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US Looks At Bioterrorism
ChelleyBean writes "A group of security experts have put together an elaborate simulation that lawmakers viewed on Monday. The goal was to show one possible scenario should the US be hit with a bioterrorist attack. What purpose the exercise was to serve is not mentioned, but one would assume either someone wants more money to beef up defense or someone is looking for a new scare tactic for the next election. " I firmly belive this scenario is far more compelling and dangerous then rogue nuclear missiles - check out my review of Living Terrors for more information.
Just like little kids don't understand that there is a lot of things that can happen and they will be dead, most of adults believe that it's impossible that there can be a real and absolutely unavoidable threat to their lives, leave alone a threat to lives of a lot of people at once. I have news for them -- each of you can die at any time. Anyone with a sufficient amount of persistence and time can kill any number of people with trouble becoming significant if the desired number of victims is in the range of millions or tens of millions.
If by any chance I was what you would describe a "psycho", had a desire to kill you (or even you plus some large number of people) and ignored all other consequences of my actions, I would accomplish it with my existing level of education, available materials and money. Same applies, I believe, to CmdrTaco, Hemos, JonKatz, most of your former teachers in high school, most of your neighbors, most of your relatives unless they are very, very old or very, very young, your mailman, a salesperson in the nearest store, garbage truck driver, and quite possibly a newspaper boy. And there is absolutely nothing you, or anyone else can do about it. If you want to be "safe" against that I would recommend you to kill yourself, so no one else would. This is the bad news. The good news are, people relatively rarely kill other people, and even more rarely kill large numbers of other people. Even mobsters. Even muslim terrorists. Even disgruntled postal workers. And people never kill tens of millions of people at once, at least they never did. They don't do that because even seriously screwed up people that may have a desire to kill someone don't have enough motivation for relatively complex process of preparing and performing murder, or especially a mass murder, and because most of people really hate to have even a remote chance of being convicted murderers. So unless Toys'R'Us will start selling terrorist kits for $9.99 with no cooling off period, it's very unlikely that someone will kill you and few millions of people around you.
This brings another, more general, thing -- every system has a situation when it fails, and everyone who denies it about whatever he is selling or supposed to be responsible for, is a liar. Any car will be smashed, killing everyone inside, if driven into the wall at high enough speed. No bank will keep its money if robbers will arrive in a bunch of tanks. All airplanes can fall. Nuclear reactor on a power plant, no matter how "safe" it was designed, will blow up if enough idiots will run it for few years. Same applies to chemical plants, oil refineries, ballistic missiles. Earth itself has some chance of being smashed by something large and fast that may hit it. One can decrease the probability of a failure, but eliminating it is impossible. This means, there is always a point where it takes an unacceptable amount of resources to achieve some level of "safety" no matter how important or noble the goal of achieving "safety" in that particular situation is. There is always a point beyond that where "unacceptable amount of resources" becomes "complete lunacy". And I don't think, I know, what is beyond that, but it certainly isn't pretty. The fact that by painting scary enough picture of death and destruction it's possible to drive this safety-obsessed society to any level of effort necessary to achieve this kind of "safety" at the expense of everything else, scares me more than anything a bunch of scaremongers can invent.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
The arguement that liberal gun laws will cause more terrorist acts is...idiotic.
1. Terrorist Acts are not caused by firearms.
2. Nations with strict firearms laws can also have massive terrorist acts. Israel, Japan, UK, Germany, Russia, Eastern China. All have strict gun ownership laws and all have been the targets of terrorist acts.
3. The US has to be concerned about actual terrorism, it's happened in NYC, OKC, and came close to happening in LA on the Y2K. It's happened to US Embassies in Africa, and US military housing in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia.
Read some about IDF preperations and you will see that they plan for unconvental warfare.
Nowadays, we have Air Conditioning, which lets us southerners cope with the hot months.
Really not that different - instead of being stuck inside for 3 months in the winter, we're stuck inside for 3 months in the summer.
While I'd survive the initial round(born in 66, before immunization for Smallpox stopped in the early 80s), there's no telling what would happen afterwords - other diseases would probably run rampant due to the overwhelming effect of dealing with dead.
Nah. The sarin attack, while terrible, was the release of a poisonous chemical. The attack described here is the release of a dangerous living organism.... the gift that keeps on giving, if you will.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
But Janey doesn't panic. She remembers what they taught her in school. That's right, "Duck & Cover."
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Iraq used nerve gas against Iran in the Iran-Iraq war of the 80's and they also used it against the Iraqi Kurds. Maybe that's why Bush the Senior called Saddam "worse than Hitler"?
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Your wife is wrong of course. That's chemical warfare.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
What purpose the exercise was to serve is not mentioned, but one would assume either someone wants more money to beef up defense or someone is looking for a new scare tactic for the next election.
Yeah, god forbid we would want to actually plan ahead for somthing like that... damn, what an asshole.
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This guy said protecting democracy in America. How about protecting THE REPUBLIC.
Or do former high level defense department officials have no clue what the difference is.
-j.
I have to wonder if the .mil folks know something here that we don't. The above argument convinces me that rogue missile attacks are unlikely, but they are still going for it gung-ho, despite the prohibitive cost and potentially destabilizing effects it may have.
.mil folks know are (1) it is the duty of the US military to implement the defence policy of the constitutional authorities of the United States no matter how ill advised from a foreign policy standpoint and (2) if they don't do their best to make a functioning missile defence, others less scrupulous or more credulous will be put in charge.
They weren't going for it gung ho until Congress pushed the money on them they didn't ask for, and until the new administration made it national policy that we will deploy a missile defense come-hell-or-highwater in a timeframe that is pure bullshit. I frankly think its dangerous reliance on wishful thinking, but I'm not one of those who lays responsibility for this at the feet of the military. The impetus for missile defense (at least in the last few decades since the ABM treaty) has always come from the political side, who are much more accustomed to trafficking in the appearance of security than our fine military establishment.
The things that our
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Well....
I suppose the starwars-as-instrument-of-world-dominion scenario plausible, but it attributes a level of cleverness the missile defense advocates that is to me implausible. There is plenty of historical precedent for people undertaking absurd projects out narcissistic confidence their own infallibility.
However, the scenario you describe is important in two respect. First, it will seem plausible to leaders in other countries who attribute a higher level of wisdom to our leaders than they deserve. Second, it the thing is built and it works more or less, this scenario could well play out regardless of the fatuous intentions or our government.
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AFAIK there isn't even a simple policy that says that the CDC is in charge and can ask for manpower help from the military if things get really hairy.
;-)
I expect that if things do get hairy, then the CDC will be able to get, or take, all the help they need from anyone they can get their hands on, without many questions being asked.
What they may be lacking in is preparation and planning.
It may relieve you to know that there is at considerable bioterrorism response money being spent (considerable by public health, maybe not military standards) and programs are being developed in both Atlanta and in state public health departments to respond to bioterrorist attacks. Unfortunately I don't know the full extent of the effort since it's only tangential to my involvement with public health issues, except that I know some of the people working on this.
If this issue receives a shot in the arm (or a kick in the pants) then probably a good response system could be put together reasonably fast, so long as some crusading congressman doesn't screw it up by putting the money and programs in the wrong place. It isn't so much that there isn't anybody working on it, its just not terribly big or visible now.
If you are seriously interested, try going to CDC's Search Page and typing "bioterrorism". Over six hundred documents are returned, including ones describing the smallpox scenario.
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As somebody who's worked in the field (I did some work on detection systems) I can say that bioterrorism scares the shit out of me. It's something that's much more easily within the reach of a private organization than nuclear weapons, can cause a lot of damage, and would be very tough to stop once it got underway.
Sure, remember Om Shin Rikyo's fooling around an anthrax? They actually went as far as test releases of anthrax a couple of times, I think in a subway and on the American embassy in Japan. Fortunately, it is hard for somebody just screwing around to get their hands on a sufficiently virulent strain. They didn't manage to infect a single person. However, a competent biotechnologist might do absolutely frightening things with the flu.
It's also something that has not been adequately planned for, IMO, to the point that there's not even a reasonable idea about who would be in charge of dealing with it if it did happen.
I think the right people for this job are the CDC.
For one thing, is very likely that when we are attacked by a serious pathogen, we won't initially know that we were being attacked until considerable detective work had been done. The smallpox example was deliberately contrived. If people starting dropping dead with smallpox, it'd be virtually certain that the Russian government was responsible, since they're the only ones likely to have it available. If we face the flu, or tuberculosis, or some novel tropical disease, whether it is or is not deliberate will have to be determined after the fact, even if somebody claims to have introduced the pathogen deliberately.
Strengthening our civilian (and Public Health Service) capacity to respond to emerging pathogens is not only the best way to be prepared for bioterrorism, it is useful, possibly vital in itself. Historically, we have had in the US huge outbreaks of deadly influenza (the 1918 Flu Pandemic -- visit an old graveyard sometime and do a tally of death dates). There have been outbreaks of hemhorragic Yellow Fever (not the relatively mild kind that is like a bad flu -- the bleed from your eyeballs variety that kills painfully) that have emptied entire cities(Philadelphia 1794; Jacksonsville 1888). Most recently, we have had a terrifying out break of hantavirus in the four corners area in 1993; had a similar infection emerged in an urban area the effect would have been catastrophic. These were all natural events that any bioterrorist would consider a great success, had they been artificial.
Secondly, the CDC has the technical facilities to investigate highly dangerous pathogens. They have what I believe is one of the few remaining BSL-5 lab in the world (I believe the Pentagon has one too), now that Europe has shut down theirs. The CDC also has the technical knowledge and experience in responding to new pathogens. When Ebola broke out, it was a team of CDC scientists that went to Africa to chase it down.
What I am sure of is that this would be a very bad program to put under the military. While the military does have significant public health needs and capabilities (particularly around protecting troops from insect borne illnesses), it would be folly to try to create a duplicate set of military capabilities purely for bioterrorist attacks.
(1) We must maintain civilian (or quasi civilian) capacity to respond to pandemics anyway. Providing a similar capability in the military would take money away from crafting a single, more effective response.
(2) In the event of an outbreak, we're asking for the response to be hobbled by jurisdictional issues until it could be determined whether or not we had a bona fide bioterrorism event.
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Well, headache, fever, vomiting, in the earliest stages. Could be the flu. A rash a little later. Could be chicken pox, or any other of a number of things. End stage, when it is creating the pus filled "poxes" is when it is most easily differentiated from anything else. By that time you're horrendously contagious and it's too late.
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In the book mentioned in the article the venue is the "Mall of America" in Minneapolis.
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Of the big 3 terrorist weapons, chemical, biological or nuclear, biological is the one that scares me the most. For a chemical attack, a fairly large ammount of material must be acquired and processed, and delivery to a significant portion of the population would be very difficult. The results would be terrible for the relatively few victims, but of marginal consequence for the nation. A nuclear attack would also be limited, unless a terrorist gained control of a significant portion of a nations nuclear forces. One bomb One city means that relativly few cities would be hit. A biological weapon??? you can brew it in a basement and for some pathogens, the victims can carry it around and infect quite a few other people before showing serious symptoms. If the proper venue for dispersal were chosen ( can you say Olympics?? Sure! ) you can affect a worldwide class of victims. There is much talk about the displaced Soviet nuclear engineers, and the threat that they pose for nuclear weapons. What about the similarly displaced Soviet bio-techs ? I read a novel with the premise of a Right-Wing militia type group using a former soviet biotechnician to brew up anthrax. It was a compelling read ( sorry I can't remember the name of it - I will look for it at home )
meanwhile - hold your breath.
Z
enough is too much
"but one would assume either someone wants more money to beef up defense or someone is looking for a new scare tactic for the next election."
Or, maybe, they might just want to practice before the real thing happens.
Scientists accidentally create a blueprint for biological weapons that can be used by any number of domestic terrorists who can deploy weapons that won't be stopped by any number of "missile defense sheilds".
It's real funny to watch all those idiotic claims like SDI revived, etc, rogue-countries, etc, when a 40-year-old design aircraft (sessna-like) can penetrate country's air defence for about 300 km a t least. Recently learned that in about mid-1970s two dead-drunk Finns flied 350 or so kilometers into (now former) Soviet Union, amnaged to reful at an Air Force airbase, and all attempts to intercept them failed.
Now what it takes to launch an unmanned low-speed low-altitude recon craft (similar to those used in Gulf War), with a 50kg nuclear warhead (i.e. 15-50 Kt) or just a can of spores from an innocent-looking fishing vessel?
Who would care to design, build, test ICBMs?
And that's NOT to say of domestic terrorists.
./lxnt
The company I work for (a biotech) makes machines which are being used to research chemical warfare defense and detection.
The detection has to do with running assays on the air for certain properties, considering that our product uses micro-beads to analyze the results, I don't really understand out that would work; fill the air with micro-beads and reagents?
The defense is an idea where the army could deploy trucks with out device attached, the idea is that we can quickly test men for signs of some airborne decease's, anthrax for example.
-Jon
this is my sig.
I don't even think that it's being thought of even at that level; it's not clear to me whether the advocates of BMD even care if it's possible. The goal is to spend a big chunk of cash on an expensive military project, and the prospects of developing a useful system out of it are secondary. Spending money on expensive military projects like this has three big benefits from the point of view of its advocates:
To meet these goals a project must be emotionally compelling, expensive, and far enough from being successful that you can keep throwing money at it for a long time. I'd say that BMD meets them pretty well. There's nothing like the threat of a city or two being blasted to provide emotional appeal (and forget about other ways that a bomb could be transported to them). Anything having to do with space is going to be god-awful expensive. BMD is also great in that you can almost always show some results (See! We were able to hit a missile when we knew when and where it was coming and it didn't have countermeasures.) but a system that can handle realistic threats will likely remain out of reach for the forseeable future. It's a big hole that you can keep shoveling money into forever while bashing anyone who complains that doing so it pointless.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
As somebody who's worked in the field (I did some work on detection systems) I can say that bioterrorism scares the shit out of me. It's something that's much more easily within the reach of a private organization than nuclear weapons, can cause a lot of damage, and would be very tough to stop once it got underway. It's also something that has not been adequately planned for, IMO, to the point that there's not even a reasonable idea about who would be in charge of dealing with it if it did happen.
OTOH, reasonable contingency planning and research into detection systems are not terribly expensive; my guess is that they're currently spending substantially less every year on bioterrorism than on one of those stupid anti-missile tests (as if a "Rogue" state would use a missile instead of smuggling a warhead into the country on a ship). Some simple precautions would not cost much, on the grand scale of things, while substantially helping the current woeful situation.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
And I firmly believe it's a typical straw man. Nuclear, chemical, biological... Big countries with fat armies can and do develop them; for terrorists good old explosives are much more cost-effective. In this case I'm kind of wondering what kind of (bio-)gas are military (and some political) leaders have been inhaling.
Why on earth would a terrorist group waste their resources on complicated/expensive (nuclear, ballistic missiles), error prone and unreliable (biological) or combination of both (chem) "weapons"?!?!
Biological attacks are (at least on current level) probably the most highly overrated threats of them all, though. It not only includes risky feed-back property of nuclear stuff (you think your disease will stay in enemy territory for long?), and either slow-incubating ineffective (low lethality) aspects (like HIV) or fast and kind of effective disease that quickly runs out of steam (Ebola). Its only perceived benefit is that "it's scary stuff!", kind of whizz-bang - factor of warfare. Bit like nerve gases, except less effective, and harder to control. But seems to sell real well.
So, here's the scenario: terrorist groups are delighted to see da Big Nation wastes its resources on fighting straw-men, and at same time plan new ways to stick more good ole TNT up Uncle Sam's ass (usually abroad as it's easier that way).
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
I wonder how many of the analysts who put this together were scolded about too much roleplaying games when they were teenagers? In the eighties they were demon worshipping geeks, now they're high level security advisors. Although I'd guess that this crowd was more into the Avalon Hills games than D&D.
Hmmm...I actually think that money we are spending on missile defense is better spent on disease control (aka public health) anyways.
Making massive lethal doses of anthrax or some other airborne contagion is pretty easy. That is probably the reason some folks refer to biological weapons as "a poor man's nuke". Basically, all you need is a home brewing kit and some know-how. Well, bottling and transporting could be a bit more risky...
However, the smallpox scenario is pretty unlikely, but smallpox is an easily recognized disease. The "S" word is enough to make anyone's ears pop up. Better than anthrax (too many people might think that is a band or a bug spray).
Realistically, if the event were to happen in the US, anybody who has ever had US military service would be unaffected. Anyone vaccinated prior to, oh, about 10-15 years ago would also likely be unaffected. As for everyone else, getting cowpox ain't that hard (that IS the vaccine, btw). Find a farmer or rancher.
Now, anthrax, that would be easy to make and spread around. Not much you can do about vaccinating either (limited effect and duration). Problem is that the stuff lives in the soil forever. Not a big deal if you are a terrorist, I suppose.
Plague, though, now that could be made just as easily, and vaccination lasts for quite a while. Different types of plagues with different types of vectors (bubonic is just one...there is another that is spread airborne, and is more lethal). That is where the DoD scenario would really hit the fan, since AFAIK the vaccine only lasts for about 10 years, and most folks never go back for a booster unless they study bats or other stuff like that for a living. Hmmm...maybe I should get shot again, but that stuff hurts like heck.
mrgoat
'Hail Eris, baby, hail Eris...pfffffffttt.' *cough* 'Yeah.'
These two things scare the heck out of me. Want to ship some plutonium across the country? You're going to have a good bit of paperwork to fill out. Want to ship some anthrax? Fill out a UPS bill and maybe put a biohazard sticker on the side (it may not be this easy, but this is what I've been told). Given the potential damage a biological organism could cause if it were introduced into a major population center, I really hope something comes of this.
Although this event was very high profile because of the way the perpetrators operated (suicide-style operation in a dense metro line), actions like putting micro-organisms or poisons in the water reserves of a city, for example, are much more likely to happen and would create massive losses of lives. The frightening thing is, it takes guts to go in a metro station and release gas, but it doesn't take any to pollute water, any crackpot could do that and pretty surely get away with it.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
1. Buy Monsanto.
2. Do nothing. (See 3)
3. Monsanto's god awful care of limiting the spread of its genes mixed with stupid patent law should ensure that within a few years you 'own' the entire US harvest.
4. Charge through the nose for basic crops/refuse to supply them unless the government does as they're told.
Wait a moment, that is what Monsanto's doing. Silly me. Still, so long as we spend money worrying about external threats, who needs to worry about fixing the laws to protect from external ones.
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
For the same reason, more power to the next gen star wars - or even a Mars mission for that matter... beats them blowing cash on the really wierd stuff that defines "pork barrel".
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
and I'm going to play them back without telling anyone they're fake and scare the shit out of my kids
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Think of the amount of damage if Aum Shinreikio had been using conventional explosives! Chemical and biological weapons do not make compelling weapons of mass distruction by small financially-strapped bands...
At least until the price of biotech labs comes down the real threats are conventional and computer oriented. That is where we should be focusing our energy.
As far as nuclear terrorism goes, it would, I think, be a greater threat because if one warhead could be procured (though theft) and, say, detonated in the heart of the Smithsonian Institute, the results would be disasterous... Moreso than any chemical or biological attack that could be currently executed.
But still, this is unlikely. The real threats come from small groups who do not have extravagant funding or scientific resources. As such conventional explosives are the largest threat, with virus-based attackes (computer--) as the second largest.
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Evidently someone has not studied their medical history. Smallpox has a number of less nasty relatives which could probably be easily procured (swinepox, cowpox, etc.)-- not as effective as a vaccine but helpful. In fact that is where vaccines originally came from. THe cowpox virus was discovered by Dr. Edward Jenner in the 19th century (I think) and named Vaccinia (from the Latin for cow). He used it as a replacement for smallpox innoculations and was able to demonstrate that it was at least as effective and much more safe.
In other words, ignorance of history is the biggest enemy here because it makes people not see ways to prevent an epidemic.
However, I agree with you when you say,
the amount of man and brain power required to actually execute a bioterrorist attack is so far out of scale with the amount of damage that can be caused vs. say, a U-Haul full of dynamite ... the report looks more like a hard-sell to politicians than anything else.
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So the question is, is this a real threat?
Does it warrant more money in the area of defense?
The Lottery:
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
While the bugs would have to be rather hardy to live on currency for any period of time, if it could be managed, it would be one heck of a way to spread - particularly if you used $100 bills (the most numerous type in existance, and the most widely used of the US currencies outside of the US).
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
I have seen this before. It's called "The Stand" and is a book from Stephen King.
There are lots of books and movies about this matter.
What really surprises me is that only now (after all the books, movies and publicity about Biological Warfare) the Lawmakers are starting to think about it.
Planning ahead ? I don't think so. Only in the sense that nobody tried it yet. But the idea has been around for a long time.
---
morcego
I suppose the starwars-as-instrument-of-world-dominion scenario plausible, but it attributes a level of cleverness the missile defense advocates that is to me implausible. There is plenty of historical precedent for people undertaking absurd projects out narcissistic confidence their own infallibility.
:-)
There you go.... think of missile defence as the high tech equivilient of the Maginoit Line
This has been another useless post from....
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
http://www.stimson.org/pubs/cwc/ataxiaexecsum.pdf
The above is a link to a PDF file of a report by the Henry L. Stimson Center that concludes that the threat of chemical and biological terrorism have been represented as much more serious than they actually are. It is the result of 2 years of research. We have many choices to make as a society and we better be damn sure we're making them based on the best information. The doom scenario is scarier and sexier so it gets the press and the alarming books written about it: I recommend this report strongly to anyone that wants to hear the other side. The bottom line is it is far from "easy" to make effective chemical or biological weapons, and their effectiveness is not nearly what some claim.
This being said, it is also true that we should be bolstering our systems to deal with epidemics of infectious diseases in general. This is an area that gets frequently neglected in public funding of science and health care, and by nature it is an issue where when your REALLY need it, it's too late to prepare.
So by all means, lets make an integrated and practical approach to beefing up our defenses to empidemics a national priority, but let's do so with an eye towards the full range of likely and pragmatic scenarios - the preponderance of which have nothing to do with terrorism or warfare.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
karma capped
It is possible to innoculate yourself with a live strain of smallpox. That is how it was done a long time ago. The process is somewhat umpleasant and occasionally has that "Nasty Horrible Death" side-effect, but it could be a pragmatic option under the scenario described (not that I'd want to try it). I'm sure things would still get all buggered for a while though ....