April first is a good day to remember that fear and fiction travel on the same frequencies as facts. Electronic warfare attracts tall tales because the technology hides in antenna farms, black boxes, and classified budgets. Add a dash of cinematic language and social media amplification and you get everything from ‘mind control rays’ to portable EMP pistols. My objective here is practical: separate the urban legends from the technical realities so hobbyists and operators can recognize what is plausible, what is real but limited, and what is pure fiction.

Start with a classic case study: the “Russian woodpecker.” From 1976 to 1989 shortwave listeners around the world heard a rhythmic tapping that spawned conspiracy theories about mind control and weather modification. The signal was noisy and scary, but it was not mystical. It came from a very large over-the-horizon early warning radar system known as Duga. Duga was an HF, high-power, frequency-hopping radar with enormous antennas and transmit power that interfered with civilian bands; it explains the phenomenon without invoking exotic biology.

That example shows how high power plus unusual emissions produce folklore. It also points to a key practical point: generating effects at distance requires energy, antenna aperture, or both. If someone tells you they have a pocket-sized device that fries electronics through walls or beams voices into heads across a plaza, ask for numbers: frequency, peak power, antenna gain, and link budget. The real systems that do unusual things are big, or they work within narrow and well understood constraints. For an example in the counter-electronics space, CHAMP demonstrated that an air-launched high-power microwave payload can disable electronics on multiple targets in a test — but it rides on a full-size cruise missile. That is a far cry from the portable, handheld EMP weapons that circulate in memes.

Next, the microwave auditory effect. This is one case where a scientific effect exists at the root of a myth. Allan Frey and subsequent researchers documented that properly pulsed radiofrequency energy can induce perceptions of sound inside the head. The mechanism most investigators accept is thermoelastic expansion: brief, tiny heating pulses generate pressure waves the inner ear can perceive. That does not equate to effortless mind control. Laboratory demonstrations show clicks, buzzing, and in some historical work the ability to create intelligible syllables under constrained, high-peak conditions. Translating that to covert, long-range, conversational-level speech with low risk of collateral injury faces significant physical hurdles. In other words the Frey effect is real; operational “voice-to-skull” as portrayed in fiction remains unproven and highly constrained.

There are legitimate directed-energy programs that look and feel like fiction to the lay audience. The Active Denial System is a millimeter-wave area-denial technology that produces an intolerable heating sensation on exposed skin. It has been demonstrated and documented by the U.S. military and contractors, but it is engineered for short range and constrained use. Similarly, high-power microwave counter-electronics systems are transitioning from demonstrations to limited fielding for things like drone defeat or temporary disabling of selected electronics. Those systems are not magic; they are designed with engineering trade-offs around range, collateral effects, platform size, and power. If you hear claims that a pain ray or EMP weapon will be handed out like a flashlight to local militias, treat that claim skeptically and look for vendor specs and official trials rather than breathless press releases.

A politically charged example that lives at the intersection of myth and plausible physics is the set of incidents often called Havana syndrome. Independent panels and the National Academies have said that pulsed radiofrequency energy is a plausible mechanism to explain some core characteristics reported by affected personnel, while other government reviews later found no attributable foreign attack in many cases. The episode illustrates how technical plausibility does not equal operational attribution. It also underlines the need for careful forensic data and repeatable measurements before jumping to dramatic conclusions. If someone uses Havana syndrome as a short-hand to claim widespread, surreptitious use of new energy weapons, ask how that conclusion accounts for the messy, partly contradictory results of formal studies.

How do these myths spread and why do they stick? A few tactical observations:

  • Sensory salience. Auditory or vestibular sensations are personal, immediate, and alarming. People seek explanations and conspiracy fills the vacuum where rigorous analysis is absent. The Frey effect seeded a lifetime of rumor because the sensation is real and the underlying physics is nonintuitive.

  • Scale confusion. People conflate system categories. A powerful, fixed over-the-horizon radar becomes evidence for “mind control” because listeners cannot see the antenna farm or the huge transmitter. Small, low-cost electronics that jam a Wi-Fi link are not evidence that someone has a portable weapon that fries a data center. Use science questions about power, aperture, and propagation to test claims.

  • Media and marketing. Vendors and content creators sometimes sensationalize capabilities. Official demonstrations and well-documented field tests are the gold standard. Press articles, social posts, and old patents are not the same thing as peer-reviewed demonstration data. Check the provenance.

A short technical reality checklist for readers who want to evaluate claims:

  • Power and peak vs average. Many pulsed effects depend on peak amplitude. A device that quotes average power without peak data is hiding the most relevant number.

  • Antenna gain and beamwidth. Focused energy needs aperture or close distance. A claim of long-range, narrow-beam effects from a centimeter-scale antenna is a red flag.

  • Propagation and materials. Building materials, windows, and foliage attenuate RF in predictable ways. A device that allegedly acts through concrete and multiple rooms needs extraordinary supporting evidence.

  • Safety and regulation. Real DE and HPM systems are constrained by safety concerns and legal regimes. That limits their operational use and explains why truly disruptive devices do not casually appear in the hobbyist market.

Finally, the responsible operational stance. Electronic warfare is not magic; it is engineering and trade-offs. Myth-busting is not meant to be dismissive of real harms. Where people report injury or equipment damage, that deserves rigorous, impartial investigation. For hobbyists and professionals, the sensible path is to demand primary data, measure where possible, and use first principles: energy, aperture, frequency, and propagation.

If you want to celebrate April first with a bit of levity, do it with safe experiments, clear labeling, and a respect for law and health. If you want to debunk a claim, ask for numbers. For EW, numbers beat narrative every time.