Saturday, October 20, 2007

New weapon in the War on Terra

Stock up on RAID™!!!

"One of the cheapest and most destructive weapons available to terrorists today is also one of the most widely ignored: insects. These biological warfare agents are easy to sneak across borders, reproduce quickly, spread disease, and devastate crops in an indefatigable march. Our stores of grain could be ravaged by the khapra beetle, cotton and soybean fields decimated by the Egyptian cottonworm, citrus and cotton crops stripped by the false codling moth, and vegetable fields pummeled by the cabbage moth. The costs could easily escalate into the billions of dollars, and the resulting disruption of our food supply - and our sense of well-being - could be devastating. Yet the government focuses on shoe bombs and anthrax while virtually ignoring insect insurgents."
Actually, when you consider the damage done out here in BC by those bastardous little mountain pine beetles, there might be something to this. Although I tend to think most terrorists aspire to create the sudden "shock and awe" devastation of a 9/11, destructive insects are potentially disastrous to forestry-based economies, so this could be a strategy that long-term-thinking terrorists might consider. And never mind the forests -- then there's the bugs that bite us! However, the problem with bugs is the same as with biological agents like smallpox -- the logistics of getting the stuff to go just where you want it to are pretty untenable.