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Biohazard
Biological warfare has usually been a nightmare constrained to the realm of
theory and bad dreams. If you have read The Hot Zone, which documents
people who work with the world's most deadly viruses, such as Ebola, you know how
frightening even a small outbreak of a deadly disease can be. But imagine a nation carefully
researching, stockpiling, and preparing to use these nightmarish weapons in a major war.
From the middle of World War II -- and possibly to the present day --
the Soviet Union (now Russia) did just that. In a super-secret military program,
the country developed, stockpiled and prepared to use biological weapons in an
expected ultimate war with the West. Among their tools: bacterial weapons
including anthrax and tumerlia, and weaponized viruses. Enhanced smallpox was
being prepared as a weapon, as were a whole host of hemmoragic fever viruses,
including the famous Ebola and Marbug viruses.
Ken Alibek's Biography Mr. Alibek was a unique person in the Soviet system. As the grandson of a Kazhakstanian kahn, he was one of the few non-white Russians to achieve high ranking within the Soviet military and society. After graduating from the Tomsk Medical Institute in 1975, he joined Biopreparat, a secret Soviet military program that fronted as a pharmaceutical research organization. Their actual mission: develop the most deadly conceivable biological weapons probably meant to be used in a war with the United States.
How did a physician, originally dedicated to healing and treating illness, become one of the top researchers in harnessing infectious diseases as weapons? Mr. Alibek himself seems to be unsure of this, or at least chooses not to talk about it. He documents his entry into the Biopreparat weapons program, and gradual rise to the position of head researcher for the program, but never addresses this question.
Mr. Alibek defected to the United States in 1992 after an official visit, during which he saw how much better life in the United States was as compared to Soviet life. What he is doing now is a very good question. The cover of the book simply states that "he is now working in biodefense," but nothing is stated beyond that.
The Book Biohazard is a very easy read for anyone with the slightest medical or technical background. A great deal of time is spent describing life within the Soviet system and the secret weapons program. The book's lack of technical information and its relatively brief length make it fairly easy to read, but the continuing parade of names and people within the system does get tedious.
You may want to have a notepad handy to keep track of the long Russian names, not to mention the myriad installations for researching and preparing the agents. The authors have a tendency to jump back in time to describe an episode or sequence of events; something may start in the 1970s and end in the 1980s. This semi-constant contextual leaping can be a bit distracting. The book's details of the Soviet systems will be quite fascinating for some people. One of the first pages in the book is a two-page map of the former Soviet Union, showing the locations and functions of about forty bioweapons installations, ranging from stockpiles to testing grounds and laboratories. Several of them, including a lonely Siberian outpost, the infamous Rebirth Island, and the Sverdlosk manufacturing plant are described in detail.
Perhaps the most intriguing story is about the time an anthrax contamination in a city, and the government's official response to this. Most interesting of all: the mayor of the town was none other than Boris Yeltsin, the future president of Russia.
In summation, as long as you can deal with the relatively minor flaws, Biohazard is not difficult to read. What can be difficult to deal with is the possibility of biological warfare. It is very disturbing to read about what happened to the animals exposed to these diseases, and then to imagine the same things happening to people in a city. Let's hope that Mr. Alibek's prediction of a terrorist biological attack never happens.
You can purchase this book at Fatbrain.
Am I the only one that thought they'd done a novelization of the old PS game series, until reading further? (Biohazard(jp) == Resident Evil(us))
::grin::
Depending on the agent, all you need is access to a few aircraft in foreign cities. Or the airport concourse.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Ed Regis also wrote "Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition" (yes really!) and "Nano", fantastic popular accounts of transhumanism and nanotechnology, respectively - he was also one of the better writers for Wired magazine (back in the days before it went bland and businesslike). In case anyone is too lazy to click on that link, here is a sample review from a microbiologist:
[4 of 5 stars] The Biology of Doom - aaaaarrrgh!, January 29, 2001
Reviewer: Ed Rybicki (see more about me) from Cape Town, Western Cape South Africa
I was fascinated from this book from the moment I picked it up: Ed Regis has the knack of being able to immerse his reader so deeply in the moment that it is a wrench to put it down. I am a practising microbiologist with a morbid fascination with biological weaponry and nasty zoonoses; this book certainly informed me perhaps better than I needed to be about things I had only previously read about at third- or fourth-hand, or heard as apocryphal anecdotes.
The only things I could fault in this book are that a) it is too short; b) it does not cover some of the more interesting recent biowar developments, such as Iraq's and South Africa's ventures into the field (but see a).
Apart from this, it is a fascinating, detailed and scholarly account of one of the darker areas of recent scientific history. It sits happily on my shelf next to his "Virus Ground Zero : Stalking the Killer Viruses With the Center for Disease Control", which I consider a masterwork (but then, I love Ebola...). --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
--- end quote ---
Disclaimer: I haven't personally read this yet, but based on the Amazon reviews and Regis' past writings, I think it's a good bet.
Female Prison Rape in NY
This sort of reminds me of a book I read a few years back about some guy who had his testicles stolen because infertility became rampant in the US.
It was pretty interesting, and was all about bio-engineering and the like. Anyone know the name of this book?
Strange to find that some people still can't be bothered to head to Google and type in "Rebirth Island" before wasting our time, innit?
A modified smallpox could wipe the US off the map without so much as an ICBM in sight.
All to true, and quite scary by itself. Thing is, with a missile defense system in place you force the hand of someone wishing to attack you to actually have to deliver the payload personally. You have to manage to smuggle whatever weapon we're talking about across the border, provide for transportation to the target, and do all this without raising any suspicions.
No, missile defense is not a catch all, stop all kinds of nasties. It does make things more difficult for a North Korea or Iraq to just lob a missile at the US with no more than a few minutes warning, and no defense for it. The attacker is forced to get up close and personal, on US turf.
Hopefully we don't get any "smart" terrorists with money behind them. Like folks who would be smart enough to make sure the get away car had a license plate, or wouldn't go back to get the deposit on his Ryder truck rental.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.
I didn't mean crash the plane to disperse the agent, rather drop several small containers that would break on impact. Drop half-a-dozen glass coffee jars from 2,000 feet, get a good spread, then crash the plane (you don't want the now disease-ridden pilot coming back to you...)
You could possibly improvise a fogger like the exhaust smoke generators for aerobatics, but again, the temperature might kill the bugs.
... brew up a few kilo's of some nasty disease, get a Cessna 172 with long-range tanks, add one suicide pilot, and strike the the west coast of the US from China.
Don't believe me? Go find out the tank range of a light aircraft, find out what a "back seat" tank adds to it, then see how far you can go.
All you'd need is to drop a couple of coffee-jars of something nasty in a busy place, and let human traffic do the work.
All you need is infect someone with kamikaze style. Or failing that, smuggle some smallpox infected blankets over... It's been done!
... Ooooh, a bright, shiny tinfoil hat! Gimme!
[Cranky Old Tinfoil-Hat Wearer]
And that's why the Giverment stopped issuing smallpox vaccines! The know we'll be helpless when the smallpox virus is spread by the black helicopters, and we'll come running to FEMA (also known as the FPMA (Federal Population Management Agency)), Aristotle Onassis' secret gang of Illuminatus that runs the Grays' whole organization from behind the scenes! GIVE ME MY SMALLPOX VACCINE! GIVE ME MY SMALLPOX VACCINE! GIVE ME MY
[/Cranky Old Tinfoil-Hat Wearer]
:-)
How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
Because the nature of an ABM system does not eliminate the threat entirely, just the most expensive method of delivering it. The Kurds are never going to launch a missile at anyone because they'll never have a missile to launch. ICBMs require infrastructure. Nations launch these things, perhaps an unususaly well established and entrenched terrorist group. Not disorganized disidents. Point being that an ABM system forces your enemy to rely on a method of delivery that is thousands of times more difficult to track. If someone fires an ICBM at us we know who did it and can retaliate. If they know we have an ABM system they won't fire that ICBM, they'll truck it into the country or detonate the nuke in a major harbor. Same result to us, but no retaliation is possible as we have no idea where it came from.
Point being, and ABM system is a waste of money. It will not remove a threat from a "rogue nation" simply force them to use a more underhanded system of delivery. ABM systems are only usefull if they can stop a large scale attack, simply because missiles are the only practical solution to the problem of how to bombard an enemy with nukes on a vast scale. ABM systems are ineffective for stoping nuclear terrorism because one bomb is just as easily delivered by boat as it is by missile, perhaps more easily.
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
No, missile defense is not a catch all, stop all kinds of nasties. It does make things more difficult for a North Korea or Iraq to just lob a missile at the US with no more than a few minutes warning, and no defense for it. The attacker is forced to get up close and personal, on US turf.
Yea... but: One major advantage/disadvantage of a missile based attack is accountability. The United States maintains an extensive network of launch detection satelites to identify and track incoming ICBMs. Thus, a missile attack on the US, while rather unfortunate for those in the targeted city, is a clear act of war. It is detered by the fact that we're going to reduce your entire nation to a smokeing hole in the ground.
With a anti-ballistic missle shield in place missile attacks (at least small ones) become a thing of the past. The attacker must smuggle the weapon into range. Now, there's tons of ways to do this. If you want to carry the damn thing (low tech solution) you have to land it on part of the thousands of miles of undefended coast land in the US and Canada and then truck it to your destination, possibly crossing the Canadian boarder (which incidently is the longest undefended boarder in the world). Of course, simply putting a nuke on a passanger liner and sailing it into NY harbor would work about a million times better. To say nothing of a short range missile delivery system fired from a boat in international waters.
The fundamental fact of it is that a ABM system makes the world LESS stable rather than more stable. Weapons technology has progressed to the point that a suitcase full of small pox can cause just as much havoc as the "Nuclear Trump Card." The international mindset still seems to rate nukes as the best suit to hold though, and ICBMs as the best way to deliver them. As long as that mindset prevails the ballance of mutual terror keeps the world a safe place to live. ABMs threaten that order, an order the United States has happily dominated for 50 years. The addage holds, if it ain't broke....
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
Is it just me, or is my impression of the term 'bioagents' forever tainted by 'Osmosis Jones'? Next time there is a threat of viral warfare, I'll be too distracted by Bill Murray to care...
Depending on the agent, all you need is access to a few aircraft in foreign cities. Or the airport concourse.
Don't worry, Bruce Willis will come back from the future and save us from that. I think.
Anyhow, my favorite book on the history of biotoxic warfare is A Higher Form of Killing by Robert Harris and Jeremy Paxman. It covers weapons development by the US, Britain, and USSR, as well as Germany and Japan during both world wars. Parts of it read like black comedy, but most is just black. It's out of print, but copies can still be had.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
First of all, the disease vector has to survive the explosion. Second of all, the problem with this sort of ground attack is that it would either kill the people closest to the impact point, or send them straight to the hospital with injuries sustained in the blast. Thus, your potential "patient zeroes" are either killed or isolated, and unable to spread the disease. Because of this, you need the Cessna crash to release an aerosol of the bioagent which can remain in the air for a good length of time, infecting people far from the crash site. Is it hard to create such as aerosol? Not really, but having it released from a cessna crash is not the best way to do it - there's just too much risk of you bioagent container not being penetrated, or the bioagent being destroyed in the crash. Also, if any trace of the bioagent container is found that looks suspicious, or if the inital outbreak is concentrated within close proximity to the crash site, it could tip off health-care professionals that an attack has taken place. One of the biggest advantages of bioweapons is their subtlety. An airplane crashing into Times Square is not, by any strech of the imagination, subtle.
I'm the stranger...posting to
If you are interested in the subject, another book, Anthrax: The investigation of a deadly outbreak by Jeanne Guillemin is also of interest. This is far more detailed and includes interviews with people directly involved.
Alibek's book is good for learning about Biopreparat activities, but he knew only about Sverdlosk second hand, as the anthrax plant was not run by Biopreparat.
I searched bn.com, amazon, google, and the library of congress online catalog. I can find no indication that Ken Alibek ever wrote a book titled "Contamination". Can you give more information ?
It was the Soviet biological warfare testing site. They would chain chimpanzees there to poles and see how long it would take them to die from various agents.
If nothing else the descriptions of just how powerful & easy to deploy some of the agents discussed makes an absolute joke of technology such as a glabal missile defence. A modified smallpox could wipe the US off the map without so much as an ICBM in sight.
This is one scary book that everybody should read. The Russian author, Ken Alibek, moved to Alabama (where I live) where he was a consultant after his defection to the US Army Chemical/Biological Warfare Group at Fort McClellan in Anniston, so I have actually followed this story fairly closely. Dr. Alibek is basically the guy behind the drive to vaccinate the US Army against anthrax, which has caused quite a furor over the past few years. A slide show he gave/gives fairly frequently is here and his Congressional testimony is here... it's VERY interesting reading. If Dr. Alibek's writings don't induce a rising sense of worry in the back of your mind, just keep reading here.