Have you ever found yourself in a particular
situation and suddenly you felt a rush of adrenaline? Of course you have, and this reaction in your
body is sometimes called the fight or flight response, or in more scientific terms, an
acute stress response. Your body releases a flood of hormones and
you prepare for danger, and this has been going on since men walked around with spears
on the lookout ferocious saber-tooth cats. It’s quite a thing to happen to you and
when it does your heart rate will increase, as will your blood pressure and breathing
rate. It might even be an hour before you settle
down again. But did you know a mere noise can set the
response off? Let’s now have a look at what sounds cause
this. Just so you know, according to Harvard Health
the acute stress response can happen when information is sent to the brain from the
eyes but also the ears. The information is sent to a part of the brain
called the amygdala and it is interpreted; after which it sends a distress signal to
another part of the brain called the hypothalamus. As many of you know, sometimes we over-react,
but hey, we need this survival mechanism. 7. Ghosts and Ghouls
During the Vietnam War, the American military quite literally wanted to freak Vietnamese
soldiers out. They planned a PSYOPS operation called “Operation
Wandering Soul” and part of this was to use noises to scare the soldiers. They pretty much made a mix-tape that they
knew would put those soldiers on edge. The American psychologists were well aware
that ghosts in this part of the world are taken seriously, and so they got to work. They made something called “Ghost Tape Number
10”, which is a kind of mash-up of Buddhist funeral music with just a lot of horrible
sounds. It was certainly not something the Vietnamese
soldiers wanted to hear at night as they hid in the jungle. The Americans would usually attach great big
speakers to boats and helicopters and then press play. Have a listen to this tape now: One commander said this about the noise they
created, “The tape was so effective that we were instructed not to play it within earshot
of the South Vietnamese forces, because they were as susceptible as the Viet Cong or North
Vietnamese Army.” He said it totally freaked those guys out
and made them think about their wandering dead compatriots and the fact they could be
next. That was the war of course, but there’s
a reason we have something called scary music. It’s used in horror movies for the express
purpose of getting under your skin and kicking off that fight or flight response. That tape worked on the Vietnamese soldiers,
but different kinds of music or sounds that remind you of death or dying or ghosts or
ghouls will similarly trigger a response in you. 6. Radio Gaga
Now and again people report hearing plain freaky things coming out of the radio. These transmissions lead to those stress hormones
filling the brain and in this case it’s not so much that it reminds people of something,
like those Vietnamese soldiers thinking of death, it's just the fact that the unknown
puts us on edge. You might have all said at one time in your
life, “What the hell was that?” “Did you hear that?” The unusual freaks us out because it could
spell danger. It’s the same with images. If you suddenly see something you’ve never
seen before hobbling down the street at night coming towards you, you will likely feel a
rush of blood to the head. It might get closer and you just realize it’s
some dude dressed up, but for the ensuing minutes you’ll still be in fight or flight
mode. Sounds cause the same reaction. If one day you’re listening to songs on
the radio and then you hear something weird spill out you’ll be rocketed into fight
or flight mode. Here is an example of what people have heard
through their radios: And listen to this one which New Yorkers might
have heard on WKCR radio in 1995. It freaked a lot of people out for good reason,
and they were all in fight or flight mode. We should say there are no news reports of
this that we can find, just people talking about it. No one knows where this came from. Some people think it was something to do with
the paranormal, but more down to Earth thinkers feel it was likely just someone experimenting. The radio station is owned by a university,
so it might have been a student just messing around. 5. Louds Bangs
We might be stating the obvious here, but loud bangs come in many shapes and sizes and
you might not know that they are continually stressing you out. That’s one reason, besides protecting your
hearing, that you might want to wear ear protection. Gunshots of course stimulate your brain in
this way, but even the distant sound of a car crash, or a crate falling, or if you’re
unlucky enough, an earthquake wrecking a building, will trigger a lot of adrenaline. Even if you live in a really noisy city or
a noisy factory, you could be continually putting yourself under tremendous stress. Then there are explosions, and trust us, if
you hear one of these as you’re sitting in the park pondering the meaning of life,
your brain will be totally flooded and you’ll be sent right into flight or flight mode. For good reason loud bangs quickly make us
think about survival. Listen to this and we’ll get you there now: Or listen to this, the sound of an Earthquake
that was captured in Iran. Hear this and you will soon consider the option
of flight. 4. Rising Tones/screams
We associate a rising tone with something bad because it makes us think something is
going to go off. It’s kind of like listening to a panic attack. “Oh God, what is that sound, what is going
to happen.” This makes you think you are in danger. Listen to this: We might also consider the rising sound of
a voice. When someone squares up to you, you might
not immediately consider them a threat. Sometimes people will use their voice to frighten
you, so they get louder and louder. This is supposed to put you in either fight
or flight mode. Usually they might just want you to get away,
to run away. But now your stress hormones are well and
truly flooding into your brain. You are looking at that person and you decide,
nah, I choose fight. It’s the same when we hear a scream. We know that sound means something terrible
has happened, and if you are walking down the street and you hear this around the corner,
well, you will definitely feel the immediate onset of stress: That’s now stressed us out as we compile
this list, but the scream is there for a good reason. It’s prepares us and so it’s good for
us in many cases. Hail the scream. 3. Good Alert systems
These are there for good reason too and that’s to warn you something very bad is coming your
way. Imagine the USA was under threat of nuclear
attack or had just been attacked. You would hear an alert and it’s supposed
to put you in fight or flight mode. The U.S. has something called the Emergency
Alert System or EAS and it might be sounded to warn you about an attack but also if some
very bad weather is coming your way. Have a listen
to one example: That might not sound too bad, but trust us,
if you heard it being played really loud in the streets you’d get stressed by it. During the war when the UK was being bombed
from above, citizens would hear the air raid alarm, and this would put folks into fight
or flight mode. Here’s what this sounded like to those scared
Brits: But it’s the Japanese early warning sounds
for earthquakes and tsunamis that sounds really awful, and the Japanese are well aware that
if they hear this destruction could be not far away. When people heard it after the not too recent
Japanese tsunami they would quickly follow the subsequent order to get to higher ground. In this case no one obviously chose “fight”
as a response since torrents of water filled with tons of dangerous debris is not something
someone can fight. Flight is the only option. Here’s how that sounds: 2. Bad Alert Systems
The last alert you need to hear is one that is broken, but according to some sources,
in Chicago they had an alert that was messed up. We looked into this, and it seems it wasn’t
broken, it was just there to get them moving. It’s a really horrible sound no doubt, leading
some people to call it “the ice cream truck from hell” and “the most evil thing in
the world.” Imagine you heard this in a neighborhood near
you: That’s just creepy and you’d think the
local government was purposefully trying to drive people mad. If you heard that you might not hide from
a tornado but start loading your gun. In this case we think Chicago might have got
it wrong, because while alerts are supposed to get you prepared for something dangerous,
they are not there to make you freeze and possibly urinate on the spot. This is the reason when bad weather is on
its way you don’t hear sounds like the screams we played earlier. As one person wrote in a comment under a video
of this alert, “Man, Chicago you know how to scare away the tornado and all of the city.” 1. Angry animals
Last but not least, animal sounds might induce fight or flight mode and we are not talking
about birds chirping or puppies barking. Let’s try and set the scene. Close your eyes and for a moment pretend you
are not watching YouTube and instead are camping out in the woods and are all snug in your
tent. You are awake but on your way to sleeping,
and then you hear any one of these sounds right at the side of the tent. With such sounds you might consider either
fight or flight, but we are guessing if you are not armed staying put might be the best
option. That said, when you see the tent get shredded
fight might be your only option. Here are the sounds: Can you guess what animals they were? In order they were lion, alligator, tiger,
elephant and gorilla. For your own safety you better hope it was
the gorilla outside your tent. We could have mentioned a bunch of other sounds
that might start a person’s heart beating fast. We are sure some of you might say the scariest
thing you’ve ever heard is the sound of your mother when she is enraged. We went to forums where people discussed what
were the scariest things they had ever heard, and it seems thunder freaks a lot of people
out. Others get scared by hurricane winds or pretty
much any animal that howls. Cats making out also gets a lot of people
scared. A former soldier wrote that the sound of a
weapon being locked and loaded would get his heart beating fast, but of course that was
a situation in which the sound was a threat. A guy from Chile said the sound of the big
earthquake there in 2011 and what happened after really freaked him out and he’ll never
forget what he heard that day. This is how he described it:
“It was my first big earth tremor, and it lasted some minutes. You could hear glass breaking, things falling
from the kitchen counters, porcelain figures clinking and exploding against the ground…lamps
swinging side to side, car alarms ringing, trees creaking and their leaves swishing,
dogs barking, people screaming and crying, and dominating all the sounds, the rumbling
of the earth.” We think he’s got a point, that would frighten
anyone. So then, which of these sounds freaked you
out the most. Do you feel in fight or flight mode now after
watching this? What’s the scariest thing you’ve ever
heard? Tell us in the comments. Also, be sure to check out our other episode
Scary Internet Websites You Should Never Visit. Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like share and subscribe. See you next time.
