Air Force Plan: Hack Your Nervous System

Looks like Air Force want the same type of weapon as aliens have. Wondering where they got the idea from..
www.defensetech.org...

Lol, almost every technologi we posses have been given to us by tah people in space.

[edit on 9-8-2006 by InSaneTK]

Weird and kind of spooky.

It reminds me of those sonar weapons that are supposed to be used for crowd control.

Whats scary is that it can be used from a mile away......................

Been there, done that. www.abovetopsecret.com...
Creepy Stuff.

This is me on that defensetech thread, so I'll just cut and paste

So far it looks like TrustButVerify is the only other design guy out here. Defense contractor, TBV? Hi, me too.

Larry, you are in a soft focus world. 600 dB? HAHAHA. The "brown note" is a concept that's chock full of what it purports to induce. And while I'm pretty sure you can't reach 600dB in air at STP, if you could, it would kill everything for quite a distance around.

The stuff in the article is quite real. Actually, Hambling's book is not a bad start for those of you that are somewhat curious about this sort of stuff but don't know a good (reality based) book to start with. It's a trifle skimpy in places, especially the last chapter or two, as it probably should be (someone has been talking to him about stuff they shouldn't have, maybe, IMHO, in one or two places).

This PEP weapon is a derivative of an old system called PIKL. PIKL was the very first test of plasma bloom/inverse Brehmsstrahlung weaponry, and as Hambling states, some really odd and unexpected bio-effects were seen. It was at first thought just to be concussion, then a sort of mechanical oscillation at the interface (the ultrasonic bit), then it was discovered that the bloom itself radiates a mixed bag of EM which was doing the trick. Turns out you can change the beam parameters, modulation and so on and get some control over what comes out at the bloom, and didn't THAT just 'bloom' (heh) into several projects.

Anyways, the paper he quotes is in fact pretty hard to get an intact copy of outside a SCIF, but oddly enough, there are a couple of derivative devices that use the same tricks and AREN'T classified, ain't life grand. No one said security had to be consistent, just inconvenient.

Still, shaped waveform emitters and Brehmsstrahlung effect based devices are among the hot new things for this decade, lots of research to be done there. For example, if you really crank the mod rate up, you can trade bloom energy for some pretty strong RF right at the bloom-target interface. Possibly, you could use that to disable a missile in flight, not by burning a hole in it but by disrupting the electronics with a localized EMP.

Posted by: erewhon at February 14, 2006 04:56 PM

and...

Gunny: You and Brian are the only ones since my last post that actually have a clue. Thumbs up. Boots and 'chutes are the key in combat, without boots on the ground all this stuff is just window dressing, however, things of this generic type could be pretty useful in MOUT to keep the locals back and flush insurgents out of buildings, for example. There's a lot of uses for plasma bloom related tech in other areas I probably should leave alone. But no, it doesn't replace soldiers on the ground.

Others:
1) Put down "carnicom", it's total BS.

2) the old "ufo technology" thing is pretty stale. If you had a technical background you would have a clue. I guess if you don't then it all DOES seem like magic, and you get into this "if I don't understand it, no one else does either, therefore it is all from UFO's" mindset. PS: Corso was having you on.

3) None of this stuff is intended to make you see images or hear voices by direct neural stimulation. It's a far far simpler thing to make you feel pain or scramble the nerves to your muscles in no particular pattern than it is, say, to make you hear a tone, much less a full-color image. Fearing that some sort of broadcast is taking your mind over is as old as radio itself. And it's always, ALWAYS, associated with a mental disorder...that 'no exotic warfare' website that someone mentioned is a shrink's heyday.

If you think something is making you hear voices, see things, do things beyond your control, it's most likely that you are losing it. You should go get some professional help.

Posted by: erewhon at February 25, 2006 06:17 PM

Some old PIKL presentation slides from the 80's:








[edit on 9-8-2006 by Tom Bedlam]

The full presentation on PIKL that those slides came from (it was in 2000) can be found here -

www.dtic.mil...

If you want to know more about this stuff, then Weapons Grade is a good place to start, it covers a lot of ground.

I predict you'll be hearing more about brain-affecting weapons in the next few months, there is some interesting stuff going on.

It won't be PIKL or PEP, because neither affect the brain unless you're shot in the head with it.

Okay, if we're seeing the effects of these modulated wave pulses on the brain in painful manner, what about pleasure? Induce someone to buy? Then what of the specific senses/smells/tastes?

Advertisers, absolutely huge corporations (yes, I mean the Coca-Cola's and Pepsi's of the world) are probably already in possession of parallel technology meant to do greater harm - to impoverish even greater masses of people by manipulating their senses directly to buy their products. Already, targeted audio has been applied in markets in Japan that provide the individual consumer with a specific audio cue to buy their soda. This will take the attack one step further - skip input through the ears, go straight to the brain.

Sure, the intent is not to stun so as to disperse, but war is war. When it comes to taking consumer dollars, a weapon is still weapon.

PEP and a couple of related devices don't work "on the brain", they stimulate nerves in the skin.

Let's say I have a soldering iron. If I stick you with it (and it's hot) you'll scream and yank your hand back. Thus it has caused pain by stimulating the nerves in your skin. In what way could I apply this and cause a smell? A pleasant sensation? A vivid detailed image?

You can't extrapolate one thing into another, not accurately.

Confusion, yes. Somewhat random triggering of neurons leading to pain, disorientation, unconciousness or death, maybe. Making you perceive the Lucky Charms leprechaun dance around the cereal isle singing about how they're magically delicious, not a chance.

... this technology seems to hint at something that would eventually replace television, plasma screens, current display technology.

I know what's there is crude, but if you can jam neurons using an imprecise signal, you can perfect it to direct to certain centers of the brain and create an alternate reality, no?

In the future...but for now, I guess we'll have to settle for excruciating pain, blinding light, and uncontrollable convulsions that will all but make us gag on our own tongues. I guess I can live with that.

Newtron, there are a lot of issues here.

First, AF tends to blue sky like mad, like that AF2025 paper. They have guys that sit around (you used to see Col Alexander on every one of these) and invent crap that they would like to see. This is another one of 'those' sites.

A lot of AF's project requirement docs are masterpieces of sci fi. We see things that are sort of like "gain access to alternate universe, demonstrate three examples" all the time. When we go through the "should we look at this" meetings any AF stuff is always prefaced with a "is it a new universe one, or something you could actually do".

AF is on one end of a spectrum with SOCOM at the other, the SOCOM projects are almost always straightforward engineering with a set of standard docs and a short list of 'it would be nice ifs', like "design us a 21kWh battery that weighs less than 16 large DieHard marine batteries". Half the AF ones are ok, but the other half are more like "design satellite constellation that can evaporate incoming asteroids. Use of advanced techniques such as a globe-encircling network of superconductors which draw power from the earth's rotation is encouraged. Successful bidder will launch between 5 and 10 satellites as a demonstration of technique"


It's always easier to just blanket stimulate everything. At the moment, they're able to ping skin nerves because they're there on the surface. Note that they haven't been able to separate out the different sorts. They just barrage them all. It's the equivalent of a soldering iron to the hand, if you will. That's because what they're doing is emitting RF from that bloom. Yes, an RF burn hurts like a mother. If you've ever had one, it's most unpleasant and quite difficult to ignore. Stimulating muscles just takes a little different waveform and frequency, like using a Taser. But again, they can't make you dance the fandango, although they can make you flop.

Other than shooting you in the eye or ear with one, I doubt they can induce sounds or visual stimulation, although one to the head would probably make you see stars.

Going from there into "directing it into certain centers of the brain to create an alternate reality", I'm pretty sure you are overextrapolating.

There's a lot of problems with this. To hit some highlights, no-one really knows how sound or vision information is encoded. There's some good starting bits on what's going on when it leaves your ears or eyes, but from there it's fairly hazy. For sure, it isn't in some sort of analog video signal that you could override by pumping out the NTSC next to someone's head. It's all diced and chopped into odd subderivatives like shape pattern recognition, motion vectors, edge details etc. These are scattered all over the brain. How do you propose with an outside RF input to appropriately stimulate only certain neurons in certain patterns? Remember, the brain is a sack of conductive fluids. Also the resolution of RF waveforms is tied to frequency...what sort of frequency would you need to stimulate one neuron out of a bundle of millions? How do you target it?

Let's take an educated guess at the average size of a cerebral neuron and say it's 50E-6 meters in size. To focus a "spot" of EM, you typically need a wavelength less than half the spot size, that is, it takes two cycles of EM. That would be about 12 THz. So, in order to tweak an average neuron, you'd need to use a frequency of 12THz or so to even be able to focus it that tight. But how to aim it, so that you can hit one neuron out of hundreds of millions? Worse, how many neurons are involved in perceiving even a simple image? Which ones are they? You'd have to focus tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of individual EM beams on as many neurons, while the subject was moving around.

But wait, it gets worse.

You have to do this without stimulating the surrounding neurons. That is, if some exact pattern of stimulation of 100K neurons is needed (not only specific neurons, but specific patterns of firing too), you not only have to aim so that you can hit those neurons, and no others, and stimulate them appropriately, BUT, you can't stimulate every other neuron between your evil mind control gun and the one you're aiming at.

Remember, that beam has to traverse the entire brain from the outside to the target neuron. And you can't fire the ones closer to the surface. This will require multiple target beams for each neuron, so that they add constructively at the target whilst being below the critical threshold for the others in the way.

Next impossible task:

While you're aiming your multiple target beams at that neuron, you can't get summations with the other multiple target beams hitting OTHER neurons you also have to stimulate. That is, if the multiple beams for the other 100K neurons coincide, they can't cause stray stimulations just because they're additive in the wrong places in the brain.

Next problem:

Knock, knock! Maxwell calling! The brain is a sack of saline solution. It will be dissipating EM energy as heat by eddy currents set up by the e-fields of your evil mind ray. Instead of reaching their targets, they'll be a gentle warmth in the surrounding tissue. I'm too lazy to whup out my calculator and punch up the penetration of isotonic saline by a 12THz wave, but I'd bet you that you are 100dB down within a couple of millimeters. You won't be reaching the deep structures you have to stimulate in such detail.

These are what hits me the second I start thinking about "how do I make someone see images directly". And I don't think you'll get by any of them. How your brain perceives images and sounds is just horrendously complex.

It's one thing to set up a mike outside a football stadium and hear people shout inside. It's another thing altogether to try to play that back from speakers outside so that the individual voices re-appear at the correct locations in the stadium.

It's much more straightforward to simply drop a bomb in the stadium and deafen everyone.

The big bang approach is tough enough, but it's at least straightforward. That doesn't require hyper-precise targeting of thousands of specific neurons in a head that's constantly moving. Just hit them all, randomly.

[edit on 10-8-2006 by Tom Bedlam]

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
It won't be PIKL or PEP, because neither affect the brain unless you're shot in the head with it.

With 'behavior modification' as a goal, it doesn't matter if it only hits your little finger so long as it gets the right response - but they are looking at other ways of affecting the nervous system

One - quoted in Weapons Grade - is a radio-frequency device that causes 'artificial fever' by heating the brain (and the rest of the body?), but they are now getting much more sophisticated.

The ADS is interesting; the AF claim that penetration is so shallow it can only affect the skin, whereas Russian work shows that it can have much deeper effects.
I suspect the key will be modulation, but we'll have to wait and see.

I guess if I get the result I want by poking you with a soldering iron, you could call that behavior modification.

Same with using some sort of diathermy or whatever to give you a fever.

But I think the article and the early posters in the thread were more envisioning someone doing the Imhotep two-step whilst chanting "You are my master" or whatever, than they were someone flopping around pawing at their eyes screaming "it burns, it burns".

I'd have to cheerfully disagree with you on the ADS. It may cause deeper effects because the heat it induces indirectly heats lower structures.

But the degree of penetration into your body is pretty much strictly set by Maxwell's equations. The Heaviside subset hasn't been in question for some time, at least for the bits it covers. If it wasn't accurate, many a comm system would not be working, and they do.

Modulation won't affect that. If you have a good set of data for the target's characteristics, then the equations are pretty much to be believed in terms of calculating attenuation.

Now, a question you might ask is, does the human body exhibit a non-linear response in terms of the frequency you're using, and if so, could you use that to heterodyne a couple of separate beams to produce a low frequency current at the target. I don't know. That PIKL bloom is very non-linear, mixing disparate spectra is one way to get some of these funny bio-effects. But you still can't project images or mind control beams or whatever.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
But I think the article and the early posters in the thread were more envisioning someone doing the Imhotep two-step whilst chanting "You are my master" or whatever, than they were someone flopping around pawing at their eyes screaming "it burns, it burns".

I'd have to cheerfully disagree with you on the ADS. It may cause deeper effects because the heat it induces indirectly heats lower structures.

But the degree of penetration into your body is pretty much strictly set by Maxwell's equations. The Heaviside subset hasn't been in question for some time, at least for the bits it covers. If it wasn't accurate, many a comm system would not be working, and they do.

Modulation won't affect that. If you have a good set of data for the target's characteristics, then the equations are pretty much to be believed in terms of calculating attenuation.

Now, a question you might ask is, does the human body exhibit a non-linear response in terms of the frequency you're using, and if so, could you use that to heterodyne a couple of separate beams to produce a low frequency current at the target. I don't know. That PIKL bloom is very non-linear, mixing disparate spectra is one way to get some of these funny bio-effects. But you still can't project images or mind control beams or whatever.

Agreed we're not talking telepathic mind control.
However, it may be possible to interfere with higher brain functions as well as a lot of other stuff.

Now, the extreme end of this would be TMS, but nobody is talking about weaponizing that. (Doesn't mean it's not happening, but nobody is talking about it).

As the realistic end, look at 'microwave therapy':

"Millimeter wave therapy, which directs a low-intensity electromagnetic beam to the skin, has been used for more than 25 years in Eastern Europe, where it is credited with alleviating more than 50 different conditions, ranging from heart disease to skin wounds and even cancer. Doctors there believe that the waves boost the immune system, act as an anti-inflammatory, and provide sedation and pain relief, all with virtually no side effects."

www.temple.edu...

When you're talking about treating heart conditions and the immune system, there is a lot more going on than surface effects. However, as I said, much of this is not yet accepted in the West.

Absorbed very rapidly by the skin, millimeter waves appear to initiate a response in peripheral nerve endings.

I agree with this part of the article. If you read it carefully, it seems they're marketing it more as an acupuncture sort of thing.

Yes, it IS absorbed by the skin. No, it doesn't penetrate. Yes, its effects are confined to peripheral nerves.

Beyond that, there is a lot of medical hokum that comes out of Eastern Europe. See also "gerovital". I'd be interested to see if some accredited institutions could duplicate their work.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
Yes, it IS absorbed by the skin. No, it doesn't penetrate. Yes, its effects are confined to peripheral nerves.

That's not what they're saying - they idea is that it can affect deeper things, eg heart and immune system.

The article is about replicating this in the US. However, this is early days.

The Russians claim a whole slew of effects on various obscure things - calcium channels, assorted proteins, blood-brain barrier, and it will take a while to sort out the 'hokum' from what works, much like acupuncture and other exotic medical stuff.

Sure it's what they're saying...my quote was taken from the article you posted. Here, let's look at it again:

Absorbed very rapidly by the skin, millimeter waves appear to initiate a response in peripheral nerve endings. Ziskin’s working hypothesis is that as waves reach these nerve endings, a signal is conveyed to the nervous system to modulate neural activity, in the process activating various biological effects. In one possible scenario, millimeter waves trigger the release of opioids...

The whole thing is summed up in this one paragraph.

1)absorbed rapidly by the skin

Ding, ding! Yes, they don't penetrate the skin at all. Basic signal physics.

2) initiates a response in peripheral nerve endings

You won't get any results from it that can't be attributed to this, they're admitting it

3) as waves reach these nerve endings

And not others, note they're saying it's only affecting the peripheral nerves again

4) a signal is conveyed

"we think something happens...we don't know what"

5) opioids

an admission that they don't know what happens in (4)...maybe its endorphins. Obviously they have more than one guess here: "in one possible scenario", obviously they have many guesses at what might be going on, if anything

These arguments are pretty much co-identical with the ones given for acupuncture. And it seems obvious that they see them as being similar:

Eastern European doctors directly apply millimeter waves to skin lesions and acupuncture points.

I agree with your summary. This particular article does not offer much, and very little has been done in the West - but the work is now starting.

As I said, stay tuned. It may take a few years, but we will definitely be seeing evolutions of this concept.

As long as it doesn't end up being used in a new 21st century version of the fabled "100 questions of the Lubyanka"

/Army campfire stories tend to the macabre