Neurological technology and directed energy weapons are, at this point, a well documented phenomenon. With a few clicks of a mouse button, you enter a rabbit warren of military papers, scientific articles, civilian lawsuits and activist rants.  Google non-lethal weapons, high-power microwave active denial systems, low-power microwave systems, directed acoustic beams, microwave acoustic effects, electronic harassment and bio-fusion (and then get on board quickly or risk waking up one day and wondering what the hell happened to the world while you weren’t paying attention). Neurological technology is today what the Internet was in the 90’s, surrounded by start-ups and venture capitalists and people who have only half an idea of what they’re actually doing. The fact that most Americans have never heard of these devices says more about the limits of American corporate journalism than the capacity of Americans to understand, though there is a fair amount of unrecognized psychological denial and fear. Less well known and not often acknowledged, let alone believed, is that Americans have been targets of these weapons for a decade, if not longer. The between-the-lines "proof" lies in the aforementioned papers, articles and lawsuits, and in the individual's all-too-common symptoms and sufferings, as well as buried deep somewhere in the government’s own backyard. And in today’s military, there is always the concern of reverse usage (having the weapons turned back on them by someone else’s military or terrorist cell network) and psychological terrorism.

     The terms neurological and directed energy weapons are used to include a wide variety of devices. To try to come up with an appropriate catch-all phrase for all of them would be folly, for the true number and variety of such devices is known only to those who develop and manufacture them. Some of this technology is innocuous and beneficial, such as the neuromodulation that’s used to ease Parkinson's symptoms, or John Norseen’s Brain Printing (though even he crosses the "Phillip-K.-Dick-warned-us-about-you" line). The most frightening are the aforementioned weapons. These aren’t quite Secretary of the Air Force Michael Wynne’s "non-lethal" weapons, either, designed to herd harmless crowds toward an arena exit or disperse a rowdy group of protestors (though they work on similar ideas and are equally insidious). Whether used remotely (via satellites, point to point networks, or satellite dish arrays) or up close (on the ground and within 4 to 200 or so ft., and perhaps as far as a mile), the simplest metaphor to explain the technology is a radio and the radio waves that make it work, except the device is the radio station and your body is the radio; and the radio waves are any number of electromagnetic (including microwave) or acoustic frequencies (they research this stuff down to the most minute detail). Hence the phrase "directed energy" weapons. The body is an electrochemical system; any weapon that disturbs the electrical impulses of the nervous system will affect body functions and behavior.

     Symptoms of the weapons’ usage include but are not limited to (you wouldn’t believe us or anyone else if we listed them all) sleep attacks, sleep disturbance, a buzzing or clicking in the head, a severe burning sensation or tingling in the limbs (a.k.a. "heating"), muscle cramps, muscle spasms, a ringing in the ears, false heart attacks (feeling as though you’ve been punched in the chest), false heart attacks II (severe, painful heartburn), odd "twitches" (feeling as though you’ve been jolted with an electrical prod), pinched nerves, vivid hypnogogic or hypnopompic images (strange dreams while just falling asleep or just waking up) on a regular basis... This list alone includes what would under any other circumstances be referred to as narcolepsy, insomnia, polyneuropathy (including both sensory and motor neuropathy), tinnitus, sciatica, angina and acid reflux syndrome, all in the same person, often in one day. This doesn’t even include the blurred vision, headaches, "allergies," hot flashes, cold flashes…Many of these can be disguised normal phenomena, only manifested in strange and exaggerated ways, or in those who would ordinarily never suffer such symptoms. Many others make absolutely no sense to the individual, or their doctor should they happen to seek medical help. Any long-term effects are unknown.

     Although many of these weapons can cause an amount of pain that can only be described as systematic torture, the most insidious devices are those that create an auditory or "acoustic" effect. For the majority of Americans, being told of such a weapon would immediately raise suspicions, create doubt and raise accusations of mental illness, which is, of course (and often admitted by those who develop such weapons), the whole point. The only weapon possibly more insidious, in terms of "crazy-making" and "crazy-sounding," are those that can evoke or "suggest" thoughts that the victim believes (truly believes) are their own (call it reverse schizophrenia). This is not so much "mind control" (to use a phrase fashionable with the CIA circa the 1960’s) as outright neurological manipulation. Are your thoughts your own, indeed. These are the devices that provoke the most visceral gut-reaction of fear and denial, for no one, anywhere (not even those targeted) ever wants to believe that their thoughts—their very brain—can be invaded. Hence the years of silence, the turning away, the blank looks on people’s faces at any attempt to explain. The mind shuts down at such a concept and those targeted are slapped with erroneous mental labels or simply ignored, outrage over their abandonment left for future historians to express. But the same weapons that can cause physical effects can, using the exact same principles and technology, be used to cause cognitive and emotional effects. All of the effects are neurological. This is not magic.

     Many, many (many) victim bios can be found on the Internet, and the various conference calls set up as places of comfort for these victims unwittingly echo the scientific articles and military papers that most of them have never read nor often believe on first sight. The articles are too bland, too dully written to speak to the true pain that the devices (weapons) actually cause. Many of the articles have the detached seriousness of a Nazi doctor conducting "necessary" experiments during WWII (and it has been whispered that post-WWII, a handful of Nazi doctors--or their weapons--were, in fact, imported to America, a long-ago and horrendous mistake that, if true, would spread throughout American history like a terrible, viral blight).

     But "crazy-making" and "crazy-sounding" have long been symptoms (and intended results) of these weapons. Along with actual mental labels that have been given to victims (and the true crime is that the psychological and psychiatric community in America has not caught on to the effects of these weapons: the rest of the world caught on long ago), there is the phenomenon of "chasing the white rabbit." Disinformation campaigns, the seemingly unnatural abilities of these weapons, and the human need to create an explanation in the absence of any sensible one (or even one that fits their pain, one that matches the horror of their suffering) all combine to create a mixed stew of genuine theories, conspiracy theories and down-right mythologies. To the victim, it cannot be anything so bland as military research laboratory or corporate defense contractor testing. That explanation is too stupid, too small, too senseless: it could only be an attempt at total world domination. So it is also, in the end, a mental rejection of what these weapons are truly, truly capable of (the mind shuts down), and in a reversal of thinking, the ability of the weapons becomes smaller as the explanation for them becomes grander.

     In reality, no explanation would be grand. Any real explanation will appear small and petty and ridiculous, no matter how many generals or senators or presidents attempt in the future to explain the militaristic or medical benefits or applications of such testing. It is as though (in another reversal) in their attempt to appear omnipotent, they automatically become small, for any such over-the-top phenomenon could not possibly be truly logical, rational, sane. The mind defensively and rightly cuts any attempt down to size.

     Time has marched on, such that the military has become concerned about reverse usage even as most Americans are just catching on to the existence of these devices. There are too many over-riding concerns, too many parents of too many young soldiers who will be too shocked to learn that Johnny or Jenny might be the victim of some other army’s neurological weapons. Weapons that can evoke emotions or thoughts, weapons that can negatively affect performance, that can torture and kill, leaving no evidence behind. The ease of this "no evidence left behind" has become a liability—how to explain to Mom or Dad that their child has gone temporarily mad due to a weapon they don’t yet know exists?

     In 1994 (long after these weapons were initially developed, though few will ever admit it) the DSM criteria for schizophrenia was altered. All other necessary criteria could be dismissed if the patient exhibited one (and only one) symptom: the hearing of voices. But as one victim put it, "If Joan of Arc ever heard the voice of God, I doubt it sounded like this. Tiny, tinny, computerized…you can barely hear it, but you can’t not hear it, like it’s coming from 3,000 miles over the horizon." Some only hear music, notes or a line from a song repeated over and over and over, that changes periodically but never goes away. These are not "voices." These are, in military jargon, the "acoustic effect," and there are a variety of documented types in existence (and some that are not so documented). That the DSM creators were unaware of their own complicity in the targeting and testing of these weapons is somehow revolting: "crazy-making," from the top down. Add to this emotion or thought induction and the mixed stew boils over, with nothing, not even one’s own brain, reliable.

     That there has been no acknowledgement, no public awareness campaign, no government accountability after so many years comes as a shock not to those mired in research or activism, but to any rational outsider who eventually gains some kind of outraged acceptance of just what these weapons are capable of. Leave it to others to dream up conspiracies. Leave it to the military and the government to believe that this is anything other than fascist, abusive and utterly insane. To the average American bystander who wraps their head, finally, around truths they never wanted to hear, let alone understand, it is as though the weapons themselves have gone mad.

     Government testing is not new (see MKULTRA, Tuskegee syphilis victims, Project CHATTER, etc…) and has always worn a façade of science fictionalism, even when the truth was more bland, sad or (with the benefit of hindsight, which one would think the government would have more of) hatefully pathetic. LSD, hypnosis, attempts at telepathy (and these aren’t the disinformation campaigns). Who thinks up these things? Who gets paid to dream up ways to torture innocent, unwilling Americans like lab rats? Save the whales, forget the humans. Pay no attention to alien conspiracies. The truth is out there, and it’s enough to make you cry.

     But what if it isn’t government, military or defense contractor testing? What if they deny everything? They have long lost their ability to dismiss these victims as crazy (partly because of their own media campaign and partly because of their worries of reverse usage). And what if they’re not lying? Well, there is always the frightening possibility of psychological terrorism, the possibility that these weapons have already been developed by other countries (they have—Russia, for one, practically beat us to them) who, if they aren’t using them themselves, may have sold them to some undesirable groups who are unhappy with America’s global agenda. Maybe? Possibly? Well then, someone would certainly have to investigate and work to protect all Americans from a weapon they are blissfully unaware of. Can you imagine? An entire country undone by its own ignorance.

     So you don’t believe? So you think "non-lethal weapons" are tasers or acoustic bullets and "neurological technology" is simply a vending machine in Japan that aims directed acoustic beams to sell more cola. Look deeper. But not too deep. Just far enough to retain your sanity. And then wake up to a brave new world. You just might be next.