Low-frequency sleep – electromagnetic
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.