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Bittisode 008: Anthrax Island · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Why everybody, and
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: welcome to Who Did What Now? The history podcast that's
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: not your history class. Biddysodes little bits of history that
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: don't quite fit in anywhere else with me, your host,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Kerry Charlwood, History Harlot and reader of books. That's right,
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: the bittysodes are back. Who Did What Now is now
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: part of the Airwave Media Network. And well, things were
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: switching over and moving, you know, I had to take
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: a bit of time to get stuff sortid. But now
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: we are back in phil swing and we are ready
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: to go. And I don't know if you've noticed, but
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: the last episode of Lady Jane Gray the Nine Days
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Queen was episode forty nine. That means, coming Tuesday, I
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: have a very special fiftieth episode. And if any of
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: you have followed me on TikTok, you know I have
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: a series called Human Trash and so I am going
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: to bring you a jam packed what just one person.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: It is just about one person, but a full on
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: human trash episode. I don't think I've done one since
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: I think Mother Teresa I think was the last Human
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Trash episode I did, which is a while back. Actually,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: no I'm wrong Elvis. Elvis was the last human trash
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: episode I did. That's right, But this one is worse,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: worse than Mother Teresa, worse than Elvis. You're fucking right,
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: he is. It's a man, it's a white man. It's
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: an old white man, pale, stale male, the Troy of
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: doushbagger Way, absolute fucking trash. And it'll be coming to
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: you on Tuesday. And I'm actually really excited about this one.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: It is so much fucking research, though, and I've had
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: to whittle a few things down. But I think you're
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: gonna like it. I think it's gonna but I digress.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Today's bittysode is brought to you by people demanding more
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: information on TikTok, and I thought, fuck it, I'll just
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: do a bittysode about it, because honestly, three minutes isn't
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: long enough to talk about this. It just isn't. I'm
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: gonna quit my jibber jabber in fact you and tell
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: you all about Anthrax Island. Our story starts in the
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: middle of World War Two. You've got the Allies versus
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: the Axis. Things are not going well. The Nazis are
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to be fallen into stereotypes here,
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: but a pretty evil and.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: B incredibly efficient.
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  Speaker 1: So they are doing quite well. They are, for lack
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: of a better word, winning the war and obviously in general,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: you know, anyone with a sort of moral compass doesn't
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: think that's a good way for things to be, you know.
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  Speaker 1: So Britain is absolutely terrified that the Nazis are gonna
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: do it to them. Well, with what we did to
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: most of mainland Europe, like they're taken over, like all
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: over the show. You know, they're in Poland, they're in Czechoslovakia,
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Austria and France. They're just fucking taken over the whole show.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: They've got allies in Italy. It's just it's a fucking
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: chet show at this point. And Britain is like, fucking nah,
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  Speaker 1: don't want that, partially because they're so used to being
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: the ruling elite, and also because Winston Churchill can't stand
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: anything that isn't British in fairness, if there wasn't sort
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: of a chance that Britain would have been attacked or
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: taken over, Churchill wouldn't have given a fuck about whatever
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: the Nazis were doing. Britain's not doing too well in
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: the war and they really want to get in upper hand,
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: and Winston Churchill is thinking, why don't we use biological weapons?
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: So you know how they say that every civilization is
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: like three meals away from revolt because if you starve people,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: they will fuck your shit up, you know what I mean?
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Thing else is irrelevant if there isn't food in their belly. Now,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: because of this, Churchill wanted to find a way to
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: starve out the enemy. So he has a chat with
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: his chief of staff and he comes up with Operation Vegetarian. Churchill,
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: as we know, is a super big fan of chemical weapons,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: biological weapons, germ warfare, basically anything that can be used
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  Speaker 1: to annihilate a large group of people as quickly and
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: efficiently as possible. He's super into that. So naturally he
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: wants to know if it's possible to contaminate the German
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  Speaker 1: countryside with so much anthrax that mass numbers of livestock
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: and people would be instantly killed. Just floating the idea
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: because apparently massacring innocent civilians is fine, I guess. But yeah,
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  Speaker 1: their great plan was to drop anthrax laced cattle cakes
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  Speaker 1: to destroy the German food source but like, here's the
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: thing they should know better tell than anybody because they
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: did it, is that when a country is starving, when
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the ordinary people are, you know, lacking provisions, food, always
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  Speaker 1: somehow manages to get to the army, Like they're not
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: going to starve, They're gonna feed the elite and they're
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: gonna feed the basic people they need to use, whether
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: it's fodder or whatever. So the British government were well
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: fucking aware that it was going to be civilians who suffered, men, women, children,
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  Speaker 1: ordinary people. I'm not saying that they had the correct idea,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: but like to indiscriminately kill that many people really feels
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: like it's more about asserting your dominance than it is
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: about protecting your country. That being said, they still had
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: to know how efficient it was going to be, if
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: it was going to work, so naturally, before they implement
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: this plan, they have to fucking test it. Enter Grenyard
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Island off the coast to Scotland. Doubt they chose this
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: island because it was remote and uninhabited, because apparently none
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: of the other twenty three uninhabited English islands were good enough.
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Because apparently a remote English island that's uninhabited there was
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: absolutely no use. It had to be a Scottish one,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: specifically for reasons. Of course, the government were fair because
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: they did purchase the island for five hundred pounds off
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: of the owners and promise them that them or their
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: family would be able to purchase it back for the
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: exact same price once they were done. The Churchyard gets
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Paul Fileds to set up a team and head out
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  Speaker 1: to Grenyard. The biological scientists, a fuck ton of sheep
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: and the cameraman headed to Grinyard Island. Now, the scientists
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: decided to stay on the island while they conducted their
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: tests because for them it made the most sense. They
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  Speaker 1: did have like protective gear and clothing and rubber gloves
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: and all that, but I mean, there was no guarantee
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  Speaker 1: that they would be safe. But for them, this was
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  Speaker 1: about patriotism. This was about protecting Britain for the powers
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: that be. However, anyway, they brought a cameraman so that
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  Speaker 1: they could record their experiments and be able to have
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  Speaker 1: like visual proof of it, and that video that film
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: still exists today. It was declassified. I think it's in
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: the Imperial War Museum now, but you can watch it
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  Speaker 1: on YouTube. It's called X Base Grenyard Trials nineteen forty
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: one to forty two. Now we're not actually sure how
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: many sheep were involved in this. We know at least eighty,
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  Speaker 1: but there could have been more. So anyway, these sheep
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  Speaker 1: they are shipped to Grenyard Island and then they are
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  Speaker 1: herded into these little fucking crates. So what they do
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  Speaker 1: as well is they put these wee jackets on them.
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  Speaker 1: Not because they're worry they're going to be cold or
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: shit like that, but they wanted to make sure that
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: the anthrax was inhaled and it wasn't like on their fleecy,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: wily cotts. So the sheep they're in these wee crates,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: they get the way jackets on and they are tethered
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: together and sort of tied down. So I mean they're standing,
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: but they're fixed to a spot. But not only that,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: their heads are also fixed so that well, basically it's
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: to ensure that they're going to inhale the anthrax.
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: Like it's I.
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  Speaker 1: Mean, as experiments go, if you want to test if
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  Speaker 1: an animal is going to naturally inhale this thing, putting
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: them in a fixed position doesn't exactly give a natural response.
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  Speaker 1: The thing about anthrax's as well, is that there's different strains,
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  Speaker 1: like some of it is more sort of potent or
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  Speaker 1: violent and others not so much. Naturally, they chose a
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  Speaker 1: particularly strong one, volume one, four, five, seven, eight, which
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  Speaker 1: had performed very well in the labs, and they thought
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  Speaker 1: this will be a great one. I don't know what
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  Speaker 1: you're thinking. You're thinking, how the fuck were they planning
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  Speaker 1: to actually distribute this incredibly potent strain of this very
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  Speaker 1: dangerous germ, well by mortar. That's right, you fucking heard me, mortar. Pooh,
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  Speaker 1: an anthrax bomb. They may an anthrax bomb. So once
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  Speaker 1: they had all their ducks in a row, the sheep
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  Speaker 1: were all tethered in, the equipment was set up, the
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  Speaker 1: cylinders of anthrax were in the right position, and of
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  Speaker 1: course they had the camera set up to witness it all.
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  Speaker 1: It was time to fire the mortar, and so they did,
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  Speaker 1: and within seconds, this toxic cloud just bellows up and well,
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  Speaker 1: luckily the wind was on their side and moved towards
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  Speaker 1: the completely oblivious sheep. So these scientists, they have basically
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  Speaker 1: smothered these sheep in a blanket of anthrax, right, and
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  Speaker 1: to their absolute fucking surprise, nothing happens. Day one, sheep
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: were just you know, chewing away, completely undeterred by what's happened.
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  Speaker 1: Day two, still the same, They're just fine. On the
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: third day, however, this sheep start dying, and they start
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  Speaker 1: dying very fucking quickly. So the sheep would just be
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  Speaker 1: going about their daily business as if they had business
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: being I mean, they were just like chewing on grass
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  Speaker 1: and doing whatever fucking shit sheep do, and they just
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: would suddenly just die as if they'd been like paralyzed.
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  Speaker 1: But they all just kind of kept doing it. So
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  Speaker 1: within like a few hours of the first sheep dying,
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  Speaker 1: the majority of the flock was dead, and it was
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  Speaker 1: only a couple hours after that then every single sheep
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  Speaker 1: on the island had died as a result of the
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  Speaker 1: anthrax bomb. Well, I say that, but the majority of
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  Speaker 1: their ports and information that I've read on this say
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: that every single sheep died it was a result of
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  Speaker 1: the anthrax poisoning. But there was a couple of sources
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  Speaker 1: that stated that the sheep on the far end of
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  Speaker 1: the field, like the ones that were further away and
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  Speaker 1: had like less exposure, they survived the sort of initial experiment,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: but then were later killed by the scientists. Anyway, Speaking
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: of the scientists, they realized fairly quickly, being scientists and all,
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  Speaker 1: that they could not control nor contain the anthrax bomb.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: Not really so over the course of a year they
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  Speaker 1: tested twenty two anthrax bombs, releasing three hundred thousand million
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: spores into the air. I don't know about you, but
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: to me that seems a dad excessive. Of course, of course,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: they have to report back to the big Man himself,
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: Winston Churchill, and they inform him that a mass detonation
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: of anthrax would cause fuck death on an unprecedented scale.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: They're like, we don't know how much death this could bring,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: but annihilation seems to be the idea, like mass abundant,
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: undeniable death. Because here's the thing. If you detonate an
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: anthrax bomb in Germany, depending on where you're actually detonating it,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: it could affect France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Poland, Czechoslovakia,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: so on and so forth. Like imagine post war Britain
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: being like, yay, we saved you, and like, oh, half
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: of Europe just been like, yeah, you saved us from
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: those guys. But you also, you know, killed the majority
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: of our populations by infecting our food source. Of course,
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: this is the same country that tried to hold a
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: river hostage, but that's another story for another day. So yes,
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: not only were the scientists worried about the fact they
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: couldn't you know, contain the anthrax, were also worried about decontamination.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: So basically, once the sports had settled on the island,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: they were effectively impossible to remove, Like, they couldn't get
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: rid of them, so like their clothes and a bunch
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: of shit had to get burnt, and they couldn't get
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: out of the soil, and then they obviously had to
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: get rid of all of the fucking dead sheep. So
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: under Churchill's orders, the whole process was put on hold
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: and they were told to effectively cover up the ship.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: They did, so they take all of the sheep carcasses
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: and they move them into this cave on the island.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: You know, they're thinking they'll put them in the cave
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: and then they'll blow up the cave and they'll bury
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: the sheep and they'll just like not mention it again,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: just gonna be like mm hm, put up away no
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: trespass and sign on the island be like private island,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: stay out and it'll be fine. Right, that's a big plan.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: So they overestimated how much explosives to use when it
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: came to this cave, so they put everything in. They
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: get it all up, they fucking deronate it and sheep
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: carcasses fly into the air, so they should up and
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: off the island and into the fucking sea. They later
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: like tried to blame a storm for this. They were like, oh,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: it was a storm that blew the sheep's body away,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: when it was it wasn't it was because they blew.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Up right, So this sheep and other sheep parts like,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: it wasn't just one sheep. So it ends up on
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: the shore of Scotland, right mainland Scotland.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: And what was it? I think a dog took a
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: bout of it and he ends up infecting like a
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: bunch of other farm animals. So I think sixty animals
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: were killed as a direct sort of line from that,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: including like horses, sheep, dogs, et cetera. See, this is
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: a rural area, and the thing about rural areas is
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: that news travels fast. You would be surprised how much
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: information you get about the area when it is so remote,
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: probably because there's nothing else to talk about. But that's
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: neither here nor there. For the record, I live in
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: So I understand.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: But yeah, word gets around, and so naturally the government
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: comes in and they order a secret cull of this
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: farmer's sheep, and the farmer gets very well compensated for it,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: because you know, culling an entire flow is is not good,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: not at all, and he would need to be reimbursed
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: for that, especially considering he could go into and contaminate
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: more and it could do more damage. So they basically
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: wanted to try and nip it in the butt. And like,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: people in the area thought this was really fucking weird
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: because it's not often that you put in a complaint
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: about something happening on your farm and then you get
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: paid straight away. Like the government was so fast to
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: pay this fucking farmer that all the locals were like, what,
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: what's the actual fuck is going on here? And because
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: the government was trying to keep it all hush hush,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: they blamed like diseases and this weird animal death on
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: the careless disposal of animal carcasses from a Greek ship,
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: So like, yeah, it was the Greek sort of, it wasn't
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: as you know, we'll still pay you anyway. The whole
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: anthrax bomb thing again, the projects on hold up until
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty four when things are getting pretty tense and
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: Churchill's like, fuck it, I'm going to order some bombs,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: and he does. He does order some bombs. He orders
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: an initial stockpile of five hundred thousand anthrax bombs and
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: he's like, oh, well, I'm only going to use them
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: if I have to use them, if like Germany attacks
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: us first, and then I will, you know, pummel them
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: with complete death, absolute death and utter destruction. Like he
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: overstresses the point where it's like if they do it
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: to us, I'll do it to them, when we all know, nah,
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: you'd fucking do it anyway, mate, you know you would,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: because that's who you are, you absolute shit back. So
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: he is in this big meeting with you know, military advisors,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: and again he's approved like the five hundred thousand, and
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: then the Inter Service Subcommittee on Biological Warfare they were like, yeah,
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: this number isn't quit enough, we don't think, and so
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: they're like, we need more, and how much more? Eight times?
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: They wanted eight times as many anthrax bombs. In case
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: you can't math, that is four million, four million anthrax bombs.
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: Now excessive comes to mind, but much just a tad.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: So like initially Operation Vegetarian, the whole plan was to
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: hit like the countryside where the you know, the livestock
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: and the crops were. But this started to seepen and
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: be more focused on sort of bigger cities with higher populations,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: not military bases or government headquarters specifically, no, just places
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: with a high volume of ordinary people. So because they
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: wanted so many extra mega more bombs, they were going
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: to take away bit of time, so it wasn't until
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty five that they were going to be able
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: to like make them. And by the time the first
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: bombs are ready, this secret report gets sent to the
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: Cabinet Defense Committee basically saying that they are trialing even
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: deadlier anthrax weapons, which had the potit henchew to reduce
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Germany to an uninhabitable wasteland. But this time they didn't
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: test it on cheap They tested it on monkeys. The
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: results of these tests showing that they would be able
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: to completely massacre half the population of Stuttgart with one
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: decent airstrike, but Andrex basically fell out of favor with
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: the rise of the atom bomb. Oh, Grenyard Island is
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: contaminated as fuck, and they're like, how do we get
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: rid of it? And one of the great ideas they
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: have is setting the heather on fire. Like imagine being
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: on the mainland and looking over and an entire island
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: is on fire, Like, I mean, it's not the most
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: inconspicuous of ideas, like, oh, we don't want anybody to
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: know anything is happening here. You know what, We'll do
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: massive flames and a plume of smoke, Like, no, that's
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: that's not gonna draw anybody's attention to it whatsoever. After
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: realizing they cannot clean or burn it away, they're like, well,
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: just leave and test it every couple of years. So
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: that's what they do. They leave and they test it,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: and they leave and they test it, and it just
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: keeps showing up. Yep, still anthrax here. But like, it
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: wasn't until about twenty four years after the experiment that
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: the warning danger whatever signs on the island even mentioned anthrax.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: And for fucking decades, nobody kind of went near the
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: island anyway. There was sort of a dark mystery about it,
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: and people just didn't fucking go near it, like dodgy
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: shit there, spooky, creepy, fucking not now, but like they
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: were testing it in the seventies and there was still
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: anthrax there obviously, but they didn't do anything about it,
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: like they didn't do anything until the eighties. And that's
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: only because of the Dark Harvest Commandos, which, let's face it,
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: is a pretty badass name. So the Dark Harvest Commandos,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: under cover of darkness, sailed across the bay, snuck onto
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: the island, collected the contaminated soil, and then returned back.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: And on one day in nineteen eighty one, a letter
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: was sent to the Glasgow Herald newspaper which reads, by
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: the time you read this, the campaign will have started.
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: In earnest the first delivery will have been made, and
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: we're better to send the seeds of death than to
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: the place from whence they came. So basically they were
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: sent to Porting Down, which is a biological research center
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: in Wilchair. It is the top secret Ministry of Defense lab.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: So they searched the facility like top to bo. They
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: are looking all through it, obviously, and when do they
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: find absolutely nothing way will Later they do a second
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: search and they find a bucket of soil which they
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: test and after doing a we test and using you know,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: basic reasoning, they come to the conclusion that this soil
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: is from Greenyard Island and this soil is contaminated with anthrax.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: See the reason the soil was sent to porting down
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: is not just because it was like a government lab,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: but because the scientists who had worked on Greenyard Island
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: that's where they returned to. That was their general base
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: of operations. But anyway, the scientists in this lab at
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: this point they test the soil and not only are
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: they aware that it's anthrax, but they're like, wow, it
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: is surprisingly resilient. No fucking shit, there's anthrax that's been
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: around since what the fucking medieval era. Yeah, it survives.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: But the Black Harvest commandos were not done. So four
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: days after leaving the bucket of soil poureding down, the
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: Conservative Party conference in Blackpool was their next target. Away
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: ten box containing soil was left at Blackpool Tower and
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: like everyone was convinced they had the anthrax soil in it.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: It didn't, by the way, it just had soil. But
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: like at this point, everyone's on how you fucking alert?
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: The government launches an investigation to try and figure out
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: who the fuck these Dark Harvest commandos are, and they're
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: met with this fucking wall of silence. So they're investigating
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: like the local area and nobody has anything to say,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: and there's like a bunch of theories as to who
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: these guys are. Some think it's sort of locals from
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: the area who are just sick of shit happening to them.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Others think it's like anti nuclear activists and stuff like that.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: But there's also this theory that the Dark Harvest Commandos
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: are actually some of the scientists or connected to the
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: scientists who did the experiments on the island initially, and
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: that this is some sort of weird repentance situation. In
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: December nineteen eighty one, the Dark Harvest they pin this
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: letter to the door of the UK Government's Scottish Office
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: HQ in Edinburgh. And the letter, it's not like any
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: threats or anything in it. It just says that the
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: group just wanted to highlight the fucking shit that happened
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: in Grenyard.
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: And they want it fixed, basically, and they say they're
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: done for now, and that's the thing they are done.
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: But like, it's not till five years later, nineteen eighty six,
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: that any sort of cleanup happens, and there is a
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: massive fucking cleanup.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: They are spraying it with seawater and framaldehyde, going through
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: this whole decontamination situation, and by nineteen ninety it is
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: declared that it's fucking fine. It's all good to go
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: anthrax free. Two thumbs up. Now, now the island is
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: you know, no longer a danger to well everybody. It
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: means it can be sold back to, you know, the
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: rightful owners. So word gets out that this island is
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: available for five hundred pounds because, like the deal was,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: we paid five hundred pounds for it, you pay five
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: hundred pounds back. It's like always people try and buy it,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: but like descendants of the original owners, they end up
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: buying it, not to like live own or anything, but
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I think just to own it, because fuck it, why not.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: And now the island is uninhabited apart from a couple
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: of sheep and some rabbits. You know, they're just chilling out,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: having a good time, living their best lives, not being
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: contaminated with anthrax or blown up, which is nice. You know,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: enjoy yourselves now about those anthrax bombs. So they had
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: produced over five million little anthrax cattle cake things, right
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: and after World War two, not long after, they realized,
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: you know, we can't hold onto these because this is
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: really fucking dangerous, and they had to be destroyed in
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: an incinerator. So they had to like burn them the
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: fuck up and hope for the best, and that's what
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: they did. So yeah, Winston Churchill slaughtered sheep, released a
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: deadly bacteria and made a Scottish island completely uninhabitable for
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: fifty years for absolutely no reason. Super wonderful. Yeah, zero
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: out of ten would not recommend, and so ends the
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: story of Anthrax Island.
• 29:56
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• 29:57
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