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Bio Warfare Rears Its Head- The Ancient world USED IT!!!(MUST READ!)
Newsday ^ | January 13, 2004 | By Bryn Nelson

Posted on 01/30/2004 7:18:50 AM PST by vannrox

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PLACE OF BATTLES

1 SUMER: 1700 BC, tablet inscriptions warn of the spread of contagion. Sumer was a collection of city-states around the lower Tigris and Euphrates Rivers in what is now southern Iraq.

2 SOUTHERN GREECE: eighth century BC, in Greek mythology, Hercules attacks the hydra.

3 KIRRHA, a Greek harbor town, sixth century BC, Sacred War, Athens and other Greek city-states attack.

4 TYRE: 332 BC, Alexnader the Great attacks the Phoenicians, who counter by catapulting red-hot sand onto their enemies, in what is present day South Lebanon.

5 HATRA: 198 AD, Rome attacks the city, in what is now Iraq. Hatrans counter by pouring burning petroleum on the Romans.

Visit the site for the entire article.ULTRA COOL and super interesting!

1 posted on 01/30/2004 7:18:57 AM PST by vannrox
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To: vannrox
War Is Hell...
2 posted on 01/30/2004 7:21:09 AM PST by danneskjold
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Is the sand thing feasible? Melting temp of sand is ~ 1500 C so the temp must have been less than that. How far can you catapult sand anyway? In any case I would expect rapid thermal loss from small particles moving through air making such a weapon ineffective. This could be an interesting project.
3 posted on 01/30/2004 7:47:07 AM PST by BadAndy
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To: vannrox
In the Middle Ages, didn't some armies catapult dead animals over the walls of besieged cities in the hopes of starting plagues?

}:-)4
4 posted on 01/30/2004 7:54:58 AM PST by Moose4 (Yes, it's just an excuse to post more pictures of my kitten. Get over it.)
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To: vannrox
"Very imaginative," Victor Davis Hanson, a professor of classics at California State University at Fresno and an expert on ancient warfare.

Adrienne Mayor is a "folklorist" who manages to extract from a few clay tablets that Berkeley anti-war protestors have been with us a long time. How many existed when we annihilated the American Indians not too long ago? I think the truth is anti-patriotic leftism is a relatively new thinking disorder that can eventually destroy America.

5 posted on 01/30/2004 7:59:05 AM PST by Reeses
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To: vannrox
Yeah, them ancients were barbarians, life was so cheap.. but no ancient war ever approached the barbarity of the scope U.S. abortion mills... million+ yearly, hundreds of thousands monthly..

My fetus, I mean sister(50+) is a 7th month premmie.. fetus indeed.. like she was a fetus and moments later a baby by barbarian speak... THIS you can NOT blame on democrats either.. life is pretty CHEAP in the United States...

6 posted on 01/30/2004 8:03:40 AM PST by hosepipe
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To: Moose4
I was just going to post the same question about the dead animals. I cannot point to the source, but I have heard of this, as well as using decaying carcasses to poison the water supply of a city. During the crusades, IIRC.
7 posted on 01/30/2004 8:05:50 AM PST by cspackler (There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.)
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To: Moose4
I think it was more of a psychological thing. They also would catapult the heads of men and women they had killed leading up to the siege.
8 posted on 01/30/2004 8:06:22 AM PST by CougarGA7
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To: BadAndy
Pots, the first WMD deliery system.

Ahh yes, the days of throwing molten lead at your enemy, slaughtering cattle and dumping it in the river upstream of an enemy town, etc, etc.
9 posted on 01/30/2004 8:17:58 AM PST by kingu (I vote Republican in the general, conservative in the primary.)
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To: cspackler
I think they used to catapult dead cows with the pox inorder to infect the castles during the middle ages.
10 posted on 01/30/2004 8:33:38 AM PST by tom paine 2
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To: Moose4
In the Middle Ages, didn't some armies catapult dead animals over the walls of besieged cities in the hopes of starting plagues?

I've read the same thing here at FR in the last year on some thread.
11 posted on 01/30/2004 9:41:22 AM PST by George W. Bush (It's the Congress, stupid.)
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To: vannrox

Run away, run away

12 posted on 01/30/2004 9:47:06 AM PST by George W. Bush (It's the Congress, stupid.)
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To: George W. Bush

Now, this thread is going down hill. :-)
13 posted on 01/30/2004 9:52:21 AM PST by FreeAtlanta
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To: FreeAtlanta
Now, this thread is going down hill. :-)

Deplorable. I hate it when that happens.
14 posted on 01/30/2004 9:59:50 AM PST by George W. Bush (It's the Congress, stupid.)
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To: cspackler
The dead-animal-in-the-well theory was used as recently as 1942. As Soviet troops retreated across the steppe toward Stalingrad, they would kill farm animals and dump them into the wells, to deny the Germans use of the water. (Interestingly, Kalmuks, Cossacks, and Ukranians often did the same thing to the Red Army during its retreats as well.)

}:-)4
15 posted on 01/30/2004 10:12:40 AM PST by Moose4 (Yes, it's just an excuse to post more pictures of my kitten. Get over it.)
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To: vannrox
What a great read! Thanks for posting!

FReegards,

16 posted on 01/30/2004 11:19:10 AM PST by FierceDraka (Service and Glory!)
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To: BadAndy
Is the sand thing feasible? Melting temp of sand is ~ 1500 C so the temp must have been less than that. How far can you catapult sand anyway? In any case I would expect rapid thermal loss from small particles moving through air making such a weapon ineffective. This could be an interesting project.

I too was intrigued by the idea of tossing burning sand at the enemy. And as far as the feasability, the first thing I thought of was running barefoot across the burning sand of a beach.

Also, there is the semi-conductive property of silicon, making it able to retain heat more efficiently than, say iron or aluminum. I think it would work.

17 posted on 01/30/2004 11:32:07 AM PST by FierceDraka (Service and Glory!)
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To: Moose4
In the Middle Ages, didn't some armies catapult dead animals over the walls of besieged cities in the hopes of starting plagues?

Yeah, and they dumped animal carcasses in the wells to poison the enemy's woter supply, too.

18 posted on 01/30/2004 11:33:33 AM PST by FierceDraka (Service and Glory!)
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To: CougarGA7
I think it was more of a psychological thing. They also would catapult the heads of men and women they had killed leading up to the siege.

The Orcish armies did that in Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Nasty, nasty scene.

19 posted on 01/30/2004 11:45:08 AM PST by FierceDraka (Service and Glory!)
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To: vannrox
I seem to recall the Chinese using wolf dung in the tips of their war rockets perhaps a thousand years ago.
20 posted on 01/30/2004 12:14:20 PM PST by Vinnie_Vidi_Vici
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