In the 1950s, a flock of geese detected by the radar installations in northern Canada that were part of the Distant Early Warning system was momentarily mistaken for a group of Soviet bombers on their way to attack the United States. We may need to think once again about the impact of geese on our national security as Tom Toles points out in a recent cartoon for the Washington Post.
But don't think it's a laughing matter. While Mike Davis has always had an eye for the apocalyptic (he's the author of Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster), he generally knows what he's talking about. His recent description of the threat that avian flu poses is sobering.