Over the weekend I was thinking about something interesting that I had heard about this disease
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinderpest. It has never been seen in the Americas. So my question is what would have happened if one side or the other during the civil war introduced it to the Americas in an attempt to eliminate their food base?
Also at the same time this is attempted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glanders
Biological warfare use[edit]
Due to the high mortality rate in humans and the small number of organisms required to establish infection,
Burkholderia mallei is regarded as a potential
biological warfare (BW) or
bioterrorism agent, as is the closely related organism,
Burkholderia pseudomallei, the causative agent of
melioidosis. During
World War I, Glanders was believed to have been spread deliberately by
German agents to infect large numbers of
Russian horses and mules on the
Eastern Front.
[3] Other agents attempted to introduce the disease in the United States and Argentina. This had an effect on troop and supply convoys as well as on artillery movement, which were dependent on horses and mules. Human cases in Russia increased with the infections during and after WWI. The
Japanese deliberately infected horses, civilians, and prisoners of war with
B. mallei at the
Pinfang (China) Institute during
World War II.
The U.S. studied this agent as a possible BW weapon in 1943–44 but did not weaponize it. U.S. interest in Glanders (Agent LA) continued through the 1950s, except it had an inexplicable tendency to lose virulence in the lab, making it difficult to weaponize. The
Soviet Union is also believed to have been interested in
B. mallei as a potential BW agent after World War II.