Comment by almostbasic

6 months ago

It really makes you wonder what other weapons they have that we don't know about.

Almost certainly, Havana Syndrome. Caused by a (microwave-, possibly) weapon that can lead to permanent neurological symptoms. And the US is not the only country that has it but is expanding a lot of energy into making the media talk about it less. CHUPPL did a great investigation on it if you're interested

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havana_syndrome

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqE0ltifQ2M

  • Your linked article admits it might not even be real.

    >A 2023 review article written by Bartholomew and Baloh concluded that Havana syndrome was erroneously classified as a novel entity due to a moral panic based on the fear of foreign entities such as the Russians or Cubans attacking the U.S, the over-interpretation of data, misconceptions about psychogenic illness, and coverage and leaks by the media. The authors stated that the U.S. intelligence community had concluded that Havana syndrome is "a socially constructed catch-all category for an array of pre-existing health conditions, responses to environmental factors, and stress reactions that were lumped under a single label".[8][9]

    >A 2024 review article by Connolly et al., surveying multiple peer-reviewed studies, concluded that the cause of AHIs is still unknown. The review discussed several possible causes, including mass psychogenic illness and head trauma, but did not endorse a specific cause.[6]

    • That "linked article" is Wikipedia. The second link is an actual investigation which goes into good detail debunking and investigating the source behind claims that it's a social psychogenic illness

    • > Your linked article admits it might not even be real.

      There's no evidence of anything "we don't know about". In the same way there's no pictures of things never photographed.

  • Those microwave attacks by spies are known since at least the sixties if you care to read some CIA leaker books. What's new is that those attacks became public, even if they didn't name and shame the attackers yet, if Chinese or Russians.

In a purely technical ponderance, I wonder if it's possible to design a stun gun that would inflict death by either increasing the current and voltage, or if a specific signal could be sent to the heart that would induce an arrhythmia. Basically the opposite of a defibrillator. A biotech maintenance guy told me that if you receive a shock when your heart is in a critical phase of the complex, it can cause it to shut off. Maybe a heart attack stun gun could attempt to read the cardiac waves and deliver the shock at the worst possible point.

(I have to emphasize that no homicidal motive drew me towards wondering that. It's just the borderless free thought that causes random ideas to float through my mind. If I can think of it, certainly the people who design covert weapons also have)

  • Defibs dont actually work like the movies - once a persons heart has truly stopped you need to provide proper CPR.

    Defib is for patients with hearts that are beating incorrectly - and now are mostly automated.

    Heart stopped and zapped with electricity makes for better movies though!

  • Totally possible. This is why stun guns and tasers are referred to as "less lethal" by some instead of non-lethal. Lots of electricity will occasionally stop someone's heart, and they die.

  • Was he referring to commotio cordis? There's a window of tens of milliseconds where a blow to the chest can cause sudden cardiac death, due to the ventricular rhythm being disrupted rather than any mechanical damage to the heart.

  • Probably referring to R-on-T phenomenon or unsynced shocks delivered during cardioversion. Can send you into ventricular arrhythmia.

  • i have no idea if this is possible, but i have to point out that really smart people pondering out loud is heard/read by many people who may have much sinister intentions than the nerd simply pondering out loud.

    1984 has become a playbook. be careful what ideas you share. the public internet is not a casual conversation among friends.

    • For sure, though those really sinister people in high places tend to be extremely smart too. By the time the public develops some technology that could be of great interest to those people, those people have likely already developed something along those lines.

      To give an obvious example (not necessarily involving sinister people): the NSA invented public key cryptography long before Diffie and Hellman.

There are weapons that can permanently paralyze an entire city. Not paralyze infrastructure or traffic... but permanent incurable paralysis of all the people in any area exposed to the weapon. That is still a 20th century technology.

  • That's a hell of a claim, and unless you're talking about some kind of chemical spray or seeding some weaponized microbe across the city, you could at least post a link or name that explains what it is.

There was claims of a possible cancer "gun". See https://www.ibtimes.com/hugo-chavez-says-us-could-be-giving-...

  • There's a very silly article. The basis is old people in Latin America getting cancer and a paranoid dictator blaming the US.

    • Given the already verifiable history of the CIA in Latin America, I'd give any paranoid dictator the benefit of the doubt.

  • I'll gladly jump into the gray with you. Or hopefully that changes.

    My dear old friend, now on the yonder side, showed me research that showed the intravenous injection of nothing more than mineral oil consistently causing a form of cancer that I can't remember the type for.

    He had a low level position in the NSA via the Navy prior and was persistently interesting, to me. Foremost an exceptionally fine person who I sorely miss. I remember him being fervently berated by a few intellectual (IT inclined) adversaries for attempting to explain more than a few things that came out in the Snowden docs almost a decade later.

    Personally, I've no doubt cancer can be quickly, efficiently induced, albeit probably not with a mineral oil squirtgun. I've heard of things I wouldn't discuss here.

    I've always wondered why we've not experienced the evil terrorist version of David Hahn, say from a guy in a major food production facility. The bright side of surveillance I guess.

    I may be a worthless, irrelevant moron, but I think for anyone with a bit of intelligence and a big imagination, the world is a very frightening place in this regard. I try not to think of it, but many scenarios have occurred to me and I'm often surprised, quite pleasantly so, that so far as I know, only to me, for now, and indefinitely I hope.

  • That can’t even be that hard. Some sort of directed radiation beam will do that easily.

    • You should talk to a radiation oncologist. It is extremely hard to target a person with directed ionizing radiation at any distance in a way that would significantly increase the risk of cancer without causing very obvious surface effects.

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