Blackmail is a crime in which someone threatens another person into giving them what they want or else they will do something that will put them in a bad position, perhaps even killing them. Professor Baffles stated his demands to the United States Government, Colonel Wilcox stated that the government will not submit to such blackmail. When Wendy tried to convince Luther Fenwick to sit down with Doctor Pelagian to talk about how to stop pollution, he asked her if she expected him to "knuckle" under to blackmail.