Why You Should Know about Aldous Huxley's Anthrax Bombs Today

By Péter MARTON

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In the "Science Fiction" group on Facebook a question was posted recently about "powerful" biological weapons in sci-fi. There was a large number of responses – a total of 144 to date (as of August 24), showing that this kind of thread has considerable popularity. Yours truly also reacted, nominating Aldous Huxley's anthrax bombs there, because they are a very important example from the SF literature, with much in the way of contemporary relevance, and this makes them very "powerful" in a sense.

Here's why, in a nutshell.

In Brave New World (1932), Huxley gave a central role to anthrax bombs, even as he didn't speak about them at length. According to what we are told in the story, they were among the most horrible weapons of the "Nine Years War" that wrought devastation all around the globe, and their use helped pave the way to the totalitarian world state depicted in the novel, the utopia in which mankind sought (and found?) refuge from the destructive forces of the past.

Huxley wanted to show us how the anthrax bomb, along with other military innovations, may question the value of the freedoms of the world we know. That is because freedom allows us to pursue the scientific and technological progress that bears fruit in the form of evolving military applications as well. "What use is truth or beauty or knowledge with anthrax bombs popping all around you?" – the question is thus raised in the book. In other words: blossoming freedoms contribute to the creation and the proliferation of lethal new weapons that may make self-destruction imminent.

Carl Sagan later on addressed essentially the same issue (the fragility of human existence) when he talked about the stage of "technological adolescence" that mankind had reached. Huxley's answer to the question implied by this was, at least in Brave New World, that we would have to go back to the primitive or we will have to impose major controls on human creativity to survive.

"No louder than the popping of a paper bag," is how Huxley described what happens upon impact when anthrax bombs hit, to add to the sensation of terror related to this. Huxley didn't just make this up out of sheer genius, of course – he was aware of developments in this area through his contacts in the scientific world. For anthrax, aerial bombs may indeed serve as a delivery mechanism. A key word you need to know in the context of this is "endospore."

Endospores: that is what anthrax bacteria (bacillus anthracis) are capable of turning into should they find their environment less than favourable. They go zen – or hybernate, in other words. When they do, it makes them highly resistant to heat, radiation, desiccation, freezing and to some extent even chemical disinfectants. So they can survive in the soil for a very-very long time if that's what it takes to be able to infect the next organism that comes along to give them a ride. They strategically dehydrate, they remain well-protected and are armed with DNA repair enzymes should something go wrong. It is not impossible to kill endospores, but it is certainly difficult.

Bacillus anthracis spores (CDC)

This is relevant when considering the use of aerial bombs. Endospores withstand the blast effect, and they can be placed inside ceramic casing. Exploded in the air, the spores can reach the ground attached to feathers (in a "feather bomb"). Or, exploded upon impact, a gas cloud of aerosolised pathogens can cover a given area downwind. To name a few possibilities.

During WW2, the British experimented with anthrax bombs on Gruinard Island (off Northern Scotland), placing sheep closed into wooden crates with an opening on one side facing the point of impact of the incoming bomb, upwind – the experiments proved "successful" in killing the sheep. The infamous Japanese Unit 731 used not only animal but also human subjects, and even planned to develop anthrax bombs whose traces would be difficult to discover ("popping as a paper bag," there you go).

The bad news is that the spores released can lay about and eventually activate at a ripe moment. This made Gruinard Island a no-go area for a very long time. Even so, it was ultimately admitted that "an infected sheep's carcass washed ashore from the island led to the deaths of seven cattle, two horses, three cats and up to 50 sheep in a nearby village." To further illustrate the threat of dormant anthrax bacteria, note also how there is a plausible theory that the 2016 outbreak of anthrax in Siberia may have originated from the defrosted carcass of a reindeer that died in the Yamal Peninsula 75 years ago. An anthrax bomb is thus a biological dirty bomb. Decontamination is troublesome and the use of this weapon is playing with (wild)fire...

To wrap it up: WW2 led to the development and the use of nuclear bombs, and, ultimately, to a world of Mutually Assured Destruction. As to biological weapons, they have a rich history beyond the weaponisation of anthrax, too. Yet all of this takes away nothing from the horror of anthrax bombs and – in the age of synthetic biology, with the biotechnological revolution unfolding as we speak – we should remember that Huxley asked his rather troubling questions, about a potential trilemma between scientific and technological progress, freedoms and human survival, exactly related to them.

Further reading:

• Aldous Huxley: Brave New World. London: Chatto and Windus, 1932.
• G.F. Webb: A silent bomb: The risk of anthrax as a weapon of mass destruction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), 2003 Apr 15; 100(8): 4355–4356.
• Richard M. Swiderski: Anthrax: A history. Jefferson (NC): McFarland Publishing, 2004.