Miles Houser

Jennifer Hudson

Most people believe that biological warfare began sometime during World War I, but this is not the case. In fact, some time around 400 B.C., the Ancient Roman Empire began to use biological warfare. They utilized the simple idea of chucking dead animal carcasses into their enemy's water supply to contaminate it. This not only decreased their enemy's numbers, but lowered their morale as well. As time went on, the Romans obtained a new weapon, the catapult. At first, they would hurtle large stones and hard objects at their enemy's walls. Soon they returned to their idea of biological warfare and began adding dead soldiers, livestock, and manure to their arsenal. This way they infected their enemies with numerous diseases and viruses. Through the next few civilizations very few, if any, new innovations of this tactic were created.

The Middle Ages was a time of upheaval. The Golden Horde of Mongolia was the raging, blood thirsty superpower of the time. Under the leadership of Ghangis Khan, the Mongol Horde whirled across Europe, and into Russia, which they later conquered. However, unlike their predecessors, the Mongols did not use dysentery, Salmonella, E-coli, etc... They used something much more deadly and contagious. They launched corpses infected with the bubonic plague. Many historians actually even believe that this was a significant mechanism for transmission of the plague that killed over 25 million people in Medieval Europe. Over the next few centuries, not one country or civilization came close to the massive slaughter the Tartars accomplished.

In the history of humanity there have been countless acts of genocide. Whether justification involves skin color, race, religion, gender, or just paranoia; there have been groups of people that have been senselessly massacred. Biological weaponry just happened to be the most cost effective and reliable method. In 1754, France and England went to war in North America. The Native American population fought on both sides during this war. The British suspected the Indians of secretly working for the French and giving them sensitive British information. As an "act of goodwill", the British sent the Indians a shipment of blankets for the approaching winter. Unknown to the Indians was that these blankets had been used in a British hospital for smallpox victims. A surge of smallpox infected thousands of Native Americans, killing off a large percentage of their population. Obviously there is a myriad of historical acts of biological warfare that have not been listed above.

In 1918, biological warfare reared its ugly head yet again. It was the theory of the times that technology and science were the way to winning wars, and they were the most cost-effective as well. Japan was the pioneer on the biological front, and even created a special military unit (Unit 731) dedicated to only the research of biological weapons. As time progressed Japan expanded its territory, and took over Manchuria. After the takeover of Manchuria, Unit 731 moved in. Apparently this was because it was a secure location and had an endless supply of human test subjects. In 1941 they began crop dusting China with the bubonic plague. During World War II, they also used American POWs as test subjects. Sometime during 1942, the U.S. Government seized all information the Japanese had learned from these tests. With this information the U.S. began its own biological warfare program.

At the same time in the world, Great Britain, as well, was working on the development of biological weapons. However their program predominately specialized in Bacillus anthracis spores. They released the virus with a conventional bomb on Gruinard Island, off the coast of Scotland. The British government had believed that they were far enough off the coast that it would not permanently contaminate. They were wrong. They tried to decontaminate the island by setting all the brush and topsoil on fire to burn the organism up. This effort failed since they did not expect that anthrax spores could bury into the ground and remain viable for later infections.

The U.S. furiously worked on its biological weapons program throughout the Cold War. It made several attempts to secretly infect U.S. citizens with a group of several different agents in a span of twenty years. But the programs were shut down in 1969. In today's government and military branches there are research efforts to examine a myriad of new strains, not for offensive purposes, but to find ways to deal with them.

Chemical weapons and their discovery was a major turning point in war and battle strategies. In Germany in 1915, chlorine gas was used for the first time. This marvelous creation was invented by Professor Fritz Haber, who was known as the father of chemical warfare. Many people believe that the beginning of chemical warfare was "At 5 PM on 22 April 1915....." But it actually began the year prior to that. In 1914 the French military began using shells filled with ethyl bromoacetate. During the beginning of chemical warfare, many compounds were tested to see their toxic capabilities. Of the 21 listed compounds tested chlorine, phosgene, diphosgene, chloropicrin, hydrogen cyanide, cyanogen chloride, and mustard were used in mass quantities. During World War 1, countries were producing chemical weapons in the tons. Over 189,195 tons were produced. And along with this arsenal, new ways of delivering these agents came about. During the war, 1,296,853 people were killed by 125,000 tons of chemical weapons.

A variation of chemical weaponry, was discovered by Dr. Gerhard Schrader in 1936. He discovered nerve gases. He first created ethyl dimethylphosphoramidocyanidate,GA; or Tabun. He also created acyl acidssulfonyl fluorides, fluoroethanol deriviatives,fluoroacetic acid derivatives, and dimethylphosporamidofluoridic acids. Nerve gases were created because they were easily spread, and were very persistent in the environment. They can be absorbed through consumption, inhalation, or through skin contact. Several new compounds have been created such as Soman and VX.

Biological and chemical warfare has been an important part of battle plans and strategies for centuries. They have been used to win wars, solve conflicts, and ease people's fears, as well as create new ones. Human nature and the human condition continually allow groups to justify the use of these terrible weapons. No doubt, the future will offer many more challenges in this arena of warfare.

CHOKING AGENTS