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Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

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Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#311

Post by knowaveragejoe »

hayst4ck wrote: post #250

It's the most important time in human history to protest/fight unchecked power because it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to. We are getting to the point where the technology that fuels oppression, including extremely pervasive surveillance, privatized intelligence services with no oversight, scalable AI agents that do as they are told, and crowd "maiming" or other forceful dispersal te…

> but we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans

Only 3?

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#312

Post by pclmulqdq »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #299
pclmulqdq wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might enjoy reading Rules for Radicals if you haven't already. If your riot can provoke a worse response from the authority, it can help your cause. The reaction is the action. It may be that this protest in Serbia got a bit rowdy and riotous (see "diversity of tactics") and now the headline is about the government's use of a disproportionate weapon against protestors, not about a riot.

> You might enjoy reading Rules for Radicals if you haven't already. If your riot can provoke a worse response from the authority One motif of Allinsky's message is the importance of organisation. Triggering tear gas against your peaceful protest is one thing. Losing control of it such that stores start getting looted is not. > It may be that this protest in Serbia got a bit rowdy and riotous (see "diversity of tacti…

Just for the sake of the thread, these are "anti-corruption" protests. It is essentially a mass vote of no confidence in the government. The immediate inciting incident was the collapse of a railway station in Novi Sad that killed a bunch of people, but it has turned into much more.

It's been going since November. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the prelude to a civil war.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#313

Post by JumpCrisscross »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #302
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He makes the mistake of looking at how the US military fights and thinking that is the only way to fight a war Keep reading. "And, so, where do we still see chemical weapons used? In static-system vs. static-system warfare. Thus, in Syria – where the Syrian Civil War has been waged as a series of starve-or-surrender urban sieges, a hallmark of static vs. static fighting – you see significant use of chemical weapons…

I read the analysis. I think he's being far too dismissive of the doctrinal considerations in his analysis. Frankly, he is also not an expert on modern warfare in any way, too. There is a good book called "eating soup with a knife" (and the author has given talks on this) that talks about the importance of doctrine and culture in constructing a fighting force (in this case, the book is mostly about counterinsurgency…

> the "static system" actually is the way to get the Russian military (and the Ukrainian military) to work

Well, yes. They've been unable to launch combined-arms maneouvres. They failed to establish even air supremacy against decades-old NATO air defence kit. Russia has to fight the way it does because it's unable to fight more effectively.

The author's core point stands: we didn't outlaw chemical weapons because of any moral reasons, we outlawed them because the world's leading militaries don't need them. In cases where they have tactical value, lo and behold, they get used.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#314

Post by Nursie »

hayst4ck wrote: post #250

It's the most important time in human history to protest/fight unchecked power because it's likely the last era of humanity that we are going to be able to. We are getting to the point where the technology that fuels oppression, including extremely pervasive surveillance, privatized intelligence services with no oversight, scalable AI agents that do as they are told, and crowd "maiming" or other forceful dispersal te…

> we now have 3 countries with the ability to erase entire cities or make the world functionally uninhabitable by humans

If we're talking the Russia, the US and China then they certainly have the largest arsenals, but there's an order of magnitude difference between the stockpiles of the first two and the third. China doesn't have that many more nukes than France, and only has about double the number of warheads of the UK (though it is questionable how independent from the US the UK's capability is).

And then there's Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea.

(https://www.icanw.org/nuclear_arsenals)

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#315

Post by strken »

dboreham wrote: post #303
strken wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would e.g. sarin be useful for indiscriminate damage when A) you could drop a conventional or thermobaric bomb instead, and B) you can circumvent sarin by wearing a $200 suit from AliExpress? I'm not seeing how it's meant to fit into Russian military doctrine other than in niche circumstances.

It's much cheaper. Read the book "The Dead Hand" for details.

If you give me a specific quote from the book I'll be able to understand what you mean a bit better.

I know there's a quote floating around which gives the figure of $2000/km^2 for conventional weapons, $800 for sarin etc., $600 for nuclear, and $1 for biological. I'll respond to that.

The problem is, those numbers are for attacking civilians. You can of course make the argument that Russian military doctrine includes massacring civilians, but I would respond that not only is sarin more expensive against modern military targets, it's outright ineffective against them if they're prepared.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#316

Post by pclmulqdq »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #247
pclmulqdq wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Police also regularly use tear gas against US citizens. These are weapons that would violate the Geneva convention, but we're okay with them to disperse a crowd.

How do you feel about the defensive use of pepper spray?

You asked the wrong person. I would rather that people ditched pepper spray for defensive uses altogether and carried guns instead.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#317

Post by jbm »

macintux wrote: post #229
luckylion wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the uses in Western countries weren't even to disperse anyone, they were used as giant speakers to broadcast messages, e.g. during Covid in Germany. It's crazy to compare that to what seems to have happened in Serbia. It's like saying "Carter has used a hammer, too" when commenting on a murder, and leaving out that Carter used the hammer to build houses with Habitat for Humanity.

"whataboutism" is pernicious, widespread, and devastating to civil society.

No it's not.

People make grand statements all the time and appeal to values they claim are universal. Then when you hold them accountable for the fact that they value they are claiming is not the same as the values they have supported, you get the "whataboutism" canard thrown at you.

If you support "Freedom of Speech" and support prosecution for speech, then you do not support freedom of speech. Even in a steel-manned case, you support freedom of speech "a" and I might support freedom of speech "b"; by pointing out inconsistencies, we are helping each other understand the real argument being made, not just the thought terminating cliche.

Just because one finds it tiring to have people expose their sophistic arguments doesn't mean that the rest of us don't see value in it.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#318

Post by Aloisius »

int_19h wrote: post #270
kortilla wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LRADs are not designed to cause permanent damage. They are explicitly designed under the intention of being a way to disperse a crowd without long term harm. There hasn’t been much research on long term health impacts, but it’s not a tool to maim people. https://phr.org/our-work/resources/health-impacts-of-crowd-c...

160 dB way over hearing safe. Most rifle rounds are in >140 dB territory, and that is quite sufficient to give you permanent hearing damage.

That's peak power at 1 meter for a large LRAD, not what someone 75 or 100 meters away experiences.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#319

Post by energy123 »

avaika wrote: post #125
neilv wrote: post #16

I wonder how the engineers and scientists who contributed to that less-lethal weapon feel about it.

This has to be about people who pushes the button. Not about the people who invents the technology. Otherwise you might want to stop all the kitchen knifes production, cause people occasionally use those to kill each other.

If you're an engineer or a scientist, you really should have a more developed understanding of causality than just "proximate cause is the only cause" mindset that we all learn before we reach 5 years old.

Re: Military grade sonic weapon is used against protesters in Serbia

#320

Post by energy123 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #60
hettygreen wrote: post #8

Is there any counter measure for this? Hardcore hearing protection? Noise cancelling headphones? Handheld sound insulation "shield"?

Use some thick metal plate as a shield and let it reflect the sound back towards the source, most likely. Or something foamy, like mattresses or the like, to just attenuate it. But I don't think any of that would protect you if you're facing 160 dB (though it would indeed be useful if you're farther from the source); the appropriate tactic then is indeed to disperse uniformly over a larger area and make it infeasible…

> useful if you're farther from the source

Inverse square law, so yeah.

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