Humanity in its entire history has created an incredible number of devices and mechanisms designed to exterminate all living things. However, the practice of wars shows that killing enemies rarely leads to final victory. Others take the place of the fallen soldiers, and the conflict may continue for a long time. History knows examples of wars that have lasted for centuries. In the twentieth century, inventors in different countries thought about ways to neutralize the enemy with the so-called non-lethal methods. Work has begun on psychotropic drugs, one of which is an infrasound weapon. The history of its creation and its current state has been hidden behind a veil of secrecy for several decades.
What is infrasound?
The waves propagating in the atmospheric air are conventionally divided into three main frequency ranges. The audible spectrum, occupying the maximum estimate between 20 and 20,000 Hertz, refers to the acoustic or sound range. Its boundaries are arbitrary and depend on the characteristics of hearing, subject to objective assessment after constructing an audiogram, individual for each person. Higher tones are called ultrasound. Frequencies from zero (i.e. complete silence) to 20 hertz are in the infra-acoustic range. A person does not feel such rare fluctuations in the air environment. But the lack of sensations does not mean that they do not have any effect on the body and psyche. It is on the effect produced by ultra-low frequencies on human behavior that an infrasound weapon is built. The idea of its creation is not new, it took possession of the minds in the first half of the 20th century, but its implementation in practice turned out to be quite difficult.
Zippermayer Installation
The fact that each material body has its own frequency of vibrations is a well-known scientific fact. If the external influence coincides with it over a period, then a sharp increase in amplitude occurs, sometimes leading to the destruction of the object. This phenomenon is called resonance. The Austrian physicist Zippermeier during the war years tried to apply subsonic air waves to defeat British and American bombers. In 1943, he even assembled an installation, according to his calculations, capable of incapacitating enemy aircraft.
It is not known for certain whether this was a clever trick designed to convince the Nazi leadership of the development prospects, or if Zippermayer actually managed to split the decimeter board at a distance of two hundred meters with an acoustic wave, but further experiments did not lead to anything, and the project was closed. Despite the failure, it can be argued that the vortex gun was an infrasound weapon. Her photo replenished the list of “wunderwaffes” with which Hitler hoped to turn the tide of the war.
The experiences of Dr. Richard Wallaushek
In the concentration camps, the Nazis committed many crimes, some of which were quasi-scientific in nature. The Tyrolean Research Institute addressed the effectiveness of acoustic effects on the human body. The experiments were carried out on prisoners and prisoners of war: they were placed in a low-frequency field and observed the deterioration of well-being of experimental people. The more severe the symptoms (vomiting, panic, insanity, worsening and cessation of respiratory function, digestive disorders), the more perfect the infrasound weapon was considered.
This savagery continued under the direction of the killer doctor and war criminal Dr. Richard Wallaushek until January 1945. The installation was a special generator operating on oxygen and methane, with emitters similar to gigantic (3.25 meters in diameter) speakers, but it operated only at close distances (up to 60 meters). According to the laws of physics, the intensity of the impact fell quadratically to the distance.
"Psychotropic" frequency
After the war, the German infrasound weapon - a sound cannon designed by Wallaushek - went to the Americans, they captured it in the city of Hillersleben. The gun did not cause much interest then, but it was remembered at the beginning of the space age, when there were doubts that astronauts would be able to fulfill their duties in conditions of strong vibrations, inevitable during the launch. NASA decided to familiarize themselves with the results of experiments conducted in Nazi Germany. Additional experiments made it possible to determine the most “psychotropic” frequency, equal to 19 hertz, when exposed to which, with an intensity of 155 dB, hallucinations occur in the irradiated person. It seemed to many scientists in the USA that a key was found, using which it is possible to easily create an infrasound weapon. It turned out, however, is not so simple in practice.
Rumors and speculation
Reliably find out how it is possible to influence the consciousness and well-being of a person, apparently, has not yet succeeded. In the media, from time to time, sensational reports flicker about experiments allegedly conducted in the USSR over ordinary people standing in lines and covered by an inexplicable panic while following mysterious cars. There is no documentary evidence of these facts, but philistines who are eager for sensations willingly believe in unverified information.
Doctors say that fluctuations from 20 to 30 Hz cause a headache. Other vital organs have their own resonant frequencies, such as the heart (5 Hz), the stomach (3 Hz), the kidneys (7 Hz), and so on. However, this information alone does not mean that infrasound weapons of mass destruction can be created in the near future.
What is issued as a special weapon at the household level and during the war
The market dictates its own laws: individual defense equipment is sold all over the world, and new products are widely advertised. Instruments of compact size and light weight, capable of providing a powerful directional sound effect on attackers, have become a hot commodity in recent years. There are known cases of their successful use (for example, against Somali pirates). As a rule, this is not an infrasound weapon - it works at frequencies that are audible to the human ear (2-3 kHz), and is simply a strong irritant, dumbfounding the aggressor and leading him out of mental balance. The same applies to more powerful systems used by US troops in Iraq and other countries to suppress the manifestation of mass discontent. A strong and sharp noise works flawlessly, it disorganizes, especially if it occurs suddenly. It is easy to create using conventional broadcast installations. But the infrasound weapon, if it exists, acts covertly and selectively.
Nowadays
Work in the field of psychotropic subacoustic effects, of course, is being conducted in different countries, including Russia. Apparently, the main stumbling block was the methods of emitting waves of sufficient efficiency and the required range. Even people who are not very familiar with the technology, it is clear that a conventional electromagnetic speaker, even of very high quality, can not cope with the task: it has too low efficiency and small possibilities of directional exposure. It is almost impossible to create an oscillating system with a range below 20 Hz of enormous power. The “acoustic bomb” used by NATO forces caused a panic, but its effect was too short. This should not be modern infrasound weapons. The scheme of its emitters, most likely, will be built on piezoelectric elements that have virtually no restrictions on the frequency range.
The Russian leadership, obviously, understands the importance of this type of promising weapons.