h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Insightfully Meaningless Writings of Random Specificity #7


This article, reader, is one in which the subject deeply disturbed me. So, with that being said, readers, if you are looking for humor you are not likely to find it in this article.
You go to work one fine sunny morning, thinking about what you might be having for lunch, or what you didn't have for breakfast. You wonder if that file will still be on your desk when you get finally getting to work. You check your watch, look for the train, tap your foot impatiently just knowing that you are going to be late for work . . .again. You think up your excuse while you wait. 'Gosh, a cup of tea or coffee would be great right about now,' you think to yourself. Seems like an average day for you . . .planning for an uneventful one. You expect nothing. You might feel a slight humidity if anything at all. Soon you begin to feel tightness in the chest. You grip your chest, wondering if you ate something bad. You notice the onset of a slight headache; still you think nothing about it . . .the flu you tell yourself. Soon though, the problems worsen. Your heart rate speeds up with the symptoms. Eye pain so severe you can't think . . . Wheezing, nausea, vomiting . . . soon your body weakens and you urinate and defecate involuntarily . . .paralysis begins and your body convulses so severely that you break your own bones . . .in your death throws you have respiratory failure and eventually death will come mercilessly. This could never happen right . . .not to you right . . . well, it did happen in 1995 in a Tokyo Subway. What was it? Sarin Gas.
Biological warfare, reader, is a weapon with far-reaching and insurmountable capabilities. And is by no means a new form of warfare. IN the 14th century the deceased, infected with bubonic plague were launched over the walls of castles to infect the besieged men within. It is defined by the use of biological agents designed to wage war and kill or maim through inhalation, skin contact, or ingestion. And more often than not reader, it is a warfare technique not recognized as to have happened until it is far to late. Biological infections can come and wipe out entire populous' without anyone ever even expecting it . . .see example above.

Unit 731

The Japanese, despite all of their honorable ways and fierce adherence to what they feel are morally upright and ethical social norms, have a dark, deep and ugly secret. So ugly in fact, that it makes most of Nazi Germany look like Dr. Seuss' playground. I am talking, reader, about Unit 731. A top secret, unchecked military "research" faction during the Russo-Japan war and World War II. Led by a prominent medical student by the name of Shiro Ishii, who became General of this organization. This unit was responsible for the testing and deploying of some of the most lethal toxins in the world, as well as inhumane research and cold methodical destruction of large groups of people.
Shiro Ishii was a skilled and gifted medical student by the late 1920's. Upon receiving his Ph.D. in Microbiology, he was stricken by what he felt was the promise of Biological Warfare. But he lacked one piece of the equation in mainland Japan . . . human subjects. Ishii felt that there were two main types of Biological Warfare, offensive and defensive (pretty profound don't you think). Defensive research could be carried out in Japan, but the offensive kind . . .oh there is the kick . . .could only be done abroad. The obvious outlet, the invasion of Mainland China.
Specializing his force, and with a profoundly overwhelming number of POW's, Ishii went to work. Horror soon ensued. Ishii was the ringleader of what would make the extermination of the Jews look like a picnic at your scary uncle Tim's. Experiments were ruthless and evil to the very definition of the words. If the scientists (who at the time were officers but after World War II would retire to successful, upstanding, and untouchable lives within the Japanese population) needed an organ for an experiment, they'd randomly select a person, and with a crude object such as an ax or some such tool, would simply remove the desired organ, without anesthetic and with the individual in full consciousness, then cremate this said person. People would be staked to a field and then would be targeted for bio-bombs at varying heights and calibers to determine the most volatile of combinations. These subjects would often meet with the worst imaginable pain before death. More often than not, the subjects would not die at the hands of the burgeoning biological infection, but rather under the bright lights of a dissection table. Again without anesthetics. Justified only with the idea that introducing chemicals would change the blood make up thus invalidating the results. Victims would still be alive as their very heart was removed. Ishii would turn loose plague infected fleas (who were infected from the exhumed blood of infected living human beings) upon neighboring villages, which were labeled as "spies." Again these bodies were examined and all materials taken. Reader would you like to know how close the US came to an attack as horrible as this. One month. One Month reader, One short month. The attack was to be an airborne spray of plague over the west coast originating from a Japanese sub launching kamikaze aircraft. Japan surrendered to the US one month shy of biological breakout in the US.
Ishii was pursued for war crimes obviously. He of course vehemently denied any testing on humans . . .saying it was only animals that were subjected. These tests, reader, left behind only 108 survivors. Investigations by the US were stunted however, because of the largely underdeveloped bioweapons program that it had. Seeing this as an opportunity, Ishii sold his results in their entirety (to include human tests results) to the US . . .for immunity. As did a lot of Ishii's subordinates. The US did, however, surpass Ishii's findings and labeled them as inconclusive. These Japanese men were then left to their lives and future careers with no indictments to speak of.

Sverdlovsk USSR

Sverdlovsk was the site of one of Russia's many accidents. In short, the Russians were experimenting with biological uses of Anthrax against troops. This scene plays out not unlike that of the opening scenes of Steven Kings The Stand. After close of business one fine day, the checks were made and filters removed as per the checklist. However, they made one little mistake this particular evening . . .THEY NEVER REPLACED IT. The next morning the incubators were started and the process for making the dreaded Anthrax virus was initiated. With the filters removed there was nothing to stop the Anthrax spores to be ventilated out into the outside air and being swept up with the wind. IT took a little while for the symptoms of Anthrax poisoning to be pronounced, but when they were, the effects were overwhelming and denied by the Russian Government. The spores passed over the neighboring military compound, a factory, and a residential neighborhood. Mortality for airborne anthrax is 100% or very close to it. Death toll was estimated to be between 64 and 600. Though witnesses put the results far closer to the 600-person mark.

In Rhodesia, biotoxins were introduced onto local farmland and in the local water to help squash a rebellion. It worked . . .however, the lasting effects of this introduction are evident on the barren landscape. My point reader, is that the lasting effects of a biological attack can never been known. The Aum Shinrikyo launched several biological attacks on the surrounding populous, however their attacks were largely thwarted by the ineptness of their biological agent or method of delivery. Finally, they accomplished their desired feat (it being the afore mentioned Tokyo Subway), but not with the intensity they had designed. Thankfully.

You see reader; a method of truly heinous conquest is Biological Warfare. These are considered weapons of mass destruction. Truly a Frankenstein Monster of the new age. These weapons know no allegiance, have no loyalty, and know no bounds. They go simply until they cease to exist. Scientists largely assume that these weapons have no "lasting" affect. Other than the psychological one. These weapons are designed to kill, not to beat into submission it's targets. The scientists, who were largely responsible for the data on humans, suffered no repercussion. Sick . . .yes it is. Immoral . . . I say yes. Scary and all to real. And the studies of these methods of warfare continue unabated partly because we believe we are immune. Stories like these are subject matter for fiction novelists and conspiracy theorists, I am neither. I simply recognize the hellish ordeal these can subjugate their victims. We do not know what effect these can have on the life in the long run. We don't know that a hiker wishing to take in scenic China one day won't be bitten by a plague infected flea and bring it home to his family and neighbors. Thus initiating another plague on humanity.


Information and inspiration for this was found in Plague Wars The Terrifying Reality OF Biological Warfare by Tom Mangold and Jeff Goldberg