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Learn how to take a bullet, stage a kidnapping, and other harrowing scenarios from the secret agents of Cinemax’s Strike Back. You can also check out trailers and clips from Season 2 as you follow Michael Stonebridge, Damien Scott, and Section 20 as they try to prevent the world’s most dangerous criminals from throwing the world into certain turmoil.

Pigeon cameras. Poison-tipped umbrellas. Sometimes reality is even stranger than TV.

Strike Back^®, the thrilling spy series from Cinemax^®, tells the story of agents at the top-secret intelligence agency known as Section 20. Locked in a deadly battle against terrorists bent on destruction, special-ops agents Michael Stonebridge and Damien Scott employ an explosive mixture of high-tech gadgetry and old-fashioned brute force in their attempt to save the world. And while Strike Back’s special-operations tech and espionage tactics seem like something only Hollywood could script, this interactive timeline shows that the bizarre world of real-life black ops can be even more unbelievable.

2004 – Future

Operation Drone Zone

Unmanned Attack Vehicles

Since the inception of Section 20, its agents have been getting their hands dirty in the field. And while there's no substitute for Damien Scott and Michael Stonebridge on the ground, there's one weapon that proves we're moving toward a new era of spying in the sky: Unmanned Attack Vehicles (UAVs), a.k.a drones. These flying robots are controlled by a navigator sometimes thousands of miles away, while others are being developed to have the capability to think and make decisions on their own. Initially developed for surveillance, they are increasingly being used for warfare in sensitive areas all too familiar to the agents of Section 20, like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. One advantage of using a UAV rather than a manned aircraft is that a manned vehicle on a bombing mission can be shot down and its pilots captured, causing diplomatic incidents if the target is officially considered a friendly country. Something to consider if you're a top-secret intelligence agency trying to fly under the radar.

2000

Operation Robocarp

Charlie the Robotic Catfish

In the search for WMD, Damien Scott and company would benefit from the help of an unlikely ally: a catfish named Charlie. In 2000, the CIA built a remarkably realistic robotic catfish, with a powered propulsion system in its tail and a wireless line-of-sight radio handset to steer it. The CIA has yet to disclose Charlie's actual objectives, but experts speculate that it’s designed to secretly collect water samples near suspected chemical or nuclear plants. Made to resemble a channel catfish commonly found in rivers worldwide, Charlie is so realistic, one scientist said, its real danger isn't being detected, but being eaten by predators while on its cloak-and-dagger missions.

1978

Operation Cloudy with a Chance of Poison

Poison-tipped umbrella

To Section 20, the days of assassination by snipers and car bombs have been replaced by far more clandestine methods. Take the case of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, who succumbed to a poison dart fired from an umbrella in 1978. Markov, a communist defector working for the BBC, left his office in London one day and boarded his homebound train. Just minutes into his journey, he felt a sharp jab in his thigh, turned, and glimpsed a man picking up an umbrella and leaving. He thought nothing of it at the time, but soon after he developed a high temperature and passed away four days later. A postmortem showed that the cause of death had been a tiny pellet containing a 0.2 milligram dose of the poison ricin, detected only because the pellet carrying the poison had not dissolved as expected.

1968

Operation Shaken Not Stirred

Martini Olive Bug

Work and pleasure are sometimes one and the same for the agents of Section 20, making this next piece of special-ops gear invaluable. In 1968, San Francisco private detective Hal Lipset developed a highly innovative listening device: the Martini Olive Bug. Perfect for placement inside an empty martini glass (alcohol would have caused it to short circuit), the fake olive — actually a tiny transmitter — was equipped with a pimiento-size microphone and a toothpick housing a copper wire that acted as an antenna. The range of the olive was short — only about 30 feet — but the bug fit perfectly into any party setting where an agent could mingle with her empty martini glass and pick up the conversations directed at her or leave her glass near a conversation that she could then monitor in secret.

1907

Operation Pigeon Pix

Pigeon Photography

Section 20 is always looking for new sources of intelligence. Maybe they should think outside the box — with this ingenious invention. In 1907 Julius Neubronner, a German apothecary, invented an aerial photography technique known as Pigeon Photography. An amateur photographer and pigeon enthusiast, Neubronner combined his two favorite hobbies when he attached a miniature time-delay camera to homing pigeons, and captured aerial photographs during their flight. From there, it wasn't long before the military implications of Pigeon Photography were realized. Battlefield tests of the pigeon photographers during World War I produced encouraging results, and this method of gathering intelligence was extensively used during World War II by the French and Germans. In the ‘70s, the CIA developed a high-powered battery-operated camera designed for espionage Pigeon Photography — though details of its use remain classified.

tools of the trade: Special Ops Uncovered