The modern concept of biological warfare involves the use of biological agents, of which there are pathogens, typically bacteria or viruses, and toxins, which are biologically produced poisons. The history of biological warfare begins in antiquity but was transformed in the 20th century via industrial warfare and advances in microbiology such as genetic engineering. In the ancient and medieval period, biological warfare commonly overlapped with chemical warfare. This included contamination of food, water, animals, weapons systems, fabrics. In the European Middle Ages, common weapons were poisoned arrows and catapults to launch cadavers or animal corpses. European colonization exposed native populations in the Americas and Australia to smallpox outbreaks, although evidence of successful intentional uses is limited. In World War I, the German Empire targeted horses and livestock with anthrax and glanders while France used burkholderia. The use of biological weapons in international warfare was theoretically prohibited by the 1925 Geneva Protocol, but research continued, and Japan and the United States did not ratify it until the 1970s. During World War II, many countries initiated large biological weapons programs as part of total war. The Empire of Japan became the first country to use enhanced pathogens. Its Unit 731 and other units, led by Shirō Ishii, dispersed pathogens throughout China during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Plague, cholera, typhoid, anthrax, glanders, and others were used, primarily from air-dropped bomblets filled with infected fleas, a form of entomological warfare. Research was furthered by forced human experimentation on civilians and prisoners of war. The United Kingdom, at Porton Down, and the United States developed advanced biological programs including anthrax bombs. After the war, an American cover-up gave immunity to biological warfare leaders, from prosecution for Japanese war crimes, in exchange for information to further the United States biological weapons program. Scrutiny during the Vietnam War forced the United States to renounce biological weapons in 1969. This contributed to the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, which comprehensively prohibited their development, production, stockpiling, and use. However, due to its weak inspection measures stemming from the Cold War, an advanced Soviet biological weapons program flourished. Genetic engineering was used to enhance pathogens' climate and antimicrobial resistance. Stockpiled weapons were envisioned for intercontinental attacks against cities, battlefield employment, and anti-agriculture attacks. The 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak, which killed at least 68 people, was the first indication to the world of a continued offensive program. Ba'athist Iraq also developed a biological weapons program, weaponizing anthrax and toxins, before its disarmament post-Gulf War by the United Nations Special Commission. The unsolved 2001 anthrax attacks in the United States, a week after the September 11 attacks, heightened public fear of biological warfare as a weapon of mass destruction. False allegations by a US-led coalition that Iraq was maintaining its weapons of mass destruction programs played a major role in justifying the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Antiquity The earliest documented incident of the intention to use biological weapons is possibly recorded in Hittite texts of 1500–1200 BC, in which victims of tularemia were driven into enemy lands, causing an epidemic. Although the Assyrians knew of ergot, a parasitic fungus of rye which produces ergotism when ingested, there is no evidence that they poisoned enemy wells with the fungus, as has been claimed. According to Homer's epic poems about the legendary Trojan War, the Iliad and the Odyssey, spears and arrows were tipped with poison. During the First Sacred War in Greece, in about 590 BC, Athens and the Amphictionic League poisoned the water supply of the besieged town of Kirrha (near Delphi) with the toxic plant hellebore. According to Herodotus, during the 4th century BC Scythian archers dipped their arrow tips into decomposing cadavers of humans and snakes or in blood mixed with manure, supposedly making them contaminated with dangerous bacterial agents like Clostridium perfringens and Clostridium tetani, and snake venom. In a naval battle against King Eumenes of Pergamon in 184 BC, Hannibal of Carthage had clay pots filled with venomous snakes and instructed his sailors to throw them onto the decks of enemy ships. The Roman commander Manius Aquillius poisoned the wells of besieged enemy cities in about 130 BC. In about AD 198, the Parthian city of Hatra (near Mosul, Iraq) repulsed the Roman army led by Septimius Severus by hurling clay pots filled with live scorpions at them. Like Scythian archers, Roman soldiers dipped their swords into excrements and cadavers too — victims were commonly infected by tetanus as result. The use of bees as guided biological weapons was described in Byzantine written sources, such as Tactica of Emperor Leo VI the Wise in the chapter On Naval Warfare. There are numerous other instances of the use of plant toxins, venoms, and other poisonous substances to create biological weapons in antiquity.
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