Sonic weapons: US diplomats under attack?

(To Francesco Rugolo)
04/05/18

Top 2017: A group of American and Canadian diplomats based in Cuba begins to report strange symptoms, hearing problems, severe headaches, sleep disturbances, some say they hear strange whistles at night. A few months later, the US government began to call home its diplomats and start investigations.

We begin to talk about possible attacks by the Cuban government, immediately denied, or potential involvement of a third nation, such as Russia.

Trump declares that he is convinced that the responsibility lies with the Cubans and begins to partially undermine the work done by Obama in 2015 which had seen the rapprochement between the US and Cuba after more than half a century of friction.

The investigations continue and we begin to talk about "sonic weapons" that working at inaudible frequencies can damage the hearing and in the worst case the nervous system, but it seems that the weapon in question came out of a science fiction film.

Non-lethal sonic weapons such as the LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device, photo) are still used today by riot forces and are used as a tool for crowd control during violent protests or by ships to discourage attacks by pirates.

Attacks on the twenty-four diplomats would have been carried out with considerable precision, since neither the families nor the neighborhood would have heard sounds or perceived disturbances of any kind. The investigations can not lead to results even after numerous searches, some subjects are able to recover completely while some have suffered permanent damage to the hearing.

Others have found effects much more serious and different from exposure to high frequencies, some subjects in fact have undergone a variation in the white matter, ie the bundle of nerve fibers that connects the brain to the spinal cord, an effect that in no way is due to a sonic weapon.

It therefore seems impossible that a weapon may have been hidden in the apartments and hotel rooms of the diplomats (the sonic weapons are in fact very noisy and cumbersome), moreover the searches have not provided any clues. Very high frequencies are not easily spread in the air and to damage the brain you should have used a device attached to the subject, and even in that case it should not have caused damage only to the white substance but to the whole brain.

Other studies have shown that frequencies similar to those recorded by one of the diplomats with a mobile phone can be obtained simply by interfering with several devices such as sensors and jammers (which could be in their rooms!), But these frequencies should not be able to to damage the nervous system.

Other research has finally tried to give another kind of answer: mass hysteria.

To date, the US government with the support of the Cuban police has not been able to give any definite answer on the events in Cuba.

  
To learn more

- https://www.wired.com/story/us-diplomats-sonic-attack-ototoxicity/

- https://www.lradx.com/

- https://www.newscientist.com/article/2156164-weaponised-microwave-may-be...

- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/14/mystery-of-sonic-weapon-at...

(photo: CRD Protection)