The The Cold War was a time of maximum global tension that divided the world into two. blocks and faced two superpowers: the United States and the . A silent and strategic war that lasted from 1947 until the dissolution of the Soviet bloc in 1991. However, during those years of paranoiathe American government seriously considered crossing all red lines and using biological weapons to decimate the enemy.
This has been revealed by the British newspaper echoing a 69-page document published on the website of the Defense Technical Information Center (the official Pentagon library for scientific information). The report details to the millimeter a plan that seems straight out of a science fiction movie: use swarms of mosquitoes as ammunition.
To carry out this offensive, American researchers set their sights on the , a mosquito greedy for human blood which is sadly famous for being the natural transmitter of severe diseases such as Zika, dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya.
“The literature on accidental and intentional infections in laboratories indicates that the deliberate use of infected arthropod vectors against enemy targets has great strategic potential”explains a section of the report.
A flying arsenal with devastating consequences
If the plan had gone ahead using infected insects, the damage to the enemy ranks would have been brutal. The diseases transmitted by this mosquito are lethal in conflict scenarios:
- : It begins to manifest itself with a very high fever, severe headaches, muscle pain and vomiting. In its most severe cases it causes jaundice (yellowing of the skin) and internal bleeding. If not treated promptly, mortality reaches 50% of patients who develop the severe form of the virus.
- : Causes spikes of intense fever, crushing joint pain, and extreme fatigue that completely incapacitates troops. Severe conditions can lead to hemorrhagic shock, killing one in five patients who do not receive emergency medical attention.
The surreal ‘Operation Big Buzz’
To test whether this tactical madness was really viable on the battlefield, in 1960 a group of American soldiers volunteered to act as human bait. The platoon was secretly moved to an arid desert region in the state of Utah.
The US Army’s objective was purely logistical: They wanted to show if mosquitoes were capable of surviving and attacking effectively. in dry and hot areas, climates that are radically different from the humid and tropical environments to which Aedes aegypti is accustomed. Fortunately for the test volunteers, these insects were “clean” and did not carry any type of pathogen.
The results exceeded the Pentagon’s dark expectations and revealed that mosquitoes would remain lethal weapons outside their natural climate. The numbers from the experiment speak for themselves: when a group of ten soldiers sat in a circle outdoors on the testing ground and a swarm of 100 mosquitoes was released, soldiers received an average of 40 direct stings in a matter of minutes. The perfect biological weapon was born.
