I, unlike most Indonesian, only heard about the ‘voodoo by the phone thing’ yesterday. I then look for some articles about it on the net.

(Yes, I am aware that ’santet’ is not the same thing as ‘voodoo’, but for this purpose, it’ll do.)

For those of you who haven’t heard, you can find article about it here, here, and here. (all indonesian)

Now, those three sites have turned the rumour down pretty nicely. So I’m not going to talk about it. What I’m about to discuss is ‘in what circumstances will your cellphone kill you?’

One part of the rumour states :

"menurut seorang profesor dari WHO itu memang bukan ilmu hitam, tapi sang penelepon mengirim sinar infra merah yang berlebihan ke nomor yang dituju, sehingga memang bisa mengakibatkan sang penerima tewas."

Which roughly translated as:

"According to a ‘Professor’ from ‘WHO’, it isn’t black magic. Instead, the caller sends excessive infrared light to the recepient number, which can make the receiver drop dead unexpectedly in very ugly, brutish way."

Yes, I made that last part up.

Anyway, some things are wrong in the above statement. Firstly, cellphone doesn’t send any infrared light in voice communication, it uses microwave. It does send infrared in data transfer, but even that won’t hurt you. Secondly, do you actually think a ‘Who’ ‘Preuffeseerur’ would be that kind and give away such stupid statement that may cause panic among humankind?

But wait, microwave can kill human, you said. True, but to actually kill human on the spot, how much power do microwaves take? This page at dansdata shows what microwave’s affects to us (find the word ‘microwave’ on the page).

Now, he mentions microwave oven, not microwave used for communication. A microwave oven easily consume hundreds of watts, while a cellphone have to get away with a couple of watts, tops.

So unless you’re using a diesel generator to power up your extremely-modded-phone that can actually receive power from a diesel generator, You can’t kill anyone. If you actually are using one, I’m betting you’ll be dead first.

It’s digital age, but still, the most efficient way of killing someone using cellphone is by throwing it at them with all your might, or using it as blunt melee weapon.