Not too long ago, on a hit television show, high-up government officials were toying with the idea of using insects to destroy wheat supplies in the enemy’s country. While this may sound a bit less conventional than dropping bombs; using insect-pests to contaminate food sources across the world would be pretty harsh as well. Even though the insect-contamination method of warfare is stealthy, it could also be even more devastating to the hungry population than bomb dropping. Unbelievably, this extreme war-tactic has been considered, but reportedly, never used.
According to a University of Wyoming professor, Jeffrey Lockwood, many different leaders were afraid of invasive or diseased insects being used as instruments of warfare. Lockwood even wrote a book on the topic of entomological warfare. The name of his book is Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War.
During the cold war the United States was accused of using mosquitoes to spread dengue fever to its enemies. However, Soviet Russia did not suspect the Americans of “entomological warfare.” During the Korean War, both North Korea and China accused the US of transmitting flies and mosquitoes to spread germs.
During the year of 1996 Cuba teamed up with Russia with the hopes that the two of them could prove that the US was planning on resorting to entomological warfare. The three countries were locked in international court battles. Luckily for America, they won the case. This may be because proving entomological warfare is pretty difficult. First of all, farmers will not even know that their crops are infested until it is too late, and the food-product is destroyed. Or, the insect-pest problem could be discovered, but dismissed by suspects as being a natural happening in nature. During World War Two, Japan got into a bit of international trouble when the rest of the world realized that the Japanese government dropped infected insects on Chinese citizens.
Do you believe entomological warfare has been carried out in the past?
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