Insects: The New Face of Terrorism? (back)
February 12, 2009
The nature of modern terrorism shows that people are often caught off guard by attacks that use the most seemingly innocent devices.
In a column published in UK ’s The Times Online, guest contributor Jeffrey A. Lockwood issued a warning against overlooking ecoterrorists’ use of insects as weapons.
‘A great strategic lesson of 9/11 has been overlooked. Terrorists need only a little ingenuity, not sophisticated weapons, to cause enormous damage. Armed only with box-cutters, terrorists hijacked aircraft and brought down the World Trade Center ,’ Lockwood writes. ‘Insects are the box-cutters of biological warfare - cheap, simple and wickedly effective.’
‘Insects are one of the cheapest and most destructive weapons available to terrorists today, and one of the most widely ignored: they are easy to sneak across borders, reproduce quickly and can spread disease and destroy crops with devastating speed.’
Lockwood is an entomologist, a professor of philosophy and creative writing at the University of Wyoming , and author of the book ‘Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War.’
Lockwood said the 9/11 attacks resulted in the loss of thousands of lives as and $27.2 billion. In comparison, the Asian longhorned beetle, which arrived in 1996, and the emerald ash borer, found in 2002, could take out more than $700 billion worth of forests, according to US Department of Agriculture estimates.
What’s more, insects carry diseases, which could transfer onto crops and eventually humans.
America saw the effects of insect-borne diseases on a smaller scale when West Nile virus found its way into the nation’s borders in 1999. The nation’s defenses were useless against the disease, which killed 654 people and sickened 7,000.
Lockwood said the US ’s losing battle against West Nile virus is another reason why the nation should be concerned about its African cousin, Rift Valley fever.
‘Originally discovered in 1931, this viral disease caused miscarriages in livestock while young animals suffered 10 to 70 per cent mortality rates. Mosquitoes spread the virus from Kenya . In 1997 a virulent strain appeared, able to infect the human nervous system. About 200,000 Egyptians fell ill, of whom 2,000 lost their sight and 598 died of encephalitis. Every region of the US has a mosquito species that is capable of carrying the disease.’
And Lockwood said it would be easy for an ecoterrorist to introduce the disease into the US with $100 worth of supplies, simple instructions and a plane ticket.
‘Stacking a nation’s defenses along its borders is a strategic error,’ wrote Lockwood. ‘The better model is that of public health. Rather than hoping to stop every sick traveler entering a country, a wise government would stockpile vaccines, train health professionals and educate the public.’
‘Western societies tend to think in terms of the short-term spectacle and heroic saviors of Hollywood action movies. Our disconnection from the natural world makes us believe that risk and benefit unfold at a blistering pace,’ Lockwood writes.
‘For a terrorist group with patience, a slow-motion disaster in ecological time would be a perfect tactic against an enemy that thinks in terms of days or months, but would suffer across the generations,’ he concluded.
Source: http://www.redorbit.com/modules/news/tools.php?tool=print&id=1632293
Re: post 985
And Lockwood said it would be easy for an ecoterrorist to introduce the disease into the US with $100 worth of supplies, simple instructions and a plane ticket.<<<
In 1998 or 99, I picked up a shortwave program on the shortwave and it told in detail how to make disease in your kitchen and even transport it on a plane in a vial tucked in your bra.
The instructions were simply enough for me to understand and I do not have any training in science or lab work.
I also, on the same station, learned how to take down electric high tension towers and to toss branches onto electric lines so they will break and it will look like an “Act of God”.
And then the station disappeared and I never found it again.
So when you think of me as a conspiracy nut, think again, the years have given me many bits of information, but not enough to make me an expert in any thing...
granny