Trump, Venezuela, and the PPF4
- Rich Washburn
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
There’s a weird, wild piece of tech chatter blowing up everywhere right now — social feeds, comment threads, memes — all about what some people are calling a sonic weapon used by U.S. forces during the recent raid to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. One widely circulated eyewitness account describes defenders suddenly overwhelmed by something that felt like “very intense sound waves” — causing nosebleeds, vomiting blood, and collapse before the main assault even hit.
I gotta tell you: the symptoms people are describing? I’ve heard that before. Because — believe it or not — I built something similar when I was a kid.
PPF4: Ultrasonic Phaser Pain Field Generator — a real thing (well, hobby version)
Back in the day — long before smartphones or viral news cycles — hobby electronics catalogs and magazines used to advertise all sorts of “cool projects.” One of the standout weird ones was a device called the PPF4 –
Ultrasonic Phaser Pain Field Generator.
Here’s what made it notable:
It’s a variable ultrasonic sound generator that sweeps through a range of frequencies (roughly 5 kHz to 25 kHz).
By pushing piezo transducers at high pressure, it creates very intense acoustic energy — directional and loud — meant to annoy or disperse.
People subjected to it at close range can experience headaches, nausea, disorientation, pain, and in extreme descriptions even vomiting — depending on frequency and exposure.
Yep — exactly the kind of effects that some eyewitness reports from that Venezuela raid are talking about.
When I was a teenager, I didn’t solder that thing together for deep philosophical reasons. I just thought it was a kick-ass project — a gadget that sounded terrifyingly futuristic and actually made people uncomfortable if you pointed it at them. I even built a pocket version and, uh… tested it experimentally on people close by. (Don’t tell my parents. They already knew.) 😅
Is this what they used in Venezuela? (Probably not — but damn it’s fun to think about)
Here’s the thing: there’s no confirmed official statement from U.S. military or government sources saying they used any kind of “sonic weapon” during the raid. What’s circulating right now is eyewitness accounts and speculation, widely shared online and blowing up in comment threads.
But the descriptions — intense waves, head pain, physical incapacitation — are eerily similar to what hobbyist tech like the PPF4 phonon generator was advertised to do. That’s not saying modern military tech is the same thing, just that the vibes are weirdly alike.
If you look at actual documented ultrasonic tech and acoustic weapons (e.g., directional sound, long-range acoustic devices), intense sound waves can cause discomfort and disorientation — that’s a known physics fact.
What the hell was the PPF4, really?
To be clear: the PPF4 wasn’t some secret military gadget. It was:
A hobbyist ultrasonic project with a pretty straightforward circuit.
Built around piezo transducers and sweep-frequency generation — the same basic acoustics people teased apart decades ago.
Marketed as a deterrent — animal control, pest discouragement, or “personal protection” — long before “sonic weapons” were a headline headline.
Capable of making humans uncomfortable if shoved into the right frequency range.
In other words: if something like this were scaled up, tuned right, and deployed in a very controlled way, it could cause effects that look superficially similar to what people claim they saw in Venezuela. But — and this is an honest but — there’s zero reliable confirmation that anything like this was actually used, just a bunch of narrative hype circulating online.
So why is everyone talking about it?
Because the idea of a “sonic weapon” is just awesome tech porn — it sounds futuristic, spooky, slightly terrifying, and totally sci-fi. Then you mix in headlines about soldiers dropping like flies, and you’ve got the perfect social media cocktail. Meanwhile, there I am, remembering the horrified look on my brother’s face the first time I hit the trigger on my project. God, that was fun. 😂
The real take
Is there a real sonic weapon deployed in Venezuela?No confirmed evidence yet — it’s still speculation and eyewitness claims.
Is acoustic energy tech a real thing?Yep — physics says sound and frequency manipulation can definitely affect people and environments.
Is it insanely cool that I literally built something like this in my teens and now everyone’s losing their minds about it online? Absolutely. That’s just fucking cool.