Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. Think so much for tuning in.
Speaker 1: My name is Ben, and I got to tell you
Speaker 1: something's bugging me. My name is Noel the big buzz Brown.
Speaker 1: Is that what they call you? Or they? Oh no,
Speaker 1: they call me they you know, the Royal Day, Good
Speaker 1: editorial Day. We're also we're also joined by our super producer,
Speaker 1: Casey the Big itch Pegram. How's it going, Casey scratching
Speaker 1: away over here? And I guess it sounds like it's
Speaker 1: that summertime in Georgia. Man. And you know, when you
Speaker 1: realize too part of this story is the government actually
Speaker 1: dumping more mosquitoes into Georgia. That's when you realize how
Speaker 1: truly callous and cruel the American government can be. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll take the name Ben dropkick Bowling. And it is true.
Speaker 1: The thing that specifically bugging me today is just the
Speaker 1: heat walking to work. But we are talking about bugs.
Speaker 1: We're talking about entomology, we're talking about warfare. We're talking
Speaker 1: about bug wars. Pretty cool, yeah, literal bug wars, right, So, nol,
Speaker 1: what's this? What? What what are you talking about? People?
Speaker 1: We are dropping mosquitoes into Georgia. That's one of them. Um.
Speaker 1: That was Operation Big Buzz, which in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: the Army um put more than three hundred thousand uninfected
Speaker 1: mosquitoes into bombs and then dropped them onto the unsuspecting
Speaker 1: population of Savannah, Georgia. And this was a test for
Speaker 1: something that the government was working on in a much
Speaker 1: larger scale, Uh, the weaponization of insects. We'll get into
Speaker 1: the specifics of each of these operations, but for now, Ben,
Speaker 1: what the hell is the weaponization of insects. Let's let's
Speaker 1: let's backtrack a little bit. Sure, it's a form of
Speaker 1: biological warfare. You know, it's something that a lot of
Speaker 1: engineers have said before in the past. People can make
Speaker 1: things that are pretty good in terms of technology, but
Speaker 1: when it comes to the natural results of evolution, Mother
Speaker 1: nature tends to make pretty great stuff. So why would
Speaker 1: we go back and try to build tiny, tiny machines
Speaker 1: and weapons of our own when we could just use
Speaker 1: the existing creatures insects. Yeah, we know that various versions
Speaker 1: of weaponizing animals have gone varying ways. Dolphins, Um, that
Speaker 1: the tiny bat bombs, You know that on Japan. The
Speaker 1: idea that the bats would deploy into eaves of homes
Speaker 1: and then these inside darry devices would go off and
Speaker 1: then burn down Japan. UM, that didn't work out so well.
Speaker 1: This story that we're talking about today, the weaponization of insects,
Speaker 1: has had varying degrees of success in various different cultures,
Speaker 1: not not only ours. UM. But here's the thing. So
Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century, UM, human beings in
Speaker 1: general started figuring out that insects carried diseases. The term
Speaker 1: is vectors. They were vectors for diseases. Uh. There is
Speaker 1: a professor at the University of Wyoming who explained it
Speaker 1: as such in the Casper Star Tribune, a gentleman by
Speaker 1: the name of Jeff Lockwood. He says, quote, the Japanese, French, Germans, English,
Speaker 1: and the United States all had entomological disease programs active
Speaker 1: during the Golden years of nineteen thirty to nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: and that includes a Japanese World War two program. Uh.
Speaker 1: The name of that program was Unit seven thirty one.
Speaker 1: Unit seven thirty one was the Japanese governments World War
Speaker 1: two analog to the horrific human experimentation that took place
Speaker 1: under the Nazi regime during the Holocaust. So Unit seven
Speaker 1: thirty one is a very very dark thing. It's not ridiculous, UH,
Speaker 1: but do be aware that it exists. Essentially, Unit seven
Speaker 1: thirty one engaged in tremendously horrific, unethical human experimentation. UH.
Speaker 1: There are sickening stories that are all true and that
Speaker 1: are worse than fiction. UH. You can you can learn
Speaker 1: more about these evil science experiments. I do not use
Speaker 1: the word evil lightly. By searching online, there of course
Speaker 1: numbers of books here. They were doing stuff like studying
Speaker 1: hypothermia by submerging people's limbs and water until the armor
Speaker 1: leg is frozen solid and ice formed over it, and
Speaker 1: then striking them with canes. They were essentially vivisecting people,
Speaker 1: conducting surgery on them while they were alive, starving them,
Speaker 1: burning them, infecting them with very diseases. And part of
Speaker 1: it was their weaponization of insects, wherein they sprayed fleas
Speaker 1: from low flying airplanes and these fleas were infected with
Speaker 1: cholera UM and according to the Boston Globe and another
Speaker 1: piece that Lockwood contributed to, UH, these deaths could have
Speaker 1: exceeded that of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Combined those bombings
Speaker 1: um at least four hundred and forty thousand Chinese were
Speaker 1: killed using these plague infected uh fleas. This is a
Speaker 1: that that number comes from an international symposium of historians
Speaker 1: and two thousand two, so relatively speaking, it's it's pretty recent.
Speaker 1: And think about that number, four hundred and forty thousand people. Japan,
Speaker 1: we should say as well, is the only country in
Speaker 1: history that has verifiably used bugs in war. Other countries
Speaker 1: have experimented with spoiler alert, one of them being the
Speaker 1: good old US of A. In fact, we experimented with
Speaker 1: this not once, but multiple times in a very short
Speaker 1: time span in the nineteen fifties, right, because we said
Speaker 1: there's a golden age from the nineteen thirties to the
Speaker 1: seventies in the US. We had not one, but three
Speaker 1: huge operations weaponizing insects in the mid nineteen fifties and
Speaker 1: it's fascinating stuff. The first one where Casey Pegram took
Speaker 1: his his nickname for today is Operation Big Itch, which
Speaker 1: also used fleas. Right, it's a page from the Japanese
Speaker 1: government there. Yes, and we have thanks to the lovely
Speaker 1: folks of the Smoking Gun have a document that catalogs
Speaker 1: several of these programs, one of which has been entirely redacted,
Speaker 1: But we do have a little bit of information about
Speaker 1: that one from some other sources. But according to section
Speaker 1: one of a document called the History of Infield Testing
Speaker 1: in the US, Operation Big Itch took place in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty four was a series of trials of tests that
Speaker 1: were conducted using fleas loaded into E fourteen munitions with
Speaker 1: what's described as cardboard and sponge inserts um. The idea
Speaker 1: was that the bugs would be dropped from altitudes of
Speaker 1: between three hundred and five and six ms over a
Speaker 1: testing area called the dug Way Proving Ground in Utah.
Speaker 1: The idea was to investigate uh the viability of the
Speaker 1: munitions used here and how um effective they would be
Speaker 1: in disseminating what's referred to very scientifically as these arthropod vectors.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, this specifically was the tropical rat flee or
Speaker 1: zeno scilla chopis. The logic here is pretty sound, right.
Speaker 1: The waves of death, known collectively as the Black Plague,
Speaker 1: came from fleas. They're very very good for transmitting diseases quickly.
Speaker 1: Big Itch showed a lot of promise, but it also
Speaker 1: had had some problems. So they were loaded into these
Speaker 1: munitions dropped from the air. As you said, up to
Speaker 1: what six They used a couple of different bombs, the
Speaker 1: E fourteen bomb and the E twenty three bomb, which
Speaker 1: they could cluster into a kind of a vultron arrangement
Speaker 1: called the eight six cluster bomb or the E seventy seven.
Speaker 1: Without getting two in the weeds on these abbreviations and numbers,
Speaker 1: just know that the E four team was designed to
Speaker 1: hold one hundred thousand fleas, and they E twenty three
Speaker 1: was designed to hold two hundred thousand fleas. The three
Speaker 1: was the worst performer. Over half of the bombs failed.
Speaker 1: They didn't meet their expectations. Uh, they malfunctioned during this
Speaker 1: is the worst part. They malfunctioned during testing and the plane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the fleas were released into the aircraft where they
Speaker 1: attacked the pilot, the bombardier, and an observer. So what
Speaker 1: was just sitting there, you know as a by standard.
Speaker 1: So they I'm at and you're you're about to launch
Speaker 1: a bomb of fleas and the bomb goes off in
Speaker 1: the plane. That's exactly what happens, and this by the way,
Speaker 1: it comes from a great book called Weapons of Mass
Speaker 1: Destruction and Encyclopedia of Worldwide Policy, Technology, and History by
Speaker 1: James J. Wurtz. Next, we have Operation Big Buzz, which
Speaker 1: was in nineteen fifty five, and this was an experiment
Speaker 1: that with the Georgia centric one that we mentioned earlier
Speaker 1: in the show. UM. It was a field test that
Speaker 1: was trying to figure out the I don't know the
Speaker 1: viability again of actually breeding and then um housing and
Speaker 1: then loading up into bombs uh and ultimately you know,
Speaker 1: scattering these across the land. Uh. Yellow fever infected mosquitoes. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: over three hundred thousand rows. And it gets even crazier
Speaker 1: than that, right. So they they did these tests in Savannah, Georgia,
Speaker 1: where they released three hundred and thirty thousand A. D. S.
Speaker 1: Egypti mosquitoes, which are known vectors for yellow fever. And
Speaker 1: they did this by dropping them on Georgia parks all
Speaker 1: throughout Savannah, UM, and they were kind of released out
Speaker 1: into suburbs as well. And the idea was that they
Speaker 1: would see how many reports came in of citizens being
Speaker 1: bitten and they would kind of be able to tell
Speaker 1: how effective this was as a means of dispersing this disease.
Speaker 1: Not the best methodology. When's the last time you contacted
Speaker 1: the government because of mosquito attack? Two these mosquitoes, by
Speaker 1: the way, thankfully we're not actually infected with yellow fever
Speaker 1: for the purposes of this test. But it's pretty insane
Speaker 1: to think that they said, Okay, let's just drop this
Speaker 1: off and see what happened. See who is so concerned
Speaker 1: about mosquitoes that they call us. They were also dropping
Speaker 1: these them the same bombs in the Big Itch, the
Speaker 1: E fourteen bombs, so they clearly thought that there was
Speaker 1: some promise for this. In total, I think it was
Speaker 1: one million female mosquitoes they bred for the testing, at
Speaker 1: least according to Public Health Issues Disaster Preparedness. That's a
Speaker 1: that's a real very sexy acronym. Yeah, super creative. Oh
Speaker 1: that would be fittip. Now that is pretty cool sounding Philip.
Speaker 1: That comes from John Marr and Lloyd Novic over at Philip.
Speaker 1: I think that's why I like acronym so much, because
Speaker 1: the sound of the acronym is usually infinitely more fascinating
Speaker 1: and intriguing than when you actually name out the individual words.
Speaker 1: A little easier to remember too, because it's anemonic. So
Speaker 1: what happened with the what happened with the the yellow
Speaker 1: fever run through or rehearsal there in Savannah? Well, what
Speaker 1: I mean it was annoying, right, I mean it was
Speaker 1: literally like you know, Georgia and Savannah in particular is
Speaker 1: a swampy kind of breeding ground for mosquitoes. Anyway, can
Speaker 1: you imagine just unleashing that on your own people. I mean,
Speaker 1: sure they weren't infected with the actual disease, right, but
Speaker 1: they were still essentially doing military tests on their own citizens, right.
Speaker 1: And there was even more subterfuge because we found that
Speaker 1: government officials disguised themselves as healthcare professionals to monitor the population.
Speaker 1: So that's how they were getting just to clarify, that's
Speaker 1: how they were intending to get feedback. That's pretty gross, man,
Speaker 1: It's definitely unethical. And with the with the results there,
Speaker 1: would would we say that that was a success, because
Speaker 1: the idea to get was they would they would drop
Speaker 1: them and the test was going to be whether the
Speaker 1: mosquitoes could survive the drop and then seek food on
Speaker 1: the ground, right, seek blood. Yeah, what they determined was
Speaker 1: the female mosquitoes actively sought blood meals from humans and
Speaker 1: guinea pigs, which is what were described as in the
Speaker 1: report um and that some of the mosquitoes were collected
Speaker 1: as far as four tenths of a mile from the
Speaker 1: target release site. So yes, it was absolutely effective. They
Speaker 1: could get into homes. You know, they would. I mean,
Speaker 1: if they were infected with this deadly disease, it would
Speaker 1: have been an absolute blood bath, no pun intended or
Speaker 1: maybe pun intended, what do I know? Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: absolutely this This seems ridiculous now, but it had enormous
Speaker 1: potential for destruction, so much so that after releasing these
Speaker 1: eighties at GIP time mosquitoes, the US government said, I
Speaker 1: really think we're onto something. Okay, maybe big. It was
Speaker 1: just a good starting point for us, and the Big
Speaker 1: Buzz showed some promise. So hey, guys, it's ninety six,
Speaker 1: we're living in the future. Let's do this one more time.
Speaker 1: What do you say for old time's sake? Fun? That's
Speaker 1: what I say. So that gives us the one of
Speaker 1: the more shadowy operations. Uh No, and as Operation drop Kick,
Speaker 1: which I believe which I believe was your nom de
Speaker 1: plume in this episode, right, Yeah. I have a very
Speaker 1: lazy fighting style. I just sort of put my foot
Speaker 1: up and then it drops. Yeah, exactly. It's very effective
Speaker 1: on shooes. Yeah, it's kind of an m M A style. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: So this was kind of similar to these other operations,
Speaker 1: but had some pretty important distinction. Uh, this took place
Speaker 1: in ninety six when, um, this is the Chemical Core,
Speaker 1: isn't that right? Isn't that with this operation Y which
Speaker 1: is an organization I was not familiar with. Tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about Chemical Core, Ben sure. The Chemical
Speaker 1: Core is the branch of the U. S Army. The
Speaker 1: official stories, they specifically work on defense against nuclear weapons,
Speaker 1: chemical biological weapons. You'll hear people say that for most
Speaker 1: of its history, the Chemical Core was actually tasked with
Speaker 1: delivering these weapons instead of defending against them. And you'll
Speaker 1: hear that because it's true. It's actually so. They conducted
Speaker 1: Operation drop Kick, Um, when they released six hundred thousand
Speaker 1: uninfected mosquitoes onto a bombing range in Avon Park, Florida. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right. And their methodology was improving. They were able
Speaker 1: to track these mosquitoes a little bit better. They were
Speaker 1: able to come up with an estimate of how many
Speaker 1: injured houses and bit people. And they also found that
Speaker 1: they could deliver them through a couple of different devices
Speaker 1: or methods. In this case, they were released from helicopters, right,
Speaker 1: and people in Avon Park still, some of them remembered this,
Speaker 1: you know, they were old enough to be conscious of
Speaker 1: these things happening. And they reported that mosquitoes weren't the
Speaker 1: only things released. There is a Avon Park resident named
Speaker 1: Beatrice Peterson who wasn't aware of the mosquito releases because
Speaker 1: they're already mosquitoes in Florida, but she did recall that
Speaker 1: a ton of screw worm flies were released in the
Speaker 1: mid to late nineteen fifties when she was fourteen, I think, yeah.
Speaker 1: And she describes them as being dropped from little boxes
Speaker 1: out of these helicopters, and then they'd see them at school, um,
Speaker 1: and the boxes would open up and the flies would
Speaker 1: be dispersed. Uh. And here's the thing. Avon Park in
Speaker 1: Florida was a prominently black neighborhood and prominantly lower income
Speaker 1: and a lot of folks actually got sick because of this,
Speaker 1: and I believe a handful actually died. Yeah, And we
Speaker 1: shouldn't skip over that because it is true that in
Speaker 1: many of the illegal experiments that the US conducted domestically,
Speaker 1: they focused on marginalized communities because they thought they could
Speaker 1: get away with it. They were at the very least
Speaker 1: be less legal trouble or less possibility. So the big
Speaker 1: question is what would have happened if these insects were
Speaker 1: carrying disease. The answers is clearly a public health disaster
Speaker 1: would have been possible, would have been in cards, you know,
Speaker 1: a yellow fever outbreak. So they found that in theory,
Speaker 1: unlike the bat bomb where the cyborg cat, which are
Speaker 1: both real things, this weaponization of insects had some sand
Speaker 1: to it, it could actually work. And although the three
Speaker 1: experiments we outlined occurred in the nineteen fifties, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that the U. S. Army called it quits. We
Speaker 1: have evidence that shows they were interested in it even
Speaker 1: more recently. Right, Yeah, we have some documentation that shows
Speaker 1: that up until as recently as the nineteen eighties eighty one.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's a report um on Entomological Warfare that
Speaker 1: piggybacks off of the research that was done at that
Speaker 1: dug Way Proving Ground in Utah, and the study actually
Speaker 1: looks more at how we could defend ourselves against attacks
Speaker 1: being done on US soil UM by infected mosquitoes with
Speaker 1: yellow fever. And according to the report UM it noted
Speaker 1: that U S Intelligence Informa SHIN indicated that Warsaw Pact
Speaker 1: nations have attempted to develop this capability UM and it
Speaker 1: also looks at cost estimates of what the fallout from
Speaker 1: these kinds of attacks might be. So this isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: looking at doing the research and developing these techniques ourselves,
Speaker 1: but more guarding against it in the case of attacks
Speaker 1: from other nations outside of America. Right, and this leads
Speaker 1: us into a bit of conspiratorial speculation here. We've heard
Speaker 1: of the zeka virus, right, Remember that was in the
Speaker 1: news a lot. So the zekea virus is a disease
Speaker 1: transmitted primarily by these mosquitoes that we mentioned earlier. Symptoms
Speaker 1: can be mild and include fever, rash, conjuncti vitus, muscle
Speaker 1: joint pain, malaise, a headache. It's twenty nineteen, man, I
Speaker 1: feel like most people have malaise of some sort nowadays,
Speaker 1: but it can it can pose great dangers. It can
Speaker 1: be particularly dangerous to unborn children. It can cause infants
Speaker 1: to be born with a number of delatorious conditions. But
Speaker 1: some people will tell you that the Zeka virus is
Speaker 1: an offshoot of the U. S. Armies e w OR
Speaker 1: Entomological warfare program, because in the nineteen thirties, this mosquito
Speaker 1: atis and gypti was found in every country in South
Speaker 1: and Central America, throughout the Caribbean, and even here in
Speaker 1: the southeastern United States. And then it came with you know,
Speaker 1: it came with all the diseases that this creature usually carries,
Speaker 1: yellow fever, dane fever, also called breakbone, and now zeka.
Speaker 1: So people were working to eradicate this troublesome creature, which
Speaker 1: was occurring naturally. It's not like Peru was bombing Brazil
Speaker 1: with these or something. In nineteen fifty eight, Brazil successfully
Speaker 1: eradicated the mosquito and was working to eradicate it not
Speaker 1: just from its own country, but from the rest of
Speaker 1: the hemisphere. This was gonna be where the culmination of
Speaker 1: decades of WOR. And unfortunately, even while the US was
Speaker 1: funding eradication efforts in South America, it was still secretly
Speaker 1: raising colonies of millions of these mosquitoes to use as weapons.
Speaker 1: So it was kind of shooting ourselves in the foot,
Speaker 1: robbing Peter to pay Paul. It seems like a get
Speaker 1: out of hand really quickly. And a lot of this
Speaker 1: research really makes me think, is the US responsible for
Speaker 1: how many mosquitoes ended up? Like in the South, they
Speaker 1: had mosquitoes already naturally occurred. Now I know that, but
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, like, when you dump that many more
Speaker 1: on top of it already thriving population, it's not gonna
Speaker 1: double down on that great time to be a bird.
Speaker 1: Because I was just thinking, like, already in this summer
Speaker 1: here in Atlanta, I'm already covered in mosquito bites and
Speaker 1: I haven't even spend that much time outside. So they
Speaker 1: definitely are able to infiltrate homes and get inside and
Speaker 1: you know, get at those uh, those blood bags that
Speaker 1: are human beings. I hear you can modify your diet.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true such that mosquitoes won't
Speaker 1: find you tasty. Yeah, yeah, you will. Hear people say
Speaker 1: that there are a couple of different what they call
Speaker 1: mosquito repellent foods, garlic and onions, and that's not a
Speaker 1: problem apple, cider, vinegar, lemon, grass, chili, peppers, grapefruit, which
Speaker 1: I am not going to eat. Not a grapefruit. No,
Speaker 1: hate it, hate it, not even like in a little cocktail,
Speaker 1: like a little grapefruit vodka. Grapefruit is an injustice that
Speaker 1: shall not stand interesting. I used to not like it.
Speaker 1: Either of the ruby red I find a little bit
Speaker 1: more palatable than the regular old I think it was
Speaker 1: because when I was in when I was in boy
Speaker 1: Scouts one summer in the middle of nowhere, we were
Speaker 1: stranded in a place where the only thing to drink
Speaker 1: was water or this rancid grapefruit juice. So that was
Speaker 1: my first six Yeah, I just can't do it. I
Speaker 1: fully support everyone who enjoys grapefruit, just don't make me participate.
Speaker 1: It's fine to each of them. I also heard a
Speaker 1: thing about mosquitoes that if you flick them off before
Speaker 1: they fully had a chance to do their dirty work,
Speaker 1: it itches more because there's some kind of antibody or
Speaker 1: something they inject into the bite after they finished that
Speaker 1: makes it like less itchy, kind of like the little
Speaker 1: cheese that you get if you donate blood. Exactly. It's
Speaker 1: just like that. I'm not even gonna bother confirming whether
Speaker 1: this is true. I just choose to believe it is true.
Speaker 1: But we definitely know it is true. Is there is
Speaker 1: a precedent for this kind of research, and we alluded
Speaker 1: to it earlier in the show. But in nine Heinrich
Speaker 1: himmler Um was ordered to create a research station, a
Speaker 1: laboratory that was based out of the concentration camp at
Speaker 1: Dakao under the command of the Nazi s S and
Speaker 1: that was to focus on studying diseases with the goal
Speaker 1: of protecting the Germans. But some new reports from the
Speaker 1: University of Tubing in an ecologist by the name of
Speaker 1: Klaus Reinhardt, indicate that they were actually working on offensive
Speaker 1: biological of warfare programs as well. Yeah, just like the
Speaker 1: US Chemical Core, you know, and they say it's for
Speaker 1: defense or research, but it turns out the potential for
Speaker 1: weaponizing this stuff is just too promising. Yeah. So under
Speaker 1: the Geneva Protocol, Hitler wasn't allowed to use chemical or
Speaker 1: biological weapons during World War Two. But you know, like
Speaker 1: we say, we can on paper say, yeah, of course,
Speaker 1: we're going to follow the rules of engagement, but behind
Speaker 1: closed doors, he had folks working around the clock to
Speaker 1: uh study the same thing that we're talking about in
Speaker 1: the United States, weaponization of mosquitoes and fleas, right, And
Speaker 1: as Klaus Reinhardt points out, reading through the details of
Speaker 1: the research seems to indicate that there was a another
Speaker 1: research program, a classified project code named dormouse or can
Speaker 1: you give it a shot? In German? How about sieben
Speaker 1: Schaffhle because it's got the umlaut over the a, so
Speaker 1: that makes it an a sound. I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 1: We found this in a Smithsonian article. This title is
Speaker 1: Golden Nazi scientists wanted to use mosquitoes to send diseases
Speaker 1: behind enemy lines, and that's by Colin Schultz, and it
Speaker 1: goes through this research material that we discussed, and it's
Speaker 1: some of the wording in these documents is what indicates
Speaker 1: there may have been a parallel program. So we don't
Speaker 1: necessarily know this for a fact or have confirmation, but
Speaker 1: there is some indication. Again, according to Reinhardt, the wording,
Speaker 1: he says, um in the German documents suggests that, uh,
Speaker 1: they knew that there was a planned release of mosquitoes. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So there's a report dated in September of September twenty three,
Speaker 1: And in this report they have some what we call
Speaker 1: weasel words. They got some wiggle room. They say they're
Speaker 1: carrying out research quote, in order to clarify the question
Speaker 1: whether an artificial mass infection of the malaria parasite onto
Speaker 1: humans is possible and how one can counter in action
Speaker 1: that aims at such mass infection. So the idea here is,
Speaker 1: ultimately we're learning how to protect ourselves against weaponized bugs,
Speaker 1: and the way we're going to do that is to
Speaker 1: weaponize some bugs and infect a ton of people with malaria.
Speaker 1: And then a pretty uh solid cover story is that
Speaker 1: they were doing this research to prevent plague outbreaks in
Speaker 1: the concentration camps with already weakened uh you know, prisoners
Speaker 1: of war that were used basically as slave labor um.
Speaker 1: So that was an important quality of this research as well. Right,
Speaker 1: they were entirely concerned with the slave labor aspect. It's
Speaker 1: not like they were working on people's quality of life.
Speaker 1: And I gotta say, you know, I'm surprised that this
Speaker 1: kind of thing has not been more widely reported or
Speaker 1: has not happened more often, because it's clearly unethical. But
Speaker 1: it would have to be effective. You know, the mosquitoes
Speaker 1: just get in everywhere, the ubiquitous. Well, we know it
Speaker 1: is effective from the way the Japanese used it on
Speaker 1: the Chinese with those insane numbers of casualties. I think
Speaker 1: we said in the neighborhood of half a million, Yeah,
Speaker 1: four hundred forty thousand. So I guess knock Wood, Thank
Speaker 1: our lucky stars. This hasn't been used more because it
Speaker 1: just sounds like an absolute terror. I mean, even the
Speaker 1: testing in Savannah. Can you imagine having that many bitey
Speaker 1: mosquitoes dropped on you during the heat of summer and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, like, where are these clouds of
Speaker 1: you know, insects coming from? It sounds like a biblical plague. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Savannah already has an atomic bomb resting in the
Speaker 1: water off the coast. Yeah. Man, they can't get a break.
Speaker 1: They can't get a break. I have to ask I
Speaker 1: have to ask you guys. Okay, So, no, you have
Speaker 1: what they in the South call sweet blood. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: because mosquitoes bite you love me, casey, what about you?
Speaker 1: Are bugs a fan of your blood? Unfortunately? Yes they are. Wow. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe you guys should incorporate some garlic onions, but
Speaker 1: I eat a lot of garlic and fruit to rub
Speaker 1: it on my actual body. Or yes, while intoning uh
Speaker 1: intoning the phrase bugs, bugs go away, drink my blood
Speaker 1: another day. I'll remember that for next time. And you, folks,
Speaker 1: for next time, remember to check us out on Facebook.
Speaker 1: Our group is called the Ridiculous Historians. You can be
Speaker 1: a member. All you gotta do is invoke my name,
Speaker 1: Casey's name, Ben's name, all three, or just make a
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Speaker 1: that sounds harsh. I promise if you if you send
Speaker 1: a good T shirt idea, or even one that we
Speaker 1: don't end up using, that's not grounds for rejection. And
Speaker 1: those sweet T shirt ideas may or may not end
Speaker 1: up in our t public store t public dot com
Speaker 1: slash Ridiculous History, where you can buy all kinds of
Speaker 1: ridiculous swag, including the brand new Casey on the Case
Speaker 1: childhood Modeling photo T shirt that to me looks like
Speaker 1: some kind of cool indie rock like Dinosaur Junior Sonic
Speaker 1: Youth shirt. I am actually I've got one packed in
Speaker 1: my bag for my upcoming trip and I plan to
Speaker 1: rocket all over New York City. They did a fantastic
Speaker 1: job with that when also also Casey, by the way,
Speaker 1: huge thanks again for letting us do that. I know
Speaker 1: I bugged you for a while. No I love how
Speaker 1: it turned out. So all's well well, So get you
Speaker 1: to get you one of those shirts. If you don't
Speaker 1: want to do that, which you should, you can check
Speaker 1: us out on Instagram. Me and Ben exist independently of
Speaker 1: the show. I am at how Now Noel Brown I post.
Speaker 1: You know my stories are fun. You can check me
Speaker 1: out hanging out with my kid eating a lot of
Speaker 1: fancy foods at different eateries around town in the United States.
Speaker 1: And Ben, you're on there too, aren't you. The rumors
Speaker 1: are true. You can find me on Instagram getting kicked
Speaker 1: into and out of various countries. I am at Ben
Speaker 1: Bowling there, and you can find me on Twitter hot
Speaker 1: takes left and right. I am at Ben Bolling h
Speaker 1: s W. We want to give a huge, huge thanks,
Speaker 1: of course to you super produce Casey Pegram, to you
Speaker 1: folks listening, and also to Alex Williams who composed our
Speaker 1: track Ye Gay Bluesier our research associate and friend Chris
Speaker 1: frasciotis here in spirit is always Jonathan Strickland, the quist joh.
Speaker 1: I'm starting to warm up to his antics a little bit.
Speaker 1: It is his birthday today, is we record HBD J
Speaker 1: strick Yeah. I just walked by, shot him a little
Speaker 1: finger gun and said, happy New Year, bro. I'll shoot
Speaker 1: him a different finger when I walked by. Okay, I
Speaker 1: feel like you might, but it will accompany birthday wishes.
Speaker 1: So let us know. Let us know what you think
Speaker 1: about these strange sorts of experiments, not just entomological warfare,
Speaker 1: but also the use of animals and war in general.
Speaker 1: We have never done what would be a lighthearted and
Speaker 1: delightful episode on animals who got military ranks. No, that's
Speaker 1: just adorable. Okay, we gotta do that. We gotta do
Speaker 1: that one. And if you want to send us those recommendations,
Speaker 1: you can write to us at ridiculous at my heart
Speaker 1: radio dot com. See you next time, folks. Yeah. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.