Havana Syndrome Harasses Diplomats 2 Ways

The Complexity Series

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Summer here at ChaosFarm has been considerably more pleasant than in other parts of the country. The farm has received plenty of rain and a minimum amount of sweltering weather. It would be easy to conclude from this that all is well with the rest of the world. It is not.

This post presumes that the reader has electrical and RF engineering experience and awareness of the Havana Syndrome.

The post does not connect directly to the incompetent management of the Oberlin College Board of Trustees, aka The BOT. Therefore, it is part of the OberlinChaos Complexity Series rather than the Oberlin College Series, even though complexity is a common theme in both cases.

The BOT does seem to have the same problem dealing with complexity that the government has. The BOT’s opacity does an excellent job of keeping the public from seeing the important things the BOT is often ignoring.

Harassing diplomats

Recently, there have been news reports of diplomats and other government representatives being injured or temporarily incapacitated by some mysterious force that is not understood. At least, if the government understands, it is not talking about it. The Havana Syndrome is named that because it has happened a lot in that city.

JD has formulated a hypothesis about what is creating this disruption. His theory is that the disruptor is RF (radio frequency) energy used by an evil international actor.

A job for ham radio?

Photo credit: JD Nobody.

It is clear to JD that looking into this matter is potentially a job for the ham radio community, even though it may not look that way on the surface. Ham radio experimenters have a long-standing record of understanding RF energy in innovative and disruptive ways. These skills could help expose the current mystery because the most likely explanation is the use of high-intensity RF radiation.

There are four extra class hams (the highest license level) living at Kendal at Oberlin who could discover the mysterious force harassing the diplomats. Should they or any of the other hams in the world solve the harassment problem, they could then turn their attention to the ultimate challenge — straightening out the BOT.

The big question is, what are the bad actors doing? Based on the publicly released information, the government gurus have no clear idea what is happening. One worrisome possibility is that they know who is doing it and how but do not want to reveal what they know.

The next hypothesis is that the perpetrators are not using conventional or straightforward radio protocols. If they were, they would be easy to detect. So how might these radio waves be detected using outside-the-box thinking? Whoever is creating these disruptions has a method that conventional instruments cannot easily see.

One possibility is that the perpetrator generates the RF across a broad frequency spectrum. Any detecting device designed to operate on a single frequency or scan a range of frequencies probably would not detect this renegade RF energy.

Another possibility is pulsing the radio waves in some pattern or varying their amplitude might also be techniques that could make the RF energy look more like RF noise than structured radio waves.

Spread spectrum disruptions

Another possibility would be that the bad actors use spread-spectrum transmissions that transmit their energy in tiny amounts on multiple and randomly changing frequencies. These transmissions would look like normal background noise. After concentrating these pieces on a particular target, the cumulative effect could be pretty disruptive.

The frequencies and energy levels needed to disrupt human tissue, especially brain tissue, should be well known. Knowing this will substantially limit the areas needing investigation. It appears that a non-conventional instrument is required to detect these hypothesized conditions, and such a device could potentially be quite simple to build.

The experience of a good ham radio operator comes into play here because these experimenters have the needed curiosity and knowledge to experiment and determine how the disruptions work and how to block them. It might be that the device causing the problems is nothing more than a sophisticated variant of a microwave oven’s design.

Detecting the RF

In concept, there is a simple instrument design that could detect invasive RF energy over a broad spectrum and would not be overly complicated to build. For example, two small beakers containing medical saline solution, salt dissolved in water, could simulate brain fluid and detect disruptive RF energy.

The presence of disruptive RF would raise the temperature of the saline solution, induce electric currents in it, or both. RF energy that could increase the temperature of an unshielded beaker of simulated brain fluid would also raise the temperature of actual brain fluids by inducing disruptive electrical and magnetic effects in the brain.

The saline solution in one of the beakers would be inside a Faraday cage that would block RF energy but allow room air to circulate easily. The temperature in this shielded beaker would be the room temperature reference. Comparing the temperature of the beaker outside the Faraday cage to the one inside the cage could detect if dangerous RF energy is present in the immediate area. This measurement concept could see evasive complex RF patterns better than more sophisticated instrumentation.

Magnetic brain disruption

Another possibility is the bad actors are inducing severe magnetic brain disruptions. We know that a medical MRI machine works by creating low-level magnetic disturbances that are harmless in the brain. Doing this with low power for short durations does not involve ongoing brain disruption. What extreme and longer-term magnetic brain disruptions might do needs further exploration.

Faraday cages for diplomats

Putting diplomats and other government operatives in Faraday cages could protect them against the debilitating harassment attacks. The availability of a Faraday cage defense could minimize an attack’s damage.

A simple Faraday cage that would block most RF energy could be made from aluminum or copper fly screen stock. If left to its own devices, the government could also contract for expensive and elegant RF blocking solutions that would not work.

Let’s see if we can get a few knowledgeable hams to do some outside-the-box thinking and build devices that could shed light on the harassing attacks and develop protection against them.