If there’s one central lesson of the ever-more-insane news cycle over the last six years or so, it’s that sometimes truth is, in fact, stranger than fishin’ — especially when it comes to the various machinations of the Deep State.
If you follow social media happenings, you might have noticed a deluge of amateur videos shot from around the country depicting boxes of ticks apparently dropped onto farms and other properties, as well as reports of extremely unusual volumes of ticks, even for the current tick season.
Man films strange box of ticks dropped in woods -- one of many such reports pic.twitter.com/CWtMpaDzAm
— Ben Bartee (@BenBartee) May 20, 2026
Related: Bird Flu Engineered to Infect Humans Could Be Lab-Produced ‘in Months,’ Former CDC Director Says
It seems like only one of two things could be happening here:
- Mass formation psychosis has gripped the Deplorables, and they are experiencing a collective hallucination, or;
- There are, in fact, unnaturally large numbers of ticks dispersed across the country, and someone or something is behind it
So which is it?
First off, it’s worth establishing that it is true that the number of ticks, as well as their geographical range, has increased in recent years.
Most mainstream scientists, such as the ones below, chalk it up to “global warming” — because of course they do — but, as we’ll see, there exists perhaps a plausible alternative theory.
Via Cureus (emphasis added):
The lone star tick has been linked to other disease entities in the past, including, but not limited to, Francisella tularensis, southern tick-associated rash illness, and, more recently, Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Traditionally found primarily in southern states, lone star ticks have been seen more frequently in northeastern states such as Delaware and Connecticut. This shift may be due to rising global temperatures, which contribute to more favorable conditions for tick survival and growth. The warming pattern may also increase the duration of tick activity, further extending the period of disease transmission. In addition, lone star ticks can lay thousands of eggs at a time, which facilitates their spread. A study of lone star ticks in New York identified genetic differences that may suggest adaptation conferring resistance to the northern climate….
Between 2015 and 2025, the incidence and prevalence of MMA increased significantly across all demographics. Based on TriNetX analysis of a national cohort of 114,696,176 patients, the number of new MMA diagnoses rose from 180 cases during 2015-2020 to 10,132 cases during 2021-2025. This corresponds to a 5,520% increase in incidence proportion and a 5,566% increase in prevalence, reflecting substantial growth in both new diagnoses and the total number of individuals living with the condition.
If we’re going to entertain the very real possibility that the tick infestation is engineered and not an act of God, what would be the point?
Related: Health Officials Gun Down Hundreds of Ostriches on Family Farm For Bird Flu
As it happens, proponents of The Science™, like Blake Hereth, PhD (they/them), who has “spearheaded efforts to advance the interests of LGBTQ persons within professional philosophy, including bioethics,” and his colleague, Parker Crutchfield, PhD, have publicly promoted the weaponization and proliferation of tick populations to induce alpha-gal syndrome (AGS), sometimes referred to as MMA, a potentially life-threatening allergy to red meat, on an unsuspecting public, through a program they describe as a “moral bioenhancer.”
Via Bioethics (emphasis added):
Among the best and most widely accepted arguments in applied ethics are those concluding that eating meat is morally wrong. Their premises, logic, and conclusions differ. However, broadly, they end in one of two claims: (a) that eating meat is wrong, or (b) that eating factory farmed meat is wrong…
Our main conclusion is that we should promote a particular tickborne syndrome: alpha‐gal syndrome (AGS). AGS is caused by the allergen alpha‐gal, which in humans causes an allergic reaction to eating mammalian meat and mammalian organs. People who have the allergy may have a variety of symptoms, including hives, gastrointestinal upset (e.g., vomiting and diarrhea), or anaphylaxis in severe cases. Often, these symptoms present 2–6 h after ingestion of mammalian meat. However, there is little reason to believe that there are additional harms associated with the allergy, aside from the allergic reaction itself. Although AGS is typically associated with the lone star tick (LST), other ticks also transmit AGS…
In short, when a tick sucks human blood and transmits AGS, it enhances the moral capacities of the person it bites; the AGS‐transmitting tick is a moral bioenhancer. The more they transmit AGS, the better they and the world will be. We aim to establish the main claim that we should promote the proliferation of AGS by promoting the ticks that transmit it. To be clear, we do not argue that, today, we are morally obligated to promote the spread of tickborne AGS, because presently it is not possible to do so. But it is feasible to genetically edit the disease‐carrying capacity of ticks. If we are right, then today we have the obligation to research and develop the capacity to proliferate tickborne AGS and, tomorrow, carry out that proliferation.
This is a pair of bioethicists, in public, declaring that artificially inducing an allergy with no consent from the victim is somehow a moral good.
Some might call that bioterrorism.
Related: 'Supercharged Monkeypox': House Republicans Charge NIH With Dangerous Gain-of-Function Research
But the rabbit hole gets deeper.
In the '60s, the CIA drew up plans to airdrop ticks on Cuban sugar plantations in an effort to destabilize its economy and foment regime change.
Via Principia Scientific (emphasis added):
During the Cold War, the United States maintained an active biological warfare program from 1943 until President Richard Nixon ordered its termination in 1969.
Centered at Fort Detrick in Maryland, the program explored various delivery systems for pathogens, including insects such as fleas, mosquitoes, and ticks. One notable experiment, Operation Big Itch in 1954, involved releasing approximately 670,000 fleas from cluster munitions to test their viability as disease vectors.
Researchers also studied ticks extensively, with some work reportedly conducted at Plum Island, where large colonies of both soft and hard ticks were maintained. Wildlife, including deer and birds, moved freely between the island and the Connecticut mainland, creating potential pathways for pathogens to reach local populations.
The program gained additional momentum during the Kennedy administration. In response to Cuba’s alignment with the Soviet Union, the United States launched Operation Mongoose, a covert campaign aimed at undermining Fidel Castro’s regime. Some proposals reportedly examined the use of disease-carrying insects to target Cuban agricultural workers, particularly in sugarcane and tobacco fields, in an effort to disrupt the island’s economy.
While the full extent of these plans remains debated, declassified documents confirm that Project 112, authorized in 1962, expanded biological weapons testing and included research on mass insect production.
Between 1966 and 1969, the U.S. military released 282,800 ticks labeled with radioactive carbon-14 along bird migration routes in Virginia. The goal was to study how ticks—and the diseases they might carry—could spread across wide areas. Notably, lone star ticks, previously not found north of the Mason-Dixon line, soon established populations on Long Island.
Related: After Years of Covering For Fauci, Washington Post Acknowledges Beagle Torture
What’s more, journalist and author of “Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons,” Kris Newby, relayed an interview with a CIA black ops operator who said what was previously understood only as a proposal was actually a real program that he personally participated in: dropping diseased ticks on Cuban sugarcane workers.
Via The Spectator (emphasis added):
On December 18 last year, Donald Trump signed into law an order to “review and report on biological weapons experiments on and in relation to ticks [and] tick-borne diseases.” The investigation is long overdue but even so, the facts it uncovers will come as a shock to many. A growing body of evidence shows that during the Cold War ticks were tinkered with and used as delivery mechanisms for biological warfare agents. And these weaponized ticks may have been released both intentionally and unintentionally on an unsuspecting public by the US military…
I met a man in his seventies who had been in black ops in the CIA. He told me that the strangest thing he ever did was drop infected ticks on Cuban sugarcane workers in 1962. I verified the details of what he told me – it turned out that the dropping of infected ticks in Cuba was a subproject of Operation Mongoose, which aimed to weaken Fidel Castro’s position in Cuba by destroying its economy...
The US entomological bioweapons program was directed by the Chemical Corps, headquartered at Fort Detrick, Maryland. The program was almost as large and secretive as the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. In 1951, Willy Burgdorfer, a medical zoologist with experience working with ticks and Q fever, was recruited from Basel, Switzerland, to conduct feasibility studies for Fort Detrick. His lab was based in the Rocky Mountain Laboratory in Hamilton, Montana, which was home to the largest living tick collection in the US. Burgdorfer often traveled to Fort Detrick, where he worked alongside former Nazi biowarfare scientists who had been allowed into the country through Operation Paperclip.
