As Loud As It Gets

In early November a cruise ship, Seaborn Spirit, was attacked by machine gun armed pirates in motor boats off the coast of Somalia. Early reports ascribed the escape of Seaborn Spirit to its ability to outspeed the pirates. However, an article in the German magazine Spiegel of November 15th reveals that the pirates were disabled by a newly developed sonic weapon that emits earsplitting noise.
"Until now, it wasn't widely known that the US Defense Department was sharing the so-called Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD) with commercial cruise ships. The weapon is essentially a small dish that beams hellishly loud noise that is deafening but not lethal. Weighing 20 kilograms and as big as a TV satellite dish, the device looks deceptively harmless. But once trained on its target, it blasts a tight beam of painful siren-like sound.It's not known how the grinning pirates 160 kilometers off the coast of the Horn of Africa reacted as they suddenly were hit by the LRAD. But they were close, and the closer one is to the sonic cannon, the worse the effect is. It's possible they received permanent hearing damage, but at the very least they experienced an excruciating headache and ear pain to the point that they could no longer see or hear. They also quickly lost the desire to board the ship."

The weapon, it appears, can deliver 150 decibels of pure noise.