Does The Brown Sound Really Exist? Involuntary evacuation in the news

A fair amount has been written about the brown sound. Notably, one of the funniest South Park episodes, "Worldwide Recorder Concert," tells the story of Cartman learning how to make the sound and then unleashing it on his enemies (and others, including Kenny G [pictured above] and Yoko Ono) at a concert. You may have heard of the “brown noise” or “brown sound” – it is a very low-frequency sound (usually identified as a sound under 15 hz) that is said to cause those who hear it to suddenly lose control of their bowels.

You can see a clip from the South Park show here.

Jonathan Sterne writes in "The Brown Sound" that the sound is "an oscillation of sound that causes the bowels to loosen. The brown noise is believed to be ninety-two cents below the lowest octave of E flat.” “The brown noise was discovered by the French, and tested as a weapon during WWII. It is a 12-14hz sound wave that, when played loud enough, relaxes your sphincter, causing loss of bowel control.”

"On the lower end of our hearing, we almost never perceive a 20hz sound. Even before the vibration slows to 20 cycles a second (roughly an E-flat), we begin to feel the sound as vibration rather than just hearing it. Once the rate of vibration drops below 20hz, we can't hear it as sound at all; we only feel it as vibration. So when Cartman proudly announces that the brown noise is 92 cents below the lowest octave of E flat, he is saying that the brown noise is not a noise at all. It is subsonic vibration. In the second definition, the brown noise is somewhat lower, in the 12-14hz range, which would place the note somewhere between a G and an A, were an elephant or some other animal with better low-end perception than a human to inquire about the pitch. "

Military history is filled with stories of people attempting to create (and most importantly, deploy) the brown sound and other infrasonic weapons. The most common story says the Nazis experimented with pretty much every kind of imaginable weapon, and a brown noise generator was among a class of “sonic” weapons they devised. The plan was to use it in surprise attacks on both military and civilian targets. "On the battlefield, you could momentarily overtake your opponent – and since the brown noise is very low-frequency vibration, it could hypothetically travel through tanks and other hard-to-reach places, thereby temporarily disabling the enemy. It could also be useful for civilian attacks to weaken enemy morale – as a form of what the Nazis called “worldview warfare” and what Americans now call psychological warfare."

The Fortean Times quotes acoustician Jurgen Altman, who argued in a 1999 paper that acoustic weapons were basically impossible to construct: “I have found no hard evidence for vomiting or uncontrolled defecation, even at levels of 170 dB or more.” It takes so much power to generate a low, low sound that it is virtually impossible. . .and then no one is really sure earplugs would actually help...it's your bowels themselves that would be affected, and there really are no earplugs for your bowels. . . at least yet.
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