Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 12:54 pm
dyqik wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 12:45 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Mon Dec 07, 2020 12:19 pm
In terms of detectability, would the DOS (or whoever) be expected to have some kind of record of RF interference they could go back and check after people start reporting symptoms? Or would it rely on people at the same time - perhaps the patients themselves - also noticing stuff?
I'd expect them to at least do EM sweeps occasionally, looking for bugs etc.. That would miss intermittent attacks, but generally, I'd expect them to have to be looking for it.
I could put together detection equipment for the kind of pulsed RF thing I think they're talking about for a few thousand dollars, using mostly parts bought on eBay, so it's a fairly high risk proposition to try and do this kind of thing secretly.
I'm slightly confused by this. An RF weapon was supposed to be impossible, but they're also supposed to have been checking for it frequently enough to pick up intermittent attacks? (The 'acute phase' symptoms would have to arise from something intermittent and directed)
Or do you mean that they'd be checking for other forms of RF 'attacks' - e.g. if they were keeping an eye out for people trying to hack their wifi they'd also by necessity pick up the kind of device postulated here?
As bizarre as the whole thing sounds, I'm not sure I've seen a convincing technical explanation of why a novel kind of directed, intermittent, pulsed RF weapon couldn't have been used for a short period of time, which is what's being claimed here. That doesn't mean to say it's the most likely explanation, but I think I'm not quite grasping why so many people are convinced it's impossible.
I'd expect the state department in a foreign, nominally hostile, country, to be carrying out fairly regular screenings for unexplained RF emissions.
The implausibility is based on simple physics - RF radiation strong enough to cause a physiological response is also strong enough to cause a host of easily detected physical effects. The human body is not a good radio receiver, so the power levels have to be pretty high.
Pulsed RF would have to be fairly short wavelength to be directed effectively from a distance by a secret transmitter. To be powerful enough to have any physiological effects, those wavelengths would also cause disruption to any computer type wireless communication systems operating.
Low frequency pulsed RF of sufficient power to cause physiological effects wouldn't necessarily interfere with wireless, but would be strong enough to directly drive speakers (even with subharmonics), light bulbs, interfere with radios, etc. The transmitter would either have to be very close, or very very large to target a specific building.
To cause a window frame to make a noise, the RF power levels would likely have to be high enough to cause incandescent light bulbs and florescent tubes to glow.