Which did not require any advanced knowledge

However, in this case, and since the whole world was vulnerable I highly doubt it

are not really really comparable to what may have happened in any recent conflict.

Lots of folks died in this flu outbreak.

My father was the youngest of 5, was 5 at the time.

While Jenner did the early work in protecting people from smallpox by inoculating them with cowpox, he had no clue what either disease actually was or what it was caused by. While they knew that something smaller than bacteria was at work with illnesses in 1918, they had never visualized them (not having electron micrography) and development of other vaccines was slow, slow work.

Medicine and microbiology were both in their infancy in 1918. In addition, much of the scientific infrastructure where the first flu had popped up had either been neglected or had lain idle during the years of the first World War, leaving their primitive means of dealing with it out of the picture. Agriculture and trade had both been disrupted, so people were weak and more susceptible to illness.

In order to build such a monstrosity, they would have needed to be able to do gene sequencing and check the result back in a time when they didn't know what DNA was. They've only managed to sequence it and recreate it in a lab in the past 10 years, figuring out it was an H1N2 subtype only when people who died from it were exhumed from Alaskan permafrost.

Tl,dr: No fuckin way, Jose.

Unless it was a punishment from GODDDDDDDDDDDDDDD for our violent ways. But since 90% of the bible is exceedingly pro-war, I doubt it!

Epidemics happen.

And travel between continents became more common after WW1, so viruses could spread to people who had no experience or immunities to flu.

war.

I remember my mother talking about it. She was a kid in El Paso and she remembers sick folks being quarantined...

Flu : the story of the great influenza pandemic of 1918 and the search for the virus that caused it by Gina Kolata

I got about half way through it but had to return it to the library because someone put a hold on it, so I couldn't
renew it. May try to get it out again after the New Year.

The Influenza Pandemic occurred in three waves in the United States throughout 1918 and 1919. Learn more about the pandemic, along with the Nation’s health and the medical care system and how they were affected. Also, take a glance at some people who fought the Influenza in the United States.

http://www.flu.gov/pandemic/history/1918/

not even in the realm of possibility.

given the state of science and technology at that time. I doubt anyone would even have thought of doing that with the influenza virus. It just doesn't sound possible to me.

Or is it The X-Files instead?

too much Doctor Who.

If you take a look at how awful cleanliness standards (food prep, sewage, shortage of medical care and bathing facilities) were towards the end of the war, it's pretty obvious...

But you are right that neither side would have shrunk from doing so, if they had thought of it. And you are right that such "weapons" have a long history, extending as far back as we have written records.

That pandemic was caused by an avian influenza, which was the ancestor of our common human and swine influenza. Over 500 million people were infected, with about 40 million deaths, mortality rate was 2.5%.

The influenza virus is a particularly changeable and infects many species of animals including humans; it shifts and drifts and mutates over time to survive. It can jump species by combining with another influenza virus and creating a worst case scenario pandemic. This all happens without any help from humans, and the conditions were perfect during that time period that it spread unabated. Another consideration - a lot of deaths occurred from secondary infections like pneumonia, simply because the infected were not given supportive care (and there were no antibiotics for sencodary infections).

This will happen again, it's mother nature.

In the military bases when all the new recruits for WW1 started arriving. It is believed to have probably arrived by a young man from rural America on a farm. In the barracks it found excellent conditions and spread.

When US troops arrived in Europe we brought it with us. It was deemed the Spanish Flu because there was an article written from Spain.

And when our troops started returning back to the States they brought it back.