Biological Warfare
 

Aerosolized anthrax may seem like one of mankind's most dangerous scourges, but plague-ridden corpses are a bioterrorist's best friend.

According to the U.S. government, the earliest recorded uses of bioweapons goes back to the ancient Assyrians and the ancient Greeks, who used medicinal herbs to wreak havoc before the Christian era began. Another early adopter was the Mongol horde, which threw plague-infested corpses over the walls of a Crimean fortress they happened to be beseiging in the 14th century. This was perhaps history's most devastating use of biological warfare, seeing as it may have caused the Great Plague (in addition to very effectively wiping out its target).

Chernobyl gets all the press, but in a little-discussed 1979 incident, a Soviet biowarfare laboratory had an accidental explosion which resulted in the release of anthrax spores (probably) in the city of Sverdlovsk. The Soviet government blamed contaminated meat for the subsequent outbreak (but Boris Yeltsin subsequently admitted it was a biowarfare experiment gone bad). The numbers were obscured because of Cold War secrecy, but it's believed 200 to 1,000 people died. Funerals were canceled, and the bodies were sterilized and disposed of as biohazards.