Talk:Gruinard Island

Operation Dark Harvest
If anyone can find refs to it, it would be interesting to include "Operation Dark Harvest", where the SNLA claimed it had taken anthrax off the island, and was going to use it in biological attacks.--MacRusgail (talk) 17:54, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I've found a Time Magazine article on it. Lurker  (said · done) 11:59, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

The area of the island is 520 acres but only about 16 acres were actually decontaminated; this was in the vicinity of where the anthrax air bomb was detonated. The actual method of application of the formaldehyde was applied using a complex matrix of irrigation pipes; the seawater was pumped up using Coventry Climax fire pumps and mixed with the formaldehyde using modified fertiliser injectors from greenhouse hydroponics set ups. As to Dark Harvest it sounds like a typical conspiracy theory; there would be a lot easier ways of obtaining anthrax spores than trying to cultivate them from spores obtained from the island. Certainly by the time the decontamination was carried out the spore level was very low, and within another dozen years they would have been virtually undetectable.

G maps
An anon IP writes: "Gruinard Island is deliberately blurred on Google Maps". It seems to be missing from G maps and of poor quality on Google Earth - but the same is true of nearby Pabay and probably co-incidental. It's not as if there is likely to be anything visible anyone might wish to obscure. Ben  Mac  Dui  17:50, 24 July 2011 (UTC)


 * Two years later it's still very much low-res on Google Maps, as opposed to anything nearby. I think it's fair to say that this is not coincidentially. -- DevSolar (talk) 07:36, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * If you need more detail try Bing or Ordnance Survey. Ben   Mac  Dui  07:48, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 16:47, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120206055057/http://deepblade.net/journal/Holland_JUNE2005.pdf to http://deepblade.net/journal/Holland_JUNE2005.pdf

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 * Neither link works. The wayback link is to a GoDaddy expired account notice.  I tried a couple of links on other dates in the wayback machine and found that this one works:  https://web.archive.org/web/20080529042417/http://deepblade.net/journal/Holland_JUNE2005.pdf


 * Later versions may work as well. Some seemed to be PDF files but weren't loading, and I'm not at all sure that the files were actually there.  -- motorfingers : Talk  23:14, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Operation Dark Harvest
"...where the ruling Conservative Party was holding its annual conference." - Whilst the Conservatives may think they "rule", they but govern in the name of Queen Elizabeth II as only a monarch can rule in Great Britain.

92.11.135.180 (talk) 22:24, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Plagues and People
— Assignment last updated by MatthewBroadway (talk) 22:56, 2 October 2023 (UTC)