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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.
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.
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
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"
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.