Insects on the warpath
Detachment of insects ready for battle!
The effectiveness of insects is very ambiguous. On the one hand, they can cause serious epidemics and kill a lot of people, and on the other hand, it is scary to scare. So most likely it happened about two thousand years ago, when the Romans threw Hart's fortress in Mesopotamia with clay pots with scorpions. In other sources, scorpions were used not by the besiegers, but by the defenders. The psychological effect, of course, was, but there is no mention of the victims of scorpions. Able to sow panic in the ranks of the enemy and honeybees - they have enjoyed success for centuries as a “biological weapons". So, the fighters from the Nigerian nationality tiva shot bees from wooden air tubes at the enemy.
The flea is one of the most effective weapons of entomological warfare.
In medieval England, bee colonies were settled under the walls of castles, creating a reliable defensive shield in case of assault. Embittered bees, protecting the hives, stung both ordinary fighters and knights in steel armor. The latter had more problems with poisonous insects - a few bees or wasps under the armor were able to permanently take the knight out of battle. Insects were used during the siege of castles. Several thousand wasps and bees, capable of disorganizing the defense of the townspeople, were often launched into the excavated trench. Legend has it that the German city of Beyenburg (Pchelograd) got its name during the Thirty Years War, when a gang of deserters approached this village. In the convent of the town there was a large apiary, the beehives which the resourceful nuns turned upside down and hid in the chambers of the monastery. The failed robbers and rapists came under a massive bee attack and left the city untouched.
Jeffrey Lockwood, in the book The Six-Legged Soldiers, writes about bee troops:
“We know about throwing beehives during the wars of the Spanish Reconquista. In the XIV century, even a special throwing machine, resembling a windmill, was developed. Its crosspiece rotated, and each of the connected bars served as a throwing arm. With the help of such a machine, it was possible to launch many stones at once into the enemy — or hives with bees, as was sometimes the case. ”
The author also mentions hives on ships (wasp nests) that were fired at the enemy. In general, bees are not only useful honey, but effective tactical weapons.
The most massive "fighting" insects of antiquity
Surprisingly, even in the XNUMXth century, bees were used to wage war. In East Africa, on the territory of modern Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda, during the First World War battles, “bee mines” were used against Entente soldiers. A string was pulled across the path, attached to a clay pot with bees or wasps. What happened in the event of an "explosion", I think, is understandable. But the bees were capable of much more. In the Italian war with Ethiopia, local Aborigines threw Italian hatches tanks packages with bees. As a result, several tanks fell off a cliff, and many tankers left their vehicles in a panic.
Italian tanks, as it turned out, were defenseless against Ethiopian bees
However, much more serious consequences from the use of entomological weapons occurred in 1346 during the siege by Khan Janibek of the Genoese city of Kaffa (modern Theodosia). A plague broke out in the Khan's army, and the commander ordered that catapults throw the bodies of the dead into the besieged city. Obviously, plague fleas, which later became the cause of a deadly epidemic in Europe, got into Kaffa along with the corpses. Janibek after unsuccessful attempts at assault left the city walls, which saved his army from the plague epidemic. According to Jeffrey Lockwood, it was this incident of the unconscious use of entomological weapons that caused many millions of Europeans to die from the black plague.
Insect vectors
In the 20th century, entomologists and epidemiologists joined forces to transfer insects to a qualitatively new level of combat use - infection of the enemy with infectious diseases. We will not retell history the well-known Japanese “731 Squad”, whose specialists became famous for the hellish work with plague fleas and cholera flies. Modern historians believe that the Japanese killed at least 440 thousands of people with the help of artificially caused epidemics in China. It is important that Ciro Ishii, the detachment commander, received immunity from the US authorities and continued to engage in "science" at Fort Detrick. He became one of the ideological inspirers of the entomological warfare program of the United States in 50-70's. In accordance with it, facilities for reproducing 100 million mosquitoes infected with yellow fever and aimed against the Soviet Union were developed. The fact is that there was no vaccination campaign against the causative agents of this serious disease in the USSR, and this fact was taken into account in the United States.
731 Squad Results
Americans have given an important place in this work to the practical part of research. In 1954, they organized the “Big Itch” exercise at the Daguay range, during which they used non-infected Xenopsylla cheopis flea. Insects were packed in cluster bomb-containers like ЕNNUMX and Е86, which were dumped over experimental animals at the test site. Despite the fact that during the next flight fleas bit the crew. Tests recognized successful. A year later, they conducted tests on civilians in the state of Georgia. For this, about a million females of the Aedes aegypti mosquito were bred, which in the event of a conflict with the USSR was supposed to be a carrier of yellow fever. More than 77 thousands of uninfected mosquitoes were sprayed with E330 ammunition from airplanes flying at an altitude of 14 meters. Next, we investigated the estimated viability of individuals, their “appetite” and dispersion range, which was about 100 km. In general, the result of the operation was positive. Later, almost every year, the military dumped uninfected mosquitoes in different parts of Georgia, increasingly honing the art of biological warfare. With the appearance of deeply echeloned air defense in key areas of the Soviet Union, such tests became absurd. Therefore, in 6, they launched Operation Magic Sword, during which mosquitoes were sprayed over the sea a few kilometers off the southeast coast of the United States. Evaluations of the effectiveness of such an entomological war have shown that it can lead to a real genocide - one massive discharge of mosquitoes with yellow fever can kill more 1965 thousands of people. Data on such studies became irrelevant over time, and in 600, the US Department of Defense partially declassified the information.
Colorado potato beetle - a massive disaster in Eastern Europe during the Cold War
During World War II, the Germans tried to cause food problems in the UK by dumping containers with a Colorado potato beetle onto potato fields in the 1943 year. According to some reports, in the Frankfurt area, the Germans carried out mass tests of potato infection with the Colorado potato beetle. The French also planned to use their striped beetles against the Germans, but they did not have time - the potential victims occupied the country. After the war, the Eastern bloc countries accused Americans of biological sabotage with the Colorado potato beetle. Polish newspapers wrote about this:
“American candidates for atomic war criminals today showed a sample of what they are preparing for humanity. Only murderers can resort to such horror as the deliberate destruction of peaceful human labor, the destruction of the crop by the Colorado potato beetle. ”
USSR Minister of Agriculture Ivan Benedict wrote to Suslov in 1950:
“Creating favorable conditions for the mass reproduction of the Colorado potato beetle, the Americans simultaneously carry out atrocious acts of dropping the beetle in mass quantities from aircraft over a number of areas of the German Democratic Republic and in the Baltic Sea region in order to infect the beetle and the Polish Republic. The USSR Ministry of Agriculture daily receives information about the massive influx of the Colorado potato beetle from the Baltic Sea to the shores of Poland. This is undoubtedly the result of Anglo-Americans sabotage work. ”
With the malaria mosquitoes, the Germans worked in concentration camps, and in the autumn of 1943, near Rome, the previously drained marshes, into which the larvae of the anopheles mosquito were launched, were purposefully flooded. The work was led by German entomologist Erich Martini. The Anglo-American troops were planning to infect, but because of the vaccination of the military, civilians were hit. More than 1200 cases among 245 000 people were recorded in 1943 year and almost 55 000 in 1944 year.
In the modern world, insects become tools in the hands of terrorists and genetic engineers. But more about that in the next article.
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