It sounds completely crazy when you hear it today but Germ Warfare tests are just one of the many tests the US Army did on US citizens without any consent. In 1966 a whole group of army scientists was dispatched to New York to test some new Germ Warfare attacks. They made their way into the New York City subway lines with light bulbs packed with bacteria. In fact, there were over 87 trillion different types of organisms in the lightbulbs.
The plan was to shatter them and then use air sampling tools to test how the bacteria moved around the subway. This is just one test of several experiments that happened over a 20 year period in the US military, all involving germs. Shockingly there were over 240 different experiments carried out on US citizens, and they never had any knowledge. The idea was to use bacteria to simulate how a chemical attack on US soil would look like. However, these tests were actually a direct violation of the Nuremberg Code. This code requires every participant to be voluntary and provide informed consent.
Now it is true that all the scientists who conducted these tests believed the bacteria to be totally harmless. But the truth is many of these bacteria species were later confirmed to be pathogens that could cause health problems. Many of the bacterias used are now found regularly in major cases of food poisoning. Of course, infections and fatal cases are rare – but they have happened. To summarize, it’s not so farfetched to assume one of these tests did cause severe complications and even death for some people. Because the scientists dropped these lightbulbs of bacteria during peak travel hours.
As a result, it’s impossible to say how many people were infected. One reason is that the trains pull air through the tunnels as they drive, meaning the bacteria could have ended up anywhere and everywhere. The army concluded that not many people were alarmed by the clouds of bacteria. Some people just brushed their clothes a little, but everyone continued on with their day. Even scarier was the report’s conclusion, advising in the case of a deadly chemical attack on downtown New York, the disease would ravage the population quickly.
