When has Biological agents for warfare or terroism have been used in past episodes?

Question

When has Biological agents for warfare or terroism have been used in past episodes?

Answer 1

The US supplied Iraq with them and they were used in Iraq, and in Iran.

Other than those known uses, I can not document other usages, however I am sure they have been used since that time.

Anthrax was used by our own country as recently as a few years ago, within the U.S.A.

Answer 2

In Vietnam the Viet Cong would dip punji stakes in human excrement.

In the 90's there was a cult in Oregon that used Salmonella to poison a town to reduce voter turn out.

Answer 3

the anthrax attacks here in the u.s.a... and back in the middle ages.. they would toss dead body's with the black plague behind enemy lines

Answer 4

Japan used biological weapons against the Chinese in WW2.

Answer 5

Biological warfare has been practiced repeatedly throughout history. Before the 20th century, the use of biological agents took three major forms:

* Deliberate poisoning of food and water with infectious material

* Use of micro-organisms, toxins or animals, living or dead, in a weapon system

* Use of biologically inoculated fabrics

- During the 16th century B.C, the Assyrians poisoned enemy wells with ergot, a fungus that would make the enemy delusional

- During the 4th century B.C. Scythian archers used arrows with tips covered with animal f***s to cause wounds to become infected.  

- In 204 B.C, Hannibal of Carthage had clay pots filled with venomous snakes and instructed his soldiers to throw the pots onto the  Pergamene ships.

- In 1346 the bodies of Mongol warriors of the Golden Horde who had died of plague were thrown over the walls of the besieged Crimean city of Kaffa (Theodosia).

- At the siege of Thun l’Eveque in 1340, the attackers catapulted decomposing animals into the besieged area.

- In 1422 during the siege of the Bohemian castle of Karlstein Hussite attackers used catapults to throw dead (but not plague-infected) bodies and 2000 carriage-loads of dung over the walls.  

- In 1710, Russian forces attacked the Swedes by flinging plague-infected corpses over the city walls of Reval (Tallinn).  

- During the 1785 siege of La Calle, Tunisian forces flung diseased clothing into the city.

- When the Pilgrims arrived in the New World in 1620, the native population of the Plymouth area had already been virtually eliminated by diseases that arrived with European fishing expeditions to the waters of the Northeast.

- The Spanish conquest of the Aztecs in Mexico and the English predominance in North America might not have occurred if not for the devastating effect of diseases that had been previously unknown in the Americas and against which the local populations had not built up any immunities.

- In September 1710, during Queen Anne's War, Iroquois Indian tribes used biological warfare against the British.  This caused an estimated 1000+ soldiers' deaths and is the first recorded instance of biological warfare in North America.

- Only one documented case of alleged germ warfare, involving British commander Lord Jeffrey Amherst and Swiss-British officer Colonel Henry Bouquet, whose correspondence included a reference to the idea of giving smallpox-infected blankets to Indians as part of an incident known as Pontiac's Rebellion which occurred during the Siege of Fort Pitt in 1763 during the French and Indian War.

  

- In 1834 Cambridge Diarist Richard Henry Dana recounts his ship traded blankets with Mexicans and Russians who had established outposts on the northern side of the San Francisco Bay. Local historical documents state the California smallpox epidemic began at the Russian fort soon after they left.

- During the American Civil War, General Sherman reported that Confederate forces shot farm animals in ponds upon which the Union depended for drinking water.

- The Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibited the use of chemical weapons and biological weapons, but said nothing about production, storage or transfer; later treaties did cover these aspects.

- Japanese Army Unit 731, based primarily at Pingfan in occupied China and commanded by Shirō Ishii, did research on BW, conducted forced human experiments, often fatal, on prisoners, and provided biological weapons for attacks in China.

- During the Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945) and World War II, Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army conducted human experimentation on thousands, mostly Chinese and Korean.



- During the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials the accused, such as Major General Kiyashi Kawashima, testified that as early as 1941 some 40 members of Unit 731 air-dropped plague-contaminated fleas on Changde. There are also reports of contaminated water supplies. Three veterans of Unit 731 testified, in a 1989 interview to the Asahi Shimbun, that they were part of a mission to contaminate the Horustein river with typhoid near the Soviet troops during the Battle of Khalkhin Gol.  Such estimates report over 580,000 victims, largely due to plague and cholera outbreaks.

- In response to biological weapons development in Germany and Japan, the US, UK and Canada initiated a BW development program in 1941. The center for U.S. military BW research was Fort Detrick, Maryland, where USAMRIID is currently based.

- Much of the British work during World War II left Gruinard island in Scotland contaminated with anthrax for the next 48 years.

- During the 1948 Israel War of Independence, reports raised suspicion that the Haganah militia had released Salmonella typhi bacteria into the water supply for the city of Acre,

- Cuba accused the US of spreading human and animal disease on their island.  Recently revealed documents indicate that this was disinformation produced by Soviet intelligence.

- Richard Nixon signed an executive order on November 1969, which stopped production of biological weapons in the U.S.

- In 1972, the U.S. signed the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention, which banned the "development, production and stockpiling of microbes or their poisonous products except in amounts necessary for protective and peaceful research."

- The Soviet Union continued research and production of offensive biological weapons in a program called biopreparat, despite having signed the convention. The United States was unaware of the program until Dr. Vladimir Pasechnik defected in 1989, and Dr. Kanatjan Alibekov, the first deputy director of Biopreparat defected in 1992.

- After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Iraq admitted to the UN inspection team to having produced concentrated botulinum toxin, of which had been loaded into military weapons.

- On September 18, 2001 and for a few days after several letters were received by members of the U.S. Congress and media outlets containing anthrax spores: the attack killed five people. The identity of the perpetrator remains unknown as of 2008. See 2001 anthrax attacks.

Answer 6

Biological warfare is the oldest type of warfare.  It can be traced back to the times when dead rotting pigs were deposited into the water supply of a town, thus contaminating the town's water, and causing widespread sickness.  Biological agents are the easiest to manufacture, and distribute.  Biological agents are numerous, and a list can be seen at the CDC's website:  http://www.bt.cdc.gov/Agent/Agentlist.as...

As far as used in warfare biological agents are generally not used.  Due to the Geneva Conventions of 1972 Chemical, Biological and radiological weapons are prohibited from use.