Someone has a weapon that's causing hearing and brain damage
No one knows what to make of the weapon used on diplomats in Havana. Whatever happened, it's potentially terrifying.
Here's what we know:
- At least 21 Americans have symptoms
- Others, including Canadians were also targeted
- The attacks took place at the embassy, at homes and in hotels
- Symptoms including hearing loss and mild brain injury, like a concussion
- Some victims now have problems concentrating or recalling specific words
Those are part of new details in an AP story today. What's interesting is that a brain injury makes it likely that it wasn't some kind of sonic weapon; that's something that would only affect the ears.
"None of this has a reasonable explanation," said Fulton Armstrong, a former CIA official who served in Havana long before America re-opened an embassy there told AP. "It's just mystery after mystery after mystery."
Theories on what happened:
- An attack by Cuba's government
- A rogue faction of Cuban forces
- A third country attack
- Some kind of espionage operation that went wrong
Nine months after it was first reported, all we have is speculation.
Some felt vibrations, and heard sounds - loud ringing or a high-pitch chirping similar to crickets or cicadas. Others heard the grinding noise. Some victims awoke with ringing in their ears and fumbled for their alarm clocks, only to discover the ringing stopped when they moved away from their beds.
The attacks seemed to come at night. Several victims reported they came in minute-long bursts.
Yet others heard nothing, felt nothing. Later, their symptoms came.
That's terrifying. Physicists can't even theorize how such a weapon might work. We don't even know if it's really a weapon, but if it is, who knows what it's capable of.
We're naïve to think that atomic bombs were the end of weapons development. We know about some of what's out there, but 130,000 people were employed in the Manhattan project and it was a secret until it was used.
