
Sonic Weapons: How “sound cannons” are used for control
Twenty Thousand Hertz
The L-Rad Is a New Way to Communicate at a Distance
The Long Range Acoustic Device, or L-Rad, was developed for the US military after an attack on the USS Cole in 2000. It can transmit sound over two miles across the water so ships could hear it even without a working communication system. The largest L-Rad can be as loud as 160 decibels - that's about 1024 times as loud as a normal conversation. When law enforcement uses the L-Rad's deterrent tone for crowd control, many of the people who get hit are just a few feet away. Any sound over 120 decibels can cause pain and hearing loss.
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