Home > Sonic weaponry

Some of these weapons are described as sonic bullets and sonic grenades and sonic mines and sonic cannons. Some produce a beam of sound or ultrasound; some produce an area field of it.

1 Weapons that emit sound as an irritant

These produce certain high or low, partially audible frequencies which cause humans to experience nausea or discomfort. The use of these frequencies to incapacitate persons has been used both in counter-terrorist and crowd control settings.

The 2002 French film Irreversible uses (real, not fictional) extremely low-frequency sound during the opening twenty to thirty minutes to create a state of disorientation and unease in the audience.

See this link for news of a real sonic bullet used as an irritant as a weapon against plane hijackers.

2 Non-lethal sonic weapons

Some of these weapons project sound or ultrasound that can break the eardrums of its targets and cause severe pain or disorientation. Usually, this will stop an enemy in its tracks, and is helpful against enemies with great physical resistances. Against creatures with naturally sensitive hearing, it is devastating.

• As used in air, they are mostly or entirely science fiction. In such scenarios they sometimes serve as stunners.
• Underwater, for a ship to fire its ordinary navigation sonar loudly has long been known in the real world as an effective anti- frogmanA frogman is a name for a scuba diver, often for a rebreather-equipped diver on an covert attack or reconnaissance mission. The Frogman is also the name of a man-sized frog who appears as a character in L. Frank Baum's Oz books. He is first introduced in weapon. The frogmen are disoriented, and panic and drown, or are forced to surface.

3 Lethal sonic weapons

Most of these are science fiction only. There are these types:

• Powerful low-pitched sound waves as a shock waveFor the vector animation platform, see Macromedia Shockwave. In fluid dynamics, a shock wave is a strong pressure wave. See Rankine-Hugoniot equation. In compressible fluids such as air, disturbances such as pressure changes caused by a solid object movin that blows enemies back. Fictional rifles that project sound to knock down or stun are featured in the 2002 movie Minority ReportMinority Report is a science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick first published in 1956. Some say it's a modification of 1984 by George Orwell. It is about a future society where murders are prevented before they happen through the efforts of " Precogs.
• A tight beam of focused sound used as a weapon like the focused light in laserFor alternative meanings see laser (disambiguation). A laser light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation is a device which uses a quantum mechanical effect, stimulated emission, to generate a coherent beam of light. Light from a laser is often guns.
• A powerful ultrasound beam which can liquefy living tissue.
• A powerful sound designed to get buildings or structures to resonate and in that way break them.

Underwater, some of these weapons are practicable in the real world.

• Ultrasound disintegration of solids in liquids is well known in industry, and could be adapted into a weapon.
• It has long been known that ultrasound in water will kill small water animals.
• There have been unconfirmed reports of scuba diver deaths and mass deaths of fish from being caught in powerful undersea ultrasound beams used by navies for communicating with submarines.
• It is suspected that the sperm whale uses powerful ultrasound to stun or kill its prey.
• There have been unconfirmed speculations about development of real lethal underwater ultrasound anti- frogman weapons.