V2K: The Microwave Auditory Effect

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 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 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,

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. 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 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. 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

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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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, 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, 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 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

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

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 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 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 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 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 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,

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

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 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, 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 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 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

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.

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

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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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

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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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, 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. 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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

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 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

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 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 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 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.

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 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 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, 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

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. 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, 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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? 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 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 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

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

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 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

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

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 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 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 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 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, 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 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,

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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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