Fear, an effective deterant?

[Alexires]

A long time ago, I used to read a series called "The 3 Investigators". The first book deals with a 'haunted' castle. To cut a long story short, a large pipe organ with sub/super sonic range produced a note that effected the central nervous system and caused fear.

I googled a bit, but didn't come up with anything that looked good. My question to you all is, have you ever heard anything like this before? There is, ofcourse, the "brown noise" which I'm fairly sure is shit (hehe), but it would be very interesting to find a frequency that caused this.

Someone (I wonder who it could be) comes to have a snoop around your house/lab/shelter/cache but can't get any closer than a hundred metres before they are subjected to incapacitating fear.

I, for one, would find it very amusing.

Not too sure where to put this thread, so if a mod could move it to the appropriate place, then I would be very greatful. Thank you.

[festergrump]

There is, of course, the "brown noise" which I'm fairly sure is shit (hehe), but it would be very interesting to find a frequency that caused this.

I was just talking about this very thing briefly with someone a mere week ago.

It's not shit, this "brown noise"... but considering the money the US probably has already put into R&D on it they're not going to go into great detail about the frequency spectrum required for these results. They seem to have not ruled out pursuing this technology for the future.

Think you might find this little article from Popular Science interesting, though:

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/whatsnew/abcd80b13832a010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html

Of course, sound waves in water travel much better and further for the energy output, too, but the point is that it works.

I thought the whole idea of an enemy diver sicking up his latest meal within his scuba mask was too damn funny! :D

[akinrog]

It's not shit, this "brown noise"... but considering the money the US probably has already put into R&D on it they're not going to go into great detail about the frequency spectrum required for these results. They seem to have not ruled out pursuing this technology for the future.


You might be right about the brown noise, but on Discovery channel Myth Busters tested the claimed frequencies at very high amplituteds (i.e. with giant speakers) on themselves, with no positive results.

I know myth busters is not a totally scientific documentary, but some sort of infotainment programs. And maybe there is some state-of-art technology in it, if the scientists ever managed to make it. Regards.

[Alexires]

Festergrump - I haven't ever heard of any test where someone was caused to crap themselves from sonic waves. I have heard about so called "pain rays" or sonic frequencies that can give instantaneous migranes, but thats as close as I've heard.

I wonder how someone would test this? Probably with some very expensive speakers that have an extremely large frequency range. Other than that though, all you would need was a computer that fed a changing frequency into the speakers and a way of recording when you were effected (maybe a push button that causes the computer to mark the frequency range).

Just food for thought.