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Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War
The emir of Bukhara used assassin bugs to eat away the flesh of his prisoners. General Ishii Shiro during World War II released hundreds of millions of infected insects across China, ultimately causing more deaths than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. These are just two of many startling examples found in Six-legged Soldiers , a brilliant portrait of the many weirdly creative, truly frightening, and ultimately powerful ways in which insects have been used as weapons of war, terror, and torture.
Beginning in prehistoric times and building toward a near and disturbing future, the reader is taken on a journey of innovation and depravity. Award-winning science writer Jeffrey A. Lockwood begins with the development of "bee bombs" in the ancient world and explores the role of insect-borne disease in changing the course of major battles, ranging from Napoleon's military campaigns to the trenches of World War I. He explores the horrific programs of insect warfare during World War II: airplanes dropping plague-infested fleas, facilities rearing tens of millions of hungry beetles to destroy crops, and prison camps staffed by doctors testing disease-carrying lice on inmates. The Cold War saw secret government operations involving the mass release of specially developed strains of mosquitoes on an unsuspecting American public--along with the alleged use of disease-carrying and crop-eating pests against North Korea and Cuba. Lockwood reveals how easy it would be to use of
insects in warfare and terrorism today: In 1989, domestic ecoterrorists extorted government officials and wreaked economic and political havoc by threatening to release the notorious Medfly into California's crops.
A remarkable story of human ingenuity--and brutality-- Six-Legged Soldiers is the first comprehensive look at the use of insects as weapons of war, from ancient times to the present day.
Beginning in prehistoric times and building toward a near and disturbing future, the reader is taken on a journey of innovation and depravity. Award-winning science writer Jeffrey A. Lockwood begins with the development of "bee bombs" in the ancient world and explores the role of insect-borne disease in changing the course of major battles, ranging from Napoleon's military campaigns to the trenches of World War I. He explores the horrific programs of insect warfare during World War II: airplanes dropping plague-infested fleas, facilities rearing tens of millions of hungry beetles to destroy crops, and prison camps staffed by doctors testing disease-carrying lice on inmates. The Cold War saw secret government operations involving the mass release of specially developed strains of mosquitoes on an unsuspecting American public--along with the alleged use of disease-carrying and crop-eating pests against North Korea and Cuba. Lockwood reveals how easy it would be to use of
insects in warfare and terrorism today: In 1989, domestic ecoterrorists extorted government officials and wreaked economic and political havoc by threatening to release the notorious Medfly into California's crops.
A remarkable story of human ingenuity--and brutality-- Six-Legged Soldiers is the first comprehensive look at the use of insects as weapons of war, from ancient times to the present day.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published September 11, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
February 8, 2023
If insects make you nervous, Jeffrey A. Lockwood’s Six-Legged Soldiers isn’t going to do anything to ease your anxieties. That is why you might want to read it; things that make you uncomfortable must be inherently interesting, right? Even if you love bugs, there still might be something interesting here. (Did I just make an error of judgment? “Bugs” is a pejorative term for insects so I guess it is extremely offensive to oppressed animals. I can hear the raging horde of woke wasps coming after me on Twitter to make sure I get canceled. The joke’s on you because I don’t have a Twitter account.) But despite the interesting subject matter, the realized product of Lockwood’s research is less than stellar.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody that insects were being used as weapons of war in ancient times. What could be more detrimental to an army’s morale than being splattered with honey then having a beehive launched into the middle of your battalion? Or how about being routed into a swampy area where malaria-carrying mosquitoes live in abundance? How well can an army fight after some digestive parasite gives them migraine headaches, dizzying fever, double visions, and explosive diarrhea? Those annoying little critters are sometimes deadly, they exist in abundance, and are free for the taking. Why not use them as weapons? It sure beats hand to hand combat where soldier risk getting skewered on a sword, beheaded, or dismembered. Don’t take it too deeply into consideration though because all manner of vermin are hard to control; they don’t obey orders, they don’t go where you want them to, and they are just as likely to attack your own army as they are to attack the enemy’s. A little human ingenuity is necessary here.
So this is where Lockwood starts. From prehistoric times to our own age, people have attempted to use insects as weapons, some more successfully than others. As any broad-scoped popular history book would, this one starts out with the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the predecessors. It draws on the Old Testament as a source, and then looks at a few examples from the Middle Ages. Most of these attempts at militarizing insects are bumbling, awkward failures. Some of the passages are simply conjectural guesswork as to whether or not insects were militarized or what kinds of them were actually used. The author uses science to guess what really happened in these battles, drawing on the symptoms of illnesses and his expertise in entomology to draw some shaky conclusions. The writing is just as awkward, uneven, and bumbling as the historical attempts at fighting enemies with swarms of unruly pests were. I really take issue with the way he dwells so much on the Bible in an attempt to engage the reader. He writes as if he doesn’t have any real interest in Biblical studies, but he wants to throw this stuff in there on the assumption that a lot of religious people without any interest in science might want to read this. This kind of pandering doesn’t do the subject matter justice.
The following sections on World War II and the Cold War are much more interesting and well-written. Lockwood writes about Japan’s infamous Unit 731, the biological warfare laboratory that used living humans as subjects for experimentation. Shiro Ishii, the Japanese equivalent of Nazi Germany’s Josef Mengele, oversaw a project to develop bombs that would spread vector fleas infected with bubonic plague all over China. This is the most chilling part of the book and what makes it even worse is that Ishii was never brought to trial for war crimes; instead America let him off the hook in exchange for the extensive experimental records that were kept in the facility.
Meanwhile, the Americans began running their own biological and insectan warfare program in Maryland’s Fort Detrick. The scientists there went as far as dropping mosquito bombs in Arkansas, as if that state needs any more mosquitoes than they already have, to see how fast a plague could potentially develop. Also of interest during the Cold War were accusations against America during the Korean War of spreading disease-carrying swarms of fleas in China and North Korea. Fidel Castro also became obsessive about accusing America of launching crop-killing potato bugs into Cuba. Maybe that was a result of Operation Mongoose where the CIA tried spiking his drinks with LSD. Lockwood does an interesting job of analyzing whether or not these charges, broughght against the U.S.A. at the United Nations, were based on fact or if they were merely propaganda campaigns.
The final section of the book covers present and future uses of insects as agents of military use.
The author’s writing is uneven. As mentioned before, the chapters on ancient uses of vermin for war were clumsy. The book really takes off in the twentieth century chapters, but even there it is a bit of a letdown. It turns out that insects in the Cold War era were used more as symbolic weapons in propaganda campaigns then they were in actual combat. Experiments with insects as biological warfare tools have also been inefficient and ineffective. So while this section of the book is more interesting and better-written, the subject matter wears a little thin. It also seems like the proof-reader stopped paying attention towards the end of the book because the last chapters are so full of spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors that it becomes difficult to read at times.
Six-Legged Soldiers has potential to be a more interesting read than it is. If Jeffrey Lockwood spent more time on the actual writing, it would be better. Still, the subject matter is interesting enough to make it worth reading once. Plus the thought of the Japanese and American militaries mass-breeding insects, infecting them with diseases, and using them in warfare against civilian populations is scary enough to make you keep you awake at night. I’m not an advocate of insomnia, but I fear if we become too comfortable we will also become too complacent and that is not a good thing.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody that insects were being used as weapons of war in ancient times. What could be more detrimental to an army’s morale than being splattered with honey then having a beehive launched into the middle of your battalion? Or how about being routed into a swampy area where malaria-carrying mosquitoes live in abundance? How well can an army fight after some digestive parasite gives them migraine headaches, dizzying fever, double visions, and explosive diarrhea? Those annoying little critters are sometimes deadly, they exist in abundance, and are free for the taking. Why not use them as weapons? It sure beats hand to hand combat where soldier risk getting skewered on a sword, beheaded, or dismembered. Don’t take it too deeply into consideration though because all manner of vermin are hard to control; they don’t obey orders, they don’t go where you want them to, and they are just as likely to attack your own army as they are to attack the enemy’s. A little human ingenuity is necessary here.
So this is where Lockwood starts. From prehistoric times to our own age, people have attempted to use insects as weapons, some more successfully than others. As any broad-scoped popular history book would, this one starts out with the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, and the predecessors. It draws on the Old Testament as a source, and then looks at a few examples from the Middle Ages. Most of these attempts at militarizing insects are bumbling, awkward failures. Some of the passages are simply conjectural guesswork as to whether or not insects were militarized or what kinds of them were actually used. The author uses science to guess what really happened in these battles, drawing on the symptoms of illnesses and his expertise in entomology to draw some shaky conclusions. The writing is just as awkward, uneven, and bumbling as the historical attempts at fighting enemies with swarms of unruly pests were. I really take issue with the way he dwells so much on the Bible in an attempt to engage the reader. He writes as if he doesn’t have any real interest in Biblical studies, but he wants to throw this stuff in there on the assumption that a lot of religious people without any interest in science might want to read this. This kind of pandering doesn’t do the subject matter justice.
The following sections on World War II and the Cold War are much more interesting and well-written. Lockwood writes about Japan’s infamous Unit 731, the biological warfare laboratory that used living humans as subjects for experimentation. Shiro Ishii, the Japanese equivalent of Nazi Germany’s Josef Mengele, oversaw a project to develop bombs that would spread vector fleas infected with bubonic plague all over China. This is the most chilling part of the book and what makes it even worse is that Ishii was never brought to trial for war crimes; instead America let him off the hook in exchange for the extensive experimental records that were kept in the facility.
Meanwhile, the Americans began running their own biological and insectan warfare program in Maryland’s Fort Detrick. The scientists there went as far as dropping mosquito bombs in Arkansas, as if that state needs any more mosquitoes than they already have, to see how fast a plague could potentially develop. Also of interest during the Cold War were accusations against America during the Korean War of spreading disease-carrying swarms of fleas in China and North Korea. Fidel Castro also became obsessive about accusing America of launching crop-killing potato bugs into Cuba. Maybe that was a result of Operation Mongoose where the CIA tried spiking his drinks with LSD. Lockwood does an interesting job of analyzing whether or not these charges, broughght against the U.S.A. at the United Nations, were based on fact or if they were merely propaganda campaigns.
The final section of the book covers present and future uses of insects as agents of military use.
The author’s writing is uneven. As mentioned before, the chapters on ancient uses of vermin for war were clumsy. The book really takes off in the twentieth century chapters, but even there it is a bit of a letdown. It turns out that insects in the Cold War era were used more as symbolic weapons in propaganda campaigns then they were in actual combat. Experiments with insects as biological warfare tools have also been inefficient and ineffective. So while this section of the book is more interesting and better-written, the subject matter wears a little thin. It also seems like the proof-reader stopped paying attention towards the end of the book because the last chapters are so full of spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors that it becomes difficult to read at times.
Six-Legged Soldiers has potential to be a more interesting read than it is. If Jeffrey Lockwood spent more time on the actual writing, it would be better. Still, the subject matter is interesting enough to make it worth reading once. Plus the thought of the Japanese and American militaries mass-breeding insects, infecting them with diseases, and using them in warfare against civilian populations is scary enough to make you keep you awake at night. I’m not an advocate of insomnia, but I fear if we become too comfortable we will also become too complacent and that is not a good thing.
August 4, 2010
Who can resist a title like this? I thought this would be just a curious and funny subject, but it is fascinating, very well written, and I learned a TON about history and bugs. The humans are far creepier and more disgusting than the insects are. Even the footnotes are not to be missed, and the suggested reading well organised. No doubt Lockwood is a favourite professor with Natural Science and Humanities students at the University of Wyoming, as his abilities to be simultaneously educational, interesting, accessible, and discussion-provoking are flawless. Warning: if you read this in the presence of another person, you might become the type that is constantly interrupting with, "Oh my god, listen to this!" However, you can have confidence that whatever you share with them from this book will elicit so many "Whoa!"'s and "No way!"'s that eventually if you even whisper "Damn..." under your breath, they will demand to know what you just read.
Read
October 31, 2008Though the title sounds like a low-budget horror movie from the fifties this book is nothing like that. Instead, Six-Legged Soldiers is a very fascinating chronicle of the use of insects, and their kin, as weapons of war and agents of terror. Mixing everything from military history to microbiology and entomology one may think this would be the driest book ever written. I guarantee the hot and steamy
insect-on-human action will keep you turning the pages.
This book offers a glimpse into the dark and dirty deeds of
governments and rulers from times ancient to times present. Displayed throughout is that renowned human capacity for inflicting pain, suffering, and death on our fellows. I was amazed to discover how much our insectan cousins have been at the center of events great and small in the course of world history. Vivid descriptions of bee stings, tick bites, and yellow fever (also charmingly known as--and this is a great death metal band name--"Black Vomit") are found in
abundance.
However, not all is awful and depressing. The author writes
with considerable wit and humor where it is needed. Poisonous honey (in small doses enjoyable for humans), a primitive Gatling gun with bees as ammunition, and parachuting voles all shine under the author's great skill.
Six-Legged soldiers covers an overlooked, though no less dramatic,area of our time on this planet. With that in mind, I will definitely be recommending this for the holiday season. Armchair historians and scientists that have read the standard stuff will all find much to appreciate in Lockwood's excellent, enjoyable, and very readable book.
Ryan K
insect-on-human action will keep you turning the pages.
This book offers a glimpse into the dark and dirty deeds of
governments and rulers from times ancient to times present. Displayed throughout is that renowned human capacity for inflicting pain, suffering, and death on our fellows. I was amazed to discover how much our insectan cousins have been at the center of events great and small in the course of world history. Vivid descriptions of bee stings, tick bites, and yellow fever (also charmingly known as--and this is a great death metal band name--"Black Vomit") are found in
abundance.
However, not all is awful and depressing. The author writes
with considerable wit and humor where it is needed. Poisonous honey (in small doses enjoyable for humans), a primitive Gatling gun with bees as ammunition, and parachuting voles all shine under the author's great skill.
Six-Legged soldiers covers an overlooked, though no less dramatic,area of our time on this planet. With that in mind, I will definitely be recommending this for the holiday season. Armchair historians and scientists that have read the standard stuff will all find much to appreciate in Lockwood's excellent, enjoyable, and very readable book.
Ryan K
August 13, 2009
Scary stuff, from rampaging Roman soldiers being posioned by honey left out by the locals, medieval plagues brought on by throwing decaying cows over the ramparts, truely horrific World War I and II bio-warfare, American and British experiments held behind closed doors post-WWII, and up to the present day with robotic insects and the threat of bio-terrorism on agriculture. This is not for the faint-hearted. Lockwood writes superbly, readers will not be overwhelmed with scientific detail, and he offers thoughtful political and historical insight into the subject.
August 28, 2024
Lockwood writes about biological warfare. The book starts with armies dropping bee hives on one another, moving of to the toll that disease has taken in various wars - "In every conflict up to the Russo-Japanese War, disease had taken a greater toll than bullets and bombs."
It then moves on to the intentional introduction of insects and disease agents into enemy forces and their lands. The Japanese instituted a biological warfare laboratory under the direction of Shiro Ishii during WW II. After the war, the U.S. started a major effort largely based on Ishii's work.
Much of the rest of the book relates accusations of biological warfare made by various countries against other countries, the supporting arguments and the responses. The book gets bogged down in these inconclusive arguments - it is unclear to what degree any actual biological warfare has taken place.
"George W. Bush's secretary of the navy, Richard Danzig, who played a leading role in encouraging the government to prepare for bioterrorism, summarized the problem: Even if you suspect biological terrorism, it's hard to prove. It's equally hard to disprove."
"... researchers understood that biological warfare had run into two fundamental problems. First, human pathogens are well suited to living in host tissues but poorly adapted to living outside. Heat, cold, desiccation, and ultraviolet radiation quickly destroy the microbes. And second, bacteria cannot move in the environment.
Rather than forcing human ingenuity at every step of disease transmission, the key was to exploit what millions of years of evolution had painstakingly developed: vectors."
Later chapters look at possible eco-terrorism, the introduction of non-native invasive insects, the potential use of insects to detect explosives, the construction of micro robots to mimic insects, and the legality of and agreements around biological weapons.
It then moves on to the intentional introduction of insects and disease agents into enemy forces and their lands. The Japanese instituted a biological warfare laboratory under the direction of Shiro Ishii during WW II. After the war, the U.S. started a major effort largely based on Ishii's work.
Much of the rest of the book relates accusations of biological warfare made by various countries against other countries, the supporting arguments and the responses. The book gets bogged down in these inconclusive arguments - it is unclear to what degree any actual biological warfare has taken place.
"George W. Bush's secretary of the navy, Richard Danzig, who played a leading role in encouraging the government to prepare for bioterrorism, summarized the problem: Even if you suspect biological terrorism, it's hard to prove. It's equally hard to disprove."
"... researchers understood that biological warfare had run into two fundamental problems. First, human pathogens are well suited to living in host tissues but poorly adapted to living outside. Heat, cold, desiccation, and ultraviolet radiation quickly destroy the microbes. And second, bacteria cannot move in the environment.
Rather than forcing human ingenuity at every step of disease transmission, the key was to exploit what millions of years of evolution had painstakingly developed: vectors."
Later chapters look at possible eco-terrorism, the introduction of non-native invasive insects, the potential use of insects to detect explosives, the construction of micro robots to mimic insects, and the legality of and agreements around biological weapons.
July 17, 2024
Societies have used insects as weapons since ancient times. From clay "bombs" filled with wasps and catapulted into enemy lines to the distribution of infected insects to spread plague, malaria, or viruses, there's something primal about insect warfare that strikes at our core. The thought disturbs us so much that we all but ignore this tool of asymmetric warfare, preferring to wish it away rather than acknowledge it and take a defensive posture.
Six-Legged Solidiers explores not just the creepy ways that insects have and can be used in battle. It explores how they can be deployed to destroy crops and damage economies. It also shows the positive side, with bees trained to detect landmines and explosives, how roaches can be used for reconnaissance, and how insects can provide models for flight.
A fascinating if disturbing read.
Six-Legged Solidiers explores not just the creepy ways that insects have and can be used in battle. It explores how they can be deployed to destroy crops and damage economies. It also shows the positive side, with bees trained to detect landmines and explosives, how roaches can be used for reconnaissance, and how insects can provide models for flight.
A fascinating if disturbing read.
February 9, 2018
Fascinating stuff. Perhaps a little too detailed/exhaustive for the casual reader; I have some friends who weren't able to stick with it. It's astonishing to see the variety of ways that insects have been exploited as weapons for thousands of years. Mosquitoes, fleas, and lice as vectors of debilitating disease, okay, that's pretty obvious, but honey bees as minesweepers? Crop pests like thrips and medflies to devastate economies? Assassin bugs and sheep ticks as torture devices? Fireflies as nerve gas detectors... human prisoners being used as blood banks to rear thousands of insect pests... the list goes on. Nasty, gruesome stuff.... and stuff that we should probably devote more attention to, as a matter of national security. Just saying.
May 9, 2024
As a fan of military history, creepy-crawlies, and Wyoming authors, this book had it all for me.
I like that the author states his non-neutrality in the beginning, but does his best to include as many accounts as possible (even dubious ones, as he put it) so that a reader can have the best representation of the topic possible. The inclusion of a passage for additional books to read on "Entomological Warfare, Terror, and Torture" is very kind.
One of the biggest lessons I've learned from this book is to avoid random honey I've found by the roadside during a military campaign.
I like that the author states his non-neutrality in the beginning, but does his best to include as many accounts as possible (even dubious ones, as he put it) so that a reader can have the best representation of the topic possible. The inclusion of a passage for additional books to read on "Entomological Warfare, Terror, and Torture" is very kind.
One of the biggest lessons I've learned from this book is to avoid random honey I've found by the roadside during a military campaign.
January 5, 2018
I really tried to read this book. I got 19% of the way before I gave up. I thought the concept behind it was interesting but this is so dryly written I’m having an impossible time focusing on it. The combination of impossible to believe stories and dry facts weren’t doing it for me. I’m keeping it downloaded and I may try again in the future but for now it looks like this will forever be a DNF.
June 1, 2019
I really enjoyed Lockwoods Locust, but this one never kicked in for me. It is informative, comprehensive, and century-spanning, but it never seems to get going like Locust did. It has some amusing and sardonic wordplay, but overall not quite as compelling a read.
March 17, 2020
A basic book to know more about entomological warfare. Helped me a lot to write my next thriller.
January 7, 2014
Interesting topic but a chore to read in many places
As a history teacher, I was excited to see a whole new take on warfare so I eagerly snatched up Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War .
However, as good as the information in the book is, it is a difficult read. There's a lot of repetition in the first part of the book and it just bogs down in the sections on World War II, Korea and the Cold War. A good co-author would have been my recommendation.
The best two sections are the ones on the American Civil War and the last chapters on the dangers we face nowadays from the prospect of insect-based terrorism. They are shorter and move along nicely.
Lockwood admits that he is not a professional historian in his introduction on page X and at times it shows. He is probably the only person to have ever asserted in print that General Henry Halleck was a good field commander after he asssumed command from Grant after the Battle of Shiloh. Lockwood assumes Halleck made the connection between mosquitoes and malaria (most assumed malaria came from things such as "swamp vapors") and let the mosquitoes force Beauregard to retreat.
In another chapter he made the mistake of...
Read more at: http://dwdsreviews.blogspot.com/2010/...
As a history teacher, I was excited to see a whole new take on warfare so I eagerly snatched up Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War .
However, as good as the information in the book is, it is a difficult read. There's a lot of repetition in the first part of the book and it just bogs down in the sections on World War II, Korea and the Cold War. A good co-author would have been my recommendation.
The best two sections are the ones on the American Civil War and the last chapters on the dangers we face nowadays from the prospect of insect-based terrorism. They are shorter and move along nicely.
Lockwood admits that he is not a professional historian in his introduction on page X and at times it shows. He is probably the only person to have ever asserted in print that General Henry Halleck was a good field commander after he asssumed command from Grant after the Battle of Shiloh. Lockwood assumes Halleck made the connection between mosquitoes and malaria (most assumed malaria came from things such as "swamp vapors") and let the mosquitoes force Beauregard to retreat.
In another chapter he made the mistake of...
Read more at: http://dwdsreviews.blogspot.com/2010/...
May 3, 2010
This is an extremely interesting book and written in a lively, engaging way. Who can resist the image of Gatling guns firing beehives at the enemy, or little electronic backpacks on bees? The author's wit spiced up all the facts crammed into the text, with bits like:
"When Ishii lit up the 'Applause' sign for biological warfare, Japanese leadership gave him a standing ovation." (page 98)
"Releasing tens of thousands of live pests over Germany to test an entomological weapon system had the same downside as aiming a gun at one's own head and pulling the trigger to see if it is loaded. The beetles falling on the German countryside in the name of military science had no allegiance and were more than happy to bite the hand -- or the fields -- of those who bred them." (page 134)
"The Moroccans had to be persuaded that finding goat droppings on their roofs the morning after Allied aircraft flew over was a sheer coincidence." (page 151)
This book will appeal to people interested in the following things: history, war, entomology, medicine, and technology. And probably more things; those are just those I pulled off the top of my head.
"When Ishii lit up the 'Applause' sign for biological warfare, Japanese leadership gave him a standing ovation." (page 98)
"Releasing tens of thousands of live pests over Germany to test an entomological weapon system had the same downside as aiming a gun at one's own head and pulling the trigger to see if it is loaded. The beetles falling on the German countryside in the name of military science had no allegiance and were more than happy to bite the hand -- or the fields -- of those who bred them." (page 134)
"The Moroccans had to be persuaded that finding goat droppings on their roofs the morning after Allied aircraft flew over was a sheer coincidence." (page 151)
This book will appeal to people interested in the following things: history, war, entomology, medicine, and technology. And probably more things; those are just those I pulled off the top of my head.
May 27, 2016
If you like insects and out-of-the-box methods of defense, this is the book for you. I learned so much about how to weaponize insects that I'm now very concerned about our national defense strategy, which is pretty much nil. If you thought invasive species and "natural" outbreaks like West Nile Virus were hard to battle, try suppressing a plague of yellow fever. Insects also work great for terrorism because they're low tech, easy to obtain, and psychologically threatening. Obtaining the virus and choosing the right vector is really the only challenge to upsetting our first world health care and agricultural systems. Scary concept but great explanations on how it works and who has used these tactics throughout history from Biblical times to the Cold War. (Not all of which have been confirmed by the American government, but lots of facts don't lie either.)
March 17, 2011
This non-fiction gem provides a general, but phenomenal and historical account of entomological/biological warfare from ancient times to present. Lockwood's research offers the reader insight on various topics including, but not limited to: Insects and disease during wartime, weaponization of insect vectors throughout history, defensive strategies against entomological warfare, and the hypothetical future of US agriculture if an economic/entomological/agricultural terrorist attack were to arise. IMO it is worth a read for anyone interested in such topics, independent of a person's previous knowledge or research.
Read
August 2, 2011The author has several fascinating stories that are then drowned in too many details for the average reader. I'm not sure who the audience is - must be the military historian. I found myself lingering around the multiple references of the US military running trials of bacterial strains and biting insects in several of our major coastal cities and rural islands. Wondering if there is a blow back there, like when the Germans released potato bugs in their own country during WWIII. I'm amazed at our capacity for destroying others - and the creative lengths we go to acheive this.
March 30, 2011
an interesting history ranging from ancient warriors hurling bags of bees at their enemies to bioterrorism threats of insect-born disease and crop destruction as tools of war. Not as rich a work as Lockwood's "Locust", but still an interesting read, if a bit alarmist.
May 12, 2013
I'm reading this book (among many other books) for background research on the history of biological warfare and must say this is one of the most exciting, best written historical accounts I have read. Great stuff!
July 21, 2009
I really liked some portions of this book. It was a bit dry on others, though I was admittedly skimming. The sections on poison honey and ancient beliefs about poisons were really nice.
December 14, 2010
not as fascinating as Locust.
January 7, 2014
Lost all interest in the book when I reaches the rant against the US during the Korean War.
November 15, 2015
Ok so, I didn't actually finish this book. I got a few chapters in and couldn't read anymore. The idea for the book is an intriguing one, but each chapter is very dry and haphazard.
January 16, 2016
This was OK, but the technical aspects of weaponizing insects got deeper and deeper as the book progressed so I could hardly follow it at times. Still worth a look.
January 26, 2016
Very interesting subject matter!!
September 29, 2014
Both interesting and creepy.
August 31, 2015
very interesting & very horrifying.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews