Cecil’s column on the alleged shielding properties of Tin Foil Hats – not yet online as I write this, but when it is, it should be at Tin Foil Hat column – reminded me of a couple of early radio history anecdotes.
In the first case, a radio operator was working alone at an isolated coastal station, when a man broke in, waving a pistol, and demanding that they “stop transmitting thoughts” to him. The operator thought frantically, then responded with feigned sympathy with, “Didn’t you get the inoculation?” Whereupon the operator connected wires to a storage battery, and “inoculated” the intruder with a mild electrical shock, in order to “protect” him from any more problems. The man went away happy.
I also have an article by Pierre H. Boucheron on my website, A War-Time Radio Detective, which includes the case of The Strange Radio Telepathic Signals. This occurred during the Great War, when Boucheron, responding to an urgent telegram, after first being made to wait nearly a hour, found himself trapped for another hour having to listen to a woman explain how she had supposedly been hearing enemy radio transmissions, without even having to use a receiver.
Back in the early 1980’s I lived in Dallas, and I had a friend who was a thoracic specialist. He did pro bono work at a walk-in TB clinic, with a mostly Vietnamese clientele (boat people, remember them?) One day he had an elderly Caucasian gentlemen come in for a chest X-ray. The x-ray was fine but the fellow still looked upset. My doctor friend very kindly inquired, and found that he was worried about the “rays” getting into his head. Nonplussed, all G. could think of was to say, “Put some tinfoil into your hat and that will block the rays.” The man went away happy and G. never heard anything more about it.
What I couldn’t understand was WHY Jill wanted to block input from the telepaths.
As I type this, the guy in the mail-room is humming to himself and beaming Thelonious Monk’s “Crepuscule with Nellie” directly into my brain. Better than a personal radio.
Why? Just wait until you have a new guy in the mail room that’s fond of Burt Bacharach. After a few hours of “Raindrops keep falling on my head” you’ll be begging for a tin foil hat.
Sometimes I think I’m not very self-aware, and then I read about someone like these people. Can they really not tell what loons they sound like?
On a side note, my mother-in-law insists that wrapping floppy disks in foil will protect them from airport scanners. I think she needs help, but was unable to turn up anything concrete, not even in the beloved SD archives. Anyone?
p.s. She’s a naturopath.
Though I have no reason to refute his answer – indeed it is quite comprehensive – I wonder why answer it at all excepting, of course, for its entertainment value to us “normal” folk.
What’s next?
“Dear Cecil,
What’s the best method for committing suicide and how should I go about doing it?”
**
Protect them from what? Assuming you’re talking about the scanners that examine the items on a conveyor belt, they use X-rays; since diskettes are magnetic the scanners wouldn’t have any effect. It’s possible that with all that machinery around a magnetic field could be generated. However, it’s doubtful that it’d be strong enough to damage the information on a diskette, and if it were, using a non-ferrous metal like aluminum to enclose them would have no effect. I’m not even sure it would be of any help if you encased them in steel.
Getting back somewhat to the subject at hand, you have to wonder where these people come from…is it just a case of the “my life sucks, but I refuse to take responsibility for my mistakes, so I’ll blame it on someone else” school of thought that brings us racism? Or do they just really have major psychological problems (read the personal story of Leia Jessira Starfire at http://morethanconquerors.simplenet.com/MCF/starfire.htm, a couple of links away from the directions for the RF shielding hood mentioned by Cecil)?
If you go to the Mind Control Homepage off the page Cecil links to, you can get “victims” stories. I think it’s the first guy who claims the mind control agents have prevented him from getting a job. Uh huh. His story is right above the guy who explains how the CIA death squad de-sexed his dog after stealing it from a Russian dance troop and bombarding it from spyplanes with some kind of death beams. My life doesn’t look so bad…
I read somewhere that philip dick (a famous sf author) first had the idea about tin hats protecting people from mind control. I understand that VALIS is supposed to be a semi-autobiography of aliens trying to take over his mind or something like that.
While foil might block some some electro-magnetic radiation, longer wavelengths, namely radio waves, will pass easily through aluminum foil. (Wrap a battery operated radio in foil and see for yourself.)
Instead, Cec should have suggested that people encase their heads in several feet of concrete. That is what radio telescopes are made of. You, of course, have noted that radio stations go off the car radio when you are under a bridge or a tunnel.
I humbly suggest that all people frightened of alien thought interference immerse their heads in a large tub of concrete. I can personally guarantee that they will never be bothered or have their thoughts read by aliens again.
According to the other non-Cecil font of all knowledge, http://www.snopes.com, Lucille Ball claimed to have picked up secret radio waves via her fillings. It’s not actually thought control waves and doesn’t involve tinfoil but it’s an interesting story:
Now that I’ve actually read the column, I must take issue with something written there. Not with Cecil, but rather with Uncle Al, who was quoted as saying “Dragging a chain won’t do it. You must drive a thick steel spike into the water table and connect to it with a substantial copper or aluminum cable.”
This may be appropriate if you’re concerned with large amounts of DC or low frequency power (e.g. lightning, or grounding your home’s electrical service). It’s clearly overkill for protection from radio waves, and possibly not very effective anyway–depending on the frequency–since you’ve only got a single contact to ground.
A better solution: get steel-soled shoes, and run several wires from the soles up the insides of each leg of your pants, to a wire-lined sweatshirt. Now you are inside a body-shaped Faraday cage, and no one can tell. Slug’s got the right idea with the figure on the left in the illustration (although she doesn’t need the grounding chain).
By the way, grounding yourself doesn’t eliminate the problem, it only shifts the frequencies. An ungrounded adult resonates at about 80 MHz (TV channel 5 in the US). With grounding, the frequency range will roughly be halved to about 40 MHz. If you’re 40 MHz sensitive, rather than 80 MHz sensitive, you may actually make the problem worse.
Two points, here…
First, regarding the wire-mesh sweatsuit, a half-decent ground is not hard to do. Some years back (late 1960’s), I dated a cardiac-unit nurse. On the job, she was required to avoid all jewelry and nylon stockings. Cotton hose only, and everyone had to be grounded. This was done by a thumbtack in the heel of each shoe, connected to a foil strip leading up the side of the shoe to the inside. All this precaution was done to avoid freaking out the cardiac monitoring devices.
I forgot what my other point was, but I’m reminded of the Lite beer commercial where the patient with a steel plate in his head picks up the ball game. Then there’s the joke about Ted Turner and Bill Gates using implanted cellphones on the golf course.
Ungrounded aluminum foil will defeat many radio waves. I know, for I once had the (legitimate) opportunity to experiment with ways to defeat a radio-based theft-detection system in a college library. Among other things, I found that an aluminum briefcase would shield tagged books from the detection system. Even the wisp of aluminum foil coating one side of a gum wrapper would work, if it was held right up against the “target” in the book.
Now, if you’re thinking about using this revealed knowledge to rip off your local library, think again. Radio-based systems like this were always uncommon and now are virtually extinct, perhaps because of this weakness; nearly all libraries now use systems based on a different detection technology.
TRH, were these the foil squares with the spiral loop antennas? If so, they are still in use in some places. I just found one in a pair of pants I bought.
