in the report, thank goodness. Um, but it did that.
It did state that the the necessary equipment already existed,
the necessary technology already existed, and that it would take
at least fifteen minutes to achieve the desired incapacitating effect.
(28:11):
So I guess in this case, you would just point
the apparatus at the crowd and then just wait for
people to give up, to get hot and fevery and
wander off. Yeah. I don't know. I don't really know
what happens inside the government weapons research, but just as
an outsider, it kind of sounds like they found out
(28:32):
that this cooks you before it makes the sound, and
then they're like, how can we sell this? Yeah, and
and it doesn't seem like it really went any further
than that. Yeah, but we should talk about some of
the details of this supposed MEDUSA device. Yes. Uh, that
two thousand and four Navy Phase one Summer report that
I mentioned earlier said the quote through the combination of
pulse parameters and pulse power, is possible to raise the
(28:54):
auditory sensation to the discomfort level the touring personnel from
entering a protected perimeter or if necessary, temper rarely incapacitating
particular individuals, which again is the goal, but it it
doesn't really match up with with what the technology will
actually do individual So that was the phase one report.
I think I read that it didn't actually proceed beyond that,
(29:16):
did it. I don't believe though, because you know, it
was all worded very much in the optimistic, you know,
phrasing of you know, all right, this is gonna be portable,
it's gonna require low power, it's gonna have a comfortable
radius of coverage and switch from crowd to individual coverage
at the flip of a switch. You know, it was
very much selling the wonders of this and and and
(29:37):
trying to you know, get it funded. But but as
it turns out, of course, as we've discussed, there are
some major health risks involved here, mainly brain melting, yes,
cooking or melting or or at least brain damage created
by this shock wave inside the soft tissues of the
head that eventually is what conveys the sound to the ear.
(29:58):
It's not gonna be good for the person who's on
the receiving end of this. It may injure them, it
may cause permanent disability or damage, or i'd imagine as
a certain level of power, it could even kill you.
So it leads us to them explore, well, what about
the lower wave links. What if we just focus on whispers,
(30:19):
something soft, something that wouldn't be you know, will probably
not be that effective in calming like a raging, rioting
individual down, but would have a more subtle effect. And indeed,
doctor sadovnik Um in those papers that we discussed earlier
from handling, he suggested that in that it might be used,
this technology might be used at a low power to produce,
(30:42):
you know, a whisper that you could you could certainly
perceive consciously or even sudden. It might even be a
subconscious effect if the power level were low enough, so
you could have essentially a low whisper um manifesting in
the skull of the targeted individual. Or it could be
something just come pletely subconscious. They're not they don't even
realize they're hearing a voice. Yeah, Now, just based on
(31:04):
what I've read. I'm not convinced that it has been
shown that you could do even a whisper without maybe
risking some health effects. I'm not sure what the answer
is on that, or certainly it hasn't been approved for
such usage by any governmental body that you know. These
are sort of lab conditions we're talking about, But I
(31:26):
got to wondering, Okay, it's quite obvious, if you want
to get really cynical, what somebody could do with a
machine that causes the sound of whispers inside your head
that nobody else can hear unless they're standing in the
same microwave beam as you. But this could also possibly
have some peaceful applications, right, Yeah, And they've been at
least two different patents that have been filed for hearing devices.
(31:49):
The first one was filed in December nineteenth nine three
by UH Satellite by Philip Stockland of Satellite Beach, Florida.
I'm reading, and apparently apparently this technology didn't pan out.
But then a second pattern UH was filed by a
private and entity in which was a hearing system that
(32:10):
would use the microwave auditory effect to recreate sound in
the human skull. That's interesting and I mean if that
could be done for people with hearing impairments, obviously it
would be great. Yeah, as long as it didn't cause
brain damage. You're right, their heads, and then as long
as there's some sort of block there to keep you
(32:30):
from raising it to brain melting levels. And then uh.
The U. S. Air Force filed a patent for method
and Device for implementing the radio frequency hearing effect, which
was accepted in two thousand two, and then they modified
it to apparatus for audibly communicating speech using the radio
(32:51):
frequency hearing effects. So, in other words, looking at it
as a possible skull to skull um communication system, kind
of a Twitter direct message from skull to skull. Right now,
I can see how the decoding happens, but how does
the encoding happen? I don't know. I guess you would
have to you know, like you like, I see how
you receive it, but how do you send it? Um?
(33:14):
I mean maybe maybe it would work along the same
lines as any kind of like speech to text, uh
kind of programming, you know, speaking to a microphone and
then it becomes text on the screen. You're essentially turning
your own speech into electronic information that then is transformed
into the correct modulation of of microwaves that are then
sent to the receiving device. Yeah. I mean I'm wondering
(33:37):
in what way this is better than just having a
radio receiver with some with like a player that makes
noise in your ear. Yeah, And I think, why is
it better than headphones? And I think that's probably the
issue here is when you start throwing in the technology
necessary to make it work, you no longer really need
the microwave auditory effect to utilize it. It's kind of
(33:59):
I used to when I used to drive to a
job about a decade ago. I used to pass this
house where there was a trailer, and they built all
this stuff around it. They kept adding onto the trailer,
and then one day I drove past and they pulled
the trailer out of the middle. So it's kind of
the same scenario. I feel like the microwave auditory effect,
by the time you build it up, by the time
you add on to it and try to make something
(34:19):
functional about it, you don't need the trailer anymore. The
trailer is just something that could potentially melt your brain.
Now that being said, um, you know, there there's still
some other you know, military applications that are more on
the the subtle side. Um, now, I think these are
all these are all things that have been suggested, things
(34:40):
that have been done in practice. Yeah, and again these
are I have a feeling most of these that if
you tried and you would still have a trailer effect,
if you would have to pull the trailer out and
realize it doesn't quite work. But what are they that
you could use it to talk to selected adversaries in
a fashion that would disturb them. So again, whisper into
the enemy. Uh you know, presume really in that trench
(35:00):
over there in your World War One style combat scenario. Um,
you could you could inspire mutiny exactly. Yeah. Uh. You
could also be used as a decoy and deception concept apparently. Uh,
you know, create the perception of noise in the head
of enemy personnel, so you like try to create sound
that would indicate an attack has started when it hasn't
(35:21):
or something. Yeah, or right. It makes me think of
some sort of metal gear solid scenario where you use
a little device to make the soldier walk the enemy
soldier walk down the hallway and check out a box
in the corner, and when you sneak path that's sort
of um. And then again some sort of private messaging
transmission system, which doesn't sound like it would really work
(35:41):
all that well. As long as we're talking about military inventions,
that they would surely have to invent some way to
protect your brain from harmful microwaves, be it brain melting
or just some sort of nefarious suggestion. You know, this
is much easier to do than you might expect. I
actually tried. I I did this based on some stuff
I was reading on the internet last night and this
(36:04):
morning about the V two K attacks, and I read
about an experiment I decided I would try for myself.
It goes like this, Your cell phone receives microwaves, that's
how it gets the information coming in. So I got
a whole bunch of aluminum foil and I wrapped my
(36:24):
cell phone up in aluminum foil, and then I had
Robert try to call it. Did it ring? No, it
did not know it did successfully blocked my attempts to
infiltrate it with microwaves. Yeah, and this is playing out now.
This might not be exactly analogous to the microwave attacks
that would be coming at your head from some kind
of weapon like this because that you know, the power
(36:46):
densities might be different, but if someone's aiming a microwave
based weapon at you, you should be able to protect
yourself with some kind of metal shielding. In most cases,
a conductive material like metal can shield against all kinds
of a ectromagnetic waves over a certain wavelength. So, for example,
why does your microwave oven cook food on the inside
(37:07):
of the oven but not stuff sitting right beside the
oven on the outside. It's because the inside of the
oven is, you know, the cooking cavity is a sort
of inside out Faraday cage. It's made of metal and
metal mesh in the window to prevent microwaves from escaping.
So if you want to protect yourself from incoming microwaves,
(37:28):
you can build a Faraday cage or just an enclosure
of conductive metal. Yeah. That this the classic tinfoil hat scenario. Yeah,
though from what I was reading, I think a tinfoil
hat might not exactly work because it doesn't enclose fully.
But you could make a tinfoil uh mask that goes
all around your head and that would do this. Yeah,
So basically like Magneto's helmet made out of tinfoil, and
(37:52):
then with a kind of a see through cage on
the front. Also can made of tin. Yeah, it wouldn't
even need to be solid, because like a ritate cage shows,
if you're talking about certain types of electromagnetic radiation waves
over a certain wavelength, a a mesh will do fine.
It doesn't have to be solid, so you could see
through it. You can put a mesh mask on your head. Like, what,
(38:15):
what did you compare it to earlier? Oh? I guess
like the like the face shackles and cages that you
would say put around individuals heads and say medieval times,
you're being punished for being awful, so you have to
march through the town with this on your head. But
you know I'm willing, so you're protected. Yeah. So if
we actually did create these weapons bringing them onto the battlefield,
vans that are transmitting microwave energy weapon pulses at the enemies,
(38:39):
they can just put some screens over their heads and
they should be okay, okay, at just I would think.
So there might be aspects of this weapon that I'm
not fully understanding. I fully admit I'm not an expert
on directed beam energy weapons. Now, I noticed that most
of these articles we're looking at. They don't really get
into the you know, the more entertainment based uses for this,
(39:00):
you know, um, you know, and a salesmanship too. You
could have a store display that whispers in your ear.
You could just have some sort of enhanced music listening experience,
erotic movie posters that get way too personal. Oh no,
Or how about this comes to the new Friday the
thirteenth movie filmed in whisper vision. Yeah, you have the
(39:21):
so you get a hold on you're there in the
theater and suddenly, yes, directly into your skull. Yeah. Now,
then again, what would be the benefit of that over
just playing it on speakers? Well, what's the benefit of
any blank slash vision or you know, any kind of
B movie a gimmick to get people in the theaters.
You don't really need to smell the movie or or
(39:43):
have your seat tremble, but have your seat electric ket Yeah,
but you know, you could go down in the history
books like, remember remember whisper vision they used it like
two times ever And remember when I got brain damage
Friday exactly, And of course you know you can't remember,
I can't, you got I have literally melted my brain
that film. Um, then of course, finally, just to draw
(40:04):
in a couple of past episodes that we've had, you
could have potentially used this in your technology based religion.
I want to come back to that, but go on.
And then also for echo borgs, right, you need the
your artificial intelligence to communicate its words through you. Well,
maybe it could use the microwave auditory effect. Okay, yeah,
I like that. That would make it even harder to
(40:26):
detect that you're getting some of your lines from a
synthetic serrano. And also if you get out of line,
it just melts your brain. If you if you if
you betray the eco borg contract, if you violated to trust.
Help me, I'm being controlled by a computer around melt
you right there and on the podium, man, that's tough.
Except the thing that we need to remember about this,
(40:48):
and this is something that I think often gets lost
in the shuffle, especially when people are talking about the
people who believe in you know, v t K harassment
and attacks, is that this is a beamed things. So
even if you imagine that someone is really using technology
like this on you, it would be a beam that
(41:09):
anybody in the beam would receive it. It's not like
it that can just synchronize to you and just you. Yeah,
it would be exceedingly difficult to target an individual just
throughout the course of his or her day, you know,
to just if there was the shadowy caball of individuals
and they had this device it, it would just be
(41:30):
way too difficult for them to carry this out, Like,
how would you effectively utilize it against them? Uh? Throughout
their day? You just couldn't do it. You could maybe
hit them while they're sleeping, like that wouldn't that would
make it more You'd have to set up again and
every time they move so and then why how come
(41:51):
other people who just walked in front of them wouldn't
hear it? Yeah, And again it just also comes back
to why are they so interested in you? What is
it about you? Why are they making your life miserable?
Why are they why are they subjecting you to this
electronic torture? Certainly a good question to ask, But I
wanted to come back to the thing about the techno
(42:13):
religion because, as we can observe throughout history, very often
things that eventually become fairly accepted or even mainstream religions
start off as small communities that are you know, propagating
beliefs that almost no one else accepts or take seriously.
But once they've been around for a while, people just
(42:35):
accept their beliefs and say, Okay, this is part of
our culture. Now they're these certain people who believe X.
So because these people are coming together on the Internet
now and have the ability to form communities based around
the beliefs that they have, I wonder if overtime belief
in electromagnetic voice propagation and electromagnetic torture will morph into
(42:59):
a religion gin or fairly mainstream religion type belief. Yeah.
We'll have to check back in a hundred years, two
hundred years and see where we are, all right. So
there you have it the two K. I do want
to close out though, by seriously saying that if you
find yourself hearing voices in your daily life, um I
(43:19):
do go seek professional help because it's it's something that
you need to get checked out with by a mental
health professional. That's my that's my advice. Yeah, like I
said at the beginning, it's not our goal just to
tell you that what you think is happening to you
is not happening to you. I know that that's not
really helpful, but at least you should seek the help
(43:41):
of someone who is a psychiatric health care professional. In
the same way that the people on the online forum
are going to make you feel as if you were
not alone, I think you can get that same feeling
and that same reassurance from mental health care professional because
certainly you are not alone. There are other people who
deal with this and and have have come out the
other end of it, so there is hope. Yeah, all right,
(44:04):
So if you want more on this particular topic, check
out the landing page for this episode. It's stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. I'll bet we'll be sure
to include some links out to some of these resources
who we've discussed the key papers that for instance, and
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Also, that's all
the other podcast episodes, videos, blog post links out to
social media accounts, you name it. And if you want
to send us any feedback, let us know about your
(44:25):
experiences or share any positive applications you could think of
for a voice to skull technology. If it wouldn't melt
your brain, that is, you can let us know it.
Blow the mind at how stuff works dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics, does it,
how stuff works, dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to stuff to Blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick.
And you know most of us live. I feel in
kind of a balanced world where on one hand, yes,
(00:23):
you have the government doing heinous things, occasionally um careless things.
Sometimes just very manipulate things. Uh you know the U.
S Military love went flying flying around attack drones, US
government sifting through our email. But on the other hand,
there's uh, there's also kind of a comedy of the
errors to everything. Sure, this is a point that I
(00:47):
remember Scully made it in at least one episode of
The X Files, but I feel like should have been
made more often. Though it guess it didn't apply in
the X Files because in the X Files the conspiracy
is always real. But but at least in one episode
she makes the point that I think you're giving the
government too much credit. Yeah, this is often a feeling
(01:07):
I have when talking to somebody who believes that there's
a vast conspiracy that's controlling world events through secret channels
that are somehow always just just one step ahead of
the people trying to find evidence of them. My feeling is,
by and large, the government is so incompetent at everything,
(01:27):
how could it possibly carry off this one thing? So? Well, yeah,
there when you look at at various delusional situations that
involve the government and persecution of an individual by the government, uh,
there's this. The whole the whole governmental system has to
be working like this perfect machine to target that individual.
(01:51):
And then and then then, of course you have to
raise questions like why this individual, why is so much
work going on? Why are where's why, why are all
these tag dollars going to say being thoughts into this
random person's head. Well, now you have zeroed in on
one particular conspiracy, the conspiracy to target a person and
(02:13):
use some kind of electromagnetic radiation or you know, auditory
electronic technology to put messages in their brain, to beam
noises at them that make it impossible for them to sleep,
to uh, to give them deafening booms and clicks and
unpleasant sounds in the attempt ultimately to drive them crazy. Yeah.
(02:33):
This is often referred to as V two K or
voice to skull. I'm not sure why it's not V
two F. There are other terms that you'll see pop up.
If you go into the corners of the Internet that
explore this phenomenon, some of the things you'll hear are
electromagnetic torture or electromagnetic harassment or auditory harassment. What are
(02:54):
some others? Gang stalking is another one. Yeah, just just
electronic mind can roll just the idea that there's generally
like a cabal of shadowy individuals that are just outside
of your reach, maybe at the van at either of
the street, or in that apartment next to you, and
they are just they've got all the technology and they're
using it to infiltrate your thoughts. Yeah, so we don't
(03:16):
want to mention or call out anyone directly, that's not
our intention here. But if you are interested in what
this looks like, you can google any of these terms
we just mentioned and check out the websites, forums, message
boards where people are propagating these ideas. This is a
popular idea now, especially that you can find on the internet. Yeah,
I go to any one of these websites and you'll
(03:37):
find a slew of them. If you're just throw in
the search terminology and they you'll find that they serve
as kind of each one is kind of like a
Petri dish for paranoid delusion UM and and often it
will involve V two k UM this voice to skull
transmission we're discussing here. Sometimes it will also throw in
things like brainstem implants that have been secretly implanted in
(04:01):
your skull that are aiding the shadowy individuals in their
persecution of you. Yeah, and these communities have been evident
online for a while. There was actually a New York
Times article I found all the way back in two
thousand and eight talking about the emergence of communities related
to supposed gang stalking or mind control or electromagnetic torture
(04:22):
emerging on the Internet, and it raised some interesting questions.
I thought one of them was about whether these online
groups overall have a positive or negative effect on the
people suffering from the belief that they're being harassed by
these devices. On one hand, sites like this can allow
people to maintain harmful delusions through repetitive reinforcement, and obviously
(04:43):
that's not a good thing. But on the other hand,
they do provide people with a sense of community support
and positive psychological effects of validation, like in some cases
it can help just to be told you're not crazy. Yeah,
just to have somebody else in the world who seems
to be going through the same thing you are. UM.
But then yeah, it's also in the article to make
(05:04):
the comparison to a shark. It's like that the shark
that has to keep moving to stay alive, and this um,
these websites allow that shark to keep moving. It feeds
the delusion and sometimes strengthen it give you, gives you
a more script, more more mean, more pre existing trope
to draw on, Like maybe you didn't even think about
the prospect of having a brain stem implant, but now
(05:27):
bad idea has been introduced. And when it's introduced with say,
pictures of what the back of your your your your
lobo look like if there was an incision there. Yeah,
we were looking at one of these websites before we
recorded today, and they had images of the supposed scar
tissue that forms after the implant is placed behind your
ear and your skull. And we have the thought, how
(05:49):
often do people look at the backs of their ears? Yeah,
it's that there are very few. Unless you're in a
medical profession or what have you, you're you're probably looking
at the backs of very few ears. You know, where
you actually been back the ear and look and look there.
And so in these particular photographs they were showing, you know,
a popular implant they've taken place. Do you you see this
big stitch there, and then showing you what I take
(06:11):
to take to be just a normal ear. But they're
they're trying to point out, oh, there's a line right here.
This is clearly where the the implantation took place. So
you might not have that in your head, but now
you've gone to this place, you're you're sharing in these
new delusions as well as strengthening your pre existing ones. Yeah,
and then there's also a complication that emerges when you're
(06:33):
talking about the idea of a delusion because many psychological
authorities historically have made exceptions for beliefs held by large
communities of people. So there are often exceptions for religious beliefs.
If if a belief is part of your religion, it's
not considered a delusion. The same is true for cultural
or subcultural beliefs. If you belong to a culture that
(06:56):
shares these ideas, then it's not considered a delusion. But
what happens if people experiencing similar delusions find each other
on the Internet and form a community. Yeah, that's something
British psychologist Dr Von Bell brought up in that New
York Times article. Um, the author interviewed him, and he
said that that if it's if it's a culture or subculture,
(07:18):
it's not a delusion. According to the American Psychiatric Association. Uh,
it kind of has the same occupies, the same space
as say a religion, where a divine being may speak
to you and you may speak to the divine being
and it's perfectly acceptable. Uh. There's no technology involved. It's
all mysticism, so we tend to give it a pass.
(07:39):
But well, it happens when it's V two K right.
The the idea of other voices appearing in your head
is not new. I mean, this goes back thousands of years,
but there's a new version of it. There's a new
thing to attribute it to, which is this electromagnetic radiation
coming from devices, which we will talk about in this episode. Personally,
(07:59):
I think it's tough coming up with the right response
to things like this, because I don't want to be
insensitive to people suffering, even if what they believe is
happening is probably not objectively true. They're they're subjective suffering
is totally real, and so I don't think it's plausible
that government agencies men in suits in the black cars,
(08:22):
or I guess the white vans in this case, are
secret secretly running a massive microwave torture campaign on random
people throughout the population. But I also suspect it's not
very helpful to these people just to have one more
person tell them they're wrong. So my goal isn't just
to tell these people they're wrong. Ultimately, I don't know
(08:43):
what the most helpful thing to do is. But it's tough. Yeah,
I mean, on one level, we're definitely not doubting the
the subjective experience of what's going on. I mean, anytime
an individual is is experiencing something paranormal, the experience is
still valid than the reasoning for that experience. Uh, that's
(09:03):
open for discussion and generally leads one to a scientific explanation. Um,
but yeah, what do you what do you do in
a case like this, Because like the same person who
is hearing voices, you wouldn't say, oh, well you should
just go to your church about that, where someone might
tell you, oh, well, that's the devil talking to you
or God talking to you when clearly there's something else
(09:24):
going on there that requires professional assistance. Yeah. And then,
on the other hand, encouraging people's delusions can have actual
negative consequences for the people suffering from them, because when
someone is suffering from a persistent belief that is not
supported by evidence, they are additionally vulnerable to predatory behavior
(09:46):
by people who might be trying to exploit them or
get money from them or something. Yeah. I mean I
saw on some of these websites. Uh, and you know
it was at times these websites are kind of a
ramble and kind of just an explosion of text in
a way that difficult to find a thread of what's
being discussed. But I ran across one, whether it was
talk of getting your your implant, your brain stem implant
(10:09):
treated or deactivated by paying somebody like a thousand dollars
and going to stay in a hotel room in New
Jersey or something to that effect. So someone is charging money. Yeah,
so you know, you get into and I'm not you know,
I don't know exactly what the details are in that
particular treatment, but it raises some questions from me, that's
for sure. Yeah, and you you may actually have encountered
(10:31):
some stories about people who claimed to be suffering from
from V two K attacks in the media. One example
was the Washington Navy yard shooter. Yes, Aaron Alexis and uh, yeah,
this one came to light after the events that he
had uh in the past, told police that some individual
(10:52):
quote had sent three people to follow him and to talk,
keep him awake, and send vibrations into his body. So, um,
you know, that's a sobering reminder that that well, where
these illusions can lead. I mean, certainly not in every case,
but but the this is a this is a harmful
um psychiatric condition. Yeah, so what is the actual mechanism
(11:16):
that's being imagined here and how does it connect to
real world technology that actually does exist? And then yeah,
this is where it gets interesting and it uh and
it again comes back to you know, your your imagined individual.
Here are our prototypal individual who's maybe hearing voices, goes
to one of these websites, and certainly there's a you know,
a lot of of of ideas are throwing at them,
(11:38):
a lot of conspiracy theories. But if they dig around enough,
they'll also find um references to actual science, to the
actual microwave auditory effect, which we're going to discuss here today. Yeah,
so that's sort of the central idea of this podcast.
What is the microwave auditory effect, what causes it, and
how can it be applied technological lee. Well, first, let's
(12:01):
demystify microwaves in general. Right, If you read some of
this literature, you can get a sense that microwaves almost
have this magical kind of power, that there's something very
special and sacred and dangerous about them. Microwaves are incredibly mundane.
We use them in everything. They're in you know, ten
(12:24):
pieces of technology that you can see right now. Yeah,
your phone's using it, your computers using it, your WiFi router,
the microwave ove, and in your kitchen. It's microwaves are
all around us. Specifically, microwaves are a form of non
ionizing radiation on the electromagnetic spectrum. So they're e M radiation.
They're the same type of radiation as visible light, as ultraviolet,
(12:48):
as gamma rays, X rays, and radio waves. And so
what makes something a microwave is its wavelength where it
falls on the wavelength spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. Yeah. Now,
and I've read that the widespread use of microwave ovens
helps color this kind of negative idea because if you're
(13:08):
unfamiliar with any other use of microwave technology in your life,
you're probably familiar with the one that is in your
kitchen and you have seen it, say, incinerate a burrito before.
So so if you failed to incinerate or failed to
incinerate a brio, imperfectly heat up a burrito. So you've
seen this. This kind of it's kind of nefarious if
(13:29):
you start thinking of your brain inside the microwave oven.
But but of course microwaves are not just invisible fire.
You know, if you think of it like invisible fire,
it can take on this scarier, uh, this scarier effect
in your brain. But but actually the cooking effect of
a microwave oven is just taking advantage of the fact
that water is a polar molecule, and that microwaves can
(13:54):
make water molecules vibrate, which creates heat. Now, is it
worth noting that the technology does allow us to do
something called power beaming or wireless power transmission, though that
is substantially different than beaming thoughts into your brain, right,
But it is very interesting. This is something i've talked
about in my other podcast, Forward Thinking quite a bit.
(14:16):
Wireless power transmission is a cool idea. So one of
the ways you've probably heard of wireless power transmission working
is through inductive coupling, and that that's going to be
a different kind of thing. That's like how you might
charge your toothbrush without actually having to plug it into
any contacts. Instead, it just works by generating an electromagnetic
field that stimulates a coil inside the toothbrush and charges
(14:40):
it that way. But with wireless power transmission through microwaves,
you're actually talking about beaming microwaves at an antenna called
a rectifying antenna that receives the microwaves and converts them
into DC energy. Yeah. The one of the more famous
examples that like early tests of this was in ninet
to be four, and I believe they're in there's their
(15:02):
image there at least images, if not video of this
online where you can see where they they use um
microwave power transmission to being power to a miniature helicopter
and keep it up in the air for ten hours.
So it's that's pretty cool. Yeah, And I've seen some interesting,
you know, things about the possibility of say permanent aircraft
where you have them up in the air and they
(15:22):
continually get recharged via wireless power transmission. It factors into
various designs for spacecraft with use of lasers for even
a long distance spacecraft. Oh yeah, yeah, lasers being the
other common wave being makes power like that. One of
the coolest ideas to me that involves wireless power transmission
(15:44):
by microwaves is orbital solar power. Have you ever heard
about this proposal? Yes? This is where you go ahead
and just get the solar panels up there in orbit
or even on another entity up there, um, you know,
say the Moon, what have you, and then let it
collect the energy there and then beam it back to
the planet. Right. I mean, it's a big problem to
have solar panels on the surface of the Earth because
(16:05):
they're blocked by clouds they can you know, and it's
nighttime a lot of the time. What if you just
have them out at space where they're always getting direct
sunlight that you don't have to worry about clouds your nighttime.
That would be wonderful, But how do you get the power?
And the idea is that they would beam the power
back down to Earth via microwaves. And so you'd have
(16:25):
this gigantic field of rectifying antennas to receive the power
that's being beamed down to the surface, and then they
could send that power out to places where we could
use it. So microwaves are pretty fascinating. They go beyond
cooking your burrito. They could power spaceships, they could they
could power the planet. Um. And yet there's a there's
(16:46):
a curious little side effect that we're gonna that we
end up discussing here, the microwave auditory effect, which which
came out of early investigations into well what are the
effects of microwaves on an organism? Right, because because see
not just cooking, not just cooking, you know, because as
we're developing this technology, we're very interested in how how's
(17:06):
it going to affect us the the human user. Yeah,
and we should be upfront that a lot of these
studies that we're gonna be talking about, I think very
much did involve a military or weaponized focus. Yeah, I mean,
because like I mean, of course, anytime there is an
invisible beam that can cause things to cook, you know,
(17:28):
there there you've got a perfect weapon. Right. And plus
also any anything you know a number of things in
the post war and Cold War period were investigated that
were far less wrap people than this. I mean, on
this show before, we've talked about and I know I've
blogged about military investigations of essentially paranormal um activities such
as telepathy and remote viewing, just to see if it
(17:51):
was valuable, because hey, you know, the Russians are gonna
look at it, we might as well look at it too,
And maybe there's probably nothing there, but what if there is, right,
so you have to investigate it. I love to imagine
what would have happened if things had gone the other
way and they discovered that, oh yeah, all these phenomenon
are great for warfare. They do exist and we can
use them. And now we've got the Telekinesis brigades. Yeah,
(18:12):
I guess they're the vanguard of our approaching forces and
that they just like throw all the barbed wire out
of the way exactly. Anyway, But this one was a legit.
This one, this is this is real research into the
microwave auditory effect. It is a totally verified phenomenon, and
it goes back to a guy named Alan H. Fray. Yeah,
(18:33):
he was a neuroscientist looking at the effects of microwaves
on organisms. And in nineteen sixty two he discovered the
microwave auditory effects. Sometimes it's even called the Fray effect.
Um and uh and and he and he published this paper,
which is easily available online in large part because it's
a scientifically viable bit of evidence for the more deluded
(18:57):
aspects of the two K. Well, you know, I think
the version of the paper that I read, I'm pretty
sure was hosted on a on a v two K
attack website. Yeah, sadly that was like the best place
to get it without paying for it. Um but but yeah,
he's eh. Ray says in his says in his paper,
he says, with appropriate modulation, the perception of various sounds
(19:17):
can be induced in clinically deaf as well as normal
human subjects at a distance of inches up to thousands
of feet from the transmitter. With somewhat different transmitter parameters,
we can induce the perception of severe buffeting of the
head without such a parent vestibular symptoms as dizziness or nausea.
Changing to transmitter parameters again, one can induce pins and
(19:39):
pins and needles sensation. Yeah. So the effect he describes
essentially is that they could aim pulses of microwave radiation
at people's heads and induce the sensation that the person
was hearing a sound. There was no sound, like if
you weren't standing in this beam, you wouldn't hear anything.
(20:00):
But based on how this beam was interacting with the
people's bodies, specifically something in their heads, they thought they
heard noise. And the noise was described as a buzzing
or a clicking I think, And it seemed to originate
from inside the head or from directly behind the head,
And it didn't matter what direction you turned in, so
(20:21):
you could walk all around in different directions and no
matter what, it would seem to be coming from the
same place inside your head or directly behind your skull. Now,
for I thought the microwave auditory effet could possibly use
as a tool to explore nervous system coding UH and
for stimulating the nervous system without the without the damage
caused by using say electrodes. Right, yeah, so, I think
(20:41):
early on the some people hypothesized that it was coming
from an interaction between the microwave pulses and auditory nerves
or neurons. But I read in UH in an abstract
research from Lynn and Wang that they eventually found instead
that quote, the microwave pulse on absorption by soft tissues
in the head launches a thermoelastic wave of acoustic pressure
(21:05):
that travels by bone conduction to the inner ear. There
it activates the co clear receptors via the same process
involved in normal hearing. So it's creating a shock wave
in the soft tissue inside your head that gets that
the bone picks up and then says it sounds like
a sound. Yeah. And you know this is related to
(21:27):
some of the ways that we hear sounds, such as
when you hear sound underwater. You know, the bone is
involved in the hearing the interception of those sound waves. Um. Now,
in the early nineteen seventies, that's where this gets into
the realm of whispers and voices. When Joseph Sharp and
Mark Grove at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research,
they took phrase work one step further and successfully transmitted
(21:50):
a speech into the human skull using pulsed microwaves. Yeah,
and so, first of all, that's unsettling, but number too,
don't get carried away because it would be easy to
overstate the effectiveness of this effect they observed because the
idea is not necessarily that you hear normal speech in
(22:14):
your head as as sent by these signals, but instead
it was more that they could sent At least, this
is the impression I get from what's available. I get
the feeling that what they're saying is they could synthesize
the sound of speech. Yes, that's what I got. It
was kind of like a modulated voice like one might
create through the use of a synthesize of So by
using these different types of modulated pulses of microwave energy,
(22:38):
they could create sort of clicks and buzzes that sound
sort of like whispered words. So obviously a lot of
this research is taking place um for the military, and
the military is inherently interested in finding ways to utilize
new technology for their their purposes. You can just imagine
the scene in the movie where there are several you know,
(23:02):
kind of like tough looking generals sitting around a table
with their aviator sunglasses on, and they're like, oh, I
just read about this microwave auditory effect. This will keep
the troops in line, and we can really use it
to undercut enemy moral by whispering what would you whisper
to the enemy to undercut their morale? Um? I guess
you could say, oh, you're gonna lose or you're wrong.
(23:23):
L right. You know, any kind of basically anything that
propaganda that we've dropped from senor uh, you know, any
kind of propaganda that we've dumped on the on the
enemy's head, you know, on leaflets. You could just inject
directly under the skull be it's something, you know, something
that's undermining the authority um of their government or their
you know, their mission statement, etcetera. Yeah, or you could
(23:45):
go a lot cruder with it and just say, well,
these generals sitting around in the room instead, what they
want is something that's going to cause the sensation of
deafening noises in the heads of the enemy that would
just incapacitate them and make them unable to fight. Yeah.
When I was looking a two thousand four Navy Phase
one summer report that went into some of this, they
pointed out three potential applications. UM one as a perimeter
(24:09):
protection sensor in deterrent systems for industrial and national sites. Okay,
so if you're going up to the do not cross
this line line, these start here lasted with the microwaves. Yeah, yeah,
be at a buzzing or even like a do not cross,
do not enter a kind of modulated voice. Number two
for youth in systems to assist communication with hearing impaired persons,
(24:30):
which is is rather obvious. We're talking about a way
that you can cause a death individual to hear, so
obviously there would be some possible uses there that are
that are not you know, military, exclusively in their their purpose. Now,
I should say at this point we're going to offer
some qualifications later the extent to which these things can
actually be used, but sorry, go ahead. And then number
(24:52):
three use by law enforcement and nearly military personnel for
crowd control and asset protection. So this gives into the
easily imagined scenario of turning it on dangerous crowd the
proletariat's getting a little rowdy, You beam some microwaves at
um and I don't know what, I guess they get
some really awful clicking buzzing and they go home. Still,
(25:13):
the the the effect has largely remained something of a curio.
Uh though the U. S. Military you know again, has
definitely looked into it, and they were a couple of
of magazine ARTICLETS that came out around two thousand and
eight from a journalist David Handling. One was published and
Wired one was published a new Scientists will make sure
we probably we linked to both of them on the
landing page for this episode. But Handling looked into the
(25:37):
US Army study of these technologies, this telepathic ray gun
and the Medusa as well discussed and he actually interviewed
a man by the name of Lev satov Nik who
worked on the Medusa. The mob excess to Trent using
silent audio device for thee oh, man, those acronyms, let's
call it Medusa, you guys figure out how the words
(25:58):
go together, um and uh sad. Sadovnik stated that the
technology was effective, but here's the that the crucial underlying
factor it comes with the risk of brain damage due
to high intensity shock waves generated by the microwave pulse.
And this is specifically when we're talking about the idea
(26:19):
of oh, let's let's being some loud, annoying noise into
that riot or skull. Well loud noise, of course, you
need large vibrations, and the effects of these large vibrations
on the brain can be rather startling. Yes. I also
found some quotes along the same lines as cited in
an I Tripoli Spectrum article also from two thousand and eight,
so I think it was reacting to this story as
(26:41):
published in The New Scientist. But they spoke with Kenneth Foster,
who was a bioengineering professor at the University of Pennsylvania,
and Bill Guy, a former professor from University of Washington,
who had both done research on the microwave auditory effect themselves,
and both of these guys say that any microwave radiation
that produced a sound loud enough to be a problem
(27:04):
for the target would burn the target, so it would
cook your flesh before it would deep purple you into submission.
So it's evasically a brain melting death ray instead of
the the peaceful crowd deterrent that that one would would
be hoping to create peaceful crowd deterrent. That's a field
(27:26):
I wish I was said. UM also ran across a
report titled bio Effects have Selected nonleth the Weapons that
was leased under the U S Freedom of Information Act
in two thousand and eight, and this report mentioned a
microwave weapon able to produce disabling artificial fever by hitting
a person's body. That sounds like redesignating a bug as
(27:48):
a feature. Yeah, they're like, well, you know, maybe it
doesn't so much as annoy them as it makes them
feel physically ill. Uh. But no tests were actually mentioned
in the report, thank goodness. Um, but it did that.
It did state that the the necessary equipment already existed,
the necessary technology already existed, and that it would take
at least fifteen minutes to achieve the desired incapacitating effect.
(28:11):
So I guess in this case, you would just point
the apparatus at the crowd and then just wait for
people to give up, to get hot and fevery and
wander off. Yeah. I don't know. I don't really know
what happens inside the government weapons research, but just as
an outsider, it kind of sounds like they found out
(28:32):
that this cooks you before it makes the sound, and
then they're like, how can we sell this? Yeah, and
and it doesn't seem like it really went any further
than that. Yeah, but we should talk about some of
the details of this supposed MEDUSA device. Yes. Uh, that
two thousand and four Navy Phase one Summer report that
I mentioned earlier said the quote through the combination of
pulse parameters and pulse power, is possible to raise the
(28:54):
auditory sensation to the discomfort level the touring personnel from
entering a protected perimeter or if necessary, temper rarely incapacitating
particular individuals, which again is the goal, but it it
doesn't really match up with with what the technology will
actually do individual So that was the phase one report.
I think I read that it didn't actually proceed beyond that,
(29:16):
did it. I don't believe though, because you know, it
was all worded very much in the optimistic, you know,
phrasing of you know, all right, this is gonna be portable,
it's gonna require low power, it's gonna have a comfortable
radius of coverage and switch from crowd to individual coverage
at the flip of a switch. You know, it was
very much selling the wonders of this and and and
(29:37):
trying to you know, get it funded. But but as
it turns out, of course, as we've discussed, there are
some major health risks involved here, mainly brain melting, yes,
cooking or melting or or at least brain damage created
by this shock wave inside the soft tissues of the
head that eventually is what conveys the sound to the ear.
(29:58):
It's not gonna be good for the person who's on
the receiving end of this. It may injure them, it
may cause permanent disability or damage, or i'd imagine as
a certain level of power, it could even kill you.
So it leads us to them explore, well, what about
the lower wave links. What if we just focus on whispers,
(30:19):
something soft, something that wouldn't be you know, will probably
not be that effective in calming like a raging, rioting
individual down, but would have a more subtle effect. And indeed,
doctor sadovnik Um in those papers that we discussed earlier
from handling, he suggested that in that it might be used,
this technology might be used at a low power to produce,
(30:42):
you know, a whisper that you could you could certainly
perceive consciously or even sudden. It might even be a
subconscious effect if the power level were low enough, so
you could have essentially a low whisper um manifesting in
the skull of the targeted individual. Or it could be
something just come pletely subconscious. They're not they don't even
realize they're hearing a voice. Yeah, Now, just based on
(31:04):
what I've read. I'm not convinced that it has been
shown that you could do even a whisper without maybe
risking some health effects. I'm not sure what the answer
is on that, or certainly it hasn't been approved for
such usage by any governmental body that you know. These
are sort of lab conditions we're talking about, But I
(31:26):
got to wondering, Okay, it's quite obvious, if you want
to get really cynical, what somebody could do with a
machine that causes the sound of whispers inside your head
that nobody else can hear unless they're standing in the
same microwave beam as you. But this could also possibly
have some peaceful applications, right, Yeah, And they've been at
least two different patents that have been filed for hearing devices.
(31:49):
The first one was filed in December nineteenth nine three
by UH Satellite by Philip Stockland of Satellite Beach, Florida.
I'm reading, and apparently apparently this technology didn't pan out.
But then a second pattern UH was filed by a
private and entity in which was a hearing system that
(32:10):
would use the microwave auditory effect to recreate sound in
the human skull. That's interesting and I mean if that
could be done for people with hearing impairments, obviously it
would be great. Yeah, as long as it didn't cause
brain damage. You're right, their heads, and then as long
as there's some sort of block there to keep you
(32:30):
from raising it to brain melting levels. And then uh.
The U. S. Air Force filed a patent for method
and Device for implementing the radio frequency hearing effect, which
was accepted in two thousand two, and then they modified
it to apparatus for audibly communicating speech using the radio
(32:51):
frequency hearing effects. So, in other words, looking at it
as a possible skull to skull um communication system, kind
of a Twitter direct message from skull to skull. Right now,
I can see how the decoding happens, but how does
the encoding happen? I don't know. I guess you would
have to you know, like you like, I see how
you receive it, but how do you send it? Um?
(33:14):
I mean maybe maybe it would work along the same
lines as any kind of like speech to text, uh
kind of programming, you know, speaking to a microphone and
then it becomes text on the screen. You're essentially turning
your own speech into electronic information that then is transformed
into the correct modulation of of microwaves that are then
sent to the receiving device. Yeah. I mean I'm wondering
(33:37):
in what way this is better than just having a
radio receiver with some with like a player that makes
noise in your ear. Yeah, And I think, why is
it better than headphones? And I think that's probably the
issue here is when you start throwing in the technology
necessary to make it work, you no longer really need
the microwave auditory effect to utilize it. It's kind of
(33:59):
I used to when I used to drive to a
job about a decade ago. I used to pass this
house where there was a trailer, and they built all
this stuff around it. They kept adding onto the trailer,
and then one day I drove past and they pulled
the trailer out of the middle. So it's kind of
the same scenario. I feel like the microwave auditory effect,
by the time you build it up, by the time
you add on to it and try to make something
(34:19):
functional about it, you don't need the trailer anymore. The
trailer is just something that could potentially melt your brain.
Now that being said, um, you know, there there's still
some other you know, military applications that are more on
the the subtle side. Um, now, I think these are
all these are all things that have been suggested, things
(34:40):
that have been done in practice. Yeah, and again these
are I have a feeling most of these that if
you tried and you would still have a trailer effect,
if you would have to pull the trailer out and
realize it doesn't quite work. But what are they that
you could use it to talk to selected adversaries in
a fashion that would disturb them. So again, whisper into
the enemy. Uh you know, presume really in that trench
(35:00):
over there in your World War One style combat scenario. Um,
you could you could inspire mutiny exactly. Yeah. Uh. You
could also be used as a decoy and deception concept apparently. Uh,
you know, create the perception of noise in the head
of enemy personnel, so you like try to create sound
that would indicate an attack has started when it hasn't
(35:21):
or something. Yeah, or right. It makes me think of
some sort of metal gear solid scenario where you use
a little device to make the soldier walk the enemy
soldier walk down the hallway and check out a box
in the corner, and when you sneak path that's sort
of um. And then again some sort of private messaging
transmission system, which doesn't sound like it would really work
(35:41):
all that well. As long as we're talking about military inventions,
that they would surely have to invent some way to
protect your brain from harmful microwaves, be it brain melting
or just some sort of nefarious suggestion. You know, this
is much easier to do than you might expect. I
actually tried. I I did this based on some stuff
I was reading on the internet last night and this
(36:04):
morning about the V two K attacks, and I read
about an experiment I decided I would try for myself.
It goes like this, Your cell phone receives microwaves, that's
how it gets the information coming in. So I got
a whole bunch of aluminum foil and I wrapped my
(36:24):
cell phone up in aluminum foil, and then I had
Robert try to call it. Did it ring? No, it
did not know it did successfully blocked my attempts to
infiltrate it with microwaves. Yeah, and this is playing out now.
This might not be exactly analogous to the microwave attacks
that would be coming at your head from some kind
of weapon like this because that you know, the power
(36:46):
densities might be different, but if someone's aiming a microwave
based weapon at you, you should be able to protect
yourself with some kind of metal shielding. In most cases,
a conductive material like metal can shield against all kinds
of a ectromagnetic waves over a certain wavelength. So, for example,
why does your microwave oven cook food on the inside
(37:07):
of the oven but not stuff sitting right beside the
oven on the outside. It's because the inside of the
oven is, you know, the cooking cavity is a sort
of inside out Faraday cage. It's made of metal and
metal mesh in the window to prevent microwaves from escaping.
So if you want to protect yourself from incoming microwaves,
(37:28):
you can build a Faraday cage or just an enclosure
of conductive metal. Yeah. That this the classic tinfoil hat scenario. Yeah,
though from what I was reading, I think a tinfoil
hat might not exactly work because it doesn't enclose fully.
But you could make a tinfoil uh mask that goes
all around your head and that would do this. Yeah,
So basically like Magneto's helmet made out of tinfoil, and
(37:52):
then with a kind of a see through cage on
the front. Also can made of tin. Yeah, it wouldn't
even need to be solid, because like a ritate cage shows,
if you're talking about certain types of electromagnetic radiation waves
over a certain wavelength, a a mesh will do fine.
It doesn't have to be solid, so you could see
through it. You can put a mesh mask on your head. Like, what,
(38:15):
what did you compare it to earlier? Oh? I guess
like the like the face shackles and cages that you
would say put around individuals heads and say medieval times,
you're being punished for being awful, so you have to
march through the town with this on your head. But
you know I'm willing, so you're protected. Yeah. So if
we actually did create these weapons bringing them onto the battlefield,
vans that are transmitting microwave energy weapon pulses at the enemies,
(38:39):
they can just put some screens over their heads and
they should be okay, okay, at just I would think.
So there might be aspects of this weapon that I'm
not fully understanding. I fully admit I'm not an expert
on directed beam energy weapons. Now, I noticed that most
of these articles we're looking at. They don't really get
into the you know, the more entertainment based uses for this,
(39:00):
you know, um, you know, and a salesmanship too. You
could have a store display that whispers in your ear.
You could just have some sort of enhanced music listening experience,
erotic movie posters that get way too personal. Oh no,
Or how about this comes to the new Friday the
thirteenth movie filmed in whisper vision. Yeah, you have the
(39:21):
so you get a hold on you're there in the
theater and suddenly, yes, directly into your skull. Yeah. Now,
then again, what would be the benefit of that over
just playing it on speakers? Well, what's the benefit of
any blank slash vision or you know, any kind of
B movie a gimmick to get people in the theaters.
You don't really need to smell the movie or or
(39:43):
have your seat tremble, but have your seat electric ket Yeah,
but you know, you could go down in the history
books like, remember remember whisper vision they used it like
two times ever And remember when I got brain damage
Friday exactly, And of course you know you can't remember,
I can't, you got I have literally melted my brain
that film. Um, then of course, finally, just to draw
(40:04):
in a couple of past episodes that we've had, you
could have potentially used this in your technology based religion.
I want to come back to that, but go on.
And then also for echo borgs, right, you need the
your artificial intelligence to communicate its words through you. Well,
maybe it could use the microwave auditory effect. Okay, yeah,
I like that. That would make it even harder to
(40:26):
detect that you're getting some of your lines from a
synthetic serrano. And also if you get out of line,
it just melts your brain. If you if you if
you betray the eco borg contract, if you violated to trust.
Help me, I'm being controlled by a computer around melt
you right there and on the podium, man, that's tough.
Except the thing that we need to remember about this,
(40:48):
and this is something that I think often gets lost
in the shuffle, especially when people are talking about the
people who believe in you know, v t K harassment
and attacks, is that this is a beamed things. So
even if you imagine that someone is really using technology
like this on you, it would be a beam that
(41:09):
anybody in the beam would receive it. It's not like
it that can just synchronize to you and just you. Yeah,
it would be exceedingly difficult to target an individual just
throughout the course of his or her day, you know,
to just if there was the shadowy caball of individuals
and they had this device it, it would just be
(41:30):
way too difficult for them to carry this out, Like,
how would you effectively utilize it against them? Uh? Throughout
their day? You just couldn't do it. You could maybe
hit them while they're sleeping, like that wouldn't that would
make it more You'd have to set up again and
every time they move so and then why how come
(41:51):
other people who just walked in front of them wouldn't
hear it? Yeah, And again it just also comes back
to why are they so interested in you? What is
it about you? Why are they making your life miserable?
Why are they why are they subjecting you to this
electronic torture? Certainly a good question to ask, But I
wanted to come back to the thing about the techno
(42:13):
religion because, as we can observe throughout history, very often
things that eventually become fairly accepted or even mainstream religions
start off as small communities that are you know, propagating
beliefs that almost no one else accepts or take seriously.
But once they've been around for a while, people just
(42:35):
accept their beliefs and say, Okay, this is part of
our culture. Now they're these certain people who believe X.
So because these people are coming together on the Internet
now and have the ability to form communities based around
the beliefs that they have, I wonder if overtime belief
in electromagnetic voice propagation and electromagnetic torture will morph into
(42:59):
a religion gin or fairly mainstream religion type belief. Yeah.
We'll have to check back in a hundred years, two
hundred years and see where we are, all right. So
there you have it the two K. I do want
to close out though, by seriously saying that if you
find yourself hearing voices in your daily life, um I
(43:19):
do go seek professional help because it's it's something that
you need to get checked out with by a mental
health professional. That's my that's my advice. Yeah, like I
said at the beginning, it's not our goal just to
tell you that what you think is happening to you
is not happening to you. I know that that's not
really helpful, but at least you should seek the help
(43:41):
of someone who is a psychiatric health care professional. In
the same way that the people on the online forum
are going to make you feel as if you were
not alone, I think you can get that same feeling
and that same reassurance from mental health care professional because
certainly you are not alone. There are other people who
deal with this and and have have come out the
other end of it, so there is hope. Yeah, all right,
(44:04):
So if you want more on this particular topic, check
out the landing page for this episode. It's stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. I'll bet we'll be sure
to include some links out to some of these resources
who we've discussed the key papers that for instance, and
stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Also, that's all
the other podcast episodes, videos, blog post links out to
social media accounts, you name it. And if you want
to send us any feedback, let us know about your
(44:25):
experiences or share any positive applications you could think of
for a voice to skull technology. If it wouldn't melt
your brain, that is, you can let us know it.
Blow the mind at how stuff works dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics, does it,
how stuff works, dot com
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.