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HERF Gun: Make it in your basement
CuriousGeorge113 was the first one to write us about the homemade HERF gun an engineer unveiled at Infowarcon '99. All stuff that you can buy from a hardware store, and disable computers at varying range, depending on size. The current model does not do permanent damage, unlike EMP.
I think they forgot to mention that when the computers locked up, they were running windows. Having a HERF gun near it was entirely a coincidence.
Finnaly someone showed this to the public. It really is an old idea, but in the world we live now, it has some interesting effects. :) And the next thing would be to cover my house entirely in somekind of conductive mesh, to make more or less effective faradey cage. I feel like protecting computers and other electronic equipment will be big bussiness in the next decades.
I was tracing the development of such toys based on Nikola Tesla's ideas for a while now and found a lot of impresive stuff. Just do a quick search on "telsa weapon" and read some of the articles that pop up. One of the most scary is located at http://www.peg.apc.org/~nexus/bskies1[2345].html (yeah thats five parts of it). Hints about causing earthquakes with similiar technology as described in the story above. Other interesting sites are Gravity gate (http://www.starwon.com.au/~rayd/index.htm), Kelly BBS (www.kellynet.com), Tesla web ring and similiar. If you like to search a lot, you may even find hints about top secret super high tech weapons developed in Russia for knocking out satelites, which are also based on one of the Tesla's ideas and are powered by also originaly Tesla's work, improved by dr. H. Moray, the so called Moray generator. Basicaly you just set up an antenna and some electronic wizardry and you have electricity. Sounds too good to be true, but there's a story on the kellynet about how Tesla made an electric car powered by such a device.
Back to the EMP stuff...does anyone have some nice information about project HAARP and similiar "experiments" all around the world? I heard somewhere that US military already developed their small EMP "bomb" for knocking out "e-criminals". I would like to take a look at one of those toys
You could even make the device look like a cell phone itself, so that everybody around you (on the train, for example) will think their cell phone is broken, while you, for a change, bore them out of their skulls talking into your little gadget.
Here's the story on Electronic Telegraph: Immobilising the mobiles
Yes, you are right there. -- Another glass of champagne?
Alright, a few points to clear some things up. Most of you won't realize this from the article, but these HERF guns are very low range. The gun has to be within a very minimal amount of feet to accomplish anything. Another thing, the gun is huge. If you were to make a high powered gun, it'd be even bigger. So your thinkin', "Well, I'll just lug it around in my car." Wrong, if you do, expect nothing on your car to work when you get done firing the thing at a couple of computers. It'll fry the computer in your car as well as the "enemies" computers. If you happen to get a car thats old enough not to have a computer in it, a high powered HERF gun will even fry the actual wiring. These HERF guns are very neat, but not practical yet. I hope someday we can actually build something that has some practicallity, and do the same as this lovely tool.
For those who haven't seen the Glubco microwave weapon, it's even simpler and cheaper than the HERF. It's also a hell of a lot more dangerous.
All you do is find an old microwave oven, tear it open, and remove the magnetron and associated HV power supply circuitry. You then build a small waveguide behind it so as not to fry yourself too badly. Point and shoot.
Now that I've said this, and the script-kiddies are off Darwinating themselves out of the gene pool, here's what happens to them:
- Stupidity I. The capacitors in a high voltage supply on a microwave oven might not drain themselves automatically. If that happens, and the script kiddie is using both hands to play with the supply, he could fibrillate and die on the spot.
- Stupidity II: If he's using one hand to play with the supply, when he gets zapped, he scrapes his hand to hell when jumping away from the shock. A Dejanews search on why you have to discharge the anode of a TV set before working on the tube will provide much amusement.
- Stupidity III: All the nasty 120VAC bits are exposed, and our script kiddie doesn't use an isolation transformer, or does something similarly stupid. Bzzt, game over, thanks for playing.
As you can see, it's easy to weed out a good chunk of the script kiddie population before they even finish building the damn thing. Now, suppose they survive this long...- Leakage. They get internal burns because the waveguide wasn't built well enough. Visions of fingers turned into fried chicken wings come to mind as someone makes a waveguide that's short and easily-concealable, but that accidentally gives very wide dispersion.
- Reflection. More of the same. Y'know how your microwave oven works? Script kiddie points magnetron at a metal wall.
- Fire. Ever throw a CD in a microwave and not turn the microwave off after the pretty light show? The CD starts to smoke and burn. I'd imagine it'd be very easy to get the same thing to happen with the house wiring. And downright trivial to get it to happen to the traces on any printed circuit board.
If I had to put money on it, I'd say the RF burns would be the most horrific side-effect of a kid playing with the Glubco magnetron weapon, but that the most probably side-effect would be that he burns down his own house while beta-testing it.Moral of the story: It's a cool idea. And in a situation of civil disorder (East Timor, anyone?) might be a handy field-expedient terror weapon - plug it into a wall socket in the target building, turn it on, and get the hell out of dodge while everything burns. For anything else, it's merely a quick and easy ticket out of the gene pool. Just like the bogus recipies in the "Anarchist's Cookbook", think of it as evolution in action.
What you'll need is a makeshift parabolic reflector dish and something that works as a feed horn to source the signal. Something a little safer than this rube goldberg shown in the article (which, by the way, looks damned unsafe- gaps in the horns, etc... Easy way to get cateracts, leukemia, etc.) would be a coffee can and metal saucer sled combo for the antenna. The can makes for a sorry (and sloppy) feed horn, but it works and if you get the distance from the sled right, it works as expected and creates a decent columnated beam. Sloppy work, but it will point this mess more away from you than the other would.
All this guy has done is built a simple pulsed DC Tesla coil using some sort of vibrator and a huge step-up transformer. Lots of people have done that, its nothing new.
;-)
:-). Cops came around the next day with a search warrant, didn't find anything and left. Now he only does his experiments in an old barn in the middle of nowhere, with no electical lines nearby. Any cars driving near the place stall and the CD player will skip, and he advises leaving all credit cards and watches somewhere else when visiting. I think some day he will actually discover zero-point energy or tap into the earth's natural resonance of 12Hz.
.45 caliber pistol and shoots star-wars-like bolts of light, or the death ray in "Revenge of the Pink Panther", or the size of a packet of cigarets with some big LED numbers counting down with an audible click.
He'd have to have at least three stages of RLC circuits to get an efficient power coupling into the antenna and then radiated off into the ether (maybe he has, it doesn't show in the photo). Yes, it can be done by winding your own coils, and buying an old 20kV capacitor from an electric company auction or scrap dealer. Then you would have a very effective disruptor of unprotected electronics (but not likely to cause permanent damage except with a proximity of a few inches). Making it highly directional is left as an exercise for the student
Years ago I helped tune a HUGE multi-stage step up system to duplicate the experiments of Nikola Tesla (sending spark gap morse code). This guy had built it into his garage, and had collected huge old power supplies from an old AM radio station to power it. We tested it briefly for a few seconds each evening. Whenever we worked on it, one of his cooler neighbors came over to play with it as well. Seems that every time it was switched on, all radio and cable TV reception in the area was overpowered. Fluorescent lights glowed up to 30 feet away, and nearby computers would crash.
For a few months there were cable TV trucks patrolling his neighborhood with all kinds of detecting/directional antennas looking for the source of the HERF (he kept it off most of the time), eventually they posted reward notices on phone poles in the area. He dismantled his whole setup and moved it that day (his house has never been cleaner
I cringe when I think of how this idea will be mutilated by the movie industry. A HERF gun that looks like an M16 or a
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Now Microwave mind control would've been a bomb ass topic
For hundreds of years, sci-fi writers have imagined weapons that
might use energy waves or pulses to knock out, knock down, or
otherwise disable enemies--without necessarily killing them. And
for a good 40 years the U.S. military has quietly been pursuing
weapons of this sort. Much of this work is still secret, and it
has yet to produce a usable "nonlethal" weapon. But now that the
cold war has ended and the United States is engaged in more
humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, the search for weapons
that could incapacitate people without inflicting lethal injuries
has intensified. Police, too, are keenly interested. Scores of
new contracts have been let, and scientists, aided by government
research on the "bioeffects" of beamed energy, are searching the
electromagnetic and sonic spectrums for wavelengths that can
affect human behavior. Recent advancements in miniaturized
electronics, power generation, and beam aiming may finally have
put such pulse and beam weapons on the cusp of practicality, some
experts say.
Weapons already exist that use lasers, which can temporarily or
permanently blind enemy soldiers. So-called acoustic or sonic
weapons, like the ones in the aforementioned lab, can vibrate the
insides of humans to stun them, nauseate them, or even "liquefy
their bowels and reduce them to quivering diarrheic messes,"
according to a Pentagon briefing. Prototypes of such weapons were
recently considered for tryout when U.S. troops intervened in
Somalia. Other, stranger effects also have been explored, such as
using electromagnetic waves to put human targets to sleep or to
heat them up, on the microwave-oven principle. Scientists are
also trying to make a sonic cannon that throws a shock wave with
enough force to knock down a man.
While this and similar weapons may seem far-fetched, scientists
say they are natural successors to projects already
underway--beams that disable the electronic systems of aircraft,
computers, or missiles, for instance. "Once you are into these
antimateriel weapons, it is a short jump to antipersonnel
weapons," says Louis Slesin, editor of the trade journal
Microwave News. That's because the human body is essentially an
electrochemical system, and devices that disrupt the electrical
impulses of the nervous system can affect behavior and body
functions. But these programs--particularly those involving
antipersonnel research--are so well guarded that details are
scarce. "People [in the military] go silent on this issue," says
Slesin, "more than any other issue. People just do not want to
talk about this."
Projects underway. To learn what the Pentagon has been doing,
U.S. News talked to more than 70 experts and scoured biomedical
and engineering journals, contracts, budgets, and research
proposals. The effort to develop exotic weapons is surprising in
its range. Scores of projects are underway, most with funding of
several hundred thousand dollars each. One Air Force lab plans to
spend more than $100 million by 2003 to research the "bioeffects"
of such weaponry.
The benefits of bloodless battles for soldiers and law
enforcement are obvious. But the search for new weapons--cloaked
as they are in secrecy--faces hurdles. One is the acute
skepticism of many conventional-weapons experts. "It is
interesting technology but it won't end bloodshed and wars," says
Harvey Sapolsky, director of the Security Studies Program at MIT.
Says Charles Bernard, a former Navy weapons-research director: "I
have yet to see one of these ray gun things that actually works."
And if they do work, other problems arise: Some so-called
nonlethal weapons could end up killing rather than just disabling
victims if used at the wrong range. Others may easily be thwarted
by shielding.
Sterner warnings come from ethicists. Years ago the world drafted
conventions and treaties to attempt to set rules for the use of
bullets and bombs in war. But no treaties govern the use of
unconventional weapons. And no one knows what will happen to
people exposed to them over the long term.
Moreover, medical researchers worry that their work on such
things as the use of electromagnetic waves to stimulate hearing
in the deaf or to halt seizures in epileptics might be used to
develop weaponry. In fact, the military routinely has approached
the National Institutes of Health for research information.
"DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] has come to us
every few years to see if there are ways to incapacitate the
central nervous system remotely," Dr. F. Terry Hambrecht, head of
the Neural Prosthesis Program at NIH, told U.S. News. "But
nothing has ever come of it," he said. "That is too science
fiction and far-fetched." Still, the Pentagon plans to conduct
human testing with lasers and acoustics in the future, says
Charles Swett, an assistant for Special Operations and
Low-Intensity Conflict. Swett insists that the testing will be
constrained and highly ethical. It may not be far off. The U.S.
Air Force expects to have microwave weapons by the year 2015 and
other nonlethal weaponry sooner. "When that does happen," warns
Steven Metz, professor of national security affairs at the U.S.
Army War College, "I think there will be a public uproar. We need
an open debate on them now."
Laser ethics
What happened with U.S. forces in Somalia foreshadows the
impending ethical dilemmas. In early 1995, some U.S. marines were
supplied with so-called dazzling lasers. The idea was to inflict
as little harm as possible if Somalis turned hostile. But the
marines' commander then decided that the lasers should be
"de-tuned" to prevent the chance of their blinding citizens. With
their intensity thus diminished, they could be used only for
designating or illuminating targets.
On March 1, 1995, commandos of U.S. Navy SEAL Team 5 were
positioned at the south end of Mogadishu airport. At 7 a.m., a
technician from the Air Force's Phillips Laboratory, developer of
the lasers, used one to illuminate a Somali man armed with a
rocket-propelled grenade. A SEAL sniper shot and killed the
Somali. There was no question the Somali was aiming at the SEALs.
But the decision not to use the laser to dazzle or temporarily
blind the man irks some of the nonlethal-team members. "We were
not allowed to disable these guys because that was considered
inhumane," said one. "Putting a bullet in their head is somehow
more humane?"
Despite such arguments, the International Red Cross and Human
Rights Watch have since led a fight against antipersonnel lasers.
In the fall of 1995, the United States signed a treaty that
prohibits the development of lasers designed "to cause permanent
blindness." Still, laser weapons are known to have been developed
by the Russians, and proliferation is a big concern. Also, the
treaty does not forbid dazzling or "glare" lasers, whose effects
are temporary. U.S. military labs are continuing work in this
area, and commercial contractors are marketing such lasers to
police.
Acoustic pain
The next debate may well focus on acoustic or sonic weapons.
Benign sonic effects are certainly familiar, ranging from the
sonic boom from an airplane to the ultrasound instrument that
"sees" a baby in the uterus. The military is looking for
something less benign--an acoustic weapon with frequencies
tunable all the way up to lethal. Indeed, Huntington Beach-based
Scientific Applications & Research Associates Inc. (SARA) has
built a device that will make internal organs resonate: The
effects can run from discomfort to damage or death. If used to
protect an area, its beams would make intruders increasingly
uncomfortable the closer they get. "We have built several
prototypes," says Parviz Parhami, SARA's CEO. Such acoustic
fences, he says, could be deployed today. He estimates that five
to 10 years will be needed to develop acoustic rifles and other
more exotic weapons, but adds, "I have heard people as optimistic
as one to two years." The military also envisions acoustic fields
being used to control riots or to clear paths for convoys.
SARA's acoustic devices have already been tested at the Camp
Pendleton Marine Corps Base, near the company's Huntington Beach
office. And they were considered for Somalia. "We asked for
acoustics," says one nonlethal weapons expert who was there. But
the Department of Defense said, "No," since they were still
untested. The Pentagon feared they could have caused permanent
injury to pregnant women, the old, or the sick. Parhami sees
acoustics "as just one more tool" for the military and law
enforcement. "Like any tool, I suppose this can be abused," he
says. "But like any tool, it can be used in a humane and ethical
way."
Toward the end of World War II, the Germans were reported to have
made a different type of acoustic device. It looked like a large
cannon and sent out a sonic boomlike shock wave that in theory
could have felled a B-17 bomber. In the mid-1940s, the U.S. Navy
created a program called Project Squid to study the German vortex
technology. The results are unknown. But Guy Obolensky, an
American inventor, says he replicated the Nazi device in his
laboratory in 1949. Against hard objects the effect was
astounding, he says: It could snap a board like a twig. Against
soft targets like people, it had a different effect. "I felt like
I had been hit by a thick rubber blanket," says Obolensky, who
once stood in its path. The idea seemed to founder for years
until recently, when the military was intrigued by its nonlethal
possibilities. The Army and Navy now have vortex projects
underway. The SARA lab has tested its prototype device at Camp
Pendleton, one source says.
Electromagnetic heat
The Soviets were known to have potent blinding lasers. They were
also feared to have developed acoustic and radio-wave weapons.
The 1987 issue of Soviet Military Power, a cold war Pentagon
publication, warned that the Soviets might be close to "a
prototype short-range tactical RF [radio frequency] weapon." The
Washington Post reported that year that the Soviets had used such
weapons to kill goats at 1 kilometer's range. The Pentagon, it
turns out, has been pursuing similar devices since the 1960s.
Typical of some of the more exotic proposals are those from Clay
Easterly. Last December, Easterly--who works at the Health
Sciences Research Division of Oak Ridge National
Laboratory--briefed the Marine Corps on work he had conducted for
the National Institute of Justice, which does research on crime
control. One of the projects he suggested was an electromagnetic
gun that would "induce epilepticlike seizures." Another was a
"thermal gun [that] would have the operational effect of heating
the body to 105 to 107" degrees Fahrenheit. Such effects would
bring on discomfort, fevers, or even death.
But, unlike the work on blinding lasers and acoustic weapons,
progress here has been slow. The biggest problem is power.
High-powered microwaves intended to heat someone standing 200
yards away to 105 degrees Fahrenheit may kill someone standing 10
yards away. On the other hand, electromagnetic fields weaken
quickly with distance from the source. And beams of such energy
are difficult to direct to their target. Mission Research Corp.
of Albuquerque, N.M., has used a computer model to study the
ability of microwaves to stimulate the body's peripheral nervous
system. "If sufficient peripheral nerves fire, then the body
shuts down to further stimulus, producing the so-called stun
effect," an abstract states. But, it concludes, "the ranges at
which this can be done are only a few meters."
Nonetheless, government laboratories and private contractors are
pursuing numerous similar programs. A 1996 Air Force Scientific
Advisory Board report on future weapons, for instance, includes a
classified section on a radio frequency or "RF Gunship." Other
military documents confirm that radio-frequency antipersonnel
weapons programs are underway. And the Air Force's Armstrong
Laboratory at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas is heavily engaged
in such research. According to budget documents, the lab intends
to spend more than $110 million over the next six years "to
exploit less-than-lethal biological effects of electromagnetic
radiation for Air Force security, peacekeeping, and war-fighting
operations."
Low-frequency sleep
From 1980 to 1983, a man named Eldon Byrd ran the Marine Corps
Nonlethal Electromagnetic Weapons project. He conducted most of
his research at the Armed Forces Radiobiology Research Institute
in Bethesda, Md. "We were looking at electrical activity in the
brain and how to influence it," he says. Byrd, a specialist in
medical engineering and bioeffects, funded small research
projects, including a paper on vortex weapons by Obolensky. He
conducted experiments on animals--and even on himself--to see if
brain waves would move into sync with waves impinging on them
from the outside. (He found that they would, but the effect was
short lived.)
By using very low frequency electromagnetic radiation--the waves
way below radio frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum--he
found he could induce the brain to release behavior-regulating
chemicals. "We could put animals into a stupor," he says, by
hitting them with these frequencies. "We got chick brains--in
vitro--to dump 80 percent of the natural opioids in their
brains," Byrd says. He even ran a small project that used
magnetic fields to cause certain brain cells in rats to release
histamine. In humans, this would cause instant flulike symptoms
and produce nausea. "These fields were extremely weak. They were
undetectable," says Byrd. "The effects were nonlethal and
reversible. You could disable a person temporarily," Byrd
hypothesizes. "It [would have been] like a stun gun."
Byrd never tested any of his hardware in the field, and his
program, scheduled for four years, apparently was closed down
after two, he says. "The work was really outstanding," he
grumbles. "We would have had a weapon in one year." Byrd says he
was told his work would be unclassified, "unless it works."
Because it worked, he suspects that the program "went black."
Other scientists tell similar tales of research on
electromagnetic radiation turning top secret once successful
results were achieved. There are clues that such work is
continuing. In 1995, the annual meeting of four-star U.S. Air
Force generals--called CORONA--reviewed more than 1,000 potential
projects. One was called "Put the Enemy to Sleep/Keep the Enemy
From Sleeping." It called for exploring "acoustics,"
"microwaves," and "brain-wave manipulation" to alter sleep
patterns. It was one of only three projects approved for initial
investigation.
Direct contact
As the military continues its search for nonlethal weapons, one
device that works on contact has already hit the streets. It is
called the "Pulse Wave Myotron." A sales video shows it in
action. A big, thuggish-looking "criminal" approaches a
well-dressed woman. As he tries to choke her, she touches him
with a white device about the size of a pack of cigarettes. He
falls to the floor in a fetal position, seemingly paralyzed but
with eyes open, and he does not recover for minutes.
"Contact with the Myotron," says the narrator, "feels like
millions of tiny needles are sent racing through the body. This
is a result of scrambling the signals from the motor cortex
region of the brain," he says. "It is horrible," says William
Gunby, CEO of the company that developed the Myotron. "It is no
toy." The Myotron overrides voluntary--but not
involuntary--muscle movements, so the victim's vital functions
are maintained. Sales are targeted at women, but law enforcement
officers and agencies--including the Arizona state police and
bailiffs with the New York Supreme Court--have purchased the
device, Gunby says. A special model built for law enforcement,
called the Black Widow, is being tested by the FBI, he says. "I
hope they don't order a lot soon," he adds. "The Russian
government just ordered 100,000 of them, and I need to replenish
my stock."
The U.S. military also has shown interest in the Myotron. "About
the time of the gulf war, I got calls from people in the
military," recalls Gunby. "They asked me about bonding the
Myotron's pulse wave to a laser beam so that everyone in the path
of the laser would collapse." While it could not be done, Gunby
says, he nonetheless was warned to keep quiet. "I was told that
these calls were totally confidential," he says, "and that they
would completely deny it if I ever mentioned it."
Some say such secrecy is necessary in new-weapons development.
But others think it is a mistake. "Because the programs are
secret, the sponsorship is low level, and the technology is
unconventional," says William Arkin of Human Rights Watch Arms
Project, "the military has not done any of the things to
determine if the money is being well spent or the programs are a
good idea." It should not be long before the evidence is in.
Original article written by: By Douglas Pasternak
related topics
Want Root?
Now I can finally shut down those Britney Spears sounds my neighbor is bombarding our street with. Aaaah, blissful silence!
Just think what this sort of technology would be worth to y2k consultants! There you are doing your sales pitch of why a company must hire you to fix all there computers. You set the clock of one of their computers to a few seconds before 2000 and as they are busy watching the screen, all it takes is a nonchalant wave of an arm near a window and every computer in the building chrashes. Eat your heart out Dogbert. And of course if there are any companies that don't pay up, you can pay them a visit on New Years Eve and turn the power up.
Bob.
(Who if you can't tell, is joking)
Imagine one of these scenarios:
As much as I'd love to have plans for one of these HERF guns, I think that it would probably make it too easy for "hardware script kiddies" to then go out and wreak havoc. What I'd really like is a reading list (preferably with difficulty ratings) on what to study to be able to design your own.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
Actually, knowing all our script kiddie friends, they would probably be rolling along in their parents' brand-new Expedition or something and be trying this thing out. Somehow, I doubt a script kiddie would be smart enough to realize that it's going to affect their car as well.
I can see the headlines now (and they're not getting the terminology correct)!
Everyone's afraid of a new class of terrorism that seems to be emerging. Bombing and shooting people is for dumbos. These days, smart terrorists disrupt the use of technologies like phone, cell phone and computers. This is a device for them.
Imagine this device placed near a major phone line hub... within view of a cell phone transmitter... on a highway bridge, the latest "drive-by-wire" cars passing beneath it... on an airport... at a stock exchange... Devices like this, at a handy size, could be as dangerous to economics as a gun is to an individual.
I wonder if there is a law against things like that.
Yes, you are right there. -- Another glass of champagne?