Poisons and Pestilence

Poisons and Pestilence

By Brett EdwardsHistory
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Poisons and Pestilence episodes

  • 6 Bonus Episode: ’The Monks of Moonfleet’ with Mike Kenner

    You can check out the Declassified MOD film on the Lyme Bay Trials here (a clip of this appears in the show audio) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTwQJ1ASyws&t=302s 

     

    You can also check out various documentaries and excerpts of  press coverage of the Zinc Cadmium and Lyme Bay Trials produced when these issues first hit the headlines over at https://www.youtube.com/user/experimentsrus/featured 

     

    INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF THE POSSIBLE HEALTH HAZARDS

    OF THE LARGE-SCALE RELEASE OF BACTERIA DURING THE
    DORSET DEFENCE TRIALS
    Professor Brian G. Spratt FRS, Wellcome Trust Centre for the Epidemiology
    of Infectious Disease, University of Oxford.

    https://zeltus.eu/mre/downloads/dorset_bacteria_trials.pdf

     

    Zinc Cadmium Sulphide Dispersion Trials

    Report by the Academy of Medical Sciences to the Chief Scientific Adviser, Ministry of Defence on the Zinc Cadmium Sulphide dispersion trials undertaken in the United Kingdom between 1953 and 1964.
    December 1999 

    https://acmedsci.ac.uk/file-download/34958-ZincCadm.pdf

     

    For a recent historical appraisal of these issues, other open-air trials in the UK- as well as public and technical/ expert discourse on these matters see also: 

    Ulf Schmidt ( 2015)  Secret Science, Chapter 7. 

     

    46 min
  • 5 Bonus Episode: ‘Clouds over Gas Lane‘ with Mike Kenner

    Welcome to the first-ever bonus episode of the poisons and pestilence podcast!  

    This episode is the first in a two-part special on large area biological weapon simulant trials, carried out in the UK during the Cold War. In this episode, we focus on work carried out by scientists from Porton Down up until the mid -1960’s- which involved the spread of zinc cadmium sulphide over vast swathes of the UK. In part two of this special, we will take a deeper dive into the ‘Lyme Bay Trials’ which involved the use of bacteria, including E.coli in open-air trials over populated areas during the 1960s and 1970s. In the second show, we will also examine the political fall-out of experiments these experiments, when they started coming to broader public attention in the 1990s.

     

    Further resources

    Mike Kenner YouTube channel  https://www.youtube.com/user/experimentsrus

    Rob Evans (2000) ‘Gassed’ https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gassed-Behind-Scenes-Porton-Down/dp/1842320718

    Brian Balmer ( 2001) Britain and Biological Warfare https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Britain_and_Biological_Warfare/GGWJDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=brian+balmer&printsec=frontcover

    Brian Balmer (2016) Secrecy and Science  https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Secrecy_and_Science/KrreCwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Brian+balmer+2016&pg=PT3&printsec=frontcover

    Peter Hammond and Gordon Carter ( 2000) From Biological Warfare to Healthcare https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/From_Biological_Warfare_to_Healthcare/UTwGDAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=porton+down+history+carter&printsec=frontcover

    54 min
  • 4: Fire in the hole

    This episode we're going to be looking at the time- period between roughly 1 AD and 500AD.  As we continue our trundle through the history of chemical and biological weapons and warfare

     

    You can check out the show notes here: 

     

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

    22 min
  • 3: I don‘t love you Hellebore

    In Episode 3, we examine the history of biological and chemical warfare from 1000BC to 1AD

     

    You can check out sources and show notes at:

     

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

     

    18 min
  • 2: Hittite me Plaguey one more time

    In Episode 2, we continue our discussion of pre-historic biological warfare

    Check out the show notes for this episode here

     

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

     

    18 min
  • 1: Shoot that Poison Arrow

    The first episode covers the pre-history of poison arrows- check out the show notes here:

     

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

    9 min

About Poisons and Pestilence

From the publisher's feed

A History of Biological and Chemical Warfare