Terrorist How To - Insects!
It sounds like a version of the early Bruce Willis-Brad Pitt classic, 12 Monkeys -- a man with a suitcase infecting the world -- but with an all natural green twist. Instead of using toxic chemicals or destructive bombs, University of Wyoming entomologist Jeffrey Lockwood believes that a terrorist cell could easily wreak havoc using insects. Professor Lockwood has a new book on the topic, Six-legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War. In an interview with the BBC (presumably to promote the book) he talked about how simple and inexpensive it would be for a even a small group to infect a huge number of people, just by transporting a suitcase full of infected insects into a country.
Maybe it is easy...if you're an entomologist. But I'm going to hang on to the idea that most terrorists aren't educated in the ways of bugs, and will automatically swat mosquitoes as quickly as the rest of us.
Plus, I find it hard to believe it's really that simple to smuggle enough insects on to a plane to do real damage. It's hard to get a tube of lip gloss through security, so probably test tubes of creepy crawlers would attract some attention.
Still, come summer time it's best to light those citronella candles. You never know what's flying around out there!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-09-2009 @ 4:45PM
louis said...
Terrorists are extremely educated people. Their intelligence combined with the zealous passion they hold for their believes causes them to think up of new ways to hurt people that we would never think of. 10 years ago we would have never thought that liquids brought into carry-on would be able to explode a plane, yet terrorists found a way to do so, although they weren't able to follow through with it thank god.
If terrorists are willing to kill themselves for a cause, chances are their willing to study insects if there's a remote possibility it could help them obtain their goal of terrorizing.
As for the "smuggling enough insects on a plane" comment, who said they would be using commercial air crafts? Do criminals involves in the black market, transporting literally tons of drugs, humans, animals, weapons, etc. only use Delta airlines? No. Terrorists does not impose themselves any limitations as to whether they'd prefer to travel in the air, on ground, on water, or under-water with their own vehicles.
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