harbor#5

戦争のための細菌兵器の歴史について書かれた記事です。この記事には，病気を持つ羊を敵の町に送り込み，感染病を起こすことで敵を全滅させ，街を奪った例や，第二次大戦中に考案された細菌兵器について書かれております。記事の中で気になった単語は"harbor"です。『Wisdom英和辞典第三版（三省堂）』によると「を匿う，に隠れ場所を与える，（生物・菌の）すみかとなる」などという意味がありました。ODには"Carry the germs of (a disease)"とあり，遺伝子などの内在的なものを表現する時に使うようです。にここでは，人間の体液などには，良くない物質を含む場合があり得ることを書いております。（Ume）

How long has mankind been waging germ warfare?

The average cough creates a cloud of more than 3,000 moisture droplets that hang in the air for hours.

And bodily fluids can harbour some nasty stuff. Take, for instance, the Black Death; it killed more than 200m people in the 14th Century alone. Or smallpox, which used to kill 400,000 Europeans every year. Smallpox was eradicated in the 20th Century, but if it somehow got back into the natural world it could create a doomsday scenario. That’s why both the US and Russian governments keep stocks of the disease in top secret labs.

But the world is already full of infectious diseases. And germ warfare – using those bugs to win battles – has been going on for a long time. Around 3,500 years ago, a race of Middle Eastern warriors known as the Hittites hatched a plan to leave six sheep at the gates of an enemy city. When the unsuspecting locals took in the livestock, ticks from the sheep gave them a dose of rabbit fever, a contagious bacterial disease that could have killed half of them and left the city for the taking.

harbor #4 - 田邉祐司ゼミ 常時英心：言葉の森から
harbor #3 - 田邉祐司ゼミ 常時英心：言葉の森から

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140808-the-dirty-history-of-germ-warfar