Examining New York's Bioresearch Laboratory

Evangelion quotes from a NY Press story about Plum Island: "'Located just two miles off the tip of Long Island and six miles from the Connecticut coastline, Plum Island is home to a Bio-Safety Level 4 (BSL-4) research facility... During the fifth month of [an Engineer's] strike, a three-hour power outage renewed public interest in the island... Without power, the air filtration systems are inoperable. Without power, decontamination procedures break down. Without power, the seals in the pressurized airlock doors start to deflate. According to one report, workers were desperately sealing the doors with duct tape...'"

Comments

BSL-4 labs

[BWJones]

Ahhhh, long walk on the beach of Plum Island watching the birds. (all kidding aside, seriously, it is good bird watching there). But, it should be noted that Plum Island is only one of several BSL-4 labs around the country that are publicly acknowledged. Others are located at UC Davis (proposed back in 2000 at least), UTMB in Galviston Texas, One propsed for Boston University, there are two just outside Washington D.C., there is one in Atlanta at the CDC and one in San Antonio. I believe we also have a BSL-4 lab out at dugway proving grounds in Utah as well.

So, one should know that these facilities are the absolute best place to do research with the kinds of pathogens and chemicals and folks should not be scared at the mere presence of these facilities because of the work they do to help understand disease and potentially, biological weapons that may be used against us. However, we should know about their presence, and we should have contingency plans in place for the surrounding population (aside from "sanitation") should we have problems at these facilities.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[DjMd]

You forgot Fort Detrick Right between Washington D.C. and Baltimore.
USAMRIID has over 10,000 square feet of Biosafety Level 4 (BL4) and 50,000 square feet of Biosafety Level 3 (BL3)....

Re:BSL-4 labs

[aschneid]

The proposal for the one at UC Davis was dropped due to public opinion. Although the federal government is still looking at building a new one. There were several proposed sites, and that list was narrowed down and UC Davis dropped from that list.

Part of the site determination that the government is doing for this new one is the surrounding area public opinion of the lab. UC Davis and the surrounding Sacramento and bay area had a very negative reaction to a BSL-4 lab being created. Therefore the government determined that it would not be a good idea to build it here.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[Anonymous Coward]

My father is managing the construction of a new BSL-4 lab in Iowa. The test procedure involves compressing the room to some ridiculous pressure and then making sure it holds it for 48 hours or so. That means every outlet, every electrical conduit, every pipe, etc. must be epoxy sealed. Apparently the CDC had a BSL-4 building that never passed the pressure tests. So all that money later and it just sits empty.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[demachina]

There are probably a wonderful thing when they are used to prevent epidemics and to develop countermeasures for biological attacks. Unfortunately there is always the chance that they are dual use, especially at places like Ft. Dietrick. If they are also being used to reengineer microorganisms to be more effective weapons then they aren't quite as noble as you paint them. The U.S. would like you to believe they stopped developement of bioweapons in 1969 but you would have to be an optimist to believe that is really the case since the U.S. consistently opposes any international effort to verify bioweapons labs are not being used for new weapons research.

Probably the most disturbing indictment of these facilities is that the Anthrax used in the attacks in the U.S. that followed 9/11 were traced back to the Ames strain of Anthrax which is American in origin and is used extensively at
USAMRID, Dugway, and Batelle among others. A full list is here:

http://www.fas.org/bwc/news/anthraxreport.htm

The Anthrax attacks which have largely faded in to obscurity, unsolved, should be a source of deep concern to American's and the world. They might have been perpetrated by a roque wacko that had access to Anthrax in one of these facilities. Its pretty unlikely they were perpetrated by an Arab terrorist. They could have just as easily been a covert operation perpetrated by a misguided government agency designed to stoke fear of WMD's in the U.S. Coincidentally the Bush administration, right after this used the threat of WMD's as the rationale to attack Iraq though no significant WMD programs have been found there. They will, no doubt, continue to use WMD's as a rationale for preemptive warfare assuming they can get away with it after the bold faced lie the war in Iraq has proven to be.

WMD's are the perfect rationale for preemptive warfare. You can accuse any country of developing them and its impossible for the target country to prove they don't. Every nation in the world has dual use industrial equipment that can be redirected to chemical and biological weapons production and the Bush administration cynically uses this fact to suggest a target country is a danger because they have tanks thats could be used to ferment biological weapons, for example.

As much as the U.S. likes to get on the high horse about WMD's its still a fact that the U.S. has more of them than anyone and has used them in the past to kill large numbers of innocent civilians by nuking two cities in Japan full of civilians in particular.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[itsnotthenetwork]

Tell the civilians in Nanking just how innocent the Japanese were, I'm sure they would love to hear that.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[datababe72]

I have no personal knowledge of the research done at Plum Island. However, they do have a website.
Not that you are likely to believe what they say about themselves. I suspect the father of your childhood friend just got tired of explaining what he did to freaked out people like you, and don't really consider that anecdote evidence of some big coverup of the research that goes on there.

There is also no point in arguing over whether or not the US is still involved in bioweapons research. None of us knows for certain... and those that do, can't say, or aren't believed (when they say that there is no research aimed at developing bioweapons going on).

However, I don't think the two diseases you mention are likely targets for such research, if it is continuing. Nor is "escaped from a bioweapons research lab" the most likely explanation for the arrival of these diseases.

The disease that we call Lyme disease has been around in Europe for quite awhile. Here is a short history. You are correct that no one really knows when it showed up here, but given the tick-infested state of many of the early immigrants to America, I don't think we really need to invoke some governmental conspiracy theory to explain it. As many of the patient testimonials show, this is a difficult disease to diagnose, and I don't find it hard to believe that it existing for a hundred years or so in the US before anyone really noticed it. Furthermore, I don't think Lyme disease would be a likely target for bioweapon research. It requires a tick bite to transmit, and not even a bite by an infected tick is guaranteed to transmit the illness. And the disease doesn't quickly disable the infected person. So: flakely transmission and unreliable effects. Not the best characteristics for a weapon.

Last I heard, the theory for how West Nile came here was via airplane: either a mosquito or two hitched a ride, or a person on board was infected. Since many infected people never really think they have anything worse than the flu, this is not unreasonable.

West nile is also not the big scary disease it is often made out to be, and again strikes me as an unlikely target for bioweapons research. According to the cdc:

"From 1999 through 2001, there were 149 cases of West Nile virus human illness in the United States reported to CDC and confirmed, including 18 deaths. "

Compare that to these numbers for deaths from the flu: somewhere in the 20,000 to 30,000 range EVERY YEAR.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[Cloud 9]

Would you rather it was operational?

Re:BSL-4 labs

[Skye16]

Okay, so we're going to tell civilians in Nanking that the civilians in Nagasaki and Hiroshima were innocent. All that proves is that mankind remains bound to misplaced hatreds no matter the facts.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[canajin56]

Yes, and they are almost certain that this Anthrax came from Ft. Detrick, since that exact strain was used there, and some was missing. Additionally, one Lt. Col. Philip Zack was spotted by security cameras entering the facility after hours, and after he had been FIRED one year earlier for racially-motivated harassment against an Egyptian researched named Dr. Assaad. One day before the Anthrax attacks, the FBI was sent an anonymous letter warning that Dr. Assaad was a nutcase, and planning some sort of biological attack on the USA. They investigated him, but determined it was an attempt to frame him. But they NEVER investigated WHO was trying to frame him. Odds are it was the same person who initiated the attacks. (How else would he know?)

So what we have is somebody who was FIRED over his hatred of an Arab, who was spotted illegally entering a secure facility shortly before the Anthrax used in the attacks WENT MISSING, and they received a letter implicating this same Arab immediatly before the attacks began. Additionally, the letters sent with the anthrax were written so as to frame Arabs. However, forensic analysis revealed that the person who penned them writes in English, and was faking an Arabic "accent" on the penmanship (Or whatever it is called when your penmanship is affected by the script you first learned to write in) Also, the letters told the people to take antibiotics. Why would terrorists trying to kill somebody do all they can to help save them? A real terrorist wouldn't say it was Anthrax at all, let alone recommend a treatment. Some have said "Well penacillin wouldn't help, you need Cipero!" That is completely untrue. The people who make Cipero would like you to believe it is the only antibiotic that works, but it is not. There are many antibiotics that are effective. Penicillin is, and is FAR cheaper.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[hardaker]

[I'm in Davis]

Well, the campus is still trying to put one in and get a future site here. The public is a bit upset that they're still at it (and the campus is refusing to talk to the public self-appointed liason people). The uproar here after the last proposal round was rather strong. The campus can't convience the public that there is no reason for concern, as much as they try.

Ah, Davis politics. It's a fun place to live.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[Anonymous Coward]

When this was going through the process, before it ended up going to Texas, one of the disgruntled workers at CNPRC (the primate lab) brought a gun to work. UC Davis swept that under the table.

And they went about 2 weeks before the lost monkey made the news. I suppose they're trying to keep up the fine UC system that keeps Los Alamos in such great tradition: missing computers containing sensitive information, misused funds and lax controls.

Re:BSL-4 labs

[TheCarp]

And you sound like one of my fellow Americans. Who seems to think that bailing them out in a war 50 years ago is good enough and now the europeans should just be our bitches and shut up about anything they don't like.

Note that YOU are the one bringing up the fact that we used atomics, and were the only ones to ever do it. He just said we are, today, hipocrits for having more WMDs than anyone and being the worlds biggest crybaby about other people getting them.

Ever note how quick "we" Aemricans are at bringing up the fact that we bailed out Europe, but the French never bring up the fact that they bailed out our revolution.

The Europeans don't get any credit when they help us out on operations we want. Guess thats ok, afterall, they seem to still "owe" us for bailing them out right? And god forbid they disagree with us on something. The bastards. The biggeset "Freedom" that my fellow Americans seem to care about is the "Freedom from dissenting opinions".

-Steve

Re:BSL-4 labs

[wohlford]

I appreciate the great detail of your comment about the Anthrax crap. But I'm skeptical of your report. No sources. Not even a simple google link.

credible dope smokers?

[garcia]

I packed up the car, scored some weed, picked up my girlfriend and headed to the Jersey Shore, just to be on the safe side. Coincidence and stupidity will kill you just as dead as conspiracy and evil genius, if the wind is right, so we holed up in a motel in Ocean City and followed the story from there.

While I don't doubt for a second the "strangeness" of the entire operations there and the chance that there might be "leaks" coming from the island, how in the hell are OTHER people (I don't mind it so much) going to lend any credibility to a writer that says something as unnecessary as "I scored some weed" in what could have been a serious article?

Re:credible dope smokers?

[ajlitt]

Here's one

Re:credible dope smokers?

[oblivionboy]

In canada this is actually a *sign* of credibilty. :)

Re:credible dope smokers?

[Durindana]

Credibility aside, the writer's trying hard to emulate Hunter Thompson throughout this piece, and this part in particular is a direct allusion.

Fans of Thompson, the 'gonzo journalist' known for participating as heavily as possible in the stories he covered for various newspapers, magazines, and most recently Rolling Stone, will recognize the Jersey Shore as a place Thompson knew and loathed from a stint at a shitty newspaper there, soon after he left the Air Force in Florida and before he lit out for New York. I believe Thompson's story of how he fled town after taking out a local man's daughter and destroying the man's car is in his first volume of memoirs, The Proud Highway.

Phrases like "holed up," overuse of the word "evil," malaprop similes ("fire in a cardboard factory") and consistent reflections of the writer's own opinions and impressions - how much do you see "I" in "serious articles"? many journalists call it "going first-person," and it's virtually never done - are all Thompson touches. As are gratuitous drug references. I'm tickled by the Thompson channeling, actually, because emulating other writers' style is something Thompson himself was notorious for doing early in his career.

I personally don't think the writer's predilection to score weed has much relevance to his credibility, any more than a mainstream reporter's alcoholism might (working reporters know what I'm talking about). This writing style and drug references are meant to appeal to a particular, fringe, audience, that's all, a kind of ingratiation and location with his audience's values, whatever you think of them.

Go Duct Tape

[ePhil_One]

Is there no end to its miracle powers?

Re:Go Duct Tape

[JosKarith]

Everyone knows Duct Tape is the Force in handy little rolls - it has a Light side, it has a Dark side and it hold the universe together.
Jos

Re:Go Duct Tape

[eclectus]

The difference between duct tape & the Force is that 'May the Force be with you' sounds a lot better than 'may you be covered in duct tape'.

Re:Go Duct Tape

[Stopmotioncleaverman]

Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Dirac, Faraday, Planck, Kelvin, Maxwell and Einstein believed in God. So do I.

Interesting actually. Einstein didn't. A common misconception amongst many religious groups in some desperate hope to hang onto some credibility in this age of reason and common sense, is that Einstein was religious, and believed in god.

While a Jew by descent, he had no religious beliefs of his own - in fact when this nonsense was brought to his attention he was indignant at the suggestion:

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religion then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.". (From Albert Einstein, "The Human Side", ed. H. Dukas and B. Hoffman (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1981).

Re:Go Duct Tape

[Short Circuit]

That quote doesn't make sense. I saw a video clip of him announcing something (I don't remember what) in Germany, while Nazis were on the rise. He something like "I am re-affirming my existance as a scientist...and a Jew." (That's a seriously butchered quote so far as my mind can recall.)

Re:Go Duct Tape

[operagost]

I'm sure there's a fetish site on the web for that.

Scary..

[grub]

We don't have level 4 labs where I work (levels 1-3 only), but we have emergency backup power that kicks in in under 10 seconds. Why on earth would this place not have that?

Re:Scary..

[Servo]

that was my first thought too. Either this is fabricated, or someone is a complete idiot in managing/building the facility.

Re:Scary..

[phurley]

According to the article :grin: they had three; however they failed due to either:

1. Poor maintance by "scab" workers
2. Sabotage by striking maintance works.

(not good either way), but it does answer your question.

Re:Scary..

[Fnkmaster]

A more useful question is why on earth is striking allowed at this kind of facility? I mean, I appreciate the right to collective bargaining and unionization, but that right has certain bounds in facilities of national security importance like this.

I think the public's right to safety from level 4 biohazard's trumps the right of facilities engineers at this place to strike, any day. Whoever let such a situation occur in the first place should be held personally responsible for any injuries or deaths caused by inadequate, incompetent maintenance at this place.

Re:Scary..

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>we have emergency backup power that kicks in in under 10 seconds. Why on earth would this place not have that?

The article saith, " I found the failure of all three of the island's backup generators particularly provocative". In other words, they did have emergency backup power but somehow bungled keeping it operational.

Re:Scary..

[glenrm]

Should you be able to strike if you work at such a facility?

Re:Scary..

[Short Circuit]

Collective bargaining, currently being one of the few bargaining tools useful in a wide range of environments, needs to be available.

It's like outlawing the ability of government workers to strike. If you do, they're now working on their employer's terms. And their employer may not have their best interest at heart. Or even balanced interests.

I'd love to see an effective alternative, though. In my negligible experience, unions tend to get greedy. I understand a school's staff not wanting to take half their pay out for insurance, but I don't understand seniority-over-value rules that end up in place in unionized factories.

Re:Scary..

[DigiShaman]

I call BS on the 2nd one. I mean, why in the HELL would any scientist put the human race in harms way just to spite their employer? That would be like me rigging an airplanes engine to explode once it reached 10,000 ft, just to make a point about my current status of employment.

And if this in fact the case... SCARY!!! Our government has a much bigger underlining issue at hand with the people they employ. And as a citizen of the US, I want a full investigation into such matters.

Re:Scary..

[HokieJP]

Well, Police and Firefighters are government employees (except the volunteers), and government employees are not allowed to strike. These people, as government contractors, may, technically, be allowed to strike, but I'm with you in thinking that they shouldn't.

I would like to point out, though, that this is yet another downside of the privatization so touted by politicians these days.

Re:Scary..

[afidel]

NO.
Presidential order has stopped many classes of federal workers from striking and private individuals can be forced to cease striking under the Taft-Hartley Act which Bush used to reopen west coast ports. If he can force dock workers whos actions only result in economic impact back to work then surely he has the authority to force safety critical workers as well. Of course it would never be done because that would draw way too much attention to the fact that there is a bioweapons and severly contagious disease facility just miles from long island.

Re:Scary..

[Lucidwray]

Boy no kidding.. Its kinda sad when my web site of family photos has more powerbackup than a Bio-Safety Level 4 (BSL-4) research facility.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

[rafael_es_son]

Well, looks like Dr. Lecter won't get his vacation RSN.

Re:Tsk, tsk, tsk.

[Tackhead]

> Well, looks like Dr. Lecter won't get his vacation RSN.

It puts the fucking Ebola in the pressure-contained work area!

phhhewwww

[DR SoB]

At first I was scared, but a little calculation shows me I'm at least 500 miles away here in Toronto, pheew. This stuff is completely insane, why do we need 802412904158132951249812 weapons that are all capable of destroying life on earth, I mean, isn't 1 enough???

Re:phhhewwww

[JonTurner]

Because there are other people in the world who possess these weapons (or seek them desperately), and they have the intention to use them against people, either in their home countries (see: Northern Kurds in Iraq) or in Western countries (e.g. US/Canada/Britian/France/etc.) Labs such as the one at Plum Island investigate the effects of disease-causing agents and bioweapons in the hopes that remedies/cures/vaccines/treatments might be discovered.

*That's* why weapons like this are needed. Because others have them, too.

PS. Your distance from the lab isn't significant. As SARS has demonstrated, a swift moving easily communicated disease doesn't recognize national borders. Yes, it's scary, but so is the alternative -- having NO research at all.

Re:phhhewwww

[s20451]

We have enough WMD to destroy the earth 1000 times over, that's PLENTY to wipe out 100% of life (not including cockroaches I guess..).

I'm all for confronting the realities of WMD, but I don't like misleading statistics that are meant to frighten.

Statistics of this kind take the known casualties from Hiroshima and Nagasaki "per kiloton", and then multiply them by the number of kilotons in the Earth's arsenal. Thus, the only way we could kill all the humans on Earth 1000 times over is if they all agreed to gather together in one place and stay exposed.

Nuclear weapons are not as mystically destructive as people think. Yes, in a massive nuclear exchange, most large urban areas would be decimated, and fallout would claim many more. But it's relatively simple to protect yourself against blast and fallout, as long as you have a bit of warning and the bomb doesn't fall on top of your head.

And as for the article, none of the pathogens that were mentioned, such as Ebola, Anthrax, or Hantavirus, are massively contagious.

Ironically, I think people are so frightened of the exaggerated destructive power of these weapons that they try not to think about them and hope they go away. I think more people need to confront their reality, and scare tactics don't help.

Re:phhhewwww

[Zathrus]

a little calculation shows me I'm at least 500 miles away here in Toronto

Well, since you want to play the tinfoil hat game -- you're dead.

For a bioweapon to be truely effective it has to have a reasonable infection and transmission period -- followed by rapid death. If the transmission period is too short then it won't spread because carriers will die before they can infect others. (Which is why a lot of really nasty viruses, like Ebola, are rare and have small kill clusters). If a military grade bioweapon got out without warning then you run a high risk of being infected by someone on a plane. Want to avoid it? Move to a small town at least a couple hundred miles away from any large city. AKA - the middle of nowhere.

Alternately, you could actually do some research on BSL4 facilities. Do you think that researching things like hantavirus, Ebola, lyme disease, antibiotic resistant strains of strep and TB, and other contagious and (currently) incurable diseases isn't worthwhile?

Of course, you'll just tug your tinfoil cap on tighter and claim that all they're really doing is bioweapons research. Sure. Whatever.

No, I'm not claiming they don't do bioweapon research (particularly Fort Dietrich), but a lot of that research is in how to defeat enemy bioweapons. Or your own, for that matter. Bioweapons have a nasty habit of indiscriminantly infecting everyone -- not just your "enemy". Which is why they are technically illegal to use in warfare.

Re:phhhewwww

[DR SoB]

That's not what the article said, it said UP UNTIL 1954 it was used for those purposes:

"In 1954, the research took a more aggressive turn, with scientists looking to cook up ways to inflict damage on Soviet livestock"

"President Clinton to include Plum Island in his expanded bioterrorism program based on the possibility of a biological attack on the nation's agricultural base. Last year the administration of the island's research facilities was transferred from USDA to the Department of Homeland Security.
"

Re:phhhewwww

[HeghmoH]

This is just ridiculous.

If you are lucky, then you can get one warhead to kill a city. It depends a lot on how large the warhead is and how large the city is, of course. According to http://www.world-gazetteer.com/st/statd.htm, the number of cities in the world of all sizes is roughly (I'm too lazy to go through and add all the numbers together, so this is an estimate) 50,000. At one point there were 50,000 total warheads in inventory, but there aren't now. This also ignores the fact that a nuclear strike on a city will not automatically kill everyone who lives there; lots and lots and lots of people will survive. Also, half of the population of the planet doesn't live in a city of any kind.

The above analysis also ignores the realities of any real nuclear war scenario. No matter who the countries involved are, they are not going to carefully target cities so as to eliminate the greatest amount of population possible. The primary targets in a nuclear war are the other guy's nuclear forces. This means missile fields, strategic air bases, missile submarine docks, possibly aircraft carriers. With the possible exception of docks, none of these are known for being located in populated areas. Secondary targets are the other guy's conventional forces. These are air, army, and navy bases of all kinds, radar stations, air defense installations, etc. Some of these are located in populated areas, some are not. Tertiary targets are the other guy's infrastructure: airports, rail yards, major commercial hubs, and so on. These are generally located in populated areas but the population is not the target. last, coming in at #4, is the other guy's population. If and when you get to this point, you have already lost, but the threat of taking out a hefty chunk of the other guy's population can be a good insurance policy against war, and of course the threat has to be real for it to work.

By the time you've had a good-sized nuclear exchange, you've destroyed a bunch of warheads before they were exploded (warheads in missiles, aircraft, and ships that were destroyed in the fighting before they could fire), and, from the point of view of wiping out humanity, wasted a lot more warheads on relatively unpopulated areas. A bunch of cities have died, either because they contained critical infrastructure or just because they were important collections of people, but large portions of the population of both sides remains alive. More of them will die from radiation poisoning (although many fewer than most people think), starvation due to destruction of transport or 'nuclear winter', or just plain civil disorder, but you'll still have a lot left. And this is just in the two countries who went at it and their assorted allies; in any conceivable war scenario, the majority of the world will simply sit it out and hope none of the shit falls on them.

Chemical weapons aren't much of a threat to the survival of the race. Chemical and nuclear weapons are essentially the same as far as killing people goes; they can both do a good job at it, but only if everybody is in the same place, and it's just not something that the militaries of the world are going to bother with. Not to mention that nobody is wasteful enough to load chemical weapons onto strategic delivery systems, so in any armageddon scenario, the chemical weapons simply don't come into play.

Now we come to biological weapons. This is the only wildcard, because they are self-replicating. However, germs that make good war weapons don't make good extermination weapons, In fact, germs don't really make good extermination weapons at all. Either they kill so fast that they burn out (black plague, ebola) or they kill so slowly that the victim still has time to live a fairly normal life and have kids before they die (AIDS). Biological weapons are useless for war unless they can kill quickly. This means that they simply cannot wipe out an entire population, because they will burn out. Especially in

Re:phhhewwww

[s20451]

The worst strain is airborne via coughing and it has a 90% kill rate.

If that's true, it's about as communicable as SARS, though more deadly. I lived in Toronto through the SARS crisis and it affected me not at all.

Multiplying a death rate by a population is misleading, because people will change their behaviour to avoid people with the disease, up to and including barricading themselves in their homes. In the case of SARS, the disease was brought under control through large-scale preventive quarantines.

Now in the case of smallpox, all bets are off, because the virus itself is airborne, not carried in droplets. You only have to pass within a few meters of a sick person to get infected.

Sounds Familiar

[bfg9000]

Plum Island is home to a Bio-Safety Level 4 (BSL-4) research facility... a three-hour power outage... the air filtration systems are inoperable.. decontamination procedures break down... the seals in the pressurized airlock doors start to deflate... workers were desperately sealing the doors with duct tape...

Plum Island, Raccoon City... either way, I'm duct taping my windows and kneeling under my desk as per the Umbrella Group's safety instructions.

Backup Power

[turgid]

So where are the emergency batteries and diesel generators? How can you get away with that in this day and age?

Re:Backup Power

[ajlitt]

RTFA. The workers that managed critical systems like... oh... THE GENERATORS went on strike and were replaced by unskilled and untrained dimwits.

Re:backup gens?

[evilad]

Ah yes, this confused me at first as well. Then the answer hit me: YOU CAN'T READ.

Redundant power supply

[Underholdning]

We host some servers. If they do not have power, the customers goes apeshit (and I blame the guy that doesn't speak english). That's it. No one has died (yet). Still, we have two seperate diesel power generators in underground concrete shelters. Why is it that a small hosting company has more power supply redundancy than a level 4 biological lab?

Re:Redundant power supply

[drinkypoo]

You don't, the lab has three backup generators, which were not running for unexplained reasons.

Re:Redundant power supply

[Dun Malg]

You don't, the lab has three backup generators, which were not running for unexplained reasons.

Only slightly unexplained, I'd say. Maintenance engineers go on strike and suddenly all three generators don't work? The striking engineers blame it on "bad maintenance" by scab workers, but it's quite difficult to accidentally disable a generator, much less three of them. They don't really require any maintenance, other than checking fuel levels and starting them up once a month. Anything beyond that is handled by contracted outside maintenance companies that specialize in generators and backup power systems. I smell sabotage by a filthy union bastard.

Re:Redundant power supply

[Dun Malg]

"a filthy union bastard."

You made a good point. Too bad you made yourself sound like a total ass at the end with that comment. Then again I guess your not old enough to understand why all Unions aren't evil.

Didn't say all unions are evil. I've been a dues paying member of the IBEW (electrician) and the CWA (telecom tech). I know what aspects of unionization are good and which are bad. In this case, I'm referring to a specific type of union person. Anyone who's ever worked in a union building trade knows this type of union person. He's the guy who works half as hard as everyone else and complains that he doesn't get paid enough. He's the guy who shows up to work high as a kite or drunk as a skunk, but he'll always make more than you and get laid off after you because he has seniority. He's the [cousin/brother/friend] of the president of the Local who somehow always gets named foreman despite his incompetence. He's the guy incharge of apprenticeship at the Local who decides that they're only going to accept eight apprentices a year (despite the extreme shortage of union electricians in the area), and fills those eight positions with slackjaw [children/nephews/friend's kids] of his good ol' buddies in the union, rather than the competent unindentured guys with twenty recommendations from journeyman they've worked under. He's the guy who sees his employer as an enemy that needs to be cheated and exploited because "they're rich and they owe me". He's the guy who thinks sabotage is a reasonable tactic for encouraging employer concessions at the bargaining table. I got nothing against non-filthy, non-bastard union members. I just hate the guys who see the union as some sort of free ride/meal card. Those guys are filthy union bastards.

Re:lets hope that

[Planesdragon]

What are the moral implications of a Nation that invades another because they suspect there are weapons of mass destruction, and they have such a stash in their own garage?

We didn't just invade Iraq because of that. (Look--we didn't invade Pakistan or India, nor have we invaded North Korea, or the UK, or France.)

Re:Yet another example ...

[BillFarber]

some of those dirty A-Rabs might just have a point about the U.S.

A statement like that kind of destroys all credibility of the author.

REsident Evil

[DarthTeufel]

Resident Evil : New York City. The new reality based TV show from Fox will follow 12 mutants around as they infect our nation with a virus that was created to destroy only Al Quada operatives. Unfortunately, a beta version of the drug got released, and we got a hit series. Who will be transformed first? Will it be the janitor or perhaps the comic relief ex rapper who always gets killed. Tune in and watch.

What are you worried about?

[burgburgburg]

It's not like it was a Level 5 research facility which would be one worse than a Level 4 research facil ...what do you mean the numbering stops at 4? There is no such thing as a Level 5 research facility? Oh, that's different. In that case, I think we should panic right about now.

Re:What are you worried about?

[meringuoid]

It's not like it was a Level 5 research facility which would be one worse than a Level 4 research facil ...what do you mean the numbering stops at 4?

Is this the Spinal Tap approach to biohazard classification?

The Cobra Event

[DR SoB]

I recently read a book named "The Cobra Event" by Richard Preston. It was one of the best book's I've ever read, it was about germ warfare, and most of it was based around real technology (such as Viral Glass). I won't say anymore, so I don't ruin the book, but I strongly recommend it.

No this is not off-topic. The last few chapters of the book, all take place on Plum Island, and they talk in detail about the facilities on this island. Great reading, and it made it better after I read this article.

Amazon link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/034540997 3/ qid=1079625306/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-0266613-02360 18

Re:The Cobra Event

[DR SoB]

I posted that since I knew it would get a rise out of some people.. Here:

"
b) Detection of botulism:

We have been developing a generalized optical testing system for

adenosine triphosphate using the luciferase enzyme encapsulated in a sol

gel glass matrix. This makes a solid state sensor rather than a wet

chemical sensor. These techniques could be applied to other agents to

make faster more automated sensing.

"

Hmmmm? Gel Glass matrix? Sounds odd, I wonder who's doing research with GLASS and VIRAL infections? Read on:

http://lina.tns.sunysb.edu/AlfredCeramicsDetails .h tm

Here's WSU's view on Viral Glass, they seem to think it's real:

"A realistic view of the botox situation is that many of the problems of dispersal were likely solved by the >3,000 US scientists that reportedly worked on biological warfare during W.W. II & the cold war. It is also reasonable to assume that the botox can be fused by common molecular biology technology with other proteins that stabilize it for dispersal without decreasing its lethality or it can be mixed with other protective agents (e.g. trehalose, viral-glass) or that it can be encapsulated in protective material (timed release) that dissolves once it is in the digestive system. It should also be possible to clone the botox gene into common bacteria that inhabit the human gut (e.g. E. coli), which would establish themselves there long enough to produce a quantity of botox sufficient to disable the victim before their immune system responded; a natural condition seen in young babies who ingest the spores in foods like honey. For a chilling description of how this might be done visit the Cal Poly site."

http://www.slic2.wsu.edu:82/hurlbert/micro101/pa ge s/101biologicalweapons.html

Perhaps I should read less and get out more, your right... Then again, perhaps you should read more.

Duct tape

[stateofmind]

According to one report, workers were desperately sealing the doors with duct tape...

I'm looking through the The Jumbo Duct Tape Book on Amazon right now, and don't see any section on using duct tape to seal off biohazard doors... maybe they are saving that for the second edition. Duct Tape: 101 Nuclear and Biochemical Warfare Uses!

Josh

Re:Not so bad?

[TGK]

Because of the infection rates on some of those bugs. BSL4 is terrifying stuff, it's like working with plutonium that can breed.

If I remember correctly, to be a BSL4 pathogen a bug must have a high lethality in humans, unresponsive to treatment and vaccine, and a high infection rate.

Aids, for example, is BSL3 (or is it 2?). Now, HIV if frightening stuff, and while treatment has come a long way recently, its still the stuff of nightmares.

BSL4 is the stuff of the kind of nightmares you get after watching a Hannibal Lecter marathon while dropping acid.

Personaly I'd be much happier of BSL4 labs had some sort of fail safe, such that if all proverbial hell broke loose the doors would just shut and seal, and if everyone inside died horribly, well... so be it.

Labor issues have plagued the facility...

[terraformer]

...for years. My parents still live on Long Island and I take the Orient point ferry (docks 100 yards from the Long Island depo servicing Plum Island) and for years there has been one union or another on strike there. You see them every time you take the ferry. The scary thing is that plum island used to be isolated but there are more and more people moving to the North Fork and that ferry is seeing a huge amount of growth these days with the casinos opening up in CT. Any mishap could be disastrous and be totally uncontainable due to the sheer numbers of people every which way on the ferry services through that area. Also, the ferry comes within a half mile of the island on a regular basis. I would imagine that is enough to put the passengers at risk and if any leak is not found immediately then when the passengers dock at CT or Orient they could be off and running infecting everyone else before it can be stopped.

Makes you wonder..

[Anonymous Coward]

..who the "terrorists" on this planet really are, with "bio labs" like these one thing you can really count on is mankind will be the architect of his own demise.

A>S

Re:Not so bad?

[Fnkmaster]

Yeah, just pack it up and throw it in the freezer (which has no power either).... uhh... that really sounds like a massively inadequate response to me for a facility with the kinds of devastating failure modes possible for such a place. I mean, air pressure differentials, freezers, all that crap depends on being on multiple semi-separated power grids and having serious backup power systems in place capable of supplying at least 5-6 days worth of emergency power if not more without any human intervention. Hell, it shouldn't even rely on a human to flip the system over to backup power, that should be a manual failsafe required only in the event that the automated switchover fails.

If your average server colo facility (the major places I've been at do this at least, like the old Exodus data center in Waltham) can auto-failover to backup power in under a second, and can test their backup power systems on a monthly basis, why on God's green earth can't a place like this do AT LEAST the same?

Emergency systems

[plams]

The emergency brake (i.e. the handbrake) in trucks is usually kept open by compressed air. The compressed air is responsible for holding a spring back, so if the air is suddenly lost, for some reason, the spring will extend and brake the truck. (This is because the conventional brakes are powered by compressed air)

Maybe a similar system could be used to automaticly seal off contaminated areas, in case power is lost?

Re:Emergency systems

[StateOfTheUnion]

Maybe a similar system could be used to automaticly seal off contaminated areas, in case power is lost?

We do that when designing safety systems in chemical plants and refineries . . . critical systems are designed to "fail open" or "fail closed" depending on the situation. By "fail", I mean if the system loses power (whether it be electric, pneumatic, etc.) For example, one would not want a fuel gas valve on a boiler to "fail open" and one would not want a chilled water quench system on that same boiler to "fail closed." Also, there are almost always manual block valves in the event of a more catastrophic failure.

If the doors cited in the article fail open, it would imply that it is impossible/impractical to design a fail closed system for sealing the doors, triple redundant backup generators were considered sufficient to address the failure mode, or the engineer that designed the system should be sent to remedial engineering school.

What the hell is WRONG with you people?

[JabberWokky]

Has NOBODY read the links provided? This is a veterinary research facility run by the USDA (the people who make sure our cows and chickens are healthy). Everybody is talking about "how horrible America keeps biological weapons". The whole facility is toured routinely by research scientists. While there's the possibility of a "secret gub'mint bug lab" elsewhere, it ain't here. The Plum Island Animal Disease Center is not a weapon research lab, there *are* backup generators (which didn't work), and it's not a video game.

Signal noise, people... Signal noise.

--
Evan

New Book about this "Lab 257"

[jayrtfm]

Michael Christopher Carroll's new book Lab 257 details the politics, lies and incompetence that surrounds the lab. While I haven't read the book yet, I did see him speak at B&N a few weeks ago when he kicked off the book tour. I was impressed by the thouroughness of his research (he had a few of the people who helped him there), getting the original documents from the National archives, comfirming stories by interviewing multiple witnesses, and speaking to the son of the man who started the lab.

He has done an audio interview on rense.com and onNPR (can't find the link)

What he describes sounds similar to the problems laid out by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board.

Yet another example...

[cryptochrome]

... of why unions shouldn't be allowed anywhere near facilities which have the capacity for posing a serious hazard. Politics are OK in some places. A BSL-4 facility (or a nuclear reactor) is not one of them.

Re:Yet another example...

[j-beda]

If you are going to remove a worker's right to collective bargaining, then you also have to ensure that they are given fair working conditions and pay through some other mechanism. I do not have any problem with specifying some services as "essential" and proof against strikes, but there does need to be some method of resolving employer/employee grievences. If you run your "vital infrastructure" by offering the contracts to the company who does the lowest bid, without any sort of protectios for the workers who actually do the jobs, I think you are leading yourself to ruin.

Plum Island is Biosafety Level FIVE.

[MarkusH]

From a United Stataes Animal Health Association's 1998 Report:

Beyond the traditional four biosafety levels, U.S. Agriculture has an additional level, biosafety level 5 (BL5), designed for agents that by law are not allowed on the U.S. mainland. Both foot-and-mouth disease virus and rinderpest virus require that BL3-Ag facilities in which they are studied be separated from the mainland. There is only one facility in the U.S. that meets BL5 criteria -- the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.

Original Report Here.

Here's the offer

[burgburgburg]

CLARICE
Best of all, though - one week a year you'd get to leave the hospital and go here.
(points to a map)
Plum Island. Every afternoon of that week you can walk on the beach or swim in the ocean for up to one hour. Under SWAT team surveillance, of course...

DR. LECHTER
"Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center." Sounds charming.

CLARICE
That's just part of the island. It has a very nice beach. Terns nest there.

People are paranoid these days!

[rahvin112]

We are talking about a lab where they analyze viri and microbes that are deemed Level 4. Ebola is considered Level 4 because it's lethal and incurrable. On the other hand based on research done on the Zimbabwe outbreak Ebola is almost only transmissible in unsanitary hospital conditions (such as sharing needles).

Experimentation with these Level 4 infectious diseases is to develop cures and/or vaccines. The specimens are contained in sealed media, in sealed cabinets, in pressurized rooms protected by airlocks and pressure flow. Given the complete failure of the pressure system and a catastropic release of the specimen out into the building (of which there is probably a better chance that the facility will be hit be a metor) it's still not going to sail miles away and depending on the specimen may not even infect any of the workers even if they were exposed. We are taking about microorganisms here, they dont' get up and walk out of the building. For the vast majority of infectious diseases without a vector to transmit the disease the other microorgasims present in every square inch of this planet will consume the infectious organism.

Re:People are paranoid these days!

[rahvin112]

If I remember the CDC report correctly the only doctors and nurses that got the disease got it from handling patients with unsanitary measures. As soon as the CDC arrived and brought the 50tons of medical supplies with them the outbreak was contained. Availability of gloves, masks and disposable needles and other sanitary medical supplies elimated new cases in something like 3 days. Somewhere out there is a copy of the CDC report on the outbreak, check it out.

Re:Yet another example ...

[DjMd]

Uh hello?
weapons-grade anthrax...

You aren't suggesting that this lab has this are you? Cause this is Plum Island Animal Disease Center
But I mean yeah! diseases are dangerous they could kill us. We should totally stop reasearching them, cause while research might provide us with treatments, vacinations, and all that, there is a small chance that the disease could escape. Better to get rid our research...

Sorry for the Trolling, but it's almost like watching Wargames and Terminator and saying lets get rid of computers...

Re:Must be all Americans on drugs perhaps?

[Retric]

They had 3 sets of backup generators they ALL failed. The question is was it from incompatice or malace? Considering it's a goverment project I would asume both were involved but that's just me.

Re:troll

[Smidge204]

Since when is stating a lucid truth considered a troll?

=Smidge=

Level 3 is closer than you think

[ka9dgx]

Any decent hospital Emergency Room deals with Level 2 all the time (sharps, blood, etc), and will see Level 3 on a fairly regular basis (Tuberculosis, Encephalitis, etc).

--Mike--

Re:And Another Thing....

[Chibi Merrow]

Except that even critical and 'fail-safe' systems are not immune to sabotage by former employees.

Re:Not so bad?

[DigiShaman]

I don't recall the orginal source. But I do remember hearing about the common cold being a BSL4 pathogen due to it's high rate of infection and mutation.

Don't you just love the implied...

[cnelzie]

...and sensationalist writing style spit out by this 'reporter'?

Where's the objectivity?

I understand that New York, is really close to Detroit in having some of largest populations of people from the Middle East. It is EXTREMELY possible that someone that visited the Nile area and then returned to their home in New York could have brought that virus into the US with them. There are so many scenarios possible it's plain silly...

This article smacks of the scare-mongering tactics used in such 'reputable' news sources like 'The Metro Times' in Detroit, as well as any number of left/right-wing 'news' sources used to further someone's political agenda.

It carries just enough facts to seem credible and then adds so much personal opinion and bias that the credibility should be tossed out by any reasonable person. Unfortunately, it is designed to cater to highly emotionally charged people that want to have something to constantly rail against.

Time for a Reagan-like solution?

[Chordonblue]

Remember PATCO? No? Well, not too many people do. They were the striking air traffic controller guys back in the 80's. Fired. Boom. Done.

Why? In the interest of public safety. If this situation isn't in the interest of public safety I don't know what is.

I suggest they go the 'binding arbitration' route. If this is refused by the union, then it's time to start writing pink slips. This is too important.

Why is /. linking to a crackpot?

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, the NY Press is hardly a reputable news outlet. Secondly, the article's writer openly claims to have "scored some weed" during the "incident." Third, he makes overt suggestions that this facility is related to outbreaks of Lyme disease and West Nile in New York.

Lastly and most important, the only sources the author really attributes have nothing to do with the lab! All the rest are unnamed. Nobody with authority is interviewed, and he uses the old urban legend trick of giving out a few names of legit companies and agencies that maybe do related work (maybe not) and then proceed to concoct a story around them!

I'll bet if this story is actually investigated, hardly any of it will be true.

Re:Not so bad?

[VendingMenace]

AIDS is a BL2. It SHOULD be a BL 3 (no cure, but can be treated). However, for logistical reasons it is a BL2. Otherwise (if it was BL3, then blood drives would have to be done in a BL3 facility, all research on donated blook would have to be done in a BL3 facility, ect. At least until you checked to see if it contained HIV.

At least that is what i was told when i worked with human blood. It is balisically a logistic thing, owing to the fact that AIDS is fairly prevelent.

just a thought on generators

[subjectstorm]

i work in a network control center.

while our function is important, it isn't "critical", in that, should we completely shut down, no one would actually die.

having said that, i should now like to point out that we have two procedures in place to ensure that we do not experience a power outage:

one is an enormous CAT generator that is tested every tuesday and thursday. the lights blink for a moment, that's all. regular tests of any back-up power system are certainly advisable.

the second is an enormous bank of batteries. the main function of this is as sort of a universal UPS, keeping the computers from going down while the generator gets up. granted, it won't last long, but it is SOMETHING.

they can blame anyone they want for the failure of the generators, but, barring outright sabotage immediately before the power outage, i'd say this entire fiasco is the result of piss poor testing procedures. one could have any number of back-up generators in reserve . . . but if they aren't tested ROUTINELY, this is the sort of crap that can and does happen.

The Umbrella Group, and it's parent company, ...

[burgburgburg]

Canopy are working for the protection of humanity through their efforts with SCO to ensure IP property rights, whether they be for Operating Systems or for the T-Virus. How dangerous a world would this be if open-source virus creation was freely allowed? Virus creation must be restricted to responsible, for-profit organizations that will use and allocate these resources in a consitent manner.

Oh, and even one scratch from the zombies and you'll become one too, so watch out.

Re:Is this the same lab

[jratcliffe]

Are you perhaps thinking about the Soviet anthrax release in 1979 at a bioweapons lab in Sverdlovsk? Killed about 60 people and a lot of livestock.

Re:backup gens?

[Dun Malg]

Hospitals have backup generators. Why not have them there for the essential life-or-death systems?

They have 3 separate generators. Somehow, all three were happened to fail simultaneously during an engineer's strike. Looks like sabotage by disgruntled workers to me.

Re:Yeh, and M$ is in on the SCO deal too!

[demachina]

I forgot to add the choice of targets for the Anthrax attacks is particularly intrigueing. As you recall it was two leading Democratic senators and several media outlets including NBC.

What would be accomplished by these particular targets? In the case of Democractic senators its extremely useful to insure Congress will vote your way when you come in later with claims Iraq has WMD's and is an imminent danger of using them aginst the U.S. and to insure Congress will vote lots of money for WMD research and defenses. Congress living with vivid recollection of its own Anthrax attack was much more likely to vote for war to defend the U.S. from this threat. It kind of explains why the Democrats rolled over when the time came to green light the Iraq war.

The same can be said for the media. They became much more sympathetic to the danger of WMD's than they would have been if they hadn't been attacked themselves.

An arguement could be made this was all "Good For America". Perhaps those in power were legitimately concerned about the danger of biowarfare attacks against the U.S. but felt they couldn't get the funding or priority placed on defenses unless they staged a little demo. Sure a few people died but in the national security establishment calculus that is a small price to pay to help protect America from all threats, foreign and domestic.

Union Busters

[Detritus]

Mother Jones has an interesting article that provides some background on the labor problems at Plum Island. It appears that the contractor, LB&B Associates, with USDA assistance, is trying to destroy the union.

Re:Not so bad?

[LauraScudder]

As quoted here:

BIOSAFETY LEVEL 4 is required for work with dangerous and exotic agents which pose a high individual risk of aerosol-transmitted laboratory infections and life-threatening disease.

So I have the feeling the common cold doesn't live up to the life-threatening disease requirement. BSL4 is for things like Ebola and other hemorrhagic fevers with no vaccine. I think smallpox is also studied under these conditions due to the fact that the general population has never been vaccinated.

Did YOU read the article?

[Silvers]

The point of the article is not that the center isn't needed. It's that something so horribly stupid can occur there in a lvl 4 facility.

Simply saying "Well we had back up generators, but they didn't work. Sorry." Does not cut it.

Re:Not so bad?

[rbrinkman]

you forgot the bit about that Biosafety level 4 pathogens may be transmitted by the *cough* aerosol *cough* route. Within work areas of the facility, all activities are confined to Class III biological safety cabinets, or Class II biological safety cabinets used with one-piece positive pressure personnel suits ventilated by a life support system. The Biosafety Level 4 laboratory has special engineering and design features to prevent microorganisms from being disseminated into the environment. (Except power outages followed by sabotage of the generator apparently). Remember these are the nice things like Viral Hemorragic Fevers (the Ebolas of the world http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispage s/vhf.htm) BSL1 - Biosafety Level 1; Organisms not known to cause disease in health adult humans. However, these agents may be opportunistic and cause disease in the young, aged, immunodeficient or immunosuppressed individuals. BSL2 - Biosafety Level 2; Laboratory transmission occurs by self-inoculation or exposure via mucous membranes. Human blood, body fluids and cell lines are designated as Biosafety Level 2, unless they are known to contain a higher level pathogen. BSL2 organisms may cause diseases that may be lethal over time such as HIV. However, the BMBL lists BL2 organisms as being of moderate risk to personnel and the environment. BSL3 - Biosafety Level 3 have the potential for respiratory transmission (inhalation of aerosols). BSL3 organisms may cause serious and potentially lethal infection. BSL4 - Biosafety Level 4 is assigned to work involving dangerous or exotic agents which pose a high individual risk of life-threatening disease, which may be transmitted via the aerosol route, and for which there is no available vaccine or therapy More info at http://www.cdc.gov/od/ohs/biosfty/bmbl4/bmbl4s3.ht m

Greed

[dysk]

When the employees go on strike, stop the experiments, and maintain only the staff necessary to ensure security and an orderly shutdown/storage of materials.

It sounds like they wouldn't have had nearly the problems if the lab was already in standby.

Re:And Another Thing....

[turgid]

Once every three months is about right for diesel generators. You do have redundant backup generators, don't you? Whether the workers are in a union or not, where I come from, deliberately tampering with safety equipment is a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment.

Oh, and you do test run your diesels once a week don't you?

If not, you deserve everything you get.

Re:Yet another example ...

[torpor]

A statement like that kind of destroys all credibility of the author.

Yeah? Why is that? Because its possible that some of the objections that the Arab community have about America may in fact be true? That they may be applicable? That they may have a point?

The fact that America's enemies may actually have a point may have escaped some of you, I know ... but just think about it. What exactly is the reason for having such devastating facilities?

"Protection of the American Homeland".

Great. Thanks. The rest of the world, dying of new strains of Tuberculosis cooked up in your ivory towers, will be very happy to know that America is protected from its 'enemies' ...

I thought we were going to Candy Apple Island

[MattGWU]

Candy Apple Island? What do they have there?

Viruses, but they're not as deadly.

Ken Alibek(ov)

[Chitlenz]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385 334966/qid=1079632818/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/102-04375 66-8960154?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Biohazard was written by the head of the Russian bioweaponeering program in the 80s-90s. There are literally pictures of him standing with a bunch of scientists in places like Plum Island (i thiknk its actually in Arkansas at the Pine Bluff facility) during one of the many "goodwill" tours the USSR and the US had during treaty negotiations after the cold war.

This book is SCARY. Apparently, the chimera virus so easily discounted earlier in this post is very real, and was an attempt to mix ebola and smallpox and seal it in gelatinized capsules to make it airborne and able to survive the explosion of delivery by bombs. Why bother? Because their research was based on whatever was considered INCURABLE in the west. Several accidents in russian experiments are well documented, and show up in old news reports as "food poisoning" or other polically correct reasons for mass deaths in suburban areas. Apparently in one case, someone got drunk and forgot to put the air filters back on at an Anthrax plant and killed a bunch of folx.

2 points: someone noted that this is small scale research. This is incorrect, as Ken Alibek notes that weaponized germs have to be produced by the TON in order to keep the stockpile of arms fresh enough for maximum impact. Think about what a TON of ebola would do to anywhere. Second, where did all this shit go? He documents how at least one of the starving workers at a smallpox plant slipped out with a live vial (from a lvl4 facility) to try to sell it as a supplemental income. In lots of cases, noone knows where it all went.

The upside is that it mostly doesn't work as effectively as it's billed. Spraying an agent would probably only infect a small number of people, since delivery of a live virus is apparently a very hard thing to accomplish effectively.

-chitlenz

Cost-Effective Homeland Insecurity

[Doc Ruby]

You'd think that BushCo's invocation of bioterror at every turn would be backed up with support for these bio research labs, and especially their staff. These geeks are the high-tech asset giving us our edge in bioweapons and defense, not the collapsing building they work in. You can bet that they're not cashing in on any Bush tax breaks like their neighbors in Connecticut and the Hamptons. And as geeks, you know it must really be bad out there for them to stoop to such untidy blue-collar tactics as a strike, especially in Republican dominated Long Island. So we should wave them goodbye as they float across the Atlantic to friendlier Europe, with its own rising demand for bioweapons experts, where many of these geeks come from, and many foreigners will find friendlier than The Homeland. And if you get in some sympathetic "Bon Voyage" messages now, they might let you crash at their flats when their debacle happens to you.

Lyme, Gulf War Syndrome, and HIV...

[qtp]

The Connecticut town of Lyme (Old Lyme, and East Lyme as well) is less than ten miles away accross the Long Island Sound from Plum Island (If you were ever in the Navy and pulled out from New London or the Groton Sub Base, then youve been within 150 yardsof the place).

Mycoplasma Fermentans has been detected in patients of Gulf War Syndrome, Lyme Disease, and HIV in almost all cases. It is often also detected in Multiple Sclerosis patients, and the US Army released instructions to the Veterans Administration shortly after the Korean War that all MS cases developing within two years of a serviceman returning from Korea should be considered to be service related.

There is a connection that has been noticed by doctors in that area, as well as by doctors treating patients who have lived in that area in other locations.

There is also at least one patent held by the US Army for this organism.

It's good that there's covertage of some of the mishaps that occur at these facilities, but it seems that a "mishap" might not be enough to account for the problems that have been connected to the communitioes surrounding Plum Island and are spreading through the population. (Yes, Gulf War Syndrome is contagious, and did "originate" in many veterans who never left the states.)

Terraserver view of the island

[Tom in Boston]

Here's a Terraserver view of the island. I don't see anything dangerous! Well, nothing bigger than 1 meter, anyway.

Re:backup gens?

[Tassach]

Looks like sabotage by disgruntled workers to me

Remember Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

While sabotage is indeed a possibility, I find it far more likely that the scabs hired to replace the striking engineers never bothered to RTFM, never ran an equipment test, and never had a drill or simulated outage.

In that kind of facility, they should have been running a monthly, if not weekly, test of the backup systems. The most likely explanation to me is that there was a breakdown in operational procedure, possibly because the procedures weren't documented. If the policy is that you run a periodic systems test, then you need to document the fact that you need to run a test along with the instructions needed to carry out the test.

"Fred runs the test every Tuesday; get him to show you how to do it" doesn't cut it, particuarly if Fred goes on strike or gets run over by a bus. It's management's responsibility to make sure that all the critical operational procedures are documented and that they are being followed on an ongoing basis. This obviously did not happen in this case -- even if the generators were sabotaged, the damage should have been detected at the next test.

Re:backup gens?

[Dun Malg]

even if the generators were sabotaged, the damage should have been detected at the next test.

Good point. The fact that they had three backup power units go bad in a not-immediately-repairable way in the same time frame looks like sabotage, but the fact that such non-functionality was overlooked indicates ineptitude as well. Personally, having seen a LOT of backup generator systems working as an electrician in Las Vegas hotels, I suspect the one-two combo of sabotage-stupidity. There's not much of those generators that building engineering has access to. Fuel tanks, starter panel, and switch gear, mostly. Can't imagine what could've been done to them through "bad maintenance" that could keep them offline.

Re:Yeh, and M$ is in on the SCO deal too!

[dustmote]

You know, the thing that scares me is that even though I'm *almost certain* that this sort of thing is (-1, Tinfoil Hat), it is believable enough and I trust the leverages of power right now in my own country little enough that I'm not sure. I'm really not sure. That my trust has eroded that far is a horrifying sign of things wrong, true or not.

FUD about origins of virii?

[djdanlib]

Read on past this rant if you can.

# begin rant # Seems to me like this guy likes to take the sensationalist approach more than the straight facts approach, and shock us out of our right minds. But that's to be expected from a human author. # end rant #

Did anyone else read this and get the impression that he wanted us to think that these horrible, awful scourge-of-mankind diseases ORIGINATED from this facility? I'll post about the origins of two big names he drops here.

Lyme Disease is actually named after a town in Connecticut where it was first documented in the 1970s. That town's name? Old Lyme. I go there every year for a vacation, so I know about it very well. It spreads to humans by ticks - exactly the kind of thing you'd expect Plum to have inside. However, it is easily treated, has a decent grace period before complications occur, and is not debilitating until it gets really bad. You can read more about it here. If this easily curable disease was indeed the result of an experiment at Plum Island, then it was probably the crappiest and least effective bioweapon ever invented.

Now, about West Nile Virus. According to this document: Unless new information comes to light, the first case of West Nile virus to be subjected to scientific study was brought to medical attention in December 1937 at Omogo, West Nile district, Northern Province of Uganda. That case (and the subsequent viral characterization process) was documented by members of the Yellow Fever Research Institute, Entebbe, Uganda in 1940. I seriously doubt they created West Nile in a laboratory that long ago.

The Plum Island laboratory (Link 1 Link 2 got any more links?) has been around plenty longer than Lyme Disease has been known according to this document, but it is newer than West Nile. Directly copied from that site: In 1946, a disease laboratory was built at Fort Terry by the government. Fort Terry was closed in 1948 because we were no longer at war, and it was no longer needed. Fort Terry was reopened to research new ways to go to war, and for the development of chemicals to kill animals.

Draw your own conclusion, here's your sketch pencil.

Re:Yeh, and M$ is in on the SCO deal too!

[Anonymous Coward]

You forget to mention that the NYpost was attacked as well. The most popular right wing paper in NYC. The two senators that were attacked were hit at a time when the Democrat party was in power in the senate making them legitimate non-partisan targets. Attacking them for the power they hold not the party they belong to.

Step away from the kool-aid boy you have already had too much to drink.