Blacklist, Se 7, ep 13 has a serial killer who kills people by forcing them to sit in a tub with weird fluid and then pumps in sound with powerful low frequency speakers and kills them.
COULD that be done?
Don’t see why not. They break up kidney stones with sound. And apparently that medical use has the potential to fuck you up. You could pulp anything inside you wanted to, with the right hardware.
Would it be this, turned up to 11?: Brown note - Wikipedia
There’s some information here.
Most of the weapons described here are non-lethal alternatives, although destroying the eardrums doesn’t seem like a fun idea*. There’s no mention of the specifics of any intentionally lethal sonic weapon actually in use, but -
*It hertz.
I remember an article about suicide bombers in Israel (written in the months prior to 9/11) that stuck with me that described bombing victims who look perfectly intact on the outside, but on autopsy it is revealed that their internal organs have been destroyed by the shockwave, which is essentially a really loud sound. (The “being a sound” part is from me, not the article.)
I belive that a shock wave and a blast wave travel supersonically, so they are not technically acoustic waves.
Dolphins can stun or even kill fish with sound, don’t see why sonic weapons aren’t possible.
Hypothermia? How do sound waves lower body temperature?
Sure. In fact plain old water would be perfectly workable rather than any “weird fluid”; water is much better at conducting sound than air.
Sonar injures and possibly kills wildlife, and that’s by accident and at long range. Point blank and with the intent to cause harm would pretty much have to be worse.
Like this:
Seriously—thermoacoustic refrigerators are a thing, and their Carnot efficiency isn’t terrible.
I’ve read similar reports of some Londoners in bomb shelters during the Blitz, and of soldiers near large explosions in relatively confined places in wars since.
Ahhh, they’re 1920’s-style “deaf rays”.