Six - legged Soldiers : Using Insects as Weapons of War Six - Legged Soldiers : Using Insects as Weapons of War is a nonfiction scientific warfare book written by award - winning author and University of Wyoming professor , Jeffrey A . Lockwood . Published in 2008 by Oxford University Press , the book explores the history of bioterrorism , entomological warfare , biological warfare , and the prevention of agro - terrorism from the earliest times to modern threats . Lockwood , an entomologist , preceded this book with " Ethical issues in biological control " ( 1997 ) and " Locust : The devastating rise and mysterious disappearance of the insect that shaped the American frontier " ( 2004 ) , among others . Summary . " Six - Legged Soldiers " gives detailed examples of entomological warfare : using buckets of scorpions during a fortress siege , catapult ing beehive s ( " bee bombs " ) across a castle wall , civilians as human guinea pigs in an effort to weaponize the plague , bombarding civilians from the air with infection - bearing insects , and assassin bug s placed on prisoners to eat away their flesh . Lockwood also describes a domestic ecoterrorism example with the 1989 threat to release the Medfly ( " Ceratitis capitata " ) within California ' s crop belt . The last chapter highlights western nations ' vulnerability to terrorist attack s . Interviewed about the book by BBC Radio 4 ' s Today programme , the author describes how a terrorist with a suitcase could bring diseases into a country . " I think a small terrorist cell could very easily develop an insect - based weapon . " Criticism . In its January 2009 review , " The Sunday Times " criticised the book as being " scarcely scholarly " for its mixed collection of myth , legend and historical facts . The Author Replies : Reviewers have described themselves as skeptics and asserted that Six - Legged Soldiers is “ devoid of rigour ” or “ scarcely scholarly . ” What such folks seem to have missed is that I share their doubts ( e . g . , the US military weaponized yellow fever mosquitoes during the Cold War , I don ’ t believe that the Americans waged wholesale entomological warfare against North Korea or Cuba ) . As I noted in the preface of the book : What I am less skeptical about is the reader , believing that readers of science and history are generally astute folks . As such , I chose to respect their intelligence rather than donning the paternalistic mantle of academic authority ( can anybody really claim to be an expert on warfare from the Paleolithic to the present ? ) . As a writer and professor , I am not in the business of sparing people from having to think . Instead , the preface makes clear that : And so , those who suggest that I endorse various views and reports by virtue of having included them in the book have evidently failed to read the preface . Indeed , careless readers are prone to all sorts of misunderstandings , such as Mr . Hastings of the who suggested that Napoleon ’ s forces were devastated by “ typhus borne by fleas ” ( the disease being carried by lice ) and that Generals Grant and Lee were not “ clever or fiendish enough ” to employ biological warfare ( there is no such claim in the book , although I do contend , along with Civil War historians , that General Johnston unwittingly allied with mosquitoes when he knowingly and effectively inflicted disease on his enemy by pinning down a superior Union force in the malaria - ridden marshes outside of Richmond ) . So , for the reader ( or reviewer ) who wants to understand the perspective from which the book was written , please don ’ t skip the preface .