Poisons and Pestilence

The latest installment- covering the spread of gunpowder west, via the Mongols.  Show notes available at: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wIibQJYobwyhFNC-OhjnLYkOwVizIjuJ?usp=sharing 

You can check out Glenn's book here: Dirty War: Rhodesia and Chemical Biological Warfare 1975-1980 - Glenn Cross - Google Books

We didn't have time to cover the smaller and largely exploratory BW aspect of this programme but hopefully we will in s future episode. 

Audio clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FrD4XJcOw4 

You can find a link to Simon's work on this subject over at https://simonjoneshistorian.com/2019/08/27/first-air-dropped-cw/ 

Image and sound from the US national archives. 

Check out Reid's website over at Military Historian - Reid Kirby

In this episode we examine the impact of the development of gunpowder on chemical and biological warfare. We focus on China in the 9th -16th centuries. Next week we follow the spread of gunpowder west. 

Show notes are available here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wIibQJYobwyhFNC-OhjnLYkOwVizIjuJ?usp=sharing 

In this episode Dan discusses his work examining the life of Edmund Tilly. After WW2 Tilly interrogated those involved in the German chemical warfare programme- which was the first to develop and produce a nerve agent ' Tabun'- on a large scale. 

Sound Credits:  This clip is from the 1963 film, Nerve Agents, available at the national Archives.  Video found on this amazing Youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/markdcatlin/videos 

During World War II, the Polish resistance movement used chemical and biological weapons (CBW) against the Third Reich. The use of CBW against the Third Reich most likely originated in a secret Polish biological-weapons program, which existed in the 1930s and went underground after the September 1939 German invasion. Between 1940 and 1942, a unit of the Polish resistance movement named WKZO (Wielkopolskie Kierownictwo Związku Odwetu—the Greater Poland Leadership of the Union of Retaliation) conducted CBW sabotage in the German-annexed area Reichsgau Wartheland and its main city Posen (today’s Poznań).  In this episode we examine this group with Robert Peterson. 

You can find Robert's paper on the subject here:  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10736700.2020.1866321 

sound clip credit: https://youtu.be/pw2PenZYBuw 

Won't be long until we are back looking at poison arrows, toxic smoke, water poisoning and the laws of war from the 13th to the 18th century.  Drop me a line if you have ideas for the show! 

In this episode, we look at transitions in Chemical and Biological defence in the British army between the tail end of the Cold War and the Gulf War. We talk about noddy suits- and I didn't make a joke about being cold once. Be sure to say hello to Gareth on Twitter ( especially if you like tanks) 

I do not own the media clips, they can be found here:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsUcz2Bh1z4vWjI9zM15qbb43sVPl7LeX

Icon image lifted from NBC field manual (1983) Crown Copyright- https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=2005-04-25-5

Hello! And welcome to episode 7 of the poisons and pestilence podcast- If you buboe me by now.

Now I had a great time putting together the last two specials- and I hope you enjoyed them. However, it is high time we returned to our trundle through the history of biological and chemical warfare.

As you will recall, in earlier episodes, we have been covering some pretty vast time periods. But we are not beginning to become a little more granular in the storytelling.

 In this episode, we cover a mere eight centuries- from around the fall of the Roman Empire ( around the 5th Century ) to the black death of the mid-14th century.  

You can find the show notes here:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1wIibQJYobwyhFNC-OhjnLYkOwVizIjuJ?usp=sharing