The British Subway Experiment
Nation Involved: United Kingdom
Time Period: 1964
You’ll be forgiven if you do not know who Ulf Smidt is. He is a professor who is responsible for exposing A LOT of old British tests and experiments, many of which were done on the public. Porton Down seemed to love doing tests on an unsuspecting public without even thinking about the consequences of their actions. We know government experiments went down at the facility a lot. Yet when they wanted to study something to see how a mass amount of people would respond, they tested the British public. It was uncovered that Porton Down experimented on public transit from the 1910s up to as far as the 1960s.
Usually, the tests were done to see how trains, subways, and buses worked. On some occasions, they released biological agents. One such incident took place when they conducted a biological warfare field trial on the Capital Tube System in May of 1964. Porton Down scientists released a lot of the chemical Bacillus Globigii into the tube. The test was said to be for seeing if long-distance travel of aerosols in the tube network was due to train transportation or if it came through the ventilation system. All the while, not considering the potential dangers their chemical could do to people on the train.