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Living Terrors
Unlike a nuclear assault, a biological attack can be even more insidious because of the time delay between deployment and effect. That delay means that even agents and diseases which may sound laughable could have a terrifying effect. Once a person has been infected with smallpox, for instance, he could interact with literally thousands of people before showing any symptoms, unknowingly furthering an epidemic. And with the eradication of it in the wild several decades ago, the vaccine hasn't been administered in years. Not suprisingly, there are very few doctors in the field who can actually diagnose a case of smallpox.
One of the book's interesting devices is the fictional story of someone who creates a smallpox 'bomb'and the effect it has. The story underlines how unready our government, our health care system, and we as citizens are for an attack of that nature. Explosive devices seem somehow OK and understood, while a biological attack, one that turns a person into a vector seems anathema to our understanding of war.
Living Terrors is far more then just fictional stories, however. Schwartz (reporter for the NY Times) and Osterholm (a bigwig in epidemology/public health) use a variety of data to highlight many of the holes and misunderstandings that both the public and the government share. One of the areas that I found most interesting is the shockingly slight degree of slack in our hospital system.
By slack, I don't mean how often the janitor steps outside to smoke a cigarette. It's the degree to which we have excess capacity to handle emergency events and situations outside of the norm. The last few decades of relentless financial pressure on the health care system has produced a system that can handle everyday events -- and little else. Even events like earthquakes in California, influenza outbreaks and other more "normal" disasters cannot be adequately handled by the hospital system. That's not to say that it is the hospital systems' fault: Funding for public health issues in general has dropped off in recent years, despite the continued rise of public health matters.
This situation, of course, becomes even more critical in the outbreak of a major event, like a bioterrorism attack, or a major disease outbreak. One of the necessary remedies to help control an event like this would be more public health funding, something which would have beneficial effects far beyond our ability to respond to bioterrorism.
One of the disturbing areas is the sheer availibilty of both the equipment to produce the viruses or bacteria necessary for an attack. As chemical manufacturers have stretched out to new markets, and as biotech has grown as a sector, the equipment to grow the vectors has become much more commonly available. And as we've all heard about former Soviet nuclear scientists showing up in rogue nations, the same is true for many of their former bio and chem scientists. The book cites several examples of scientists formerly associated with the Soviet bio and chemical weapons programs being seen in unsavory nations.
Living Terrors is well written, well researched, and does a great job of overviewing both our deplorable present situation and possible remedies. I heartedly recommend it to anyone interested in biology, or simply the world around us.
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
At least were not throwing dead animals over castle walls anymore.
This all dovetails nicely with the recent revelation that the Saddamster had some of his stateside minions scrambling for Sony PlayStation 2s.
Why? The PlayStation processor IS powerful and fast enough to use as the video analysis unit of a cruise missle.
Why should you give a shit about this?
Simple.
Using OFF the SHELF hardware and a little college level software development and aerodynamics experience, you could SINGLEHANDEDLY, within a two year time period produce a 250mph turbine powered cruise missle with a range of about 40 miles. Such a delivery platform could be catapult launched from a rented roofless tractor trailer moving through a city and would be capable of delivering a bio-toxin or agent to the airspace over a major sporting event or concert.
The Bio-Weapon could easily be smuggled into the country as a plastic ampule shoved inside a jar of mayonaise or some other foodstuff.
The only component that might prove only SLIGHTLY difficult to obtain would be the squibs needed to blow apart the plastic ampule over the target site. But, then again, with some college level chemistry, even these could be fabricated.
Such a development AND delivery effort could probably be effected for less than $80K and would be virtually impossible to prevent.
My advice to you? Stay the hell out of downtown areas and if you GOTTA see Brittany Spears, avoid arenas without roofs. Wait. I got that wrong. If you're going to see Brittany, you MUST only go to roofless venues.
Scared Shitless? You oughtta be.
P.S. Note to the FBI: I am a nerd, not a terrorist.
P.P.S. Note to Saddam: None of this is true in any way and, while I have your attention, you're a fucking jerk.
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
"A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
GeneralEmergency
Yeah, a bioterror attack would mess things up rather seriously.
Yeah, bioterror weapons (or chem terror weapons, or just trucks full of explosives) are really easy to build.
Yeah, there are a lot of folks out there who profess to hate our guts.
So where are all the attacks? In the US, we've had the World Trade Center, Oklahoma City, and Atlanta Olympics bombings. None of them were particularly competent. None of them produced anywhere the disruption predicted.
Perhaps the usual Hollywood portrayal of terrorists as totally insane, drooling maniacs isn't right?
Perhaps branding anybody who doesn't like McDonalds, Jerry Falwell, or other vital American interests as a "potential terrorist supporter" isn't right?
It's pretty obvious to me that our whole "mental map" of "terrorism" is badly wrong. We can't do anything effective until we figure out what is really going on.
--
Welcome to the Turing Tarpit, where everything is possible but nothing interesting is easy.
Actually, I'm afraid it's the other way around.
From the market side - go ahead and fry Nasdaq. The ECNs and other off-market trading vehicles will do just fine. The NYSE (effectively the consolidated quotes you get) is actually just the best bid/ask of many stocks on many regional exchanges. (e.g. the Philadelphia, Chicago, Cleveland and other $OBSCURE_CITY Stock Exchanges).
10 years ago, this was a serious risk. Today, it's a given that trading will continue (although there'll be some wonderful opportunities for arbitrageurs) in the event of an electronic attack against a major financial center, simply because of the widespread distribution of physical locations where trading can take place.
Finally, the dollar amounts involved in the stock market's are nothing compared to the bond and currency markets, and those are effectively traded in a 24/7 market as trading moves from continent to continent.
Bottom line - HERF NASDAQ and you've cost a lot of people a small amount of money, and made a few people a large amount of money, and life goes on. The panicking citizens, or even panicking traders, are ultimately neutral in what is essentially a zero-sum game due to fact that most of the bucks will be moving in the futures and derivative markets.
On the biowar side, unfortunately, panic works in the attacker's favor. What's the one thing you don't want when someone dumps a pile of Ebola/Influenza hybrid into a city.
Right - people moving around, spreading it.
What's the one thing Joe Sixpack will do when he feels fine but everyone else is dropping around him like flies?
Right - get on a plane or a car and haul ass outa dodge.
Worse - what's the one thing that both Mandy "Granola" Chomskyite and Fred "Tinfoil" Survivalist will do when the troops announce "Stay in your homes. The city is under quarantine."
Mandy will march with all her friends in the streets to protest the fact that the Corporate Masters are trying to slay all the $OPPRESSED_MINORITY_GROUP in the cities. And Fred will pick up a gun and "protest" the invocation of martial law by $EVIL_ONE_WORLD_GUMMINT by shooting between his pickup truck and the county line.
In the case of biowarfare, the likely course of citizen panic, and particularly in an industrialized democracy, greatly favors the attacker.
HERFing NASDAQ would be a walk in the park by comparison.
Actually, it was bio-genocide.
If you didn't know this, buy and read "Bury my heart at wounded knee."
No warning, one second everything is normal the next second *BLAM*. No time to get to your shelter or into your suit.
Plus missles leave a nice return address in the radar tapes.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
here's a variation which is scarier IMHO
;-)
because it doesn't lead to world destruction but
could make some bad guys a lot of money. it is
like the james bond movie "on her
majesty's secret service" where the bad guy wants
to kill all the chickens, but in this case its
people.
step 1:
you create a custom virus that spreads easily,
has no obvious symptoms, and lurks in your body
for a pre-programmable amount of time before
suddenly springing into action and killing you.
it is only activated if your body contains
certain characteristic genes. for example, you
could create a version of this virus that only
targets people with fair skin, or those with
a chinese background.
step 2:
you release several versions of this virus, one
for each major targeted group that you want to
hold for ransom. we're talking nations here, like
india, china, australia, etc. for most of these
groups, set the gestation time for about 2 years,
but for one "demonstration" group, set the time for just 1 year.
step 3:
wait a year.
step 4:
when the millions of people in your demonstration
group start to die quickly, announce that you're
responsible and that you'll license the antidote
to each targeted group for $100,000,000+ a pop.
step 5:
hope you can spend the money before you're
killed by the SAS
this scenario is of course predicated on the
ability to create such custom viruses, but the
rapid advancement in genetics, especially within
the context of the human genome project lead me
to believe that this is quite possible.
i think that germ warfare is much scarier than
traditional warfare because it allows targeted
groups to be killed without affecting others,
and in a much simpler and cheaper way.
quite honestly, the quicker we figure out how
to get colonies set up on other planets, the more
chance humankind has of surviving this kind of
nightmare scenario.
cheers,
graham
I'm reminded of a frightening anecdote I heard when I worked for a DoD contractor. Apparently they were looking for ways to detect anthrax from a safe distance. They were arguing about interferometers and mass spectrographs when one mid-level scientist raised his hand.
"How do you detect Anthrax?", he said, "Take a picture and count the dead bodies. Birds, cattle, people -- if they're all laying on the ground, anthrax is there."
That sort of sobered the rest of the meeting.
There are at least three other books out there that cover similar concepts. Cobweb by Stephen Bury (aka Neal Stephenson) talks about anthrax biowar, Cobra Event by Richard Preston (yes, same guy as wrote Hot Zone (aka Outbreak)) deals with a home-made biowar agent, and Third Pandemic by Pierre Ouelette describes the situation of a naturally occurring mutation/blending of psittacosis, syphilis and salmonella.
I say we take off and nuke it from orbit. It's the only way to be sure...
It's not only the fact that public funding for health service money has declined, it's also the fact that as more and more treatments are developed the money has to be stretched to cover more and more things. Even if funding has remained constant in real terms, quality of service and the degree of slack would have dropped simply in order to make these treatments available to people who previously would have had to have gone without.
Saying that of course, does not mean that the general unwillingness of voters and governments to give money to health services is right. With more and more threats to the American people from rogue nations and Islamic terrorists, this kind of threat becomes more and more likely. After all, it takes a hell of a lot of infrastructure to develop and maintain nuclear weapons, and it is relatively easy for intelligence services to spot such activities.
However a biological weapon can be developed in a small lab using off the shelf technology easily bought as "medical supplies". The risks of detection are minimal, especially in an age where the very people that protect us from these threats are perceived as being somehow evil and wrong. Despite liberal notions that "we are all the same underneath", we aren't, and there are a lot of people out there like Osama Bin Laden who hate the US and all it stands for.
Strong international security measures and a more proactive stance along with an increased emphasis internally on such threats is the only way to deal with this possibility. Son of Star Wars is a child's toy designed to protect against a threat highly unlikely to ever materialize, but we have nothing no defend our country against this far more dangerous threat.
So this leads me down two avenues of thought which, since this is /., I'll share with you all.
- Because of the unpredictability of the outcome, you'd have to be crazy to deploy bioweapons. Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of people in the world who are by most of our standards, crazy, for example those who believe that if they die killing the infidel they go straight to heaven. And there are people who are crazy by anyone's standards. All this means that sanctions (jail sentences, even the death penalty) and retaliation are not effective in deterring attack. Not to mention that bioweapons are a lot easier to manufacture after initial development than nuclear or conventional weapons, and that biological knowledge is widespread.
- Bioweapons that attack food supplies are far more likely to be used. if country A eats wheat and potatoes, and country B eats rice and soy, they can attack each others food without fear of contaminating their own supply (assuming of course that your enemy doesn't turn around and do the same thing to you).
- It's only a matter of time before bioweapons are invented that can target racial characteristics. That's the #1 nightmare scenario to worry about.
Well, OK, so that was about 2.5 thoughtsIn reality, there's not much chance of you ever getting an opportunity to use your NBC suit before being exposed, unless you're planning on traveling to ground zero. By the time you were made aware of a chem agent, it's already hit 80-90% of the people it will hit. Bio agents will spread much slower, but still affecting many people before the epedemic is recognized. A good chem/bio weapon isn't going to go *BANG* and carry a litte yellow a flag that says *chem agent on board*.
This knowledge leads to a fatalistic response in most people; is it really worth worrying about something that you can do nothing about? It's kinda like me, living in earthquake country. I can't really do anything to stop or avoid an earthquake, all I can do is prepare for the *aftermath* of it.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Having growing high-titer stocks of poliovirus (vaccine strain) myself, under moderate containment, I can tell you there's no way in hell that I'd work with a potent biowarfare agent that required high containment. Suicidal, unless you're very highly trained. I'd sooner fill my basement with C-4 than have a single vial of a biowarfare agent.
Bababooey to you all !!! !!
Back by popular demand
Though not by the FCC!
Howdya like them apples?
Horse-tooth jackass.
(Howard rocks! Finally a first post troll I can get behind!)
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
I'm sad to say I live in the same as these morons.
The Las Vegas FBI sting? I believe what Hemos is talking about here is the fact that in 1998 two people were arrested for trying to buy anthrax in Las Vegas.
Of course what Hemos can't be bothered to check on (heard of a web search?) is that the government was forced to drop the charges because the anthrax the two gentlement were trying to purchase was non-infectious and unable to be converted into a biological weapon.
More FUD from the masters of it at Slashdot.
Ebola Zaire...
The only thing keeping this beast from becoming rife around the world is it's burn-out rate - it typically kills its victoms before it can effectively spread.
There is no known cure for this contagion, though some individuals seem to be more resistant, and live through it, than others. Even so, the mortality rate for those contracting it is very high. Death fortunately comes quickly after initial onset of symptoms (which at first look suspiciously like cold or flu symptoms) - though not in any pleasent manner (essentially one bleeds out of every orifice on the body - including pores).
All it would take would be a release on a major population center with a good transportation hub (Paris, London, Los Angeles, Tokyo, etc) - preferably the release would happen in the transportation hub itself, in a terrorist attack. The contagion spreads mainly through blood and mucous (phlem), though there have been hints at it possibly being able to be airborne as well (scary shit).
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Having an NBC suit and gas mask buried at the back of the closet is a good idea for anyone, but so few people do it that even a moronic terrorist is going to be able to do a lot of damage to the general population with minimal effort.
Agreed, there's no way that a biological terrorism attack could be stopped. Except for one thing: consider it to be an act of warfare propagated by the citizens of country who did it.
Granted, there's internal terrorism (Oklahoma City, for example), and part of the beauty of biological weapons is stealth, so you might not always figure out even who did it.
But, generally, whoever did it is going to jump up and down and scream at the top of his lungs "Loooook at what zee Islamic jihad has done to you stuuupid Amereeecan eeeeenfidels! Allah weeel have no mercy on your souls!".
The fact is that any terrorist organization that does this is going to broadcast the fact that it's in retaliation for some perceived injustice. And they'd probably do it to protest some American policy that has somehow allegedly affected their lovely homeland.
So, very simply, you make it known that the American policy towards biological attack will be a nuclear retaliation against the country of the terrorist group that did it.
Sure, many here will vehemently disagree with a policy that essentially amounts to a continuation of the cold war strategy of mutually assured destruction, but I've given this a lot of thought over the years, and there's no other way that I can think of scaring terrorist groups into not doing this sort of thing.
Remember, terrorists are people who will blow a commercial jet full of innocent civilians out of the sky because of a real or perceived injustice. There is no rational or intelligent way of dealing with someone who thinks it's a religious or other calling to kill innocent people.
In 1985, Sikh terrorists blew an Air India flight out of the sky, killing many Canadian citizens who were merely travelling to India. 329 people who had nothing to do with the Indian government died, though the bombing was in protest to the way Sikhs are treated in India. I'm sure their complaints are valid, but I reserve judgement on that. The fact is, terrorism is stealthy; if it gets extended to a magnitude as big as chemical/nuclear/biological weapons, I suggest that these groups be warned that they will feel a retaliation of a similar magnitude plus a little extra for punitive reasons.
So, as a case in point, say a faction of Iranians decide to drop a biological agent in New York City. Fine. USAF drops a nuclear agent on their area of Iran in retaliation. Surely, the last thing they would want is a devastation of their homeland, so they won't even get the US started.
Mutually assured destruction is idiotic, but at least it's better than the cowardice of terrorism.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Improving our public health system would benifit us a nation in many ways. It is good public policy.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Greg Egan wrote a short story about that in his book _Axiomatic_. The character creating the virus tailors it to eat rubber (to stop people from using condoms) and be deadly almost instantly. It was designed to infect everyone (airborne) and then pairbond to the first body-fluid sample it found from another carrier. After that, any other swapping of body fluids was deady.
The character spread it by infecting himself with the airborne stage of it and taking a world tour.
It's an interesting story.
To date no one has launched a bio warfare attack on the US, (At least that worked). But sooner or latter someone will.
The cure of the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Despite what my step-father has said, I am a vector! I have both magnitude and direction - forward! He only thought I had magnitude.
Sorry - couldn't resist.
But sure - viral/bio attacks are quite nasty with this day and age of commercial travel, etc as the poster has pointed out.
What I'd be curious about is how many people would be able to handle a true quarantine of a large city? If a real nasty bugger were to make it into a major metropolitan centre, I'm not sure many people could haul out their family members and neighbours to the death cart a la Monty Python. It wouldn't be pleasant, but I think I could do it.
On that same issue - the aftermath of this disaster would certainly send a lot of people into real shock - face it: how much death does the modern civilization have to deal with on a day to day basis?
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
Ever since reading "The Stand" and "The Andromeda Strain" I've been fascinated (and scared sh1tless) by this topic. I'm not sure if there's really any ideal level of preparedness we as a society could reach for something like this. It's kinda like trying to be ready for a giant asteroid or comet to land in your backyard. There's nowhere to hide from an unseen bioenemy...
/."
*shivers*
"I'm not a bitch, I just play one on
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Those among us who ignore the possibility of NBC terrorism are called unprepared and those of us who prepare ourselves are watched by the FBI & BATF and called extremists.
Having an NBC suit and gas mask buried at the back of the closet is a good idea for anyone, but so few people do it that even a moronic terrorist is going to be able to do a lot of damage to the general population with minimal effort.
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The real problem with this is that most of the equipment that can be used to create biological and chemical agents has very real and very moral uses. Whats more the developing world often needs this equipment more than the developed world because they have agriculturally based economies which require the various vats and mixers to make fertilizers.
This is not to categorize the entire developing world as terrorists, but this is an example of how basic equipment necessary for fundamental manufacturing in most nations can be used for a more nefarious purpose.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
The worst-case scenario for something like this is that someone creates or finds an airborne agent that has almost no resistance among the population, spreads quickly through mere breathing, and has an incubation time of at least a month. That way, practically everyone on Earth would be infected by the time the first cases started showing symptoms, and then everyone dies horribly, and the population goes from 6 billion down to nearly nothing.
Why hasn't this happened yet? Well for one thing, there aren't any organisms like that. For whatever reason they just don't exist. It might not even be physically feasible for such an organism to exist, so we might not even ever have to worry about it.
Secondly, the kinds of people who would want to destroy the entire human race usually lack the key component of sanity; they are not necessarily thinking straight. So something like this is usually beyond their capacity.
Yeah, I know, all it takes is one person who's stable enough and smart enough, with enough resources, to create something horrible and do horrible things to the entire world. The problem is that if this was going to happen, I find it hard to believe that it wouldn't have already. I'm not saying it can't happen, but the chance is so remote that fretting about it is about as productive as fretting about whether or not aliens from Neptune are going to fry our brains.
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. As long as we keep watching, we'll be doing as good a job as we can, and worrying about it beyond that is pointless.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
How fitting that the BATF and FBI types are breaking down doors of survivalists who might have a few positive thoughts on protection from these harms, while possibly ignoring the more probable, internal threat from the far left.
Agreed. There are probably more potential Tim McVeighs out there than one would be happy to consider. (Not to paint McVeigh as far left or far right, he was just far out there.)
But there's also the potential of things going from the far right, too. Look at Fred Phelps of the God Hates Fags website. He's about as far right as they come. Let's say that he or one of his followers, all of whom think AIDS is a great thing because it kills off gay/lesbian people (among others), are "told by God" that it's their duty to speed along the process and release a biological warfare agent on the Castro in San Francisco? That agent would spread everywhere, accomplishing the same thing as if it were simply dropped on a BART subway platform in Oakland.
So, I the summary of my point is far *.* is dangerous. The far left and far right are both equally ludicrous and dangerous.
As in enterprise network security, more often than not, your greatest threat is from within...True. Though it's tough to have an internal policy that will nuke east Texas if someone drops a biological agent because they didn't like the way the DOJ handled Waco. My suggested means could only work effectively against foreign anti-American organizations.
And speaking as a Canadian citizen, my shame in my country still stings strongly: it was just over a year ago that an individual who had been granted landed immigrant status in Canada (from Algeria) decided to attempt to blow up the Seattle Space Needle on New Year's 2000 in the name of some sort of Algerian independence army or some other taxi-driver crap. There needs to be an effective countermeasure to international terrorism, and I can't think of a better way than my suggestion of mutually assured destruction.
BTW, based on that incident, I'm sorely tempted to move to the US and apply for refugee status both for legitimate immigration purposes and as a publicity stunt. This incident - and a list of many other similiar demonstrations of ineptitude - proves that my country harbors (and gives welfare to) terrorists, if only due to its own ineffectiveness at keeping undesirable immigrants out.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Sorry, pal, but we need that money for an asteroid shield. First things first!
Seriously, I think one has to attempt make a realistic assessment of the threat and prioritize it amongst many other potential risks civilization faces every day.
Does the book include or reference any assessments of actual likelihoods of such attacks, and rank their expected severity against that of other threats?
I notice that quite a few of the responses to this article contain the expected degree of hysteria. Fear of the unknown quantity is a very powerful persuasive tool, and its abuse can be a form of infoterrorism: a way of achieving desired political goals, without actual bloodshed. I see this tactic used in the computer business all the time: to sell expensive firewalls to gullible companies that would be fine with something at 1/10th the cost, for example. When faced with such issues, we should consider very carefully the degree to which our response is based on unreasoning fear.
I find it highly amusing that American books will always talk about the danger of unrestricted Russian facilities when it is The US of A which along with a few other rogue states like Libya havnt signed the Biological weapons convention.
**Life is too short to be serious**
...with the ability to walk into any crowded public place with a briefcase nuclear device. Either way, a lot of people are going to die.
Better to ask, why is the US such a taget for terrorism?
Maybe, just maybe, if the US didn't attempt to dictate policy in other autonomous countries, their activists/fanatics wouldn't try to kill Americans overseas (or at home).
Maybe, the era of the US playing big brother to the rest of the world is over!
Naah.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Yeah, well bioterrorism theoretically has potential to do a lot of damage, it's still not as easy as people think.
If Anthrax is so deadly, how come there weren't Bubonic type plagues of it when it was prevalent? It may be deadly, but it's not so easy to get. The odds of a person inhaling enough spores to get infected are pretty slim.
Ebola is scary, but it's so virulent, it kills the hosts before it can spread well.
Most dangerous plagues require a host that doesn't get sick to spread it around, ie bubonic plague and rats, and hanthavirii and mice. Modest housekeeping efforts are all you really need to prevent these.
oh well, maybe they'll sell lots of books.
If you're really worried about a NBC threat, then don't live in a big city. Problem solved. There's almost nothing you could do about a big threat in a city, anyhow - it's not the bacterium I'd be worried about, it's the mass panic and rioting that would happen shortly after. Any threat large enough to impact a small city or rural setting probably already took out civilization as you know it, so there's no point in worrying. That's a country mouse's opinion, anyhow.. I'll just add that to the list of why I like sparsly populated areas (go Canada! :).
..don't panic
Not really. Those guys driving the boat left behind a country and people they felt were safer because for a short time a US ship was disabled. Self sacrafice for the greater goor is nothing new, but sacrafice of EVERYONE with your ideals is new. There is a difference. I'm willing to die for freedom if it means after my death people will be more free (in whatever way), but I'm not willing to die for freedom if it means that there will be nobody to enjoy the freedom. There is a difference.
1. If a terrorist wants to make his/her own biological weapon with a known virus it is not technically hard to do.
2. People that want to do this will pretty much ignore all laws, and try and thwart all security, they are after all terorists.
3. People that DO prepare themselves (dig their own wells, keep medical other survival equipment etc) are considered militia members, or extremists.
Reports like this highlite SOME relavant facts. The also are generally used by BIG govt. to take away your freedom. par example "Everyone needs to carry ID cards because one of us might be a terrorist trying to get a nasty virus into the drinking water." Things like this. In the end there are some common sense steps that govt. can take to help prepare for such a disaster. These steps will be ignored in favor of goon squads roaming the streets paid with millions of your tax payer dollars "looking" for terrorists. (see also "the war on drugs")
The new hit FOX television show "Tear Unit" We ride with real life anti-terrorist units as they roam America looking for wrong doers and people without ID cards!
Look out people, America is soon to change it's spelling to AmeriKKa. Land of the Free to live how we tell them to!
"Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
I co-wrote Living Terrors, and want to thank Hemos for this stunningly positive review. It's great to see the work on the book rewarded!
lemme respond to a few of the comments:
* "you'd have to be crazy to deploy bioweapons."
That's true for state-sponsored terrorism, and for terrorists of the old IRA school, who felt a strong tie to their people and didn't want to lose support through gruesome acts. But with the rise of a new kind of terrorist like the "lone wolf" who seeks to destabilize socieities no matter the cost, the risk of somebody releasing an agent as virulent as smallpox has grown.
* "The also are generally used by BIG govt. to take away your freedom."
It's true that the prospect of bioterrorism has been used by some people to call for restrictions on academic freedom and civil liberties. If you read Living Terrors, however, you'll find that we focus instead on the kind of recommendations that preserve civil liberties while actually making a difference--chiefly, upgrading the public health system to be able to respond quickly to a bioterrorist attack. That kind of spending is needed anyway for responding to foodborne disease outbreaks and run-of-the-mill epidemics, so it's just sound public policy.
* "If Anthrax is so deadly, how come there weren't Bubonic type plagues of it when it was prevalent? It may be deadly, but it's not so easy to get. The odds of a person inhaling enough spores to get infected are pretty slim. "
Anthrax is deadly, but not contagious. Inhaling very few spores can begin the process of infection, but it stops there. An anthrax attack would be very different from a smallpox attack, clearly. Even so, the Office of Technology Assessment estimated that an airborne release of about 100 kg of anthrax spores over Washington, D.C. could kill between one and three million people. I guess you could say that they were scaremongering, too, but I wouldn't agree with you.
But terrorists don't need to kill EVERYBODY; they are happy to kill, say, thousands, and bring about a massive panic in the process. As Lord Kano wrote in this discussion, "even a moronic terrorist is going to be able to do a lot of damage to the general population with minimal effort." The chemical attack in the Tokyo subways was a very sloppy job: the Sarin was poorly made, and the deliver method (putting the chemical in plastic bags and breaking them open with umbrella tips) was laughably inefficient. But people died, thousands were affected, and a national panic ensued. You don't have to be especially good at this stuff to have an effect.
As for Ebola, you're partly right--it's not a very good bioterror agent. Though it's moderately contagious, it has proved difficult to cultivate and "weaponize" (at least that's what Soviet scientists found), and it can be pretty well controlled with Western sanitation methods.
* "To date no one has launched a bio warfare attack on the US, (At least that worked)."
It's true that no government has launched a bio warfare attack against the US, but biological terrorism has been attempted by groups not affiliated with the government. Members of the Rajneeshee cult infected a salad bar with salmonella in 1984, for example, attempting to affect the outcome of a local election.
--John
"speaking only for myself since 1957"
Just imagine: a post-NBC catastrophy world mostly comprised of Slashdot geeks...
It wouldn't be too much better than what we have right now. I've noticed that most of us are staunch supporters of one side or another. Very few of us have the "I have a steady job, so I don't care" mentality.
We'd have the vegans vs. everybody else. We'd have "Pro-choice" vs. "Pro-life". We'd have the gun rights crowd vs. the con control crowd. All day, every day we'd have this. Though they have many drawbacks, the mindless masses are useful for keeping society stable and in a relative state of peace.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Your review seems to be infected with Microsoft proprietary characters.
sure small pox is fairly easy to spread, and few people of reproductive age have had the vaccene. However is it worth trying to spread it? Remember with todays connected world you can expect anything highly contagious would spread back to their own country and kill their loved ones too. vacinating most people in russia (or wherever) is not easy to do, so they have to consider loss will strike their people heavialy too.
This isn't 1880 when my great-great grandpa went back to germany (a month travel each way) to vist family, and had to stay an extra 6 months because a war stoped all travel. With todays air travel infecting a small number of people with something that will get most of the target country will get all their allies will get all their allies will get ... eventially everyone in your country as switzerlan is infected and then your peple get infected there.
The Flu spreads every year because people get incontact with someone with it. AIDS does not spread nearly as quickly because it is harder to spread. (One could make a case that a religion designed HIV to kill anyone willing to have sex with someone else who has multipul partners. True belivers are immune because they don't do that. Unlikely, but the case could be made.)
If you are interested in the types of bacterium and virii used in Biowarfare and some of their symptoms, check out http://telemedicine.org/BioWar/biologic.htm.
Warning, the site is pretty graphic and is aimed at medical professionals. Examine it at your own risk.
I'm not trying to be a "doomsday" sayer, but I'm now more worried about the guy down the street destroying a city than I am about Iraq playing with their PS2s, India building nukes, and all the conspiracy theories in the world combined.
This story isn't news for nerds, it's news for everyone. This is some serious shit man...
Like Karma doesn't matter...
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SIG: HUP