Sonic Warfare #1: Urban Funk

“The Urban Funk Campaign is something much more evil.  It was employed by the CIA Audio Harrassment Division in Vietnam and Laos.  The idea: bombard the local citizenry with sound instead of bombs.  The desired effect: rouse the populace from their hideouts and destabilize their resolve...

  In 1973 the Urban Funk Campaign tested super/sub-sonic and ultra/infra sound with a weapon called a Squark Box which creates 2 simultaneously inaudible ultrasound tones at pitches of 16 and 16.002khz.  These 2 ultrasonic waves of highly directional beams are aimed to coincide at the target point.  This interference pattern creates a sub-beat of 2hz outside normal auditory perception and when played at immense volumes causes ears, shoulders, chest wall and buttocks to resonate.  It converts the target body into a human tuning fork.  Symptoms include headache, visual distortion, epidermal tinglings.  The skin actually gets heated by localized ultrasound and gently cooked.  Other effects are the formation of cavities or bubbles in the body, choking, excessive salivation, testicular pain, nausea and giddiness - a technological extension of witchcraft.”

Plantenga, Radio and Aural Destabilization, 2001, pp 3-4