ARTICLE ON: OPERATION SEA SPRAY [1950]-BY SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE

SmartNews Keeping you current In 1950, the U.S. Released a Bioweapon in San Francisco This was one of hundreds of bioweapon simulations carried out in the 1950s and 1960s As part of a bioweapon experiment, Serratia marcescens (pictured on an agar plate... More

SmartNews Keeping you current In 1950, the U.S. Released a Bioweapon in San Francisco This was one of hundreds of bioweapon simulations carried out in the 1950s and 1960s As part of a bioweapon experiment, Serratia marcescens (pictured on an agar plate above) was released in San Francisco back in 1950. (Nathan Reading/Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) By Helen Thompson smithsonianmag.com July 6, 2015 The bacterium Serratia marcescens lives in soil and water, and is best known for its ability to produce bright red pigment. This flashy trait makes this particular microbe useful in experiments—because it is so bright, it's easy to see where it is. And in 1950, the U.S. military harnessed that power in a large-scale biowarefare test, writes Rebecca Kreston on her blog “Body Horrors” for Scientific American. Beginning on September 26, 1950, the crew of a U.S. Navy minesweeper ship spent six days spraying Serratia marcescens into the air about two miles off the northern California coast. The project was Less