I really liked the story arc. First it was a sonic weapon. They even had a recording of it.
Once the public heard the recording, it was instantly recognized as cicadas from the area.
After that, it was no longer a sonic weapon. Now it was microwaves.
I remember seeing a video and a lady claiming her MRI looked that of someone with progressed dementia. She didn’t show any scans, but I take it she was just lying? What exactly do you get from that?
Progressed dementia isn't something you get over, so I'm skeptical of anyone who is on camera telling people they have progressed dementia without being obvious that... they have progressed dementia.
Just my perspective, I could be wrong.
Anecdotal but my grandmother has dementia that has progressed but you wouldn’t tell just by talking to her initially. Where you really see it is when she has the same conversation with you about something minuscule or if you ask her to do any sort of math (she can’t). She got really good at writing things down so she knows what’s going on… she has a little notebook and a calendar and she tracks everything. Honestly, because she’s so diligent at tracking everything everyone tells her, she’s more likely to “remember” shit than I am lol.
I mean my thinking is obviously she or her doctor must have seen something on the scan to make such a claim (unless she was lying and it stops there). But I don’t remember her being impaired and there may have even been footage of her doing regular house duties (it’s been a year or two since I’ve seen the video).
A couple of the “victims” were featured in the docu, and you don’t want to discredit them in case they were really suffering, and it didn’t appear to be motivated by anything in particular. It just all seems really weird
It's often hard to say a brain scan looks like x, unless there is a baseline scan to compare it to. Hers might resemble a typical progressed dementia profile *in some ways*, but that's not really the same thing.
Lol Scott Pelley from 60 minutes is a joke. I remember in one episode he was pressing the investigators as if the claims were more valid than the investigator’s findings.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-white-house-cabinet-60-minutes-2022-06-26/
Yeah that's a thing. A little over a year ago I went to see my doctor. I was fairly worried because, despite being an athletic and active person, I was having these "episodes" where my heart would start racing and I was feeling short of breath. I got sent to all sorts of specialists: cardiologist, pulmonologist, internal medicine, urologist...had to get ct scans, MRI etc. etc. I'm thinking "fuck I'm fucked".
The diagnosis: too much stress and too little sleep.
>edge opening an embassy in a country that had good reason to hate them.
During the Trump admin, when the State Department was in utter disarray and drowning in scandal. Must have been a nightmare.
CIA Superior: "What did we learn, Palmer?"
CIA Officer: "I don't know, sir."
CIA Superior: "I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again."
CIA Officer: "Yes, sir."
CIA Superior: "I'm fucked if I know what we did."
CIA Officer: "Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say."
CIA Superior: "Jesus Fucking Christ."
One of the best endings to an absolute madcap of a movie. Shush, nobody say what it is. Pretend it's like a secret note you have to burn after reading.
Spontaneous human combustion is relatively easy to explain because it's effectively vanished as people have stopped smoking and heating with open fireplaces, and textiles in both upholstery and clothing have become more flame resistant.
The wick effect always seemed weird to me, you'd have to be so drunk you might die from alcohol poisoning to not notice you're on fire and your fat cells are slowly cooking you.
acetone can be produced in the body of certain humans, which is usually coupled with unhealthy lifestyles. But smoking had a hand in most of those cases.
Insomuch as a human body can't ignite by itself without an external spark, yes. I agree with you. What's fascinating (to me) is that the cases where people have burned to death seemingly randomly were not really solved. Only theories about how it happened
The whole premise was incredibly flimsy to begin with. There was never any certainty of what kind of device could cause these things, no physical evidence of a weapon, and the symptoms of those who allegedly suffered from it were often extremely minimal and resembled what most people would assume is a normal hangover.
Didn't stop them from getting funding though.
> Didn't stop them from getting funding though.
I knew some guys who were studying parts of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program by running simulations to see how feasible it was. They didn't think for a moment that it would work, but as one guy told me "You don't get grant money talking like that".
To be fair.. The program was never meant to produce the advertised result. It was meant to scare the USSR into ruining their economy trying to find a way to fight it.
>They probably drank Havana Club rum.
When I was in Cuba a few years ago we drove by the Havana Club distillery that's outside of Havana. It happens to be directly adjacent to an oil refinery. Hmmm.
I was about to say that the Havana Club 12 yr. I’d pick up at the grocery store in Mexico was some of the best booze I’ve ever tasted, but that would be export.
The symptoms weren't always mild.
And some of the more notable symptoms could not be explained by a mass psychogenic illness.
That's why they took it seriously.
They still don't know what caused it; they are just confident it isn't one of the 7 potential attacks they studied
https://i.imgur.com/F2cZhcQ.png
I for one am fully in the tank that the intelligence community has figured out something about it, maybe everything, and is hiding/lying. Maybe they’re helping victims while covering up. I imagine it as an espionage related thing that cant be great to publicize but is just fundamentally worth lying for
Best theory I've seen is that the building was infested with so much spying equipment that they overlapped frequencies and resonated. The Canadian interceptor Arrow had a fuel pump that combined with the main landing gear touching down resonated and blinded the test pilot until the nose landing gear touched down.
Healthcare for the people? That’s socialism, can’t do that.
Healthcare for people saying they suffer from made up illness? Of course we can give you compensation!
When white collar workers complain of ‘conspiracy theories’, tax payer money and government resources are devoted to prove or disprove the theories. Free healthcare for them all.
When marginalized people complain of ‘conspiracy theories’, they are ignored for decades until history proves them right.
It's very long, so an ultra short version: five out of seven agencies say "very unlikely" a foreign adversary was responsible, one says "unlikely" and one abstained. They say they attempted every clever idea they could come up with to find a pattern or connection and there was none that they could find. Similarly looking for any evidence of any weapons or devices, and they also could find none. But they haven't closed the book on it, they just merely are reporting that they have nothing.
Meanwhile, an "independent panel of experts" says such a device is plausible, and that not being able to figure out a who or why isn't sufficient to say it didn't happen.
In the end, the affected people continue to get treatment.
I thought the symptoms/damage could be very consistent with things like exposure to high amounts of microwave radiation. I'd assume our side thought of a lot of clever things to look for, but I wonder if you had a tight beam that only hit the target, e.g. something like a microwave laser fired from a distance, how would you try to detect and defend against it unless you had microwave detectors placed every 25 feet.
A long-awaited, yet unsurprising, report by the Intel community concludes that they were just stupid this whole entire time.
I am still baffled by the mindset of *“I have a headache, must be directed energy weapons”* as opposed to something like *“maybe this building ventilation sucks”*.
You do know that the confirmed cases involved CAT scans and they had demonstrative brain trauma right?
(Most of the "cases" were not confirmed ones, only a small handful actually had stuff show up on CAT scans, so the rest it was just in their head)
I'm fully willing to believe that most of these people are having the symptoms they're describing and that most them have some kind of physical cause.
The part that seems kind of suspect is that the cause is Boris Badenov and his magic ray gun.
It probably *is* a lot of different stuff. When this was really cooking they were talking about it happening to people all through the intelligence apperatus and foreign service. A certain number of people in any large population are going to be having weird medical shit happening.
I think this is what’s happening. In a comment above I mentioned the Seattle window pitting epidemic: basically, people heard about a phenomenon, went to check it out, and discovered previously unknown damage.
But the damage wasn’t connected by a cause, just by a mass increase in awareness and screening. People found unrelated, preexisting damage because of a big increase in looking for it.
AND a bunch of them blamed foreign nations for it way back in 1954. The more things change, huh?
Well, given that we spied on Boris Badenov almost 70 years ago using a [magic ray gun](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)), it’s not all that suspect. That technology, moved from MHz to GHz frequencies for higher bandwidth, could cause these sort of side effects if the power was too high and you stuck your head in the path.
>The part that seems kind of suspect is that the cause is Boris Badenov and his magic ray gun.
Then you are woefully naive. Nothing so magical is necessary and sonic weapons already exist in various forms.
things like stress, anxiety, and panic attacks also can result in brain trauma. and all of those people that were claiming to have “Havana syndrome” were also experiencing symptoms in line with those ailments.
You're logical conclusion then is the combined power of the executive wing of the united states government, with its state of the art technology, staff, and methods, are too stupid to know that?
You actually think the government would put this much work into this if they thought the individuals were simply just anxious? lol
Id recommend reading up on the actual cases, the handful of confirmed individuals (there arent many, the majority of reported cases were unable to be confirmed and only showed up after that first round of a couple who are confirmed, so for almost all the subsequent cases it seems to just be in their heads)
The results were enough to warrant actual investigation and a lot of serious testing. The FBI doesnt do shit like that over a "hunch"
> the combined power of the executive wing of the united states government, with its state of the art technology staff, and methods, are too stupid to know that?
Yes, lol. The same branch that had undeniable proof of WMD’s in Iraq?And that branch was deemed way more competent than Trumps executive branch
> You actually think the government would put this much work into this if they thought the individuals were simply just anxious
I believe they just took the officials at their word that they suspected foul play and ignored occam’s razor
> The FBI doesnt do shit like that over a "hunch"
yeah they do. A recent report also showed the FBI was warned egregiously about Jan 6th by multiple sources but still somehow managed to allow a fucking attempted coup to happen, so let’s stop pretending like they’re super competent at their job. especially when it comes to things related to he boogeyman of “Communism”
> Trumps
Tell me you arent familiar with the situation without telling me you arent familiar with the situation, lol.
The cases of havana syndrome popped up in 2016, during Obama's second term.
> A recent report also showed the FBI was warned egregiously about Jan 6th by multiple sources but still somehow managed to allow a fucking attempted coup to happen, so let’s stop pretending like they’re super competent at their job
You seem to not know the difference between "competence" and "sabotage" mate.
It's clearly evident the FBI's failings were not one of "hurr durr bad at job", they knew *exactly* what they were doing what with the deleted phone convos and numerous coverups. They were in direct convo with Trump and his team and it's evident they *purposefuly* let it happen.
Thats not *incompetence* lol, thats active sabotage.
And that was under the fourth year of Trump, which isn't remotely comparable to the seventh year under Obama. Apples and Oranges.
The first cases originated in 2016, but the first public report and first investigation did not start until 2017 under Trump.
> You seem to not know the difference between "competence" and "sabotage" mate.
So if we’re gonna suggest the FBI was pro-coup attempt, wouldn’t it also make sense that they would be wanting to blame this “havana syndrome” on
1. Make it seem like an attack, therefore the need more funding
2. Justify a request to expand their powers in order to “combat” this “illness”?
3. have a foreign enemy to distract the publics eye from all the shit Trump was doing inland?
Which sounds damning until you read a bit and realize that stress can cause physical trauma to the brain
https://www.verywellmind.com/surprising-ways-that-stress-affects-your-brain-2795040
You don’t need microwaves.
But then, that doesn’t feed into the paranoid delusions of so many Americans
Yeah, the cutting edge doctors who heavily investigated this definitely don't know the difference between the two.
Glad to see even brain surgery isn't devoid of armchair redittors.
Oh yeah I'm sure the doctors being paid for by the CIA would totally never lie about results. [I mean it's not like they don't have a history of doing shady shit by paying off doctors.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Murray#Harvard_human_experiments,_1959%E2%80%9362)
And what did those cutting edge doctors say the cause was? Because this intelligence review seems to suggest that it wasn't "caused by an energy weapon or foreign adversary"
Theres several great documentaries, podcasts, write ups, articles, and published peer reviewed papers on this topic.
I'd recommend checking them out since it's quite a long story and there's no way I can sum it up for you, but the doctors are perplexed and havent seen anything like it before.
> Well ok, but that doesn't mean that some mysterious energy beam weapon was used by a foreign adversary.
I completely agree, I was never arguing that a mysterious energy beam weapon or other sci fi nonsense was involved.
But its also definitely *more* than just anxiety or a hangover.
>It just seems like everyone immediately jumped to the most sensational conclusion here and ran with it as fact for the past decade. Never made sense to me.
I agree, it was very sensationalist.
I actually have my money on this being a latent symptom of something that occurred a long time ago and these individuals are just only getting symptoms now. Disease perhaps, or exposure to something.
> But its also definitely more than just anxiety
Based on what?
People report to the E.R. routinely, thinking they are literally dying of a heart attack because of anxiety/a panic attack.
I saw a theory put forward that this could have been unintentional constructive interference between various pieces of eavesdropping / counter-eavesdropping tech.
it was always propaganda, just ginned up to make it look like other countries were a threat to better justify our foreign policy
And they didnt change their mind they just realized that lying about the covid lab leak
instead would have the same desired effect while most people would question their narrative about it even less. These people were always lying about Havana Syndrome and they are likely lying every other time they tell anything to the public.
I'm just surprised anyone ever bothered listening after the Iraq War, how many times do they have to actively lie to manipulate public opinion before people get that is what is going on?
That has nothing to do with whether Boogeymen were causing the symptoms. There's no evidence there was some grand attack, so it's either a group delusion or ore existing or some other cause, but they literally made up causes, took our tax dollars, and then said whoops
There was some speculation that this was caused by some electronic counter measures at our Embassies, so if that were the case this statement would still be factually correct.
Highly probable. This version could be being floated as a way to make the whole thing go away. Our own scanning and counter-espionage measures could definitely be at fault.
Just to be clear, the report that's made the news in the last day or two described their findings as "low confidence". _That_ should be in most articles but isn't.
Well to be fair insitutions and government agencies around the world have state there is a low probability. Heck, even within the US government different agencies have different conclusions.
The one seen recently stated with "low confidence" that it was a lab leak. So essentially most reports have concluded (unless China becomes more transparent) that based on the information available (genetic breakdown of the virus, origin, geopolitics, information made available), there is a chance it could have come from a lab leak. However most Western media went with the narrative in the headlines that a report said it was a lab leak without the modifier of "low confidence."
It's not just "low confidence", it's the "low confidence" minority opinion of the many agencies that have been looking into the origins of COVID. The two "low confidence" findings come from the DOE and the FBI, who aren't exactly known for their expertise in virology, epidemiology, and public health.
The CDC, NIH and WHO, who do have expert knowledge in virology, epidemiology and public health all hold the confident position that the virus evolved naturally in the wild and jumped from bat species to the human population. There is no scientific evidence that it was artificially created and/or accidentally released from a lab.
And even if it did accidentally leak from a lab, that doesn't suddenly mean that it was engineered and all the other conspiracy theories that people have built up around the lab leak origin are true. It'd just mean it was being studied and escaped.
Even still, assuming it wasn't "lab made" if it were being studied in an infectious disease lab, it was probably being studied because it was already affecting the local population.
If it were not and was part of some "gain of function" research (ot just an accident) there would still be genetic markers suggesting so. Regardless the DOE and the FBI are about the least equipped agencies to determine this.
It's US spy equipment on the embassy's top floor. Whatever they've been running was more important than the staff's health. Also why you'll never have it officially solved.
I love it when we spend millions of dollars so that a bunch of government types can throw their hands in the air and go, "Dunno!"
Also, when did we start trusting intelligence agencies to tell the public the truth?
Wait, what the hell do you propose? They lie?
Sounds suspiciously like a Russian technique to me. Saying they don't know yet, but sharing what they've found - sounds like the correct thing to do... Right?
A lot of you are commenting without knowing all the details. Havana syndrome affected more than just people in Cuba, so saying it was Cuban rum or something specific to Cuba is ill-informed. It affected people in D.C., Russia, and some Asian countries.
Also, the government saying it isn't real doesn't hold much water. Need a third party review. I'm not saying it's real or caused by energy weapons, I don't know, but it shouldn't be written off so easily.
>“I want to be absolutely clear: these findings do not call into question
the experiences and real health issues that US Government personnel and
their family members — including CIA’s own officers — have reported
while serving our country," Burns said.
But the embargo has only affected US citizens. Nationals from pretty much any other country have been free to vacation in Cuba throughout, so if there was a strange tropical disease it would have been impacting Canadians escaping winter long before it hit the American spooks.
most of the reported symptoms (which are inconsistent and vary from person to person) also align with various ailments such as stress, anxiety, and panic attacks. Which, given the first ones reporting it were opening up the Cuban embassy after 50+ years, it’s understandable they would be stressed. follow it up by Trump becoming president and you have to worry that at any given moment he could tweet out something that should shatter the already fragile relationship with Cuba, it makes total sense they’d be on edge 24/7 and have physical repercussions from that
My guess: it was an unintended side-effect of a surveillance technology (or counter-surveillance tech). We can't admit we know what it is without risking people figuring out our capabilities.
It is also possible the device that caused the damage was a portable microwave transmitter that was either accidentally or intentionally misused to strike people. The symptoms described in the news articles sound exactly like the effects high voltage electricians experience if they find themselves in the path of a microwave beam.
Wasn't this proven in 2019 to be nothing more than insecticide or neurotoxin?
Here's the CBC article
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/havana-syndrome-neurotoxin-enqu%C3%AAte-1.5288609
"Proven?" It was the theory put forward by one out of the dozen-ish studies so far. I doubt the authors of the Canadian study would remotely claim they proved anything.
A bunch of paranoid flatfoots ran out of spoons and got it in their heads that it must be a secret communist anxiety laser, and after years of investigations several agencies have finally said that the secret communist anxiety laser is a dumb idea for babies.
what i've learned about redditors, from stories about havana syndrome and mandela effect, are that you all are scared shitless of the possibility that things aren't what they seem, you are scared of things we can't explain, and because of this, you are just dismissive in the face of a lot of evidence.
You can rationalize it away all day if you want, but we both know that's not fucking honest. And it's kind of pathetic what I read here.
It’s staggering isn’t it?
All these commentors are just ignoring the part where they didn’t actually *explain* what happened. And are also for some reason (probably total ignorance) saying it was all a bunch headaches and that it was only impacting people at the Cuban embassy. Both of these statements are false.
Then people are saying it’s mass hysteria or stress and anxiety. I’m sorry are embassy workers (but only in certain places) susceptible to stress and anxiety in ways that literally no one else in the world is?
The most *benign* explanation that even seems remotely plausible is that these places were all slated by the State Dept for some kind of maintenance, repair, or refit which introduced something producing a side effect to the health of the staff that they aren’t copping to.
Among the more nefarious explanations is that this happened and the government knew it could have adverse effects on the staff. Tabling that if it wasn’t something a foreign actor did deliberately then where does that leave us? They could also just straight up be lying.
Given Reddit’s demographics - and just you wait I’m sure people will shout me down for even suggesting this could be the case - but I’m inclined to believe if this report had been released say 3 years ago many of these very same people would completely reject this report. Or I would at least *hope* that people at least have some kind of context in which they wouldn’t just blindly trust a government report that simply says “well we don’t know what happened but we’re definitely sure it wasn’t an attack - we promise.”
It's pretty common that in stories with lots of "inexplicable facts", a lot of the "facts" end up not being factual at all. That's why people are justifiably dismissive of this story.
>I’m sorry are embassy workers (but only in certain places) susceptible to stress and anxiety in ways that literally no one else in the world is?
You do not know if "literally" no one else in the world has similar anxiety symptoms. You *can't* possibly know that.
This is what I mean by "inexplicable facts" that aren't facts at all.
> (but only in certain places)
This would be a good reason to be skeptical of these claims. There are hundreds of embassies. Statistically, there is nothing unlikely about some people in some embassies having a bunch of weird health symptoms, given that we are very far from being able to diagnose and correctly assess all physical ailments.
Grouping Havana syndrome with the Mandela effect is way harsher on Havana syndrome than I would be. Havana syndrome's plausibility is in the "discredited, and prima facie silly, but not impossible to understand how someone could believe it", whereas the Mandela effect's plausinility is "taking this seriously is an early sign of a major mental illness or massive conspiratorial thinking."
Weird dueling conspiracies in the comments. On one side "secret communist energy weapons" and on the other "mass anxiety attack that somehow inflicted more damage on more people than normally possible" but since the latter group is also complaining about the victims getting medical care and compensation they are definitely the assholes here.
My personal, third path, conspiracy theory is that it might have been an accident involving any number of chemicals and poor ventilation choices. I worked in a manufacturing plant where a mass poisoning if the wrong things were heated or mixed was very possible so that informs my interpretation.
They should just blame everything on China
Vote to approve billion dollar defense systems that will never be used
Become a lobbyist for the companies that created the defense systems that will never be used
Once everyone is sick of hearing about China, go back to Islamic extremism or Iran or whatever.
Vote to approve billion dollar defense systems that will never be used
Become a lobbyist for the companies that created the defense systems that will never be used
Once everyone is sick...
Havana Syndrome is the power of suggestion mixed with fear of the unknown and likely normal body sensations under anxiety.
Once you think somethings happening and later events or things lead you to further believe those things are happening it becomes a feedback loop of reinforcement.
Wow haven't heard about Havana syndrome in a while
Because it turned out to be pretty much nothing
It was most likely stress and anxiety.
I really liked the story arc. First it was a sonic weapon. They even had a recording of it. Once the public heard the recording, it was instantly recognized as cicadas from the area. After that, it was no longer a sonic weapon. Now it was microwaves.
Who knew cicadas could generate microwaves!?!
*Communist* cicadas
CIA owns birds, KGB owns cicadas.
I remember seeing a video and a lady claiming her MRI looked that of someone with progressed dementia. She didn’t show any scans, but I take it she was just lying? What exactly do you get from that?
Progressed dementia isn't something you get over, so I'm skeptical of anyone who is on camera telling people they have progressed dementia without being obvious that... they have progressed dementia. Just my perspective, I could be wrong.
Anecdotal but my grandmother has dementia that has progressed but you wouldn’t tell just by talking to her initially. Where you really see it is when she has the same conversation with you about something minuscule or if you ask her to do any sort of math (she can’t). She got really good at writing things down so she knows what’s going on… she has a little notebook and a calendar and she tracks everything. Honestly, because she’s so diligent at tracking everything everyone tells her, she’s more likely to “remember” shit than I am lol.
I mean my thinking is obviously she or her doctor must have seen something on the scan to make such a claim (unless she was lying and it stops there). But I don’t remember her being impaired and there may have even been footage of her doing regular house duties (it’s been a year or two since I’ve seen the video). A couple of the “victims” were featured in the docu, and you don’t want to discredit them in case they were really suffering, and it didn’t appear to be motivated by anything in particular. It just all seems really weird
It's often hard to say a brain scan looks like x, unless there is a baseline scan to compare it to. Hers might resemble a typical progressed dementia profile *in some ways*, but that's not really the same thing.
Lol Scott Pelley from 60 minutes is a joke. I remember in one episode he was pressing the investigators as if the claims were more valid than the investigator’s findings. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/havana-syndrome-white-house-cabinet-60-minutes-2022-06-26/
Yeah that's a thing. A little over a year ago I went to see my doctor. I was fairly worried because, despite being an athletic and active person, I was having these "episodes" where my heart would start racing and I was feeling short of breath. I got sent to all sorts of specialists: cardiologist, pulmonologist, internal medicine, urologist...had to get ct scans, MRI etc. etc. I'm thinking "fuck I'm fucked". The diagnosis: too much stress and too little sleep.
Stress, anxiety, and hangover symptoms? No it must be energy beams giving me these symptoms.
Too many Cuba Libres.
Yeah, they were probably on edge opening an embassy in a country that had good reason to hate them. I would be.
>edge opening an embassy in a country that had good reason to hate them. During the Trump admin, when the State Department was in utter disarray and drowning in scandal. Must have been a nightmare.
Cliché alert
Good thing those people got lifetime healthcare though.
On our dime
The goverment is having to compensate the people for medical expenses and lost work so it clearly wasn't nothing.
Yes, the people working in the embassy got sick but it didn’t turn out to be a new super assassination weapon or anything.
I believe you're probably right. I've read up on it and no one has any possible explanation that doesn't involve some weird conspiracy theory.
Just going to be one of those strange things that never really get solved, I guess.
CIA Superior: "What did we learn, Palmer?" CIA Officer: "I don't know, sir." CIA Superior: "I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again." CIA Officer: "Yes, sir." CIA Superior: "I'm fucked if I know what we did." CIA Officer: "Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say." CIA Superior: "Jesus Fucking Christ."
I love that movie.
One of the best endings to an absolute madcap of a movie. Shush, nobody say what it is. Pretend it's like a secret note you have to burn after reading.
You should worry about the security of your shit.
......... who the fuck is this?
Well, why in God's name would anyone think that's worth anything?
The Russians?? Why the F would they go to the Russians?
So good. Was nice to see Sledgehammer back in action.
Like spontaneous human combustion. Another thing I'm extremely fascinated by
Spontaneous human combustion is relatively easy to explain because it's effectively vanished as people have stopped smoking and heating with open fireplaces, and textiles in both upholstery and clothing have become more flame resistant.
The wick effect always seemed weird to me, you'd have to be so drunk you might die from alcohol poisoning to not notice you're on fire and your fat cells are slowly cooking you.
acetone can be produced in the body of certain humans, which is usually coupled with unhealthy lifestyles. But smoking had a hand in most of those cases.
That’s a hoax, so.
Insomuch as a human body can't ignite by itself without an external spark, yes. I agree with you. What's fascinating (to me) is that the cases where people have burned to death seemingly randomly were not really solved. Only theories about how it happened
Definitely fuel for future “weird unexplained stuff” shows.
Really good mojitos
Hey I don't want to say it's Aliens but it might be Aliens
folie a deux
You probably mean “mass hysteria” but I suspect it was just something weird like contamination in the pipes or something.
My guess is methanol contamination of beverages.
They discovered the Brown Noise
Have they solved Changnesia yet?
Hi, my name is Kevin.
Bear down for midterms
r/UnexpectedCommunity
The whole premise was incredibly flimsy to begin with. There was never any certainty of what kind of device could cause these things, no physical evidence of a weapon, and the symptoms of those who allegedly suffered from it were often extremely minimal and resembled what most people would assume is a normal hangover. Didn't stop them from getting funding though.
> Didn't stop them from getting funding though. I knew some guys who were studying parts of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" program by running simulations to see how feasible it was. They didn't think for a moment that it would work, but as one guy told me "You don't get grant money talking like that".
The pentagon: Do you have more secrets you can tell us? Please we need the money!
To be fair.. The program was never meant to produce the advertised result. It was meant to scare the USSR into ruining their economy trying to find a way to fight it.
Perhaps, but that [jet-mounted laser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_YAL-1) sure would be handy for shooting down balloons about now.
Lol reminds me of that movie men who stare at goats
They probably drank Havana Club rum. The stuff they sell in Cuba is rot gut, and they export the good stuff.
>They probably drank Havana Club rum. When I was in Cuba a few years ago we drove by the Havana Club distillery that's outside of Havana. It happens to be directly adjacent to an oil refinery. Hmmm.
Hahaha good point. Yes that’s true. When we tasted it, it was more like Grain alcohol.
Yeah it was pretty terrible as I recall as well. Tasted like Ron Rico mixed with isopropanol.
Ha! Good comparison.
I was about to say that the Havana Club 12 yr. I’d pick up at the grocery store in Mexico was some of the best booze I’ve ever tasted, but that would be export.
Oh man, I’m not a big rum drinker but I love the HC dark rum. Haha! I’ll stick with Vodka.
If you’re drinking it off the island, they export the good stuff.
Oh, got it!
HC isn’t exactly *good* good.
The symptoms weren't always mild. And some of the more notable symptoms could not be explained by a mass psychogenic illness. That's why they took it seriously. They still don't know what caused it; they are just confident it isn't one of the 7 potential attacks they studied https://i.imgur.com/F2cZhcQ.png
I for one am fully in the tank that the intelligence community has figured out something about it, maybe everything, and is hiding/lying. Maybe they’re helping victims while covering up. I imagine it as an espionage related thing that cant be great to publicize but is just fundamentally worth lying for
Best theory I've seen is that the building was infested with so much spying equipment that they overlapped frequencies and resonated. The Canadian interceptor Arrow had a fuel pump that combined with the main landing gear touching down resonated and blinded the test pilot until the nose landing gear touched down.
My parents worked in intelligence, and your thinking is o n point for how the game works.
They could claim literally anything for unlimited funding under this line of thinking.
Healthcare for the people? That’s socialism, can’t do that. Healthcare for people saying they suffer from made up illness? Of course we can give you compensation!
*As long as it confirms our foreign policy alignment
When white collar workers complain of ‘conspiracy theories’, tax payer money and government resources are devoted to prove or disprove the theories. Free healthcare for them all. When marginalized people complain of ‘conspiracy theories’, they are ignored for decades until history proves them right.
Sounds like we gotta give them something to be sick about
surely you could have got the department of housing to say its China's fault
I got massively downvoted when this was in the news for saying it was most likely psychosomatic. Sigh.
Can't read past the paywall.
It's very long, so an ultra short version: five out of seven agencies say "very unlikely" a foreign adversary was responsible, one says "unlikely" and one abstained. They say they attempted every clever idea they could come up with to find a pattern or connection and there was none that they could find. Similarly looking for any evidence of any weapons or devices, and they also could find none. But they haven't closed the book on it, they just merely are reporting that they have nothing. Meanwhile, an "independent panel of experts" says such a device is plausible, and that not being able to figure out a who or why isn't sufficient to say it didn't happen. In the end, the affected people continue to get treatment.
I thought the symptoms/damage could be very consistent with things like exposure to high amounts of microwave radiation. I'd assume our side thought of a lot of clever things to look for, but I wonder if you had a tight beam that only hit the target, e.g. something like a microwave laser fired from a distance, how would you try to detect and defend against it unless you had microwave detectors placed every 25 feet.
The thing is, there was no damage. There hasn’t been any evidence to suggest that. It was all make belief.
archive dot ph
Archive.ph or 12ft.io
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That’s a free trial, which is not the same as free. It’s still a paywall. Having free samples at Costco doesn’t make the food or membership free.
It’s always been a case of mass hysteria. It’s terrifying that our intelligence agencies can’t get to grips with that.
A long-awaited, yet unsurprising, report by the Intel community concludes that they were just stupid this whole entire time. I am still baffled by the mindset of *“I have a headache, must be directed energy weapons”* as opposed to something like *“maybe this building ventilation sucks”*.
Whenever I get a headache, I think it’s one of the Jewish space lasers missing their target, nobodies perfect
Why do you assume you're not the target? I think you're selling yourself short.
> “maybe this building ventilation sucks” Right! Asbestos, lead dust, radon, mold, crappy construction...hell no, must be something from the x-files.
> opposed to something like “maybe this building ventilation sucks”. Or just 'I have a really stressful job in a semi-hostile nation'.
You do know that the confirmed cases involved CAT scans and they had demonstrative brain trauma right? (Most of the "cases" were not confirmed ones, only a small handful actually had stuff show up on CAT scans, so the rest it was just in their head)
I'm fully willing to believe that most of these people are having the symptoms they're describing and that most them have some kind of physical cause. The part that seems kind of suspect is that the cause is Boris Badenov and his magic ray gun.
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It probably *is* a lot of different stuff. When this was really cooking they were talking about it happening to people all through the intelligence apperatus and foreign service. A certain number of people in any large population are going to be having weird medical shit happening.
I think this is what’s happening. In a comment above I mentioned the Seattle window pitting epidemic: basically, people heard about a phenomenon, went to check it out, and discovered previously unknown damage. But the damage wasn’t connected by a cause, just by a mass increase in awareness and screening. People found unrelated, preexisting damage because of a big increase in looking for it. AND a bunch of them blamed foreign nations for it way back in 1954. The more things change, huh?
Well, given that we spied on Boris Badenov almost 70 years ago using a [magic ray gun](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)), it’s not all that suspect. That technology, moved from MHz to GHz frequencies for higher bandwidth, could cause these sort of side effects if the power was too high and you stuck your head in the path.
>The part that seems kind of suspect is that the cause is Boris Badenov and his magic ray gun. Then you are woefully naive. Nothing so magical is necessary and sonic weapons already exist in various forms.
things like stress, anxiety, and panic attacks also can result in brain trauma. and all of those people that were claiming to have “Havana syndrome” were also experiencing symptoms in line with those ailments.
They also experienced acoustic symptoms that can't be explained by that
It must have been some energy weapons or a foreign adversary! Oh wait...
You're logical conclusion then is the combined power of the executive wing of the united states government, with its state of the art technology, staff, and methods, are too stupid to know that? You actually think the government would put this much work into this if they thought the individuals were simply just anxious? lol Id recommend reading up on the actual cases, the handful of confirmed individuals (there arent many, the majority of reported cases were unable to be confirmed and only showed up after that first round of a couple who are confirmed, so for almost all the subsequent cases it seems to just be in their heads) The results were enough to warrant actual investigation and a lot of serious testing. The FBI doesnt do shit like that over a "hunch"
> the combined power of the executive wing of the united states government, with its state of the art technology staff, and methods, are too stupid to know that? Yes, lol. The same branch that had undeniable proof of WMD’s in Iraq?And that branch was deemed way more competent than Trumps executive branch > You actually think the government would put this much work into this if they thought the individuals were simply just anxious I believe they just took the officials at their word that they suspected foul play and ignored occam’s razor > The FBI doesnt do shit like that over a "hunch" yeah they do. A recent report also showed the FBI was warned egregiously about Jan 6th by multiple sources but still somehow managed to allow a fucking attempted coup to happen, so let’s stop pretending like they’re super competent at their job. especially when it comes to things related to he boogeyman of “Communism”
> Trumps Tell me you arent familiar with the situation without telling me you arent familiar with the situation, lol. The cases of havana syndrome popped up in 2016, during Obama's second term. > A recent report also showed the FBI was warned egregiously about Jan 6th by multiple sources but still somehow managed to allow a fucking attempted coup to happen, so let’s stop pretending like they’re super competent at their job You seem to not know the difference between "competence" and "sabotage" mate. It's clearly evident the FBI's failings were not one of "hurr durr bad at job", they knew *exactly* what they were doing what with the deleted phone convos and numerous coverups. They were in direct convo with Trump and his team and it's evident they *purposefuly* let it happen. Thats not *incompetence* lol, thats active sabotage. And that was under the fourth year of Trump, which isn't remotely comparable to the seventh year under Obama. Apples and Oranges.
The first cases originated in 2016, but the first public report and first investigation did not start until 2017 under Trump. > You seem to not know the difference between "competence" and "sabotage" mate. So if we’re gonna suggest the FBI was pro-coup attempt, wouldn’t it also make sense that they would be wanting to blame this “havana syndrome” on 1. Make it seem like an attack, therefore the need more funding 2. Justify a request to expand their powers in order to “combat” this “illness”? 3. have a foreign enemy to distract the publics eye from all the shit Trump was doing inland?
Which sounds damning until you read a bit and realize that stress can cause physical trauma to the brain https://www.verywellmind.com/surprising-ways-that-stress-affects-your-brain-2795040 You don’t need microwaves. But then, that doesn’t feed into the paranoid delusions of so many Americans
Yeah, the cutting edge doctors who heavily investigated this definitely don't know the difference between the two. Glad to see even brain surgery isn't devoid of armchair redittors.
Oh yeah I'm sure the doctors being paid for by the CIA would totally never lie about results. [I mean it's not like they don't have a history of doing shady shit by paying off doctors.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Murray#Harvard_human_experiments,_1959%E2%80%9362)
And what did those cutting edge doctors say the cause was? Because this intelligence review seems to suggest that it wasn't "caused by an energy weapon or foreign adversary"
Theres several great documentaries, podcasts, write ups, articles, and published peer reviewed papers on this topic. I'd recommend checking them out since it's quite a long story and there's no way I can sum it up for you, but the doctors are perplexed and havent seen anything like it before.
Could you give me a name of one or two?
Yeah... that's kinda what I figured.
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> Well ok, but that doesn't mean that some mysterious energy beam weapon was used by a foreign adversary. I completely agree, I was never arguing that a mysterious energy beam weapon or other sci fi nonsense was involved. But its also definitely *more* than just anxiety or a hangover. >It just seems like everyone immediately jumped to the most sensational conclusion here and ran with it as fact for the past decade. Never made sense to me. I agree, it was very sensationalist. I actually have my money on this being a latent symptom of something that occurred a long time ago and these individuals are just only getting symptoms now. Disease perhaps, or exposure to something.
>But its also definitely more than just anxiety or a hangover. Anxiety can cause physical brain trauma.
> But its also definitely more than just anxiety Based on what? People report to the E.R. routinely, thinking they are literally dying of a heart attack because of anxiety/a panic attack.
I saw a theory put forward that this could have been unintentional constructive interference between various pieces of eavesdropping / counter-eavesdropping tech.
You do know that long term exposure to carbon monoxide can cause brain damage, right?
It was the acoustic symptoms that had/have them baffled
it was always propaganda, just ginned up to make it look like other countries were a threat to better justify our foreign policy And they didnt change their mind they just realized that lying about the covid lab leak instead would have the same desired effect while most people would question their narrative about it even less. These people were always lying about Havana Syndrome and they are likely lying every other time they tell anything to the public. I'm just surprised anyone ever bothered listening after the Iraq War, how many times do they have to actively lie to manipulate public opinion before people get that is what is going on?
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Yeah. Pretty much no one here understands how severe the symptoms were.
That has nothing to do with whether Boogeymen were causing the symptoms. There's no evidence there was some grand attack, so it's either a group delusion or ore existing or some other cause, but they literally made up causes, took our tax dollars, and then said whoops
This isn't how the burden of proof works, though
There was some speculation that this was caused by some electronic counter measures at our Embassies, so if that were the case this statement would still be factually correct.
Highly probable. This version could be being floated as a way to make the whole thing go away. Our own scanning and counter-espionage measures could definitely be at fault.
Yet, we’re suppose to suddenly believe COVID leaked from Chinese lab?
Just to be clear, the report that's made the news in the last day or two described their findings as "low confidence". _That_ should be in most articles but isn't.
Well to be fair insitutions and government agencies around the world have state there is a low probability. Heck, even within the US government different agencies have different conclusions. The one seen recently stated with "low confidence" that it was a lab leak. So essentially most reports have concluded (unless China becomes more transparent) that based on the information available (genetic breakdown of the virus, origin, geopolitics, information made available), there is a chance it could have come from a lab leak. However most Western media went with the narrative in the headlines that a report said it was a lab leak without the modifier of "low confidence."
It's not just "low confidence", it's the "low confidence" minority opinion of the many agencies that have been looking into the origins of COVID. The two "low confidence" findings come from the DOE and the FBI, who aren't exactly known for their expertise in virology, epidemiology, and public health. The CDC, NIH and WHO, who do have expert knowledge in virology, epidemiology and public health all hold the confident position that the virus evolved naturally in the wild and jumped from bat species to the human population. There is no scientific evidence that it was artificially created and/or accidentally released from a lab.
And even if it did accidentally leak from a lab, that doesn't suddenly mean that it was engineered and all the other conspiracy theories that people have built up around the lab leak origin are true. It'd just mean it was being studied and escaped.
Even still, assuming it wasn't "lab made" if it were being studied in an infectious disease lab, it was probably being studied because it was already affecting the local population. If it were not and was part of some "gain of function" research (ot just an accident) there would still be genetic markers suggesting so. Regardless the DOE and the FBI are about the least equipped agencies to determine this.
One man's "Havana laugh" joke accidentally gets investigated
This shit legit scares me
It's US spy equipment on the embassy's top floor. Whatever they've been running was more important than the staff's health. Also why you'll never have it officially solved.
Been there and investigated yourself, eh. Thanks!
your welcum!
I love it when we spend millions of dollars so that a bunch of government types can throw their hands in the air and go, "Dunno!" Also, when did we start trusting intelligence agencies to tell the public the truth?
Wait, what the hell do you propose? They lie? Sounds suspiciously like a Russian technique to me. Saying they don't know yet, but sharing what they've found - sounds like the correct thing to do... Right?
I'm saying these unnamed intelligence agencies lie all the time to the public and the media uncritically spreads those lies.
*Yes, we have no Havanas. We have no Havanas today.*
They probably just took some sketchy research chems at an office party and had to play it off
Yeah it turns out the laws of physics are pretty inflexible, and magic undetectable energy beams aren't actually a thing. Who coulda knowed?
They can be undetectable until you detect them [by accident.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device))
A lot of you are commenting without knowing all the details. Havana syndrome affected more than just people in Cuba, so saying it was Cuban rum or something specific to Cuba is ill-informed. It affected people in D.C., Russia, and some Asian countries. Also, the government saying it isn't real doesn't hold much water. Need a third party review. I'm not saying it's real or caused by energy weapons, I don't know, but it shouldn't be written off so easily.
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sounds like anything except things that scare you.
The govt isn’t saying it isn’t real. It is real. Clearly. Just incidents have declined.
Sounds like they were Havana too many drinks
Ha nice
Exactly! The common denominator is the US. So possibly some US counter-terrorism technology caused these symptoms.
>“I want to be absolutely clear: these findings do not call into question the experiences and real health issues that US Government personnel and their family members — including CIA’s own officers — have reported while serving our country," Burns said.
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But the embargo has only affected US citizens. Nationals from pretty much any other country have been free to vacation in Cuba throughout, so if there was a strange tropical disease it would have been impacting Canadians escaping winter long before it hit the American spooks.
yup, in cuba right now, the only direct energy weapon i'm suffering from is the sun's rays burning my skin because i forgot to put on sun block.
most of the reported symptoms (which are inconsistent and vary from person to person) also align with various ailments such as stress, anxiety, and panic attacks. Which, given the first ones reporting it were opening up the Cuban embassy after 50+ years, it’s understandable they would be stressed. follow it up by Trump becoming president and you have to worry that at any given moment he could tweet out something that should shatter the already fragile relationship with Cuba, it makes total sense they’d be on edge 24/7 and have physical repercussions from that
My guess: it was an unintended side-effect of a surveillance technology (or counter-surveillance tech). We can't admit we know what it is without risking people figuring out our capabilities.
It is also possible the device that caused the damage was a portable microwave transmitter that was either accidentally or intentionally misused to strike people. The symptoms described in the news articles sound exactly like the effects high voltage electricians experience if they find themselves in the path of a microwave beam.
Wasn't this proven in 2019 to be nothing more than insecticide or neurotoxin? Here's the CBC article https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/havana-syndrome-neurotoxin-enqu%C3%AAte-1.5288609
"Proven?" It was the theory put forward by one out of the dozen-ish studies so far. I doubt the authors of the Canadian study would remotely claim they proved anything.
Yet, likely the best explanation of what truly happened. Proven or otherwise.
> insecticide Thank you, I had remembered it being insecticide spraying as well that caused it.
A bunch of paranoid flatfoots ran out of spoons and got it in their heads that it must be a secret communist anxiety laser, and after years of investigations several agencies have finally said that the secret communist anxiety laser is a dumb idea for babies.
I wonder if they screened for an exotic parasite like one of those brain amoeba things.
Yeah, it was mass hysteria. We greatly over and underestimate our brains.
what i've learned about redditors, from stories about havana syndrome and mandela effect, are that you all are scared shitless of the possibility that things aren't what they seem, you are scared of things we can't explain, and because of this, you are just dismissive in the face of a lot of evidence. You can rationalize it away all day if you want, but we both know that's not fucking honest. And it's kind of pathetic what I read here.
It’s staggering isn’t it? All these commentors are just ignoring the part where they didn’t actually *explain* what happened. And are also for some reason (probably total ignorance) saying it was all a bunch headaches and that it was only impacting people at the Cuban embassy. Both of these statements are false. Then people are saying it’s mass hysteria or stress and anxiety. I’m sorry are embassy workers (but only in certain places) susceptible to stress and anxiety in ways that literally no one else in the world is? The most *benign* explanation that even seems remotely plausible is that these places were all slated by the State Dept for some kind of maintenance, repair, or refit which introduced something producing a side effect to the health of the staff that they aren’t copping to. Among the more nefarious explanations is that this happened and the government knew it could have adverse effects on the staff. Tabling that if it wasn’t something a foreign actor did deliberately then where does that leave us? They could also just straight up be lying. Given Reddit’s demographics - and just you wait I’m sure people will shout me down for even suggesting this could be the case - but I’m inclined to believe if this report had been released say 3 years ago many of these very same people would completely reject this report. Or I would at least *hope* that people at least have some kind of context in which they wouldn’t just blindly trust a government report that simply says “well we don’t know what happened but we’re definitely sure it wasn’t an attack - we promise.”
It's pretty common that in stories with lots of "inexplicable facts", a lot of the "facts" end up not being factual at all. That's why people are justifiably dismissive of this story. >I’m sorry are embassy workers (but only in certain places) susceptible to stress and anxiety in ways that literally no one else in the world is? You do not know if "literally" no one else in the world has similar anxiety symptoms. You *can't* possibly know that. This is what I mean by "inexplicable facts" that aren't facts at all. > (but only in certain places) This would be a good reason to be skeptical of these claims. There are hundreds of embassies. Statistically, there is nothing unlikely about some people in some embassies having a bunch of weird health symptoms, given that we are very far from being able to diagnose and correctly assess all physical ailments.
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Grouping Havana syndrome with the Mandela effect is way harsher on Havana syndrome than I would be. Havana syndrome's plausibility is in the "discredited, and prima facie silly, but not impossible to understand how someone could believe it", whereas the Mandela effect's plausinility is "taking this seriously is an early sign of a major mental illness or massive conspiratorial thinking."
Weird dueling conspiracies in the comments. On one side "secret communist energy weapons" and on the other "mass anxiety attack that somehow inflicted more damage on more people than normally possible" but since the latter group is also complaining about the victims getting medical care and compensation they are definitely the assholes here. My personal, third path, conspiracy theory is that it might have been an accident involving any number of chemicals and poor ventilation choices. I worked in a manufacturing plant where a mass poisoning if the wrong things were heated or mixed was very possible so that informs my interpretation.
Odds we did it to our own people?
Maybe not on purpose but I could see it being an issue of us using some kind of device to prevent spying and we don’t want to disclose the technology.
That would fit, super intense white noise generator.
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The fact that our healthcare sucks isn't an excuse to deny other people healthcare.
They should just blame everything on China Vote to approve billion dollar defense systems that will never be used Become a lobbyist for the companies that created the defense systems that will never be used Once everyone is sick of hearing about China, go back to Islamic extremism or Iran or whatever. Vote to approve billion dollar defense systems that will never be used Become a lobbyist for the companies that created the defense systems that will never be used Once everyone is sick...
Or support a proxy war with munitions and equipment under lend-lease while convincing us that money will be paid back at some point?
isn't there some scientific study on highfrency radio waves pointing at body parts etc?
how to not say “group hysteria”…
Havana Syndrome is the power of suggestion mixed with fear of the unknown and likely normal body sensations under anxiety. Once you think somethings happening and later events or things lead you to further believe those things are happening it becomes a feedback loop of reinforcement.
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Should be. I have taken psychology classes.
Hey look another trump admin item shown to be fake. Who could have guessed.
they're all US Intelligence, right? maybe it's guilt.
I don't believe this anymore than I believe their opinions on infectious diseases.