Pre-existing mental health issues and the stress of working in Cuba are more likely culprits:
Havana Syndrome – the inexplicable illness experienced by some US intelligence and diplomatic personnel – is almost certainly not caused by energy weapons, according to the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It has, rather, attributed the malady to pre-existing mental health challenges exacerbated by environmental conditions.
First reported in 2016 by US and Canadian intelligence officers stationed in Cuba, Havana Syndrome was characterized by a variety of unexplained auditory and cognitive symptoms. Individuals reported hearing sudden loud noises that were often accompanied by ear pain. Others reported tinnitus, visual problems, vertigo, and cognitive difficulties. Similar symptoms were later experienced by intelligence personnel and service members around the globe.
A definitive cause was never identified, but a report produced by the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that the symptoms experienced by US diplomats in Cuba was consistent with the use of directed, pulsed radio frequency energy.
"Many of the chronic, nonspecific symptoms are also consistent with known RF effects, such as dizziness, headache, fatigue, nausea, anxiety, cognitive deficits, and memory loss," the report read. "Overall, directed, pulsed RF energy, especially in those with the distinct early manifestations, appears to be the most plausible mechanism in explaining these cases."
However, an assessment [PDF] conducted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence concluded that "it is 'very unlikely' a foreign adversary is responsible for the reported anomalous health incidents."
It's worth noting that the term "very unlikely" – when used in this context by the National Intelligence Council – is a technical term that means there's roughly an 80 percent chance it was something else.
That doesn't mean the symptoms weren't real. In a statement, the Director of National Intelligence emphasized that the "findings do not call into question the very real experiences and symptoms that our colleagues and their family members have reported," and added that the officers acted appropriately when they reported the symptoms.
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Newly Declassified Government Report Suggests Havana Syndrome Might Be Caused by an Energy Weapon:
After years of debate about the cause of the strange malady, a recently declassified document points the finger (once again) at "electromagnetic energy."
Several weeks after the intelligence community came out to disavow claims that "Havana Syndrome"—the bizarre rash of neurological disorders plaguing U.S. foreign service officers—was the result of a directed energy weapon, a newly declassified report alleges that may very well be what it is.
The group behind the report, the Intelligence Community Experts Panel on Anomalous Health Incidents (AHIs), was established by the government to figure out just what the heck had happened to the 1,000-ish American officials who claim to have suffered from "Havana"'s bizarre symptoms. Those symptoms, which first cropped up at a U.S. embassy in Cuba in 2016 and soon spread to other parts of the globe, include a rash of inexplicable ailments—things like hearing and memory loss, severe headaches, light sensitivity, nausea, and a host of other debilitating issues.
Well, after a substantial research effort to get to the bottom of Havana Syndrome's seemingly impenetrable mystery, the IC panel ultimately released their findings to the government, but the contents of the report have remained classified—until now, that is.
[...] According to the report, a plausible explanation for the disorders may be "pulsed electromagnetic energy." It reads:
Electromagnetic energy, particularly pulsed signals in the radio frequency range, plausibly explains the core characteristics, although information gaps exist. There are several plausible pathways involving forms of electromagnetic energy, each with its own requirements, limitations, and unknowns. For all the pathways, sources exist that could generate the required stimuli, are concealable, and have moderate power requirements.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Friday March 03, @06:09PM (15 children)
Any sufficiently unregulated safety standard can be made indistinguishable from weaponry. I won't even say unenforced; if anyone can check safety implementations (visually or otherwise) against a published regulation, you can at least identify it as such.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 03, @06:28PM (14 children)
I would contend that any energy source sufficiently powerful to cause "dizziness, headache, fatigue, nausea, anxiety, cognitive deficits, and memory loss" should be readily detectable with relatively simple RF, acoustic and "other" receivers with power spectrum analysis attached, much like is done for EMI and other radiated emissions compliance testing. A dude with a couple of briefcases loaded with less than $100K in equipment and about a day's training should be able to confirm or deny the presence of any such energy, regardless of source, at any time while he's operating his gear. Give him a 2nd day's training and another briefcase of goodies, and he should be able to track the source of any suspicious emissions, at least point the direction to them from within the Embassy grounds.
Whether those radiators were intentional, accidental, or intentionally made to look accidental, it should have taken no less than one year after the reports were started to be taken seriously before there were definitive answers about what was going on.
That being said: it's also quite possible that the source(es) are/were accidental and partly or wholly originating from within the Embassy itself. Ever read about the Taos hum?
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by krishnoid on Friday March 03, @06:56PM
Absolutely. Identifying whether published regulations for radio-frequency [fcc.gov] electromagnetic radiation exist, and whether such equipment can detect the presence/location of radiators outside those guidelines, would at least let the U.S. FCC brand and sell combination tinfoil hats/rf detectors to anyone travelling in areas known to not have/enforce such regulations.
I mean, when you have regulations, you at least have something numeric to compare against. Arguing whether they're too tight/loose can be done separately from that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Friday March 03, @10:54PM (5 children)
I don't remember hearing of the Taos hum, but just did a brief search. I'm really confused. We live in an age of good sensitive instrumentation. I didn't find much definitive / concrete / quantitative information, but it seems they couldn't find anything measurable. Hopefully they looked for electric, magnetic, radioactive, acoustic, maybe even gravitational perturbations.
So, is it psychosomatic?
A test I would do would be to blindfold people, drive them around, and ask when they hear the sounds. My hunch is there would be no strong correlation between the reported hum and the location.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 03, @11:30PM (4 children)
The conspiracy theory goes that the Taos hum may be generated by ultra long wave low frequency EM signals used to communicate with submarines, and that these signals aren't always being transmitted.
Again, if that really were the case you would think that a HAM might have built a receiver by now, not to decipher the encrypted messages but simply to confirm or deny the presence of a signal.
From there, the rabbit hole goes down steeply.
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(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday March 04, @12:41AM (3 children)
Very interesting. Well, I've only dabbled in HAM. Most HAMs choose popular bands. There are certainly nerds like me who might look at very wide spectrum and record it.
You may / probably know that antenna size is proportional to wavelength, so the lower the frequency, the longer the antenna needs to be. For example, a 300 Hz "RF" signal would have a wavelength of 999308 meters, or ~621 miles. Antennas in the simplest form need to be 1/4 wavelength, and more typically a "dipole" of 2 1/4 wave elements are used, so you'd have 310 miles of wire. Not easy to aim! Of course there are impedance matching networks that let you use shorter antennas, but you get less signal and your amplifier's self noise becomes a factor.
I have a friend who likes monitoring seismic activity. He wants to build a very long monitor to measure very long / low frequency movement. It would span his back yard, but his (permanent) fiancee won't have it. My favorite seismic sensor uses a small container of water, and optically watches the surface for ripples.
But I digress, as a very long-time electronics nut (and EE), I seriously doubt submarine signals would be detectable outside of the water, let alone hundreds of miles away. Salt water tends to short-circuit the signal. Frankly I'm very surprised they can get any kind of signal to go long distances through salt water. Huge power required, but again, most will go into the water and not be radiated (I think...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communication_with_submarines [wikipedia.org]
Okay, rather than edit the above, I see where some, including Soviet / Russia, have done very low frequencies. Above Wiki mentions 82 Hz. Hmmm. Much to think about.
I still wonder if there's some kind of gravitational vibration happening. That should be very easy to measure, I just don't know if anyone has tried. I'll ask my seismic sensor friend about it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 04, @01:21PM
The big antenna certainly feeds the conspiracy theory, but matched size antennas are for efficiency, if you are hearing a hum you are receiving it in your head. A shorter wire will still receive the UUULF signals, just not as strongly as if you strung up a wire.
Submarines may use a towed wire for the receiver, but however long that wire may be, I can't imagine that no HAM on the planet ever tried to string up a similar wire from a tree.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Spook brat on Monday March 06, @07:24PM (1 child)
Some light reading for you: A brief history of the VLF transmitters at Annapolis, MD [navy-radio.com]
Per that article, the facility started with a pair of 500-kw Poulson Arc Converter VLF transmitters, which covered the Atlantic Ocean, England, and Europe. As technology progressed, it was replaced with a 1000 kilowatt AN/FRT-87 transmitter and an impressive antenna array [navy-radio.com] strung across a 1200-foot guyed center tower and nine 600-foot auxiliary towers. The VLF system was capable of communicating with submerged submarines 50 to 60 feet below the surface.
I'd say your gut is right on this issue, the transmissions appear to be one-way, and limited to fairly shallow depths. Even so, they're burning a lot of power to get the signals that far.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday March 06, @08:12PM
Thank you for that info and link. Despite having life-long interest in electronics and electronic history, I've barely studied much of that older Marconi / Poulsen spark transmitter stuff. I jumped into transistors and learned vacuum tubes a bit later (late 70s). Sparky stuff is fun, but I had no idea how far they went with that stuff.
Here's some good reading too: https://www.radioworld.com/columns-and-views/roots-of-radio/brute-force-transmitters [radioworld.com]
> "Even so, they're burning a lot of power to get the signals that far."
Yeah, salt water has a tendency to conduct electricity and kind of damp out the EM waves. I don't know the physics details, but it's intuitive to me that the higher the frequency, the greater the damping / attenuation.
But relating to antenna length, the longer the wavelength, the less energy you get with a given short antenna. A human being is pretty short compared to VLF wavelength, so a human isn't going to absorb much VLF EM energy (even if you could direct and focus it.)
I guess I answered my own implied question about wavelength and salt water absorption: the shorter the wavelength, obviously the closer the voltage peaks and valleys are. Less distance in salt water means less resistance, which means more conduction and shorting (absorbing) the EM energy.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Friday March 03, @11:01PM (5 children)
Regarding Havana and others, my only point would be there could be intermittent "energy weapons" or whatever that you won't catch in action unless you've set up 24/7 monitoring. Reminds me of wearing a radiation dosimeter.
They also make such things for acoustic monitoring. I have a friend who used to work in a steel mill. They'd toss a pile of scrap into the smelter and 3 very large (14" iirc) carbon rods would plunge in. I forget the voltage- many hundreds to be sure, and maybe 15,000 amps. Anyway, he said it was so loud that nobody was allowed near. At a certain distance, even with massive hearing protection, if you opened your mouth the sound would get to your ears though your Eustachian tubes and you'd lose your hearing. No clue what the dB is.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday March 03, @11:33PM (4 children)
I wonder what the strength of the magnetic fields are near that thing.
Some ball lightning sightings are thought to be hallucinations induced by the massive magnetic pulse near some lightning strikes.
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(Score: 4, Informative) by RS3 on Saturday March 04, @12:21AM (3 children)
Very good question.
Being 3-phase the magnetic fields tend to cancel out. They may even employ some kind of repulsion / quench field coils, much like arc-quenchers around big switch / breaker / relay contacts.
I'm not sure what happens to the magnetic permeability of the metal being melted, now that you mention it. Many metals lose permeability at some temp. But otherwise the metal may quench a lot of it.
I always wondered if ball lightning / St. Elmo's fire, etc., are induced by lightning, much like Tesla and some of his experiments with sparks and transmitting / inducing current at a distance. Inducing currents in a human head and the resulting hallucinations makes sense.
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Saturday March 04, @12:40AM (2 children)
Apparently they can induce ball lightning hallucinations using TMS. My wife and simultaneously saw balls of light just after a huge lightning strike near our house.
Apparently there may also be physical ball of plasma phenomena but they appear to be much more rare than the hallucinations.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @12:16PM (1 child)
Assuming you missed out the "I" and both of you saw balls of light, did both of you see the same thing? Were the number of balls were the same and the balls roughly in the same locations? If they so then it doesn't sound like a hallucination to me.
If it's similar to TMS that would be the equivalent of zapping the relevant parts of two different brains to generate very similar visual disturbances when the brains are unlikely to even be in the exact same orientation.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 07, @12:27AM
She saw a big white ball out the window where she was looking, it filled the available space about the size of a truck.
I saw a small white ball in the bookshelf where I was looking, it filled the available space about the size of a soccer ball.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 05, @12:25PM
I find it funny that so many people were saying that cellphone radiation could NOT be harmful because it was non-ionizing radiation, and were thinking they were smart for saying such stuff.
Plenty of evidence that non-ionizing radiation can damage brains (like microwave ovens being able to cook)... Human brains are delicate, just heat up their brain by 2C and it stops working so well.
Yeah from the beginning already I suspected the US did it to their own bunch and tried to blame others for it. Which is why the investigations didn't reveal much despite it not happening just once. They don't want any lawsuits etc.