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A paragraph from about the middle of the article. Please don't go political on this....thanks. This came up in a conversation about prairie dogs being carriers of the plague.....which they are not. It's the flea that pretty much spreads it around but the paragraph I pasted just shows what humans can and will do with stuff like this.
https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20180212/plague-blame-the-flea-not-the-rat
PLAGUE AS A BIOWEAPON
Plague is a disease that can cause terror in a population because of how quickly it can kill, along with the obvious signs of buboes and necrosis of distal extremities, nose and ears in some cases (hence, the “Black Death”). Plague was used as a bioweapon by the Mongols, who catapulted bodies of plague victims over the walls of a city, and by the Japanese in World War II who dropped infected fleas over China. Both the former Soviet Union and the U.S. developed Y. pestis to be used as an aerosolized bioweapon. The U.S. terminated the program in 1970 before a large quantity had been accumulated. However, the Soviet Union had acquired large stockpiles of Y. pestis and in fact developed multidrug-resistant (including fluoroquinolone-resistant) strains of the bacteria. WHO estimated that if 59 kg of Y. pestis aerosol were dropped over a city with 5 million inhabitants, plague pneumonia would occur in up to 150,000 people. WHO further estimated that the aerosolized Y. pestis would remain viable for up to 1 hour.
https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20180212/plague-blame-the-flea-not-the-rat
PLAGUE AS A BIOWEAPON
Plague is a disease that can cause terror in a population because of how quickly it can kill, along with the obvious signs of buboes and necrosis of distal extremities, nose and ears in some cases (hence, the “Black Death”). Plague was used as a bioweapon by the Mongols, who catapulted bodies of plague victims over the walls of a city, and by the Japanese in World War II who dropped infected fleas over China. Both the former Soviet Union and the U.S. developed Y. pestis to be used as an aerosolized bioweapon. The U.S. terminated the program in 1970 before a large quantity had been accumulated. However, the Soviet Union had acquired large stockpiles of Y. pestis and in fact developed multidrug-resistant (including fluoroquinolone-resistant) strains of the bacteria. WHO estimated that if 59 kg of Y. pestis aerosol were dropped over a city with 5 million inhabitants, plague pneumonia would occur in up to 150,000 people. WHO further estimated that the aerosolized Y. pestis would remain viable for up to 1 hour.
using the Prairie dog, priceless 
