Comments on: title

title

Twang — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:02:02 -0800

US-made ultrasonic gun uses baby's scream The gun is capable of causing permanent ear damage, even death.
Makes me want to scream.

By: elendil71

elendil71 — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:11:00 -0800

Whoa! Someone in the military has been listening to a bit too much Kate Bush!

By: nomis

nomis — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:43:06 -0800

I wonder about the use of a baby's scream ... once it's been reversed, increased to ultrasound frequency, presumably stretched, and then doubled, how much of the original sound would remain? Would any other sound (a dove's coo, perhaps?) have been just as good? Or even a simple synthesised waveform? Seems like an emotive marketing ploy to me.

By: Joey Michaels

Joey Michaels — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:44:50 -0800

elendil71: I had the exact same thought. This is sort of a terrifying new technology.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:46:25 -0800

I don't know, I kept having visions of Dune as I read the article. That and the song by D12, "Words are Weapons". How soon until this device is used by Americans against Americans?

By: kindall

kindall — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:50:33 -0800

Nice title.

By: crasspastor

crasspastor — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:51:08 -0800

Well that certainly seems inhumane.

By: banished

banished — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:51:50 -0800

Newsflash: All the world to be deaf by 2008!

By: bokononito

bokononito — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:56:54 -0800

has someone in the military been busy plagiarizing or have they licensed this?

By: chuq

chuq — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 16:59:26 -0800

Mmmmmm, permanent deafness ... lovely. (Better than being turned into a Swiss cheese, I suppose.) I don't know, I kept having visions of Dune as I read the article They really should call them "weirding modules."

By: Dasein

Dasein — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 17:00:40 -0800

Wow, that Kate Bush thing is quite the coincidence. This is a really cool invention. Go DARPA!

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 17:06:17 -0800

And the article says they were tested on volunteers... I wonder who volunteered ("volunteered?") for that one. "Hey, kid! Wanna make five bucks?"

By: dg

dg — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 17:10:14 -0800

I wonder if this will work against soldiers who are also parents though? Won't their reaction be to nudge the person next to them and say "Honey, it's your turn, I got him last time"?

By: squirrel

squirrel — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 17:11:16 -0800

I agree with nomis about the use of a baby scream as an advertising ploy. Effective for me, though. The idea of being hit by a sonic blast that vibrates my skull and deafens me with the shriek of a baby has a strong deterrent effect. But then I'm liable to support the ban of use of such a terrible devise in all but the most extreme cases. Good God, what a horrifying world we're creating.

By: armoured-ant

armoured-ant — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 17:17:38 -0800

About the baby screaming thing; I seem to remember reading, a while ago, an article about amplified baby cries being used in larger crowd control situations; the justification being that the sound itself is somehow pathologically nerve wracking. Like we're affected by that particular sound as a species.

By: shepd

shepd — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 17:31:55 -0800

So, only psychotics will be able to stand this weapon, assuming it's the baby scream that's so horrible? And this is what they build to bring down the Al-Queda... Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Oh, and, a solution:

By: squirrel

squirrel — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 17:35:41 -0800

My skin is still crawling. I can't push from my mind the image of a 100-foot baby tottering toward a crowd of fleeing protesters, shrieking, Godzilla-like, wearing an FBI flack jacket and a tiny, elastically-secured cowboy hat.

By: Krrrlson

Krrrlson — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 17:37:03 -0800

Ah, shepd, but if we're trying to stop the suicide bombers, they'll be spotted from hundreds of yards away with those bright yellow earmuffs.

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 17:49:27 -0800

Yeah....I have a 15 month old who is, I swear to you, the loudest screamer of all time. If it were amplified any more, I'd just have to jump off a bridge or something. Deafness might be preferable to hearing the terrible twos....I'm just saying.

By: armoured-ant

armoured-ant — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 18:02:53 -0800

And, actually, another point about stopping suicide bombers: I'm sure, if they're willing to blow themselves to smithereens, they'd be willing to (chemically? medically?) deafen themselves.

By: dg

dg — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 18:11:30 -0800

shepd, I don't think earmuffs are going to work against something that works partly by vibrating your skull. I don't know about this - maybe it is more the frequency than the volume that does the damage, because I have attended motorsport events where the sound levels are around the 110db specified without falling to the ground screaming in pain. *shakes head to try and stop ringing noises*.

By: dg

dg — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 18:12:40 -0800

Oh, and dejah420, I will match your 15 month-old against mine any day. What do you say - db meters at 10 paces?

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 18:12:50 -0800

This seems a bit silly. What I've seen reported / admitted about actual projects has them being largely the reverse -- not high-frequency screeches, but infrasound rumbles at the base of hearing or below. Last I heard, they were trying to find a frequency that would resonate with human innards and so give a whole crowd massive intestinal cramps (aka The Screaming Shits) all at once.

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 18:15:58 -0800

Oh, and dejah420, I will match your 15 month-old against mine any day. What do you say - db meters at 10 paces? I have a better idea dg, let's find some unsuspecting babysitter, hand her some earmuffs and you and I go have a nice leisurely brunch...you know, the ones that start with champagne at 11a, and finish with martini's, dinner and cognac at midnight? ;)

By: jonson

jonson — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 18:33:43 -0800

A gun that's capable of causing permanent ear damage, even death?! Say it's not so!!!

By: dg

dg — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 18:36:27 -0800

Sounds even better, dejah420. See, I always knew women were smarter than men. Men say "let's fight to prove whose kid is better" and women say "let's lunch and forget about the kids for a few hours".

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 19:01:43 -0800

And southern women say..."you know what this lunch needs? Booze!" ;)

By: nomis

nomis — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 19:07:28 -0800

ROU_Xenophobe, as I understand it, lower frequencies are non-directional; the idea behind using high frequencies is that it can be aimed like a gun, whereas your infrasound example would be more like a bomb, taking out the whole crowd, as you pointed out (including possibly those wielding the weapon). Probably useful to a military, but in different circumstances.

By: ehintz

ehintz — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 20:03:53 -0800

$300us gets you countermeasures. I've used the Bose ANR headsets in helicopters and they do a fantastic job of wiping the rotor noise out. Presumably they'd do a decent job of dealing with this. New find Osama strategy-watch for the UPS trucks delivering ANR headsets to caves...

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 20:57:31 -0800

See it in action at the GOP convention in NYC this September!

By: gottabefunky

gottabefunky — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 23:03:24 -0800

What was it I heard about blackboard screeches being so awful because they're about the same frequency as monkey alarm screams?

By: Keyser Soze

Keyser Soze — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 23:06:05 -0800

Inhumane? I guess so. Certainly not as inhumane as sniping people from a building, or blowing busses up. This is a technology that is definitely severe but much more humane than filling the victim up with lead.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 23:49:40 -0800

...trying to find a frequency that would resonate with human innards and so give a whole crowd massive intestinal cramps (aka The Screaming Shits)... One of my nefarious war-on-idjits thoughts has been to release a CD that contains those subsonic bass notes, in the hopes that those pricks with the deafening-loud car stereos would find themselves with a mess in their pants.

By: Optamystic

Optamystic — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 05:03:45 -0800

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 06:51:56 -0800

Don't worry. The baby's lawyers have already begun sending cease and desist letters to the Military's DJs for remixing without permission. The military is organizing a web campaign called Green Tuesday in protest and there is even some question of the baby's claims to own the copyright of its own scream.

By: fungible

fungible — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 08:05:04 -0800

There was article in the NY Times magazine about the inventor of this technology, which I would link to if I could find it, but can't. Essentially, his invention is a hyperdirectional sound speaker, that targets sound directly at a person's head and recreates the sound inside their head. Anyone outside of the focus of the "sound gun" can't hear what's being played. This has many applications, from direct advertising, to pranks, to military applications. The military form of the sound gun uses a baby screaming backwards because scientific tests proved this to be the most annoying sound in existence - probably due to evolution, as anyone who's had a baby will testify. There's something about a baby scream that affects humans the way nothing else will. The gun can cause deafness, but it doesn't have to - a much milder decibel level will still cause a headache and intense pain. But more interesting, wearing headphones, I believe, will do nothing to stop it, as the sound is recreated in your head, not outside. That's what I remember from reading about it a few months ago.

By: mikhail

mikhail — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 09:27:33 -0800

"Pentagon considers ear-blasting anti-hijack gun" - New Scientist November 2001 Earpiece that screens out unwanted noise - New Scientist February 2001 I'm also sure someone will find a way to cancel out the resonant frequencies.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 10:02:43 -0800

There may be some deep evolutionary instinct to deal with a baby's cry... ...but surely we've only ever heard them crying forwards in time, not backwards. Why reverse the soundtrack?

By: callmejay

callmejay — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 10:49:28 -0800

I'm sure, if they're willing to blow themselves to smithereens, they'd be willing to (chemically? medically?) deafen themselves. Don't be so sure. They'd actually have to live with the consequences of that one.

By: ed\26h

ed\26h — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 14:46:52 -0800

So how long until the handheld version of this thing is available for purchase on the black market? I don't even want to think about what would happen if someone decided to "have a little fun" in a crowded mall. How about a bank? An airplane? Well that's an interesting slippery slope theory, but doesn't seem to be very relevant. I don't want to think about what would happen if someone started firing an air rifle or a hunting catapult around a public place, but these are already possibilities. They don't let you take anything even slightly pokey on airplanes these days, the idea that they'd allow a sonic weapon is quite weird.

By: five fresh fish

five fresh fish — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 15:45:41 -0800

A hunting catapult? Like, you get the moose to stand really, really still, then lob pumpkins and pianos at it, hoping some random combination of tension, mass, and aerodynamics results in a direct strike?

By: Twang

Twang — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 16:33:20 -0800

ROU_Xenophobe: infrasound rumbles at the base of hearing or below. According to the old editor of Analog, the Nazis had themselves an infrasound weapon operating at 00x hertz. The problem with it was that (because of non-directionality) it also killed the operator. This gun gets its directionality by crossing two beams ... something that vas Verboten in Ghostbusters.

By: Twang

Twang — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 16:35:27 -0800

jonson: A gun that's capable of causing permanent ear damage, even death?! Say it's not so!!! Maybe you're forgetting that weapons like mustard gas were eliminated from war for a reason?

By: inpHilltr8r

inpHilltr8r — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 17:47:58 -0800

...but surely we've only ever heard them crying forwards in time, not backwards. Why reverse the soundtrack? I'm guessing we respond to the set of frequencies. Reversing the actual sound doesn't affect these, but may stop you from recognising the sound, and ignoring it. NP: Bam Bam - Where is Your Child? Also on that note Surgeon has been playing a track with a child scream stab recently. Very effective...

By: moonbiter

moonbiter — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 17:53:53 -0800

I wonder what this weapon's echo (say, off a rock wall) would do to the users.

By: Hieronymous Coward

Hieronymous Coward — Thu, 01 Apr 2004 00:20:13 -0800

moonbiter: I wonder what this weapon's echo (say, off a rock wall) would do to the users. If the painful signal is created by the interference of 2 or more inaudible carrier waves in a particular place and in a particular phase, then if one carrier is reflected away, or if the particular phase relationship is lost, the signal is never delivered. So a random echo in open space seems unlikely to harm the operator. (more, more) What I find remarkable is that "the gun ... will be issued to marines in Iraq this month." The US military has been fielding some extremely sci-fi-ish systems lately, and some of them really work.