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Correction, Google has plenty, you turned up nothing, you need to look a little deeper. I had no problem Googling these by the way. Here are a couple facilities: Genspace and The DNA Learning Center. There have been articles about them in Wired, Discover Magazine and I'm not certain but I think right here on Slashdot. There is a strong movement to Open Source genetic technologies all over the country and make small very basic public laboratories available for student starting from Middle School. These kids are the future biohackers and they will be just as skilled with their tech as we computer nerds are with ours, only they'll be playing with the stuff life is made out of. Both very cool and terribly disconcerting. By the way, there are also a growing number of people experimenting at home with biotech. The hardest part is getting the basic reagents and buying the glassware without ending up on a DEA or Homeland Security Government Watchlist.

I can't believe you couldn't find information on the researchers in Australia. It was the source of huge controversy. The original researchers wanted to report about what they did in the hope of preventing other researchers from making the same mistake. Security experts however were deeply concerned that this would be the blue print for a bioweapon of unprecedented lethality. You can start reading here. The modification made to the mouse pox virus was easily translatable to human small pox, and subsequent research suggested it would be possible to engineer cold and flu virii with this mutation making them "Virtually Unstoppable Plagues". A bug with a 100% lethality is actually no threat as long as it has a short incubation period, because such a monster would burn through the local population so fast, it would leave no infection vectors only after a couple weeks. Still in that time, it could kill hundreds of thousands of people, more in dense populations like Tokyo or Manhattan. On the other hand, a virus with a long incubation period like, HIV, would be scary indeed, because each infected person could spread it to thousands of others before they even knew they were sick. Please don't call bullshit unless you're willing to do more than the most cursory of Slashdot searches. Besides throwing up FUD you only hurt your own credibility.

As for bunker living, I'd rather be with my friends if the end approached. The twits who think they can wait out a nuclear winter or radioactive contamination, or even massive social collapse in a hole in the ground have no idea whatsoever of what they're in for and those who perished early will almost certainly be the ones who got off easy. So I don't worry about things over which I have no control. I work on the things I can change and I stay informed just to know which way the wind it blowing. Avoid bad news if you can, and if you can't deal with it courageously. Sticking your head in the sand by the way, or watching FOX news (which is tantamount to sticking your head in a septic tank) is its own punishment.

Check out Genspace" in New York City. Started by a student and now a significant small research lab for the enthusiast, it has quite a good selection of equipment and resources. Some was purchased second hand from ebay and other professional labs donating older equipment. Some of the materials have been donated from local and even not so local schools. Finally a lot of the materials have been purchased by the enthusiasts themselves. You'd be amazed at what these folks are doing. Both inspiring and a wee bit unnerving (there's so much we don't know, and mistakes could be costly), though I tend to think these guys are even more cautious than some professionals, and that if there ever is a really ugly accident, it will probably come from a pro lab, cutting corners in disposing of bio-waste.

Just in case anyone has a question about the last comment you can look here to see that business as usual where biohazards are concerned is a nasty game of Russian Roulette, and we'll all be the losers.