Aizol Times –
Aizawl, Sept 4: Consider this. You get a call on your mobile phone. Then you are dead. If rumors flying around are to be believed, this mobile virus works this way: A person gets a call from any of the numbers 98854137, 9316048121, 9876266211 and 9888308001 and as soon as he or she picks up the phone, the person is dead. Rumors further claim that Aaj Tak News have reported that 26 people have died from the ‘ring of death’.
The rumors, which had caused panic and confusion in Pakistan and South Asia had also caused the same panic in Kuwait and the Gulf and has now reached Aizawl. While few people actually believe the stories about the ring of death, the rumors have spread far and wide with many sending the stories to their friends and family via text messages. One vernacular newspaper here had gone as far as to warn its readers not to pick up calls from the said numbers.
The theories on how this cell-phone virus manages to kill its victim is that an extremely high-pitched screech is heard which causes blood vessels in the brain to explode. This explanation has rightly been pooh-poohed, since a mobile phone speaker cannot produce such high-frequency sounds. A supposed warning sign is that the killer number appears in red on the screen.
An internet posting of this hoax has clearly put off the possibility of a high-pitched frequency causing the lives of mobile phone users. A senior hearing aid specialist stated that “If one is exposed to 120 decibels of sound – akin to the pounding of a jackhammer – for a period of five hours, then one is prone to heavy loss in hearing high frequencies. Normal conversation is of only 35 decibels, and if one does hear a loud sound from a mobile phone, the normal reaction is to throw the phone away from the ear reflexively.”
Rumours about this ‘killer virus’ began in Pakistan, where they reached such a fever pitch that some mosques in Karachi announced that people were being killed by this virus and the faithful should be aware of the wrath of God. Mobile operators had to release a joint statement rubbishing such hearsay.
The rumors then spread to neighbouring India and Afghanistan, even as far as Bangladesh, causing panic and confusion. But from what the media all across ‘the rumor-hit’ world had learned, this rumor is as much to be believed as the tale of Mauruangi, one of our favorite folktales in which Mauruangi’s mother turned into a big fish.
Also cover here earlier: “Mobile phone number hlauhawm”
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