Biological Warfare

I’ve hesitated in writing this post, but the thought just won’t go out of my head.  Asymmetric and guerrilla warfare have become conflict trademarks of the past 50 years.  Defeating the insurgents or alternatively beating a bigger foe has been something that I’ve thought about sitting in the comfort of my condominium in the US.

In that context I remember a story my father started to write after the Six Day War began in 1967 and there was danger that Israel would eventually be overrun, if not then, in 50 years.  The gist of the story was that Israel engaged a scientist (modeled after my uncle who was a professor at Yale), who invented a chemical that would be surreptitiously inserted into the water supply of surrounding entities perhaps using feral cats  This chemical would sharply reduce fertility and if needed, eliminate it altogether.  It was of course a story about bioterrorism, similar to the way invading European countries introduced new diseases to America and killed much of the Indigenous population, albeit unintentional.

It was just a story, but recently I’ve asked myself why some country or entity hasn’t tried it already?  Perhaps they have.  But in this day of Agent Orange, cluster bombs, nuclear and thermo-nuclear weapons, it’s hard for me to believe that it’s not on someone’s radar.