Health security

MASS HYSTERIA OR MICROWAVE WEAPONS—WHAT'S BEHIND THE 'SONIC ATTACKS' ON U.S. DIPLOMATS IN CUBA?

The strength of the mass hysteria case lies in its independence from an actual weapon. No such weapon has been detected in Cuba, but anxiety was known to be rife among U.S. embassy staff. “These people are all clustered together in a somewhat anxious environment and that is exactly the situation that precipitates something like this,” Mark Hallett, president of the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology, told the Guardian.

Once a small group complains of symptoms and strange noises, other people may begin to experience the same thing, a characteristic of mass hysteria. Counseling on a potential “sonic threat,” says Bartholomew, may have caused more U.S. diplomats to become anxious and fall ill.

Individuals can develop shared functional disorders for many reasons, Stone explains. In the Cuban situation, these may appear because of fears of injury from a nonexistent sonic attack, because of the high-pressure situation, or because of some as-yet-unknown physical trigger.