Customer Reviews

Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Now this is good stuff right here. Sure, we've all heard about how the ancients used to launch jars filled with scorpions or how the Plains Indians would torture enemies by burying them up to their neck near a fire ant nest, but who would have thought that insects could be used as weapons in the modern era? This book takes a look at an odd, but surprisingly effective, history of insects and their military applications, both experimental and in practice, as well as some less than savory miscellanea.

The book starts off from the beginning, approrpirately enough, looking at a wide variety of insects (and other arthropods) being used by various generals throughout antiquity. The above mentioned examples are par for the course, but we also get mention of other anecdotes, such as the mythical venomous dikairon bird of India (which Lockwood identifies as a particularly nasty rove beetle), the use of bees and wasps to deter invaders, launching plague infected cadavers from trebuchet, and my personal favorite, the story of Nasrullah Bahadur-Shah, the Emir of Bukhara in Central Asia, who used assassin bugs and sheep ticks to torture his enemies. Lockwood is very attentive to the role that plagues, disease and poisons from insects have played in military history as well.

He continues on, however, into more recent historical applications of insects in warfare, going through the various attempts by the United Sates, Japan and Soviet Russia to use insects during World War II and the Cold War. In particular, he examines attempts to use insect vectors to spread the bubonic plague and malaria in Asia. Even so, older tactics remained in use, as he points out that the Viet Cong would set off explosives near bee hives to get them to attack American troops. The American response? Try and develop chemical phermones that would turn bees into allies against the Communists! This is all fascinating stuff, some of which worked out better than other applications, but all innovative nonetheless. The real meat of the book, the REALLY scary stuff, is what he gets to by the end of the book.

The latter chapters start going into today's uses of insects, including the very real concern that insects could be used as agents of biological terrorism. Think that's far-fetched? Lockwood cites not only how easy it would be to reintroduce the exterminated screw worm to the United States, but also points out that domestic terrorists extorted the government in the late '80s by threatening to release the medfly into California. Insect pests cause billions of dollars of damage each year, and as the author notes, terrorist groups might very well consider destructive scenarios that conventional governments and militaries would never engage in in. Equally fascinating (and scary), he also takes a look at government experiments into controlling insects through cybernetics, and the potential ramifications of such practices. Cutting edge stuff that!

The entire book is absolutely fascinating, and completely understandable from the civilian and/or layperson end of things. At the same time, he is very careful to use proper Latin names for all of the medically significant insects (and occasionally, arachnids) mentioned in this book. Lockwood writes on a very captivating subject; I was so into this book that I think I read through it in only a few hours. Whether you are into entomology or military history, this book will be right up your alley. But what really wins him points is that Lockwood not only wrote a fascinating book, but also has a recommended reading list at the end, citing articles and books that will keep you up to date on much of the material that he writes about.

If you liked this book, I would also recommend checking out Adrienne Mayor's 'Greek Fire, Scorpion Bombs and Poison Arrows,' which Lockwood mentions in his recommended reading list. It's an equally fascinating book covering biological warfare in the classical world. Both books are going to appeal to the same audience, so if you like one, you'll like the other.

Replete with all the suspense and intrigue found in the best spy novels of Ian Fleming and John Le Carre, Jeffrey A. Lockwood's "Six - Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War" is not just a gripping, exceptional account of humanity's usage of insects as military and economic weapons of war from antiquity to the present. It is quite possibly, the definitive exploration of this very subject, and one that deserves as wide a readership as possible, for rather obvious reasons. Trained as a biologist with substantial expertise in ecology and epidemiology, Lockwood combines these gifts, along with a sound understanding of history and his exceptional writing, in weaving together a most beguiling narrative that reads more like a Cold War spy thriller than a superb piece of nonfiction. In this rather timely book, Lockwood makes a most compelling case explaining how and why insect usage in warfare has often changed the course of not only battles, but indeed, entire campaigns, citing as notable examples, the Mongol conquest of much of Eurasia, and more recently, Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, the American Civil War and the Western Front during World War I.

Among the most compelling chapters in Lockwood's book are those devoted to the infamous Japanese general Ishii Shiro and his Unit 731, based in Japanese-occupied Manchuria (Northeastern China) during World War II, and responsible for countless crimes against humanity against both Chinese civilians and military prisoners of war. In painstakingly graphic, often gory, detail, Lockwood traces Ishii's "path to infamy", demonstrating how this idealistic Japanese army doctor - who had shown early promise as an important epidemiological researcher on diseases - used his connections in the upper echelons of both Japanese military and civilian elites in creating a vast military-industrial complex in Manchuria devoted to biological warfare. A "path to infamy", which led ironically to Ishii's salvation at the close of World War II, sparing him the hangman's noose for his heinous war crimes, after his extensive interrogation by United States military officers interested in creating a viable American biological weapons program. Lockwood compares and contrasts Ishii's diabolical programs with other, almost as elaborate, research conducted by Canadian, American and British military scientists during World War II, implying that all were as morally suspect as Unit 731's efforts at "weaponizing" virulent diseases like bubonic plague.

While still compelling reading, Lockwood's historical recollection of Cold War entomological weapons research practiced by both the West and the East reads more like a litany of "Just So" Rudyard Kipling-esque tales. I found especially fascinating allegations of economic entomological warfare practiced by the United States against Fidel Castro's Cuba, but, as Lockwood himself notes, these were merely allegations not firmly supported in the 1970s and 1980s by sufficient scientific evidence. He is on much surer footing at the very end of "Six - Legged Soldiers", chronicling potential usage of insects in war, ranging from using them as disease vectors to causing substantial disruptions in agricultural economies from pest infestations of crops. His nightmarish scenarios are those well worth pondering by anyone interested in ensuring ample defense from biological terrorist attacks upon the United States.

Six-Legged Soldiers is an interesting look at how bugs have been drafted by humanity as vectors to spread disease. Be it to destroy crops, sicken an enemy, or torture a captive, insects have been our unwilling minions for as long as mankind has been around.

The first third of the book is dedicated to insects and their use in history. The critters that steal the limelight are the creepy-crawlies we loathe, like spiders, wasps, and scorpions. But according to Lockwood, the real threat isn't just from the direct harm an insect can inflict by bite or sting, but from the diseases they carry. Mosquitoes carrying yellow fever can inflict far more damage on an army than a hive full of angry bees.

From there, Lockwood moves on to conspiracy theory. Rife with allegations alternately unfounded and confirmed, it traces the Japanese government's top-secret experimental program conducted during World War II and America's subsequent dark dealings with the scientists from that same program. Do we have knowledge of bio-weapons capable of spreading plague vectors? Lockwood seems to think so. The real controversy is: have we used them?

The second third of the book discusses this at length, as well as other governments' possible use of insects in modern warfare. The problem is that the evidence is nigh impossible to prove. The very nature of insect warfare, a vector that spreads at its own pace and on its own terms, is its greatest strength and weakness. Modern militaries supposedly reject using insects because they're unpredictable; countries attacked by irruptions of plagues claim the insects were unleashed precisely because they're so innocuous.

Lockwood comes to the conclusion that the most obvious use of insects in warfare isn't on the modern battlefield at all, but as part of a terrorist attack against civilians. He drags out such horrors as the parasitic screwworm, vegetation-devouring beetles, and crop-destroying aphids. Eminently transportable, easily unleashed, and capable of inflicting immense damage with comparatively little effort, Lockwood emphasizes that the next Weapon of Mass Destruction is actually very tiny indeed.

There's a lot of meaty content here, but it's at times overshadowed by Lockwood's narrative, which is reminiscent of a carnival barker. He's enamored with alliteration, to the point of distraction. Six-Legged Soldiers also lacks focus. It's alternately a historical review of insect warfare, a conspiracy theory on government cover-ups, and a modern drama about terrorism. If you're a fan of all three topics like I am, this book is a compelling review of insects as weapons.

Our local library got a copy of Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War by Jeffrey A. Lockwood, and the subject intrigued me. How would one use insects as war weapons, or more accurately, how have they been used in the past? Lockwood goes into both in this book. It's rather dense reading at times, and suffers from a "he said, she said" problem in that admissions of biological warfare are few and far between, and documentation is sparse. Even so, the scenarios here are real, and it makes you wonder exactly what has happened in the past when it comes to insects as disease vectors for warfare.

Contents:
1 - Stinging Defeats and Venomous Victories: Bee Bombs and Wasp Warheads; Toxic Tactics and Terrors; Insects and Tools of Torture
2 - Vectors of Death: Horseshoes and Hand Grenades; The Victories of the Vectors; A Most Uncivil War; All's Lousy on the Eastern Front
3 - Bringing Fever and Famine to a World at War: A Monstrous Metamorphosis; Entomological Evil; Japan's Fleas and Flies; Japan's Pleas and Lies; Beetle Bombs; Waking the Slumbering Giants
4 - Cold-Blooded Fighters of the Cold War: Korea's Hailstorms of Hexapods; A Swarm of Accusations; An Imaginary Menagerie?; The Big Itch; Yankee (and Vietnamese) Ingenuity; Cuban Missiles vs. American Arthropods; A Tiny Terrorist in Castro's Crops
5 - The Future of Entomological Warfare: Medflies, Fruits, and Nuts; Fear on the Farm; Wimpy Warmups and Real Deals; Six-Legged Guardian Angels; Insect Cyborgs and Roboflies; "Vigilant and Ready?"
Epilogue; Suggested Readings; Notes; Index

Even though the author attempts to go back 100,000 years to cavemen throwing insect containers at each other, you really start seeing the first documented use of insects in a warfare sense in the Old Testament times. Bees, wasps, and scorpions were seemingly the weapon of choice, followed by the use of locusts to strip crops of your enemy. Even in the US Civil War, armies would try to position the enemy in swampy areas where the mosquitoes would be able to spread malaria amongst the troops. Things started to turn dark during the second World War, when Japan had a full-fledged biological warfare division being used to drop plague-infested fleas on enemy areas to decimate the population. While that should have constituted a war crime, the head of the unit was actually shipped off to the US, where it's thought that he helped the US military develop similar programs. As we move through the Korean War, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War, there's also plenty of evidence to lead one to believe that both sides had no moral qualms about experimenting with biological weapons...

While I thought the subject matter was fairly interesting, it was somewhat difficult to draw the line between truth and accusation. Cuba blames us for dropping insects on the island, and of course we deny it. Groups investigate and report their findings, but quite often they have definite ideological leanings that color their conclusions. And if you're waiting for the "smoking gun" to prove anything, it's generally not there or is countered with other evidence. Rather frustrating when you're trying to find out what actually did happen. But at least you'll get a different look, a different angle on how insects interact in our environment, and how they can be turned against us without much trouble...

This book is simultaneously a fascinating piece of military history, applied entomolgy (the study of "bugs"), and contemporary security issues. All of that would be good enough to recommend this book but the fact that it is written in an engaging and conversational manner makes it an extremely fine intellectual diversion. From the ancient use of bees to block up the walls of cities against invaders to the potential use of plague-fleas and rats against civilian targets, this book brings the pespective of a professor and well-informed amateur historian to a mass audience. This is easily the best piece of popular science writing I've read this year.

As a history teacher, I was excited to see a whole new take on warfare so I eagerly snatched this book up.

However, as good as the information in the book is, it is a difficult read. There's a lot of repetition in the first part of the book and it just bogs down in the sections on World War II, Korea and the Cold War. A good co-author would have been my recommendation.

The best two sections are the ones on the American Civil War and the last chapters on the dangers we face nowadays from the prospect of insect-based terrorism. They are shorter and move along nicely.

Lockwood admits that he is not a professional historian in his introduction on page X and at times it shows. He is probably the only person to have ever asserted in print that General Henry Halleck was a good field commander after he asssumed command from Grant after the Battle of Shiloh. He assumes Halleck made the connection between mosquitoes and malaria (most assumed malaria came from things such as "swamp vapors") and let the mosquitoes force Beauregard to retreat.

He created an entire new county in Indiana on page 147 (he mislabels Vigo County as Terre Haute County). I would have let it slide but he is so snide and so specific about where the plant was and how foolish it was to build it near a population center (Terre Haute).

Perhaps the biggest frustration for me was his constant pointing out that the United States captured and used the scientists involved in Japan's large-scale insect/biological warfare unit. He acts as though this were unique and not just part of the larger pattern that played out after the war. The West and the Soviets both used captured Axis power scientists after the war in their rocket, nuclear and biological programs. Not a pretty thought, but nothing unique, either.

"Six-Legged Soldiers" is a history of "war, terror, and torture...from the perspective of entomology", presented by entomologist and award-winning science writer Jeffrey A. Lockwood. 100,000 years of bug warfare, though it focuses most of its attention on the modern era. Incidents of biological warfare are, by the author's admission, poorly documented. Lockwood copes with this problem by being exceedingly even-handed. He takes the inclusive approach, presenting all significant accusations and denials of entomological warfare where there is any evidence to be found, leaving it to the reader to decide whether or not to accept the veracity of the claim. Packed full of information and laced with sharp humor, "Six-Legged Soldiers" is a surprisingly lively read.

Of the three major forms of entomological warfare -direct attacks, disease vectors, and agricultural pests- we begin with the simplest. From pre-history though ancient times, humans hurled stinging insects at their enemies, extracted insect poisons to lace their spears and darts, and tortured prisoners with voracious bugs. Even before the discovery of germ theory, humans' "imprecise concept of contagion" enabled them to use insects to deliberately spread disease. Along with tales of intentional infestations and infections, the author describes the devastating effects that naturally occurring insects had on modern militaries: Napoleon's ill-fated Russian campaign, the United States Civil War, and World War I.

The meat of the book is in its discussions of entomological warfare projects during World War II and the Cold War, including the evolution of biological/entomological weapons programs on both sides of these conflicts. Several chapters are dedicated to Japan's sinister Unit 731 that unleashed deadly pathogens, via insects, on the population of occupied Manchuria. There is a long discussion of the accusations by China and North Korea, and subsequent denials and evidence from the US, that the United States used entomological warfare in the Korean War. There are also allegations by Cuba, which they presented to the United Nations in 1996, that the US conducted entomological warfare against their agricultural industry.

Lest anyone think the author leans toward accusations of attacks by the US, the book's last section focuses on potential attacks against the US and concludes that we're "ill-prepared for entomological terrorism". A bit alarmist, if you ask me -not because political enemies or economic competitors couldn't launch an entomological attack, but because it would not be any different from the invasive species that cross our borders accidentally on a regular basis. The book's final chapters explore research into using insects as detection systems against chemical and biological warfare, land mines, and as models for robots. If ants marching in file or bees filling a hive seem militaristic, I guess it's not surprising that human militaries have exploited insects' unique abilities for thousands of years.

For a book that impressed me as a useful resource for an undergraduate level entomology course, I doubt I have ever encountered a text with as much sardonic wit for what a face value would seem to be a rather dry subject area. The author Jeffrey A. Lockwood is just a bit buggy, and that predilection often reveals itself here. Dr. Lockwood takes the reader on an excursion through historic epochs, commencing with the Upper Paleolithic period, traipses through the Old Testament , the Dark Ages, the Napoleonic era, the War between the States, World Wars I and II, right up to speculative considerations of weaponized pathogens that could have been vectored during the Katrina disaster. He points out how in every conflict up to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904,disease and affliction were accountable for more casualties than arrows, catapults, bombs or bullets.

Understandably, much of the early information is hypothetical, in some instances little more than the best deductive guess, based on the paucity of written documentation exacerbated by equally as understandable observer/witness unfamiliarity with species' differentiation in those eras. However, by the time he progresses to Japanese adventurism during WWII, the evidence - for the most part - begins to mirror the surprising entertainment value of his text.

One aspect that seems sacrosanct from one government entity to the next is the opportunism of the scientific community, fully realizing political leadership is generally unknowledgeable about the subject area but when confronted with conflicting priorities such as defensible measures against an alien aggressor and utilization of pathogens for offensive capabilities, it not uncommon to find the moral and ethical values of leadership consistently challenged. Not surprisingly, from society to society, scientists with ambitious bent used authoritative ambivalence to personal advantage.

One thing is certain however. After reading this book, you will find yourself unlikely to view the wasps circling the barbeque grill in the same accepting light.

As far back as 100,000 years ago, during the Upper Paleolithic period, primitive societies of mankind were using bees as weapons. After such a long passage of time, there have been large advances in military weaponry and tactics.
Jeffrey Lockwood's book paints a picture of the not-too-distant future...and if his predictions are correct, insects will most certainly be a dominant force on the battlefield.

Early on in the book, we learn about various pests such as the Paderus, used to remove tattoos and kill ringworm. We marvel at the Romans and their use of "Mad Honey". We cower at the use of Assassin bugs in the city of Bukhara. We also learn about the ill-fated decisions of Napoleon Bonaparte in 1812 that cost him the lives of 400,000 men; thanks to typhus brought on by lice.

By the time we reach chapter 8, Ishii Shiro makes his appearance...the man behind the creation of Unit 731 - a biological warfare project for the Japanese military which led to the deaths of 580,000 people through attacks, field tests and experiments. He knew the awesome power of entomology was the future of warfare and his capacity for inflicting pain and suffering on others with insects knew no limits.

Ishii's Faustian deals with Russia and the United States kept him out of prison; and the knowledge he imparted led to the development of Unit 406 - a research & development facility on insect vectors run by the United States, who ironically sought assistance from former Unit 731 personnel.

As the chapters continue, we discover the vulnerability to agricultural and entomological terrorism that currently exist, accusations against the US for alleged entomological warfare from Korea and Cuba, and we examine countermeasures in cyber-technology that are currently being researched.

All in all, this was a very entertaining and educating book - every time I came across quotes such as these listed below, I kept wanting to read more:

"Of the 488,000 soldiers who perished in the Civil War, two-thirds died of disease - and insect-borne pathogens were among the primary killers."

"Cholera's final score from the maggot-bomb campaign: China 410,000, Japan 0."

"In August 1996, a beetle was discovered in Brooklyn - and this insect's damage potential is estimated at $669 billion. For comparison, the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, resulted in direct economic losses of $27.2 bilion."

"...a reestablishment of the screwworm to the United States would result in a $750 million annual loss to the livestock industry - not counting the $400 million accrued investment in the current eradication program."

There is a lot of rich history and eye-opening information about insect warfare to be found in Six-Legged Soldiers; and you don't have to be an entomologist to understand or appreciate this work. I would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys reading about military history as well as war tactics.

T.S. Eliot once said the world would end not with a bang, but a whimper.

Bugs are certainly quieter than bombs.

I got this book, because frankly, the title fascinated me. I'm interested in military tactics and history, but didn't know too much about the role that insects have played in war. As shocking as it was to learn how insects have been used in the past, it was surprising to learn about more current, and perhaps ongoing, applications. If you like the History or Discovery channel programming, I'm sure you'll find the content of this book thrilling. After I was done I gave it to my husband, who's active duty to read and he was pretty shocked! I hope no one figures out a way to use those camel spiders against us in Iraq!