While operating a cloudbuster in Arizona during the expedition of Reich and his crew in 1955, Robert McCullough, at the age of 28, suffered a stroke and was left with a permanent hemiplegia, a paralysis of one side of his body. A number of similiar incidents since then have contributed to the strong impression among almost all persons familar with the field, that being in too close contact with an operating cloudbuster for more than a very short time can be hazardous to one´'s health.
That includes mental health. There have been several incidents of persons getting over-charged and suffering a temporary episode of psychosis. This should not be regarded as a psychosis caused by the equipment, but rather as a forcing into the open of long-suppressed latent psychotic tendencies that might otherwise never have surfaced in the individual's lifetime.
Less dramatic mental manifestations have also been recorded. Anxiety, depression, and well-rationalized and highly-structured paranoid delusional systems of thinking are among the most frequently encountered. Suicidal thoughts are not unknown, though no actual suicides are known to have happened yet. Outbursts of temper have occured, and one woman with several small children reported that every time her husband's cloudbuster was operating, the children became irritable and got into fights. In general, repressed, latent, and unconscious tendencies are forced up to the surface by the internal pressure of a higher orgonotic charge. Each individual will react according to his own underlying structure and predispositions.
In the eary 1970s, Dr. Richard Blasband, then director of the research program of the American College of Orgonomy, and who had once himself suffered a few hours of schitzophrenia from an overcharge aquired by holding onto an operating medical DOR-buster ( which is a miniaturized version of the cloudbuster ) attempted to solve the problem by use of a mechanized cloudbuster that could be turned and elevated by remote control, using small elecrical servo-motors powered by 12 volt D.C. batteries. This allowed the operator to stand at a distance of up to 100 meters, presumeably outside the field of the cloudbuster, and operate it without having to come close enough to be harmed.
But there was a serious drawback to this inovation. Physical contact, or at least close proximity to the cloudbuster is an important part of the operation. It is by feeling and learning how to interpet his own bodily sensations that the operator learns how to detect what the atmosphere is "feeling" and how it is being affected by the stimulus applied by the cloudbuster.
Without this bioenergetic contact between the equipment and the operator, one is working in the dark, unable to know how the atmosphere is responding to the imputs being applied until actual visible changes in the weather are already happening, when it is often too late to halt an operation in time to avoid a catastrophic flood or other unwanted outcome.
In an attempt to overcome this handicap, a variety of instruments were developed to try to detect and measure the changes in atmospheric orgone charge. These efforts were not very successfull. Orgone energy is not easily measured by the usual electromagnetic instruments and so far, none of these devices has proven usefull enough to be universally adopted.
The operators who obtain the best results, most consistantly, are those who retain the original method of close bioenergetic contact, coupled with close attention to their own physical sensations and emotional state. This method requires a considerable amount of "hands-on" personal instruction and a great deal of effort in learning to be able to detect and interpet proprioceptive sensations acurately, and, of course, it comes with a certain factor of risk, but the long-term results are much better than to depend on artificial instruments to know what is going on.