Project Big Buzz: The Cold War Experiment That Turned Mosquitoes into Weapons Over Georgia

In 1955's 'Operation Big Buzz,' the U.S. military released 300,000 mosquitoes on Savannah, Georgia, to test insect-based bioweapon delivery. Unsuspecting residents in a Black neighborhood were monitored for bites, used as unwitting subjects in the Cold War.

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In the spring of 1955, residents of Carver Village, a predominantly African-American housing project in Savannah, Georgia, noticed an unsettling phenomenon: a sudden, overwhelming swarm of mosquitoes. The insects were everywhere, far more numerous than the usual Southern pest. What the community didn't know was that this was no natural occurrence. They were the unwitting subjects of a secret U.S. Army Chemical Corps experiment, codenamed Operation Big Buzz.

The Cold War's Unseen Battlefield

The mid-1950s marked a peak in Cold War paranoia. The United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a tense standoff, exploring every conceivable avenue for military advantage—including the chilling field of biological warfare. The U.S. Army's Chemical Corps was tasked with developing and testing these unconventional weapons. One area of intense focus was entomological warfare: the use of insects to spread disease among an enemy population. But before a pathogen-carrying mosquito could be deployed overseas, the military needed to know one thing: could they effectively deliver the insects to a target?

An Experiment on Home Soil

Breeding the Swarm

The plan for Operation Big Buzz was straightforward yet audacious. Scientists at the Army's Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland bred approximately 335,000 female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. This species was chosen for its infamous role as a vector for deadly diseases like Yellow Fever and Dengue fever. For this test, however, the mosquitoes were uninfected. The objective was not to spread disease, but to study dispersal patterns and biting efficacy. The female mosquitoes were specifically used because they are the ones that bite, requiring a blood meal to produce eggs.

The Target and the Deception

The choice of Savannah's Carver Village was no accident. The area's layout and demographics were considered ideal for the test. In May 1955, the specially bred mosquitoes were released from ground level throughout the neighborhood. What followed was a masterclass in deception. Army personnel, posing as public health officials, went door-to-door, telling residents they were conducting a survey. They asked about recent illnesses and, under this guise, checked family members for fresh mosquito bites. This allowed them to gather data on the swarm's effectiveness without revealing the terrifying truth of the experiment.

A "Successful" Operation

From the military's perspective, Operation Big Buzz was a resounding success. The data revealed that the mosquitoes had dispersed aggressively, covering an area between one and two square miles. More alarmingly, they had effectively found human targets, with estimates suggesting that residents in the area received numerous bites. The experiment confirmed that releasing a swarm of insects was a viable method for delivering a biological agent. One report stated:

The tests showed that the mosquitoes survived the drop and, a day later, had found their way into the surrounding houses and had bitten the occupants.

This was just one of several such tests. A similar experiment, Operation Drop Kick, was conducted in 1956 in Avon Park, Florida, where uninfected mosquitoes were dropped from aircraft to study their dispersal over a wider area.

A Legacy of Mistrust

Operation Big Buzz remained classified for years, another footnote in the long history of unethical human experimentation conducted by the U.S. government. For the residents of Carver Village, the memory of the swarm lingered, eventually connecting with declassified reports to form a disturbing picture. The experiment raised profound ethical questions about consent, transparency, and the use of citizens as test subjects. No long-term health studies were ever conducted on the residents who were bitten, leaving a permanent question mark over the potential consequences. The operation stands as a chilling reminder that in the quest for national security, the line between protection and peril can become terrifyingly blurred.

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