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Operation Vegetarian: Britain's Secret WWII Plan to Starve a Nation with Anthrax
During WWII, Britain devised 'Operation Vegetarian,' a chilling plan to drop anthrax-laced cattle cakes on Germany to decimate its food supply. Tested on a Scottish island, it created a deadly contamination zone that lasted for decades, a stark reminder of the horrors of total war.
In the desperate, high-stakes calculus of World War II, nations explored every conceivable avenue for victory, pushing the boundaries of conventional and ethical warfare. Among the most terrifying of these was a top-secret British plan known as Operation Vegetarian. It wasn't a mission to promote a plant-based diet; it was a sinister plot to unleash one of nature's most lethal pathogens, anthrax, upon Germany's livestock to trigger mass starvation and societal collapse.
A Grim Harvest
The concept was grimly straightforward. Scientists at Porton Down, the UK's secretive military research facility, developed millions of small linseed cakes, a common form of cattle feed. The twist? Each cake was injected with a lethal dose of virulent anthrax spores. The plan was for the Royal Air Force to drop these infected cakes across the German countryside, where they would be consumed by cattle.
The bacteria, Bacillus anthracis, would cause a swift and agonizing death for the animals, decimating Germany's meat and dairy supply. The contagion wouldn't stop there. Anthrax can easily transmit from infected carcasses to humans, leading to a potential public health catastrophe alongside the engineered famine. The goal was to cripple the German war machine from within by destroying its food source and morale.
Gruinard Island: The Island of Death
To verify the weapon's effectiveness, a remote and uninhabited testing ground was required. The military chose Gruinard Island, a small, picturesque island off the northwest coast of Scotland. In 1942, a group of sheep were tethered in a field, and a bomb containing the anthrax spores was detonated upwind. The results were terrifyingly successful.
As described in declassified reports and films from the time, the effects were rapid and brutal. Within days, the entire flock was dead. The experiment proved the concept, but it came at a staggering environmental cost. The anthrax spores contaminated the soil of Gruinard Island so thoroughly that it was deemed uninhabitable. The government quarantined the island, erecting warning signs that read:
This island is government property under experiment. The ground is contaminated with anthrax and dangerous. Landing is prohibited. By order.
For nearly 50 years, Gruinard was known as "Anthrax Island" or the "Island of Death," a chilling monument to the lingering power of biological weapons.
A Line Not Crossed
Five million anthrax-laced cattle cakes were produced and stood ready for deployment. So why was this devastating weapon never used? By the time the cakes were ready in 1944, the tide of the war had turned. The successful D-Day landings and the advance of Allied forces across Europe meant that such an extreme and unpredictable weapon was no longer considered necessary. There was also a deep-seated fear of retaliation. If Britain unleashed biological warfare, Germany might respond in kind, leading to an uncontrollable escalation with civilian populations on both sides paying the ultimate price.
The Lingering Shadow
The legacy of Operation Vegetarian haunted Gruinard Island for decades. In the 1980s, a protest group called the "Dark Harvest Commandos" left a container of contaminated soil outside Porton Down to draw attention to the government's inaction. This spurred a massive and costly decontamination effort. Hundreds of tonnes of topsoil were removed, and the island was sprayed with a solution of formaldehyde and seawater. In 1990, after a flock of sheep was able to survive on the island for a year, it was finally declared safe and sold back to its original owners for the nominal sum of £500.
Operation Vegetarian remains a stark and unsettling chapter of WWII history. It serves as a powerful reminder of how close the world came to widespread biological warfare and highlights the long-lasting, generational consequences that such weapons leave behind, long after the fighting has stopped.