In WWII, one Scottish island became a secret British bioweapon site, stayed toxic for 50 years. Now it is a popular tourist spot

An idyllic island in the Scottish highlands became a toxic waste space during World War II. The Gruinard Island became a site for secret bioweapon tests during the Second World War. According to Pop Science, in 1942, the then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill requested a team of scientists from Porton Down to create a bioweapon for Britain using the bacterium Bacillus anthracis. B. anthracis is a bacterium that lives in the soil, and even though it's only a few micrometres long, it can cause a lot of problems. When the bacterium feels like there's not enough food, it creates special cells called spores. These spores can survive things like radiation, extreme heat, cold, and chemicals used to clean things. These spores also contain harmful substances that can lead to anthrax in humans and other animals. In an interview with Pop Science, George C. Stewart, a retired microbiologist at the University of Missouri, explained that the disease was insidious, and in animals like cattle, there are often no outward symptoms of the disease, only one day, the animal is dead.

At this point, the sick animals start bleeding a lot from many places, like their mouths and anuses, and also from cuts or sores that appear on their skin. The dark, thick blood from the dying animals leaks into the soil, spreading anthrax spores throughout the ground.

People usually get anthrax when they touch animals that have the disease. The spores can get into the body through cuts or broken skin, or they can be inhaled or eaten. The symptoms can change based on how the infection gets into the body and might involve dark, swollen blisters, chest pain, fever, and chills.


Any type of anthrax can lead to a serious infection that moves through the blood and affects the whole body. Cutaneous anthrax happens when the bacteria get into the body through a cut or any place the skin is broken, and it is the form that is least likely to be deadly. Even though it's not always fatal, it can still be very dangerous, and about one in five people who get sick don't survive. A vaccine given before someone is exposed to a disease can help keep them from getting sick.

The British Ministry of Defence identified Gruinard Island as a viable site for examining the bacterium’s power. The government had borrowed sheep from the mainland and had shipped them over to the island. All the sheep died. After they perished, the government compensated the locals for the dead animals and lied that they perished from a toxin released from a nearby Greek shipwreck. The island was sealed off in the next 40 years.

In the middle of the 1980s, an activist group called the Dark Harvest Commandos became upset because they thought the government wasn't doing enough to deal with the polluted island. The group wanted to bring attention to the ongoing danger that Gruinard has always been a threat to the public. Members went to the island and took soil samples from the ground. According to Monika Ehling-Schulz, a microbiologist at the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, anthrax spores can stay active and alive for decades under these conditions.

Anthrax spores can stay inactive for very long times and then become active again later. In previous studies, Ehling-Schulz's team found living anthrax samples that might have been dormant for about 80 years. The Dark Harvest Commandos first attacked Porton Down, where scientists found a container with soil that had anthrax contamination near the building. A few days later, the group took another soil sample close to Blackpool Tower, which was where the Conservative Party was holding its conference.

Authorities tried to find out who was behind Dark Harvest and checked different groups in the Scottish Highlands. Even though they tried their best, they couldn't find out who did the actions.

Stewart told Popular Science that the scientists mixed formaldehyde with seawater and flooded the island several times. By 1990, the government had declared the island anthrax-free and removed the prohibition for visits.

Today, the island has become a popular tourist place, and people can go kayaking.