Scientists and the history of biological weapons: A brief historical overview of the development of biological weapons in the twentieth century

When considering the potential threat of biological weapons in the hands of rogue states or terrorist groups, security experts tend to assume that scientists will always lend a hand to prevent such nefarious use of their research. Yet none of the major biological weapons programmes that were established during the twentieth century—in France, Japan, the UK, the USA and the former Soviet Union—would have been possible without the active leadership and cooperation of biological and medical scientists. Their participation provokes an important question: how do scientists, who are educated to help humanity, justify the use of their privileged knowledge for the explicit goal of killing civilians en masse? And if the human race wants to ban biological weapons, what can we learn from their history to prevent future generations of biologists from engaging in such activities?

The intense secrecy that surrounded offensive biological weapons programmes makes it difficult to gain insight into individual scientists’ motivations. Although we now know a lot about the political and military rationales that spurred the development of these weapons, we know much less about the involvement and recruitment of hundreds and—in the case of large, long-term programmes—even thousands of scientists from universities and medical schools (Guillemin, 2005a). Only occasionally do we find information on why and how individual scientists became engaged in promoting and creating biological weapons, yet it is valid to investigate their motivation. At present, the development and testing of biological weapons is banned by international law and all major state-funded programmes have been terminated; therefore, such activity is associated only with criminals or terrorists. However, it is possible that new or imagined threats to national security could persuade biologists to set aside any moral qualms about secret science in the name of patriotism or for economic security, a career in laboratory science, or some combination of these motives.

One frequent justification for developing strategic biological weapons was the suspicion that an aggressive enemy had already armed itself with similar weapons. Such suspicions were invariably based on poor intelligence and political agendas that, for the most part, claimed unrestricted latitude for military research. After the First World War, France, the UK, the USA and the Soviet Union all suspected that the defeated Germany was secretly developing biological weapons to refine its wartime campaign of infecting pack animals with anthrax and glanders. Germany instead concentrated on conventional rearmament and the expansion of its tank divisions and air force. In addition, as was fully revealed after the Second World War, Adolf Hitler had a distinct aversion to biological weapons and rejected all advice to develop them (Geissler, 1999).

Despite patchy intelligence, France started its own biological weapons programme in the early 1920s. It was headed by Auguste Trillat, an inventive German-educated chemist who envisioned and tested the sustained virulence of airborne pathogens. Trillat fostered close ties with the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where he had been a researcher. Although he published a few scientific articles, his role as director of the French biological weapons programme—which lasted until the German occupation in 1940—essentially removed him, his staff and their work from the open scientific community.

… how do scientists, who are educated to help humanity, justify the use of their privileged knowledge for the explicit goal of killing civilians en masse?

In 1925, the signing of the Geneva Protocol banned the use of both chemical and bacteriological weapons. As a party to the treaty, but with a biological weapons programme already in place, France formally reserved a crucial exception: the right to arm itself for retaliation in kind, that is, to prepare to strike back with germ weapons should it be attacked first. This exception shifted the international norm from a total ban to a “no first use” policy, which later allowed other signatories, notably the UK and the Soviet Union, to justify their offensive programmes in the name of defence.

Although the biological weapons programmes were clearly military in nature, political leaders retained ultimate control over them. In the Soviet Union around 1925, military physician Jacov Fishman became the head of the new Soviet biological weapons programme, which was part of the modernization of the Soviet Army promoted by General Mikhail Tukhachevsky (Stoecker, 1998). However, as Soviet leader Josef Stalin rose to power, he grew suspicious of both military and medical scientists, and the days of this first Soviet biological weapons programme were numbered. During the 1937 purges, when Stalin established his power by eliminating all potential opposition, Tukhachevsky was executed and Fishman was incarcerated along with many other microbiologists in the military and public health sector.

For most of the period between the two world wars, political leaders in the UK and the USA were not interested in biological weapons as either a threat or a military advantage. UK medical experts were more concerned with protecting civilians against German air raids and the privations of war, and with defences against a chemical rather than an imagined biological attack (Balmer, 2001). The USA, meanwhile, pursued its own course. With a Senate aggressively lobbied by the Army Chemical Corps and industry, the country failed to ratify the 1925 Geneva Protocol, thus keeping open its chemical options. At the time, US military experts discounted the practicality of biological weapons, doubting that germs, with their uncertain effects, could compete with conventional explosives—an opinion that persisted years later even when the US biological weapons programme was in full force.

As war with Germany loomed, Canadian Nobel laureate Frederick Banting, the co-discoverer of insulin, grew convinced that those who controlled the German army were ruthless enough to create and use biological weapons and that Britain should ready itself for defence and counter-attacks. Dismissing objections that airborne microbes were too fragile to be infective, Banting imagined all sorts of ways to disseminate germs, from spraying them out of airplanes to dispensing dried pathogens through the mail. In 1939, he argued his case in London, circulating a plan for research, development and use of biological weapons, along with civilian defence measures. In 1940, while under German air attacks, Maurice Hankey, the former UK Cabinet Secretary who had been impressed by Banting’s ideas, persuaded the Minister of Supply to establish a biological weapons programme at Porton Down, adjacent to the existing chemical establishment. The head of the project, microbiologist Paul Fildes, interpreted his mission as fundamentally offensive and led the development and testing of an effective anthrax bomb. Its strategic possibilities caught the attention of Prime Minister Winston Churchill who, with Britain’s survival at stake, sought new weapons to defeat Nazi Germany.

Like many in his time—including Churchill—Banting embraced the rationale for total war that justified attacks on cities and factories as a means of undermining the enemy’s economic structure. He wrote: “In the past, war was confined for the most part to men in uniform, but with increased mechanization of armies and the introduction of air forces, there is an increased dependence on the home country, and eight to ten people working at home are now required to keep one man in the fighting line. This state of affairs alters the complexion of war. It really amounts to one nation fighting another nation. This being so, it is just as effective to kill or disable ten unarmed workers at home as to put a soldier out of action, and if this can be done with less risk, then it would be advantageous to employ any mode of warfare to accomplish this” (Banting, 1939).

… it is possible that new or imagined threats to national security could persuade biologists to set aside any moral qualms about secret science…

Banting’s definition of total war was consonant with Allied aerial bombing of German cities, the development and use of atomic weapons by the USA, and British, American and Canadian covert pursuits of strategic biological warfare capability. In late 1942, the USA, then at war, lent its considerable resources—scientific and technological expertise, laboratories and production facilities, military officers and troops, testing grounds and a refitted munitions factory—to what soon became the largest biological warfare project thus far in history. A far-sighted report by Columbia University scientists Theodor Rosebury and Elvin Kabat in 1942 outlined “candidate” pathogens as well as an organizational structure and civil defence strategies (Rosebury et al, 1947). Ira Baldwin, an expert on fermentation at the University of Wisconsin, oversaw the mass production of anthrax spores to fill bombs. Hundreds of other scientists, civilian and military, became involved in biological warfare research, which was kept as secret as the Manhattan Project. However, the Second World War ended before any biological weapons, including the anthrax bomb, could be achieved at a level competitive with nuclear arms.

While the UK and the USA were actively pursuing biological weapons, the Japanese military were the first to use them. In 1934, military physician General Ishii Shiro created Japan’s secret biological warfare programme, which lasted until 1945. Its main base was in Japanese-occupied Manchuria, near the city of Harbin. Over the years, through his contacts with medical schools, Ishii was able to attract hundreds of researchers, promising them the unique opportunity to perform experiments with infectious disease on live humans, most of them Han Chinese.

Although Ishii and his researchers made history by being the first to use germ weapons, they were unable to achieve the technical sophistication of the wartime British and American programmes. Ishii’s first major anti-civilian campaign, from 1940 to 1942, took place in northern China, where plague-infected fleas were spread throughout port cities and towns. Ishii’s second major campaign in 1943 used anthrax and glanders to attack villages southwest of Shanghai, in retribution for their assistance to US pilots in the Doolittle raid on Tokyo in 1942, and as part of the Japanese “scorched earth” policy to prevent Allied use of airfields in that area (Li, 2005).

As early as 1944, US army intelligence had the mistaken impression that the Imperial Japanese Army had developed a superior biological warfare programme and that information about it should be kept from the Soviet Union. While the Allies were publicly prosecuting Nazi officials in Nuremberg, Germany, for mass murder and inhumane medical experiments, US officials in Tokyo were guaranteeing the former Japanese programme scientists immunity from war-crimes prosecution in return for information on their biological experiments and attacks. US General Douglas MacArthur, in charge of the Tokyo war crimes tribunal and Japanese reconstruction, had sufficient authority to make this bargain, which protected Japanese Emperor Hirohito and various members of his family, who probably knew the details of the programme (Harris, 1994).

This secret immunity agreement and years of denial by the USA, the UK and Japan kept the public ignorant of the consequences of using biological weapons. Such a lack of knowledge left people unable to demand legal arms-control restraints, as they did in reaction to the spectacle of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs, even though as many as 200,000 Chinese civilians died from germ attacks. From 1945 to 1948, during the Nuremberg tribunals, Nazi-perpetrated atrocities were front-page news around the world, whereas information about the Japanese biological warfare programme was actively suppressed. Details about these crimes emerged only years later, too late to curb the secret proliferation of biological weapons.

One courageous voice against biological weapons in this early post-war period was Theodor Rosebury, who had been a supervisor at Camp Detrick, the US programme’s research centre in Maryland. Rosebury left Detrick in 1945, at a time of relative openness that allowed scientists to publish the results of their wartime defence research on, for example, poultry and rinderpest vaccines, post-exposure therapies for anthrax, tularaemia and glanders, the isolation of a pure bacterial toxin (botulinum toxin), and airborne plant diseases.

Still, the public remained uninformed about US offensive accomplishments, such as large-scale production plants for anthrax, brucellosis and anti-crop agents against rice and wheat, and the development, production and testing of biological bombs, including a new cluster bomb. In 1949, Rosebury published Peace or Pestilence?, explaining why, for the sake of humanity, biological weapons should be rejected by world powers (Rosebury, 1949). By the time his book appeared, publications from the US programme were becoming more restricted and the imminent threat of Soviet biological weapons, based on loosely calculated intelligence estimates, was being exaggerated by members of Congress and the press. Bolstered by these claims, US programme scientists in the early Cold War years struggled to make biological weapons competitive with atomic bombs, with Soviet cities as their main targets.

Beginning in the 1960s and continuing into the Vietnam War, the programme’s scientists enjoyed greater latitude to plan biological attacks on almost any terrain or population, rural or urban. During these years, scores of biologists and physicians covertly used their skills for military purposes with virtually no oversight or high-level review, either within the military or other agencies or by Congress. The programme’s experiments included nearly a decade of tularaemia research on volunteer Seventh Day Adventist servicemen, who were exposed to the disease via aerosols and then treated with antibiotics. Unknown to the participants, the research goal was to standardize tularaemia bomb-fill for anti-civilian attacks, just as the USA was ambitiously conducting high-altitude pathogen dispersal by jet planes, to cover hundreds of square miles.

The Vietnam War era also signalled the programme’s demise, in which civilian scientists had an influential role. The widespread use of chemicals, riot-control agents and herbicides in Vietnam provoked international criticism and drew public attention to the less well-known US biological weapons programme. In 1966, 5,000 scientists signed a letter of concern to President Lyndon Johnson—not against the war per se, but seeking a review of US chemical and biological weapons policies. Johnson, under pressure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered no public response. The task was passed on to the next President, Richard Nixon, who approached it head-on.

…years of denial by the USA, the UK and Japan kept the public ignorant of the consequences of using biological weapons…

In 1969, in a position paper for Nixon, Harvard University biologist Matthew Meselson argued that US biological warfare research created a model that other, less powerful, nations might easily emulate, to the eventual detriment of US security (Primack & von Hippel, 1974). In November that year, in an unprecedented act in US history, Nixon summarily renounced biological weapons on behalf of the USA. The UK and France, which had both become nuclear powers, had already retreated from their offensive research and turned to defensive endeavours. In addition to curtailing US military exploitation of advances in genetics and molecular biology, Nixon’s decision paved the way for the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), which required signatories to ban all activities associated with the development of biological weapons. Unfortunately, owing to the Cold War, the BTWC was not given the aggressive transparency measures, such as on-site inspections, that would have made it a more effective constraint on proliferation.

In 1975, the Soviet Union made use of this loophole and initiated an enormous offensive biological warfare programme, which incorporated both advanced biology and new military delivery systems. Although it clearly violated the BTWC, the suspicion that the USA had secretly kept its programme alive was a justification for the Soviet leadership to start this massive enterprise. The growing militarization of the Soviet Union and the totalitarian secrecy that characterized its government and society allowed an unrestrained, industrial-scale pursuit of biological weapons, employing tens of thousands of scientists and technicians. According to the memoirs of two highly ranked Soviet scientists—Ken Alibek and Igor Domaradskij—the programme’s routine bureaucratic pressures, inter-laboratory competition and Kremlin politics kept them focused on specific technical tasks. These included creating tularaemia strains resistant to antibiotics and meeting high production goals for anthrax slurry—in the order of tons (Domaradskij & Orent, 2003; Alibek & Handelman, 1999). Their working conditions, centred on loyalty to the state, left them free of qualms about civilian suffering and death.

Now, with the Cold War over and global communication and travel a norm, an enhanced sense of shared risks has emerged

Now, with the Cold War over and global communication and travel a norm, an enhanced sense of shared risks has emerged (Beck, 1992). This phenomenon is perhaps most keenly felt in the area of new and emerging infectious diseases that spread quickly and require international solutions. At the same time, new permutations of total-war doctrine continue to trouble the world—such as genocides, wars and acts of terrorism in which civilian lives are politically expendable—and the repercussions of such conflicts ricochet around the globe.

When it comes to biological weapons, the pressing question is whether microbiologists will ever again use their talent to pursue the malevolent—rather than the beneficent—functions of medical science and therefore increase the risks of dangerous diseases to vulnerable populations. History shows that biologists, similar to any other people, can be swayed by political agendas to the extent that they lose their moral compass. The problem of malevolent science, and therefore its solution, is located in self-perpetuating political systems, which respond to special interests yet can be influenced by civil society.

What can professionals who are committed to the life sciences do in response to political interpretations of national security risks that seek to establish biological weapons programmes? History offers three important lessons. First, any government promotion of secret research on dangerous pathogens should be greeted with scepticism. As in the past, secrecy unnecessarily increases the risks of calamitous disease. In any unusual disease outbreak, accurate information is the best protection for vulnerable populations. Whether speaking of the 1979 anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk, Soviet Union, when anthrax spores were accidentally released from a secret military facility, or the SARS epidemic in 2003, state secrecy created panic and cost lives.

Those who protest strengthening the BTWC are still stuck in the Cold War, when state secrecy was equated with national security

Second, any claims that an adversary has developed or is developing germ weapons should be stringently evaluated. Imaginary threats have often been used to justify increased military funding and research and have, more often than not, turned out to be false. More recently, the anonymous 2001 anthrax letters in the USA instigated a radical shift to biodefence priorities at the US National Institutes of Health (Bethesda, MD, USA) and the propagation of numerous government counter-bioterrorism projects, which are now greatly in need of evaluation. Throughout 2002, germ-weapon scare scenarios—particularly Saddam Hussein’s alleged smallpox threat—served to manipulate the American public into supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq (Guillemin, 2005b).

Because the threat from biological weapons can be real, a third approach is to use all legal means available to prevent and punish abuses of biological and medical research. The world needs guarantees of transparency in government and other facilities that could have dual-use functions or, as in high-containment laboratories involved in biodefence research, that could endanger public health. For this, the BTWC needs to be updated and reinforced, on an organizational par with the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.

Those who protest strengthening the BTWC are still stuck in the Cold War, when state secrecy was equated with national security. The world has changed and keeps changing, accelerating towards new ways of exchanging information, new scientific breakthroughs, and new sources of conflict and competition. Improved state and trans-national surveillance, built through networks of cooperation, is both needed and possible. In addition, individuals who engage in the development, production, trade or use of biological weapons should be internationally recognized as criminals and denied safe haven anywhere in the world (Meselson & Robinson, 2002). As a complement to existing measures, such an agenda offers hope that, in the future, the application of the biological sciences will remain dedicated solely to the improvement of health.

Biological weapon | Types, Effects & History

Category:

History & Society

Related Topics:

plague
smallpox
anthrax
ricin
yellow rain

See all related content →

biological weapon, also called germ weapon, any of a number of disease-producing agents—such as bacteria, viruses, rickettsiae, fungi, toxins, or other biological agents—that may be utilized as weapons against humans, animals, or plants.

The direct use of infectious agents and poisons against enemy personnel is an ancient practice in warfare. Indeed, in many conflicts, diseases have been responsible for more deaths than all the employed combat arms combined, even when they have not consciously been used as weapons.

Biological weapons, like chemical weapons, radiological weapons, and nuclear weapons, are commonly referred to as weapons of mass destruction, although the term is not truly appropriate in the case of biological armaments. Lethal biological weapons may be capable of causing mass deaths, but they are incapable of mass destruction of infrastructure, buildings, or equipment. Nevertheless, because of the indiscriminate nature of these weapons—as well as the potential for starting widespread pandemics, the difficulty of controlling disease effects, and the simple fear that they inspire—most countries have agreed to ban the entire class.

As of 2013 a total of 180 states and Taiwan had signed the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) and 170 of those states and Taiwan had signed and ratified the treaty, which was opened for signature in 1972. Under the terms of the BWC, member states are prohibited from using biological weapons in warfare and from developing, testing, producing, stockpiling, or deploying them. However, a number of states have continued to pursue biological warfare capabilities, seeking a cheaper but still deadly strategic weapon rather than following the more difficult and expensive path to nuclear weapons. In addition, the threat that some deranged individual or terrorist organization will manufacture or steal biological weapons is a growing security concern.

Biological warfare agents

Biological warfare agents differ greatly in the type of organism or toxin used in a weapons system, lethality, length of incubation, infectiousness, stability, and ability to be treated with current vaccines and medicines. There are five different categories of biological agents that could be weaponized and used in warfare or terrorism. These include:

• Bacteria—single-cell organisms that cause diseases such as anthrax, brucellosis, tularemia, and plague.

• Rickettsiae—microorganisms that resemble bacteria but differ in that they are intracellular parasites that reproduce inside cells. Typhus and Q fever are examples of diseases caused by rickettsia organisms.

• Viruses—intracellular parasites, about 1/100 the size of bacteria, that can be weaponized to cause diseases such as Venezuelan equine encephalitis.

• Fungi—pathogens that can be weaponized for use against crops to cause such diseases as rice blast, cereal rust, wheat smut, and potato blight.

• Toxins—poisons that can be weaponized after extraction from snakes, insects, spiders, marine organisms, plants, bacteria, fungi, and animals. An example of a toxin is ricin, which is derived from the seed of the castor bean.

Some of these biological agents have properties that would make them more likely candidates for weaponization, such as their lethality, ability to incapacitate, contagiousness or noncontagiousness, hardiness and stability, and other characteristics. Among the agents deemed likely candidates for biological weapons use are the toxins ricin, staphylococcal enterotoxin B (SEB), botulinum toxin, and T-2 mycotoxin and the infectious agents responsible for anthrax, brucellosis, cholera, pneumonic plague, tularemia, Q fever, smallpox, glanders, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, and viral hemorrhagic fever. Various states at various times have looked into weaponizing dozens of other biological agents in addition.

Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.

Subscribe Now

Defense against biological weapons

Military defense

Most weaponized lethal biological agents are intended to be delivered as aerosols, which would cause infections when breathed by the targeted personnel. For this reason, the most-effective defense against biological weapons is a good protective mask equipped with filters capable of blocking bacteria, viruses, and spores larger than one micron (one micrometre; one-millionth of a metre) in cross section from entry into the wearer’s nasal passages and lungs. Protective overgarments, including boots and gloves, are useful for preventing biological agents from contacting open wounds or breaks in the skin. Also, decontaminants can neutralize biological agents in infected areas after a biological attack.

Developing and fielding effective biological weapon sensors that can trigger an alarm would allow personnel to don masks before exposure, get into protective overgarments, and go inside, preferably into toxic-free collective protection shelters. Medical teams could then immediately go into action to check and treat those who may have been exposed.

Biological warfare attacks can be made less effective, or ineffective, if the targeted persons have been vaccinated against the specific disease-causing agent used in an attack.

Civil defense against biological weapons has greatly improved since the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, but progress does not necessarily equal success. A successful civil defense against major biological attacks requires that significant progress be made in sensors, warning systems, vaccines, medicines, training of responders, and public education as well as in planning of emergency procedures. These aspects of civil defense are described briefly in this section, using as examples certain practices put into effect in the United States since September 11.

The foundation of any civil defense against a biological weapons attack is the medical system that has already been set up to deal with naturally occurring diseases. Special vaccines have been created, tested, and approved to deal with the two most lethal biological agents that can also be most easily weaponized: anthrax and smallpox. For example, the U.S. government has enough smallpox vaccine to vaccinate the entire American population and enough anthrax vaccine to inoculate at least every member of the U.S. military.

Effective vaccines for plague and cholera now exist and have been approved for use, but only small quantities have been produced, far short of what might be needed if large numbers of people were to be infected. Furthermore, in the United States a number of vaccines are still in the Investigational New Drug (IND) category and await further trials before the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) can validate their effectiveness and safety. Included among these are vaccines for Q fever, tularemia, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, viral hemorrhagic fever, and botulism.

At present no effective vaccines exist for preventing infections from glanders, brucellosis, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, ricin, or T-2 mycotoxins—all biological agents that some countries have researched for military use or have weaponized in the past. However, in some cases where vaccines are not yet available, medicines have been developed that help the sick to recover.

Long-term medical research is being conducted to investigate the possibility of developing vaccines and supplements that, when administered, might raise the effectiveness of the recipient’s immune system to protect against the whole spectrum of probable biological warfare agents.

One U.S. civil defense program that might make a difference in a biological emergency is the Strategic National Stockpile program, which has created 50-ton “push packages” of vaccines, medicines, decontamination agents, and emergency medical equipment, which are stored in a dozen locations across the country in preparation for emergencies. Furthermore, every U.S. state has bioterrorism response plans in place, including plans or guidelines for mass vaccinations, triage, and quarantines. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also drafted model legislation on emergency health powers for states to adopt in order to deal with such crises.

A new emergency response system was created in the United States following the September 11 attacks. The National Guard increased the number of its Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams, which respond to chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons attacks—augmenting the police, fire, and medical first responders in the local area of any attacks. In addition, the Department of Homeland Security, working with the Department of Health and Human Services, invested heavily in passive defenses against biological attacks, focusing on such programs as Project BioShield and the Laboratory Response Network. The CDC also embarked on a training program on bioterrorism for thousands of medical lab technicians, and the National Institutes of Health funded new biocontainment research laboratories to further research in vaccines, medicines, and bioforensics.

Sensors to detect the presence of biological agents in the air, in water, or on surfaces are still relatively ineffective, but the aim of research is to create a “detect-to-warn” system that would provide enough time for potential victims to don masks, cover up, and take shelter before they are infected. The current “detect-to-treat” capability is unsatisfactory because responders would be treating many persons already infected. Most current biological detectors are point detectors, which are not capable of giving advance warning after scanning an airborne cloud of particles to discern if those particles contain biological agents of a specific type.

Biological weapons – the history of the emergence and use of

Biological weapons and biolaboratories around the world started talking with the start of the COVID 19 pandemic. Moreover, this topic was raised not only by conspiracy theorists, but also by the governments of many large countries, such as the United States. Moreover, the special services conducted serious investigations into this matter. But the version of the man-made origin of the virus is still not confirmed. After the start of the military operation in Ukraine, biological weapons were discussed again. But what exactly is it and what is its danger? Its main feature is that the damaging element is pathogenic microorganisms or their spores, as well as viruses and bacterial toxins. Unlike other weapons, it does not act instantly. It is mainly used to defeat enemy manpower. In addition, such weapons can be used to destroy food by infecting livestock and crops. Like other weapons of mass destruction, bioweapons have been banned by the Geneva Protocol since the 20s of the last century, but despite this they have been repeatedly used in the modern history of mankind.

Biological weapons have been banned by the Geneva Protocol since 1925, but have been repeatedly used since then

What are biological weapons

As a rule, for biological weapons, laboratories develop special types of viruses and bacteria that meet certain tasks. For greater effectiveness and lethality of such weapons, a combination of viruses and bacterial spores is usually used.

Traditional weapons such as aerial bombs, artillery shells and mines are used to deliver pathogens. After the rupture of such ammunition, a bacterial cloud arises, which spreads through the air and infects a certain area. The area of ​​infection depends on the amount of bacterial formulation (powder or aerosols with pathogens), as well as wind speed.

After the explosion of a biological weapon projectile, a bacteriological cloud spreads that infects the area

In addition, pathogens can be sprayed or dropped from aircraft. Sometimes, in order to infect the enemy during the retreat, the military leaves contaminated household items – clothes, cigarettes, food, etc.

Features of the impact of biological weapons

The consequences of the use of biological weapons depend on the type of pathogens. As a rule, they cause severe, often fatal diseases. But they don’t show up right away. There is always an incubation period that passes unnoticed. Often during the incubation period, the infected person becomes contagious and infects others.

According to many experts, bacteriological weapons are somewhat more dangerous than nuclear weapons. Earlier we said that the consequences of a nuclear war would be horrendous, but it would not lead to the complete extinction of mankind. But biological weapons theoretically may well lead to the fact that the human race will disappear from the face of the Earth.

Scientists have not yet been able to find a way to overcome the HIV virus

Of course, medicine has advanced in many issues, but it is too early to talk about a complete victory over viruses and bacteria. COVID-19 pandemicis a prime example of this. Fortunately, at the moment it was possible to stop it. However, how the pandemic will end is still not clear. In addition, there are many diseases that are still considered incurable to this day. These include HIV and some types of hepatitis.

The peculiarity of bacteriological weapons lies in the fact that pathogens do not understand who is theirs and who is a stranger. Bacteria and viruses infect all living things that get in their way. True, modern biological weapons, as a rule, contain strains that are not transmitted from person to person. This prevents the uncontrolled spread of pathogens. But viruses are known to be able to mutate, which makes such weapons generally unpredictable.

History of the use of biological weapons

Many may think that biological weapons are a modern invention. But actually it is not. It is the oldest type of weapon of mass destruction. According to some sources, even in the ancient Romans, during the siege of cities, the corpses of people who died from the plague were thrown over the walls of fortresses. These measures were quite effective, since in conditions of high population density and poor hygiene, the epidemic quickly covered the enemy population.

There is also evidence that Khan Dzhanibek was involved in the spread of bubonic plague in Europe in 1346, who failed in an attempt to capture the city of Kafa (Feodosia). He took advantage of the reception of the ancient Romans, and threw the corpse of the deceased from the plague into the fortress. At the same time, merchants who fled the city brought the disease to Europe.

In 1763, the British used smallpox blankets against the Indians.

The first documented use of biological weapons occurred in 1763. Then smallpox was deliberately spread among the Indians who were trying to capture Fort Pitt. Then the British military distributed among the Indians blankets infected with smallpox.

I must say that the British were actively developing biological weapons during the Second World War. In particular, in 1942, weapons were developed and tested on Gruinard Island. As a result, the island was infected with anthrax spores. For almost half a century, he remained in quarantine until 1990.

According to Japanese media, the United States tested biological weapons on the island of Okinawa. According to the report of the international scientific commission, the Americans used bioweapons against the DPRK. Moreover, 804 cases of its use were recorded in 169areas. Also, according to the Kyodo news agency, US military personnel tested biological weapons on the island of Okinawa in the early 60s of the last century. This is evidenced by secret documents that fell into the hands of the Japanese media, as reported by Kommersant. In addition, a number of other cases of the use or development of biological weapons have been recorded in the world. Basically, they all belong to the middle of the last century.

Subscribe to our Yandex.Zen channel, where we have prepared even more interesting information for you

Finally, we note that it is quite difficult to record the use of bacterial weapons during military conflicts, and even more so to identify what type of virus was used. Bacteria and viruses are odorless or colorless. Their effect does not appear immediately. Accordingly, for the detection of biological weapons, laboratory research is required, which requires a significant amount of time. Therefore, it is quite possible that not all cases are known to the public.

BacteriaHumanity

The history of the creation and development of weapons of mass destruction – Radiation and chemical protection

Despite the fact that chemical agents and smoke screens were successfully used in the course of hostilities for several millennia, most military historians consider the beginning of the use of chemical weapons in the first world war 22 April 1915, when German troops used chlorine against French troops on the front near the Ypres River (Belgium). The French were defenseless against toxic gas. More than 5,000 soldiers died, about 10,000 people were defeated.

In subsequent hostilities, chemical weapons were used more widely. Along with other less toxic substances, phosgene, hydrocyanic acid, chlorine and mustard gas were used. The total losses of the belligerents in the First World War from chemical weapons amounted to more than 1 million people, which made it possible to classify them as weapons of mass destruction.

In the period before the Second World War, the development and improvement of these weapons in the capitalist countries did not stop. In fascist Germany, new poisonous substances (OS) of nerve-paralytic action were synthesized. Colorless and odorless, these OBs were 75 times more toxic than mustard gas. The discovery of these OBs happened by accident. At 19In 36, during the use of insecticides (chemicals used in the fight against harmful insects), Dr. Gerhard Schrader synthesized organophosphorus ether, which became known and was produced under the name tabun. In 1938, similar research led to the creation of a much more toxic substance, sarin. The third nerve agent, known as soman, was developed in 1944. All three agents are fatal to humans after exposure for several minutes.

Only the inevitability of a powerful retaliatory strike by the anti-Hitler coalition and the rapid offensive of the Red Army in 1944-1945. against the Nazi troops frustrated Hitler’s plans for the massive use of chemical weapons. The Japanese militarists carefully prepared for chemical and, especially, bacteriological warfare.

After World War II, the United States became the center for the development of chemical weapons. In the 60s, the US chemical weapons arsenal was replenished with new agents: VX, BZ, CS. The United States used chemical weapons during the Korean War (1950–1952). On an even larger scale, the US Army used chemical weapons in the Vietnam War (1961-1972).

Biological weapons also appeared in the First World War. It was then that Germany made the first attempt to use pathogens of infectious diseases on a significant scale to solve military problems. Japan made the same attempt during World War II. In 1952, the American command carried out a practical test over the territory of Korea and China of certain ammunition and methods of using biological agents.

Despite the signing of the Conventions on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Biological (1972) and Chemical (1993) Weapons, it should always be borne in mind that in the event of an acute situation during an armed conflict, there is no guarantee that the enemy will not will use chemical or biological weapons to change the balance of power in their favor.

Nuclear weapons were created at the end of World War II in the United States as a result of the work of physicists from a number of countries who emigrated from Europe to the United States (A. Einstein, E. Fermi, R. Openheimer, L. Szilard and others). After the first test explosion on 16 July 19In 1945, the American ruling circles undertook barbaric bombardments from the B-29 aircraft of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945), as a result of which about 250 thousand civilians died. It is known that the combat use of two atomic bombs with a capacity of 20 kg each, which destroyed two Japanese cities, was not a military necessity, but served only as a demonstration of the power of a new type of weapon and was of a political nature. Counting on long-term monopoly possession of nuclear weapons, the United States decided to use them for political blackmail, primarily the Soviet Union, to reconsider the results of the Second World War in its own interests.

In 1949, Russian scientists led by IV Kurchatov successfully solved the problem by creating and testing the atomic bomb. In 1953, the world’s first high-yield thermonuclear bomb was tested in the USSR (a year earlier than in the USA). The US monopoly on nuclear weapons was abolished. Moreover, in 1952 England joined the countries already possessing nuclear weapons, in 1960 France and in 1964 China. In 1974, India carried out an underground nuclear explosion. In 1979 A nuclear test in the South Atlantic was carried out jointly by South Africa and Israel. Work is actively underway to create nuclear weapons in Pakistan.

At present, many countries have the technical capabilities to create nuclear weapons: Japan, Germany, Sweden, Italy, etc. created neutron munitions, and on August 6, 1981, on the day of the 36th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the US President made a decision on their full-scale production.

Now a new stage in the development of military affairs has begun. The process of realizing by the world community that there will be no winner in a general or even limited nuclear war is gaining momentum, the consequences of such a war are disastrous for humanity as a whole. A world war with the use of conventional weapons also poses a no lesser threat. Their quantitative and qualitative growth, the presence of numerous sources of increased danger in the probable theaters of military operations: nuclear power plants, chemical, biological, oil and gas enterprises, thermal power plants, hydraulic structures, and other facilities, if they are destroyed, will mean the death of entire continents.