Slashdot Mirror

No, it didn't. It used air as the coolant, passing it through the core to superheat it and then ejecting it aft to produce thrust. All three design candidates were direct-cycle air-cooled reactors.

Wargames. The US just can't move its heavy artillery fast enough. Of what use is an Abrams tank, if it can't get to the battlefield before the war is over?

The only way to win is not to play at all.

Can you name the first time India started a war? It would really help if you read some history on what happened in '47, '65 and '71. Here are some starters:

• First Kashmir War 1947-1949
• What started the '65 war: Operation Gibraltar
• The causes of the 1971 war

You'd have to break it down a bit. According to the Pakistani Defense Journal, an assembled M1A is about 32' x 12' x 8'.

I suspect that you'd be spending a lot of your own money on that -- the Ultimate Machine Combat budget will probably be just enough to cover an old Nova, some rusty steel plate and an extension ladder.

Secondly, 'post-colonial' motives may or may not have been at play in the UN in 1948 (personally I think it's possible, but unlikely... reasons below: _

By end 1948, India had a legal basis to annex Jummu and Kashmir (the treaty of accession signed by it's Maharaja), however thin this may sound. Pakistan did not. The Indian Prime Minister at the time was a from a Hindu family from the Kashmir valley. He had participated in the movement that won freedom for both India and Pakistan, and he and his family had considerable respect in the valley. Virtually no support for joining Pakistan existed in J& K itself -- J&K had more in common in terms of culture and tradition with India than the newly formed Pakistan. J&K political leaders like Sheikh Abdullah (the father of the current J&K chief minister) were also partial to India. Many observers state that a fair plebescite at the time would have been in India's favor (of course it's hard to imagine this now).

All this would have weighed in the minds of the UN delegates when they came up with the resolution they did.

Look at the top of the webpage below for a Paksitani military perspective on their 1948 Kashmir infiltration. It's pretty clear that Pakistan had little to no sympathy in the valley itself -- they wouldn't have had to inject foreign tribals and their own troops surreptitiously -- they could simply incite and arm a local rebellion as they are doing now.

http://www.defencejournal.com/2001/august/anatomy. htm

What are you talking about? Anthrax has a documented existence of thousands of years -- presumably it has been around much longer -- having been a problem for the ancients right up until Louis Pasteur developed a vaccine in the 1870s. The microorganism was isolated by Dr. Robert Koch in 1876, who named it Bacillus anthracis after its accepted name of anthrax, from Middle English antrax carbuncle, from Latin anthrax, from Greek, coal, carbuncle. [1] It wasn't until WWI that the US started exploring the use of anthrax as a biological weapon. [2] All that we did was make it more portable. But to say that we developed something new and decided to call it anthrax? That's just silly.

-Waldo Jaquith

[1] http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Diction ary&va=anthrax
[2] http://www.defencejournal.com/dec98/anthrax.htm

Add some factual information, indeed.

Per your link to the CDC:
"Inhalation: Initial symptoms may resemble a common cold. After several days, the symptoms may progress to severe breathing problems and shock. Inhalation anthrax is usually fatal."

Yes, anthrax is treatable. They can give you an IV of 2 million units of penicillin every two hours and you will die anyway, the vast majority of the time. Note that I didn't say all anthrax is fatal, just inhalational. I am unsure about gastrointestinal or cutaneous infection, but it is my understanding that it can be treated with good success.

Per the Defence Journal
"Within twenty-four to thirty-six hours, the victim experiences the rapid onset of shock and subsequent death. Inhalation anthrax has a mortality of 95-100% despite antibiotic treatment."

Per the Biological Weapons FAQ
"Some authors maintain that anthrax is an even more deadly agent. According to one study, in principle, if its spores were distributed appropriately, a single gram would be sufficient to kill more than one-third of the population of the US. Of course, the authors were quick to point out that an attack of such magnitude would not be feasible. However, more realistic, smaller-scale scenarios still posit large numbers of casualties. For example, the US Law Enforcement Assistance Administration reported in March 1977 that a single ounce of anthrax introduced into the air-conditioning system of a domed stadium could infect 70-80,000 spectators within an hour). And a 1972 study by the Advanced Concepts Research Corporation of Santa Barbara, California, postulated that an aerosol attack with anthrax spores on the New York City area would result in more than 600,000 deaths."

I agree wholeheartedly that getting hysterical is not going to solve anything. However, it is just as naive to discount real, viable threats as it is to fret about weak or unlikely threats. Certainly it is true that anthrax is not going to cause a plague; it doesn't really spread very well. But it just as certainly is true that anthrax is a very potent, low-tech weapon for the psychotically discontent when spores are directly blown into the air.

Certainly it is not safe to produce biological weapons. I think that goes without saying.

Thanks for the link to Bioport, btw! I hadn't found that. And thanks also for the note about Aum Shinrikyo. I hadn't known of any publicized anthrax attacks in modern times. The sources I've looked at so far casually mention that he tried one attack. If it is in fact true that there is some factor that I haven't seen yet that invalidates anthrax as such an easy and potent weapon, I would love to know about it so I can find something else to worry about : )

More links on anthrax:
http://www.metrokc.gov/health/phnr/prot_res/anth ra x.htm