It sounds like a conspiracy theory. Is it?
From Gizmodo:
I considered putting this in a couple forums - General Questions, Politics - but decided this was the best compromise. Any mod can punt it elsewhere if I have chosen poorly.
The Lyme advocacy groups here in the UK will love that, right up their street.
Lyme disease is found throughout the Northern hemisphere, so could this evil plot have led to global dispersion of the disease? It is not communicable preson to person as far as I know.
The U.S. DoD threw so much money on crazy shit in 1950-1975 that I wouldn’t be surprised by anything.
Incidentally, the phrase “ticks and other insects” is giving me, well, a tick.
Well, we once tried to kill a dictator with an exploding cigar, so anything’s possible.
That’s what I was thinking. The US Army Air Force considered using bat bombs against the Japanese during WW II, the British considered a giant aircraft made from arctic ice, and, like you said, the US tried all sorts of crazy shit throughout the 50s and 60s. Quite frankly I’d be shocked if the DoD didn’t look into a way to weaponize ticks and other pests.
“Don’t make us bite you in hard-to-reach places!” - The Tick.
hmmm, that invulnerable super hero appeared as an adult in 1990’s, you don’t suppose…
That’s been the local lore here in New England for decades - it was created as a biological weapon and accidentally escaped the Upside Down. I mean the lab. However, in this article, What We Get Wrong About Lyme Disease, it talks about how preserved samples of ticks strongly suggest that Lyme disease has existed for a lot longer than we thought.
I guess that doesn’t preclude evil scientists from plotting to facilitate the spread an existing bacteria for militarial purposes rather than cooking it up in their lab, though…
Don’t forget the chicken-powered nuclear landmine.
Also the pigeon guided nuclear missile and incendiary bat bombs. And of course the crazy wasn’t limited to the U. S. military. The Russians had to get in on the animal action with their own anti-tank dogs, which they continued to train all the way up until 1996! China and Japan both got in on the exploding dog action, and the U.S. even looked into it during WWII, but abandoned the idea as unsafe (duh, ya think?).
Exploding donkeys have been used since the U.S. Civil War, and have even been used successfully by the Taliban in the last couple of decades. Iraqis tried the same thing, but their donkey exploded before it reached the U.S. check point that was its intended target. Explosives have been strapped to numerous animals in the Middle East, with varying success.
The U.S. and Soviets have also weaponized dolphins, though in practice they use them more for finding submerged ordinance since dolphins have difficulty distinguishing friendly humans from enemy humans. But both countries at least researched the idea of deadly dolphins.
And the crazy hasn’t been limited to weaponizing animals. There has also been the gay bomb and halitosis bomb that were researched, but as far as I am aware were never put into production.
So yeah, ticks? Just add 'em to the list. Wouldn’t surprise me at all. In fact, while the military may not have ever gone as far as actually deploying them as a weapon, I would be very surprised to learn that they hadn’t at least looked into the idea. The military researches all kinds of crazy stuff. Fortunately, most of it drops out while it’s still in the early crazy stage.
When I was in the Gainesville, Florida area several people told me that the “love bugs” (Plecia nearctic) were part of a genetics experiment gone awry over at the college (University of Florida). People swore that this was the case, everyone knew someone who worked with someone who was involved in the project.
It is usually said that lovebugs were created by UF researchers - not merely subjects of a genetic experiment but the product of it. A quick look at Wikipedia debunks this particular urban legend: “P. nearctica was in Louisiana as early as 1911, but it did not reach Florida until 1949” (citations omitted; Buschman, 1976).
~Max
Buschman, L. L. (1976). Invasion of Florida by the “Lovebug” Plecia nearctica (Diptera: Bibionidae). The Florida Entomologist, 59(2), 191-194. Retrieved July 18, 2019 from http://journals.fcla.edu/flaent/article/view/57084/54763
Didn’t they once try attaching a bomb to a cat, and send it into an embassy or something? Only the cat was run over by a car before it could get there.
There is also Franz Helm, artillery master for Emperor Charles V of the sixteenth century Holy Roman Empire. He proposed strapping incendiaries to cats and birds and letting them return to the besieged city, to hide in haystacks and thus spread fire.
~Max
Here is a New York Times article about the Plum Island theory from 2004:
~Max
Sure, the USA weaponized ticks just after the CIA released HIV into the wild.
The link is probably behind the NYT paywall but it is a remarkable study of how the Soviets were using fake news decades ago.
Not a bomb, a microphone and a transmitter. It was a spy kitty, not a bomb kitty.
No. That’s idiotic.
Now, I am sure the government (not just the USA) researched using vector arthropods to deploy biopathogens as a concept. And they would have come to the conclusion that it’s not a good idea. Vector arthropods as deployment vectors suck because you can’t control where they go or who they bite. You also have to rear millions of them (doable for mosquitoes maybe but not trivial) and infect them with pathogens (also doable but not trivial).
If you decide you want to go the mass destruction route with an uncontrollable weapon, much easier to just use gas.
Now, If you’re still hell-bent on doing this, why on earth would you choose a tick-borne pathogen? I’ve reared many species of vector arthropod and take it from me, ticks are the absolute worst. Difficult to rear, every stage needs a blood meal (and they don’t like feeding on artificial membranes), and they take at least a YEAR to go from egg to adult (maybe 6 months if you REALLY push them and know what you’re doing). Mass rearing ticks is a non-starter.
And then, why would you use a useless pathogen like Borrelia? It’s slow, not immediately incapacitating, and curable with dirt-cheap antibiotics. If I had the capacity to mass rear ticks for weapon use i’d go with a nasty virus like crimean congo.
In short, this is bullshit, horsehit, and many other kinds of shit. Conspiracy theory nonsense that pops up every now and again to give me headaches when stupid reporters call me.
This is very plausible, but it is not known if this actually occurred.
I wouldn’t put gas in the same league of uncontrollable weapon as a tick-borne pathogen. You can gas a block, neighborhood, hill, or encampment, and it is uncontrollable in that it is likely to go to nearby and different blocks, neighborhoods, etc. The weapon may also be persistent, which is really just awful. But bioweapons are likely to be uncontrollable on a whole different scale, perhaps crossing regions and countries. I strongly disagree with the “they’d just use gas to achieve similar effects” argument.
I agree that those who want to blame the government for creating Lyme disease and peanut allergies are off in cuckoo land, but that doesn’t mean there’s not a legitimate question of whether the government invested in some dumb concepts long ago.
I am certain they did at the conceptual level.
I’m sure of that, but publicly disclosing what was actually done is a good idea.