Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • January 24, 2019 9:18 AM

@ Mustafa Turan,

Yup as many as 40million Chinese starved to death due to amongst other pests locusts (hence my comment above about weaponising them and biblical plagues).

Another that might be of interest was the Australian Emu War, where man with machine guns failed fairly miserably against Emu’s that some how fell naturally into guerilla group survival tactics.

Having defeted battle hardened soldiers, the Australian government went back to a more successful “bounty program” but due to preasure from “whingeing poms” eventually they went with “Pest Exclusion Fencing”…

Every time I hear talk about “Trumps Wall” I’m reminded of the Emu War and how Australian “bird brains” defeated “Military Intelligence”. I can not help wondering what would have happened if Emu’s had hands with opposable thumbs…

Clive Robinson • January 24, 2019 1:18 PM

@ VinnyG,

Even assuming (very doubtful) that one could find a moral and ethical justification for deployment, what would be the plan to stop the engineered locusts once the adversary’s food was gone?

In war morals and ethics are shall we say a little flexible to put it politely.

As was once pointed out to me when wearing the green “In war there is no such thing as a noble savage, just savages, who follows the Patton maxim of ‘No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country, he won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country'”. After all what do people think the order “Take no prisoners”[1] realy means?

The expression “Total Warfare” is one that again people avoid defining[2], it’s basically an order for genocide by any means possible. The fact that politicians can give these dictats with equanimity to Generals who then pass them down the chain of command till it arrives at the frontline troops who are required to obay on pain of death from summery field court-marshal execution, and who will likewise be condemed to death by execution if their side looses, should tell you if they would have any qualms about weaponising insects like locusts.

From the point of view of super powers releasing weaponised insects like locust is not realy an issue in proxy wars. Such creatures unlike bacteria or virii don’t effect their troops who they can keep resupplied indefinitely and due to climate differences will not get back to the home nation. When the food supply is gone, the locusts like the local population will simply die by starvation. Thus from the super power point of view after one or two seasons at most they will have a near empty land that is quite safe to recolonise as they see fit.

To ordinary mortals it sounds horific but is a fairly quick death by starvation compared to the long drawn out dibilitation and death by dioxin or radiological poisoning realy any worse?

[1] Take no prisoners : to be totally ruthlessly, aggressive or uncompromising in the pursuit of the ordered objective by the use of total warfare, killing any and all who get in the way of the objective regardless of if they have surrendered or not.

[2] From the OED, Total warfare : a war that is unrestricted in terms of the weapons used, the territory or combatants involved, or the objectives pursued, especially one in which the laws of war are disregarded.

Clive Robinson • January 24, 2019 7:50 PM

@ Mike Barno,

Sharkey’s restaurant has been serving “City Chicken” for at least seventy years.

Has @Bruce been in to do a review yet 😉

But yes there are several types of “rock dove” including what I call “low flying scabies” or “flying rat”. Apparently the diseased little squabs are getting healthier as the parents now line their nests with “cigarette ends” and the freebased nicotine in the filters kills off the mangy pests that infect them…

Dove Cotes used to be a common sight in medieval Britain because their meat had magical properties unlike wild rabbit. That magical property is “fat”[1] without which humans very assuredly will die (unlike carbohydrates which you can live without). Unlike humans rabbits can more easily survive on very very low body fat and thus in winter and times of blight they could survive but the humans eating them could not. However well fed domesticated rabbits do have sufficient fat for human survival so leave out the “Watetship down” lot and go for “floppsy and moppsy” instead 😉

Apparently both “rock doves” and “wood pigeon” although both considered lean do have sufficient fat if you eat some of their internal organs, they also more importantly produce eggs that will grow into squabs (chicks) without the aid of incubators unlike many breeds of domestic chicken.

I’ve been known to eat a fair amount of wood pigeon, that have made the mistake of trying to get fat off of my spring salad etc. Apparently some of my neighbours have objected, but the officialdom they call does not seem very aquainted with the laws on “vermin” which all creatures that eat “crops grown by man” or “eat food from mans plate” fall into.

However my choice for “survival” meat would be grazing water fowl such as ducks or geese as both when well fed produce lots of fat[2] that is of real use to preserve the cooked meat –see “confit” which is a “Garde manger” process– for some time. They also produce eggs you can eat but be warned they are quite a bit stronger in taste.

[1] Fat, salt, vitimin C and yeast extract are things that are esential to your well being that are going to be difficult to obtain in temperate or colder zones.

[2] For survivalists the four things you will have most troubles with in the long term are your basic preservers of Salt, Fat, Sugar and Alcohol with the less common preservers “citric acid” and “water glass” (there are also nitrates but they are not essential). Whilst you can “air dry” and “smoke” as preserving methods they can be quite problematical. Ancient stone age hunters used to preserve meat by tying rocks to it and chucking it into a deep cold pond which robbed most but not all bacteria of oxygen they need to survive and kept spores at to low a temprature to become active. The exception would of course be the one that whilst harmless in oxygen, when surviving anaerobically at “pantry temperatures” produces the most poisonous neurotoxin known to man, yup that friend of the “botox set” Clostridium botulinum. It’s why you have to take other precautions when “canning meat” either in real cans or preserving jars,

https://www.cdc.gov/features/homecanning/index.html

https://www.thespruceeats.com/removing-risk-of-botulism-from-canning-1327437