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Advances in Bio-weaponry
kjh1 writes "Technology Review is running an eye-opening article on how biotechnology has advanced to the point where producing bio-weapons that were once only possible with the backing of governments with enormous resources is now possible with equipment purchased off eBay. You can now purchase a mini-lab of equipment for less than $10,000. The writer also interviewed a former Soviet bioweaponeer, Serguei Popov, who worked at the Biopreparat, the Soviet agency that secretly developed biological weapons. Popov has since moved to the US and provided a great deal of information on the types of weapons the Soviets were developing."
A WMD that's marketed specifically for evil geniuses that are on a tight budget. The days of cheap minion labour are behind us, guys, gotta look after the pennies.
I've got the spirit, lose the feeling.
And I don't even trust the people who have access to bio-warfare now.
A blog about stuff.
Heck for $2.50, I can go to Taco Bell and be a WMD the rest of the day.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I wouldn't worry about terrorist implications of this, it is actually very difficult for a group without large resources (and even for those with them) to create workable weapons of mass destruction and bioweaponry would deffinately fall into this catergory... From a journal article i read by J. Mueller in Terrorism and Political Violence (vol.17:487-505, 2005)
Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult that had some three hundred scientists in its employ and an estimated budget of $1 billion, reportedly tried at least nine times over five years to set off biological weapons by spraying pathogens from trucks and wafting them from rooftops, hoping fancifully to ignite an apocalyptic war. These efforts failed to create a single fatality--in fact, nobody even noticed that the attacks had taken place.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
He was deputy chief of science opperations at one of the USSR's main bioweapons facilities, and has detailed much of this experience in "Biohazard".
Frankly, this is the stuff of horror stories.
The sea changes color, but the sea does not change.
And that's why I don't go anywhere without my mutated anthrax
...for Duck hunting!
Demented But Determined.
Nothing to see here. Good article, but the point made is fairly worthless. Technology is getting better and cheaper. Why is it suprising that it should extend to the field of biotech? If the dude next door wants to whack you, I don't think that he needs to produce a virus to do it. I'm pretty sure that guns are still more economical and efficient for personal enterprise of this sort.
Silence is golden... and duct tape is silver.
GF: Why are they writing about the Soviets in the past tense? ...then I'm leaving you. ...
Me: Er, because they're in the past?
GF: Huh?
Me: Um, the Soviet Union collapsed more than a decade ago. Didn't you know that?
GF: Get out of here! I thought China was still around.
Me: Honey, the Soviet Union is modern day Russia. Not China.
GF: What? I thought Soviets were commies, and the Chinese are commies.
Me: Yes, but the Soviets were Russians.
GF: The Russians are Chinese?
Me: No! NO! NOO!
GF: Jesus. You don't have to yell! I was just asking!
Me: Alright, alright, I'm sorry.
GF: So how do the Nazis fit into all this?
Me: NAZIS!? Are you pulling my leg?
GF: I'm not!
Me:
GF:
You can't make this shit up I tell you.
Even an amateur can assimilate an entire army for pennies. Since the collapse of the Star Trek franchise, Borg nanoprobes are being dumped for ridiculously low prices on eBay.
You can buy a lot of ex-junkyard dogs for less than $10,000.
I have freaks! I did something right...
Then he goes underground, corresponds with Dr. David Sandstrom of NORBAC, then Sandstrom unwittingly gives him the Spanish Flu to release... Seen it all before on TV. Quality TV that is.
Does anyone remember Frank Herbert's book "The White Plague"?
From wikipedia:
Sucessful dispersal of chemical and biological agents is tough. Government funded programs have not been very effective, what makes anyone think that terrorists could come up with an effective delivery system.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Thats why U.S. didn't find Saddam Hussein's equipment to produce weapons of mass destruction: he sold them on eBay!
Peaceful Sweden trains their soldiers in chemical warfare every Thursday... a good portion of brown beans and some bacon, and they're all set for lowering the PH value of the air in the barracks. Knowing this... don't plan on attacking these folks on a Thursday... at least not without gas masks...
"genetically altered" means that the DNA/RNA has been changed. Why would she be doing that with a virus in a "beginning bio class"? What would the purpose be?
Particularly in a "beginning bio class" at a "junior college". The kind of students you see in those classes are NOT the kind that could be trusted with any precautions for handling even non-engineered viruses.
None of that sounds reasonable.
How about some links to those E-bay auctions with bio-weapon technology? And while your are at it how about some links to the plans to make a bio-weapon? Everyone should do a google query for bioweapon.
I'll be right back. Their are a few men in black suites at the door.
When I hear about how the barriers to entry in bioweaponry are lowering, I'm actually not afraid of the new people who might potentially have access to bioweapons now. I worry about how the people who have access to bioweaponry now might wind up nuking the rest of us just to take out the new people who might potentially have access to bioweapons.
Here it is on Amazon.com, seems it's out of print! I didn't realize that.
Your post caught my eye because it was really funny. Then I started to wonder what else you talk about in your posts.
Looking at your recent posting history I have found the following.
Negroponte says Linux too 'Fat'
Startup Webaroo to put the 'Web on a Hard Drive'?
Er, I'm asking this in order to, er, protect my girlfriend's sensibilities. Can't have her unwittingly downloading such naughty stuff you know. =)
Two Unofficial IE Patches Block Attacks
So many references to your "girlfriend" in so short a time aroused my suspicions so I decided to google for '"Dante Shamest" girlfriend' and guess what I found.
THIS proof that you are a liar with no girlfriend.
But...I don't.
You've been using the same bullshit ruse for over a year now. It's ok if you're celibate, but it's just plain pathetic to lie about having a girlfriend.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
So class, take test tube #1, put it in this device, press this button and you get this spectrograph.
Take test tube #2, put it in this device, press this button, then put it in the other device, press this button and you'll see the altered spectrograph.
So, what is the purpose of walking a "beginning bio class" through this process? Exactly what do they learn? Does the new virus kill mice quicker? Does it only kill female mice? Does the new virus infect a species that it did not infect before?
Exactly what does the altered virus do that is different from the original virus? If "nothing", then what is the purpose of wasting class time to walk through something that just results in a different magic picture?The equipment is inexpensive. I'm not questioning that.
What I am questioning is WHY a "beginning bio class" at a "junior college" would be doing that with a virus.Again, I'm not asking how easy it is. I'm asking WHY a "beginning bio class" at a "junior college" would be doing that with a virus.
And I'm stating that the students you get enrolled in a "beginning bio class" at a "junior college" should not be trusted to follow the basic precautions required for "genetically altering" anything.
Check out the prostitute schedule for April 9, 2006 at the MBOT.
The prostitute schedule is updated daily.
Unlike Las Vegas, San Francisco does not regulate prostitution. So, the MBOT heartily welcomes everyone -- including HIV-positive customers.
Does this mean that America is going to invade E-bay?
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
How do you fit your tin foil hat... to a HazMat suit?
So here is the rub. One not only has to have the equipment and expertise to create the biowepon. One also needs a way to infect people in lethal doses. And, to begin with, one needs to believe the bioagent will be more effecient than conventional weapons. Look at it this way. The allies probably did more damage in Dresden using conventional weapons that in Japan using nukes. However, the Japan attack was much more effecient, posed almost no risk to the Allies, had no real defense, and was not limited by the logistics of flying many planes. For a bioagent to be preferable, it must be like a nuke. If Bush is to believed the Iraqis have a bunch of biological agents, yet we see bombs are used more. Perhpas the Iragis to have WMDs, and bombs are just so much more effecient and dramatic. I mean proving to the US forces that defending against IEDs is hopeless to so mouch more dramatic than simply killing everyone in the green zone with lead poisoning, for instance.
This seems like another fear mongering article planted to create an impression that certain not-so-dangerous things are critical, so that the complex really dangerous things can be ignored. It just shows a true lack of imagination. I tink in most cases the villians just want the drama. That is why they blow up the building after it is evacated, instead of blowing up the location to which the people are evacuated to.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
What happens when the pathogen mutates? Lots of little virus babies mean lots of chances for mutation.Again, this isn't magic. This is science. To kill based on skin colour, the virus would have to target a very specific DNA/RNA sequence. Viruses mutate. The mutations aren't controlled. One mutation and your virus is suddenly attacking the wrong breed.Sure. Whatever.Yes. The problem is lack of decent education in the field of biology.
In order for your tailored viruses to work, they'd have to be able to only infect people with a certain DNA/RNA sequence, and that isn't very easy outside of the cell.
So, your virus has to infect everyone, but only kill those with the sequence you've targetted.
So, everyone is infected, with a deadly virus, and viruses mutate
It is so much easier and more assured to just buy a shotgun and do it yourself.
Since you are unable to explain the WHY, and instead you keep going off on other tangents (equipment availablity, where you live), I'm not going to waste any more of my time trying to keep you on the original topic.
There is no reason that what you claim would have happened and lots of reasons why it would not.
"Twelve Monkeys"
If you haven't seen it, you missed a great one.
"I'm in insurance"
Frank Herbert, the author of the Dune series has written a book about a similar scenario called "The White Plague". It is about a biologist who's wife is killed by the IRA. With the money recieved from death insurance he funds his equiment and attempts to make a virus that only kills humans carrying XX chromosomes as a revenge.
I quite liked the book.
The threat from modern DNA synthesizers isn't the real threat. Those synthesizers do automate the process of DNA synthesis. However, the Russian bioweapons program did the same thing a long time before by just throwing more technicians at the problem. Using nothing but hard working but low-skilled lab techs with primitive equipment they were able to engineer bacteria that stimulated the immune system of victims to attack their own nervous system. This could create autoimmune diseases -- a very broad range of diseases including multiple sclerosis and possibly even autism.
Seastead this.
Wasn't there a Popov in a Tom Clancy book? "Rainbow Six" maybe? And wasn't that bioweapon related?
Weird. Although I guess Clancy does do actual research, and Popov isn't exactly an uncommon name.
-Skeld
Making HEU is a very difficult task; Zippe-type centrifuges can't be put together in your back shed. More plausibly, they could steal it or buy it on the black market, but even that's going to be very difficult.
WMD's are a bogus category, in my opinion, draw a bogus analogy between nukes, which genuinely can kill tens of thousands of people at a shot without any great operational genius, and chemical and biological weapons, which seem to be very hard to make that lethal, even though theoretically they can be.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The hard part is weaponizing them. Anthrax is hard to spread around; you have to figure out how to prevent the bacterial particls from clumping, and you have to be able to aerosilize them. Chlorine, being a gas, is nigh-impossible to trap, store, and distribute in large amounts without a factory. You're more likely to just gas yourself (which, if you're in the habit of making chlorine for weapon purposes, is just as well). Gunpowder is easy enough to make a small, pipebomb-style weapon out of, but anything bigger and you really need a plane, rocket, or mortar to get it where you want it. And that peroxide stuff whose name I can't recall? The terrorist engineers who make have short careers for a reason, and when the survivors are arrested they are typically missing fingers and/or hands and/or notable sections of face.
It's a huge jump from something deadly to a practical weapon. Just look how much money the world's researching militaries throw at the problem; if it were just a matter of finding more lethal substances, the art of killing would have been perfected long, long ago.
Seriously, I'd expect someone with your claimed credentials to understand the basics of this. This isn't cut-and-paste.
You have to identify the exact DNA/RNA sequence that identifies your target.
Then you have to engineer the virus to only kill the hosts with that sequence
while remaining dormant in the hosts without that sequence.
And you can't just cut-and-paste the sequence you want to attack into the virus. The changes to the virus would be a completely different research project.And why would that person choose bio-tech over the conventional shotgun?Because chemical agents work so much more effectively, are easier to manufacture, transport and disperse.
And even more effective than chemical agents are conventional weapons. Such as "hand guns" or "shotguns". Not to mention the ever popular "explosives strapped to your body".
There a MANY people interested in science that simply cannot afford the tools to pursue it.
Cheap scientific tools means more tools in the hands of science tinkerers.
The more science tinkerers, means more interest, innovation, and new businesses in science.
THIS IS A GOOD THING!
If science tinkerers with affordable tools can get an open-science movement going (like programers have done with open-source), then we have a very bright future ahead of us.
FUD, like the mentioned article, are simply words of someone trying to stop innovation and destroy economies.
Most Slashdot users normally don't RTFA, and this one runs 12 pages long.
How many users are actually going to RTFA before commenting.
I for one am not!
Come on, would you want to date your Political Science professor,
or a beautiful girl who doesn't know the U.S.S.R. from the U.S.S. Enterprise?
It is very entertaining to encounter the universe through the eyes of someone who does not have the slightest clue,
but still is a joy to be around and have fun doing things with, even if they are not sure what the state capital is...
Airheads DO know how to have fun,
and sometimes that is really all you'll ever need.
So have fun!
But have you ever stopped to picture your parents having sex to create you?
That IS one Hell of a biological weapon... (Instant, irreversible blindness)
As soon as some little guy comes up with something he'll be crushed by the bigger guys for violating a bunch of patents. So this pretty much eliminates people without significant resources.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
Wouldn't it be just so ironic if the NSA tracked someone down who was actually attempting to do this by piecing together information from the web traffic? I wonder what the tin hat crowd would say then.
For that matter, what would they say if someone used this equipment to kill some people and the NSA didn't detect it, despite the web traffic?
A soviet bioweaponeer? NOW I get why the lower-shelf vodka of same name is so toxic.
In the classic days of Leonardo da Vinci, the Renaissance Man was the master of everything and was on top of many topics of interest. However, many modern achievements have been realized through specialists - science, engineering, agriculture, arts, etc... It would not be fair for a world-class scientist to be responsible for establishing the policy guidelines of a new technology. Their main concern is and should be to advance the frontiers of science - their opinions should carry weight regarding policy, but in general they are not adept with such responsibilities.
In the absence of an appropriate entity with this responsibility, the lack of oversight may lead to unwanted outcomes. Einstein's revelations made the atomic bomb feasible, yet afterwards Einstein was one of the biggest opponents of nuclear arms. As someone who is in biotechnology, I know that we may have social responsibility on the back of our minds, but in the forefront is finding that discovery before someone else in our field finds it first!
This is just another cobblestone in the Road to War.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Last time I checked they still don't have head-mounted portable laser beaming devices to go with my dolphins on eBay! :(
fuck. off.
Those 10 year olds aren't doing anything that wasn't done 10 years ago. They aren't doing anything that wasn't done 15 years ago.
By the time the skill requirements drop down that far, all of the viruses you've described would have already been created by people who had the training and expertise.
Computers can be re-booted. The software can be re-installed.
By the time the technology has been simpliefed enough that a 10 year old can genetically engineer a racially specific virus, THAT VIRUS WILL ALREADY HAVE BEEN CREATED.
And humans cannot be re-booted. When they're dead, they are dead.
There's no need to worry about 10 year olds or any other person who will rely upon the technology getting easier. If it is possible to create such a virus, it will be done and released long before that 10 year old gets a chance to play with the technology.Here, since you seem to have a problem with certain concepts, let me spell it out for you:
#1. Kill one person or family: Guns work today. Guns are easy to acquire. Chemicals also work. Bio-tech fails today. Bio-tech may never work.
#2. Kill one city: Nukes. But nukes are difficult to acquire. Guns and lots of troops are also an option. Massive chemical attack also works. Bio-tech fails today.
#3. Kill one race: Guns and lots of troops. Bio-tech fails today. Bio-tech may never work.
#4. Kill the world: Lots of nukes. But nukes are difficult to acquire. Bio-tech fails today. Bio-tech may never work.
So, your entire point is based around the following:
A. Bio-tech becoming cheap and easy.
B. Someone wanting to kill everyone in the world.
Great. Sounds like a really boring novel. I hope those rejection letters don't discourage you.
Meanwhile, there's a greater chance that I'll be killed by a drunk driver so you'll forgive me if I don't continue to point out the logical flaws in your plot.
You must be new around here and think it's cool to rehash the same old joke.
Not funny. Never was. Especially when you fuck it up like that.
Bill Joy's well-known article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" predicted this like 6 years ago:
. html
http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy
The big quesiton is: why aren't the intelligent, well-educated, technically minded of the world actually taking issues like this seriously, and doing something about it? Probably because thinking about this stuff means questioning one's own vocation and existence, and perhaps discovering that the blind pursuit of scientific knowledge or development of technology can have just as many unintended bad consequences as good ones. We can't stop these pursuits; nor should we. But all who are involved in these pursuits must also assume responsibility for analyzing the risks of their application.
Bill Joy called for a "Hippocratic Oath" of sorts for scientists and technologists to take responsibility for the ethical concerns as well as the scientific or technological or design concerns. We already know how to assess some forms of risk. These are just different kinds of risks to be assessed, and they are real.
If we are as good and as smart as we think we are, how can we not step up?
don't feel bad... my mom died before I was born too. and my father was celibate, like his father and his father before him.
I enjoyed it. Soviet Russia jokes were funny since Yakov Smirnov started using them.
SPOILER alert
Yeah, I read that about a month ago. Not one of his best, but compelling. It has some thin psychological premises (pharmaceutical scientist driven mad with grief over the IRA bombing of his family becomes evil genius) and the science is pretty sketchy, even to a lay lumpen like me. Most of the book is taken up by Herbert's typical meditations on power and deception and violence as a way of life, but this time he goes on and on and on about the bloody heritage of the Irish and how maudlin the culture is.
What interested me is the premise that a disease that takes out women brings out the worst in men, and the way he dealt with that. Not a feminist book, more a pessimist book. Global martial law, warlords, distrust and panicked sterilization of whole regions. Yay Frank, people are screwed up, we know already. Most of the political manoevering is over how to use the knowledge of the elusive cure as a further bioweapon. The scientists stage a kind of end-run around the politicians with the cure. In the end, garage start-up bioweapons capability creates a kind of detente.
Damn those pesky terrorists
... is that they tend to turn arround and bite whoever made them. Litteraly. One needs very expensive containment facilities and well trained personel to develop bioweapons. If a terrorist tries to cook something of this sort in his kitchen with equipment from e-bay, he will be the first to get infected. Now it is very difficult to use any weapon if you are dead, isn't it?
Instead of trying to build newer and bigger weapons of destruction, we should be thinking about getting more use out of the ones we already have. - Jack Handey
Also attributed to Commedian Emo Phillips
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I think you will find that a mutation of the bird flu virus would be better for duck hunting.
* The major failure with the attack was the lack of time to develop a good dispersal mechanism, as the attack plan was moved ahead of schedule because of the cult's impression that the authorities were going to act on them imminently. They had this impression on the basis of penetration of Japanese military and police sources. They eventually settled on liquid in bags getting poked with umbrella tips.
* The "specific targets" at Matsumoto were judicial magistrates whom the cult thought had a hand in the investigation against them. Seven died in that attack, incidentally.
* Aum was fricking scary with the amount of resources they had at their disposal. I remember a $300 million chemical weapons factory (operating completely above-board in Japan in broad daylight, just another chemical factory, had all its permits), and them staging a parachute raid on a JSDF facility using turncoat JSDF forces. Sounds like a bad anime, I know.
I wouldn't be sanguine about this. If you can get weapons grade sarin you can certainly develop a delivery system for it. Its not trivial but, hey, $300 million dollars has a certain way of making non-trivial problems seem a whole lot less daunting. We lucked out in a major way, in that with everything designed right for the attack (high-profile target with hundreds of thousands of people in an enclosed space) the cult made multiple errors (impure toxin, dispersal surface area the size of an umbrella puncture, etc) which minimized the casualties. There were other lucky incidents, too -- two Japanese station attendants soaked up the chemical in one car with newspapers, sealed it in plastic, and took it to the station room (I don't know if they had any idea that they were dealing with anything worse than a liquid mess, but both of them died for their troubles, which many people from exposure to that portion of the attack).
And, incidentally, remember the anthrax attack on the US and how the postal system and much of the East Coast essentially *shut down* with less casualties? Its difficult to overstate how much of the Japanese economy/government/everything is dependent on Tokyo and how dependent Tokyo is on their mass transit system. If you hit one car in Tokyo's inner loop with a lethal nerve agent tomorrow and then followed it up with a successful strike once a week for, oh, I don't know, two weeks? Three? That would be about as effective at causing economic damage in Japan as driving an airplane into a tall building of your choice in New York City.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
It's NOT brown beans and bacon. It's soup made of yellow peas and salted ham that is served every Thursday. Research has showed that this proudece much more evil gases :-)
Remembering that the US anthrax attacks were bioweapons that "escaped" from a government lab, is it possible the highly pathogenic H5N1 type of bird flu is a bioweapon that escaped from a government lab? Could it be a two-stage bioweapon, currently lethal mainly to birds until a second agent is released in time of war, re-combining with the H5N1 genotype to make it infectious to humans who have certain common "enemy" genotypes? This is of course paranoid rambling, so you must ignore it and forget about it.
It would be nice to segment bio-warfare research (bad, evil, icky) and anti-bio-warfare research (nice, good, clean), but life isn't that simple. If you are making armour-piercing weapons, then you get to know about armour, and if you work on armour you get to know about armour-piercing weapons. This latest round of research is going to generate volumes on biological weapons, most of it in open documents and electronically searchable. This may be the real mess our kids will have to live with.
I would be a lot more worried about the mention that US bioweapons labs have let their products accidentally loose on the population several times already. It is mentioned in the article.
Bumbling idiots shouldn't be allowed to work with them. Mistakes can cost the lives of millions.
And what about the Anthrax attacks, the person is still roaming free? Was it a CIA inside job as is rumored? White House went on antibiotics before the attacks.
Imaginary WMD's. Seems familiar from some reason, but I just can't place it........
Keep this article far FAR away from this guy!!!
It is your personal duty to fight for what is right on a daily basis. Ignoring injustice is identical to approving
Hiroshima-style HEU gun bombs are much easier than that; all you need to do is slam two bits of HEU together fast enough to overcome predetonation. You don't need shaped charges, precisely-timed firing sequences, and the like for that.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
"As someone who is doing research in molecular biology right now in a major US
university (at a postdoctoral level),"
No one believes you, primarily because there are those of us out there with sufficient background in the subject to know that if you really had the credentials you claim, you would know what you're talking about ridiculous.
In other words, stop lying.
Municipal water supplies are another possibility, if you want to introduce a very lethal compound. But as far as body count, delayed mortality is what you want. The worst situations are the ones where life works for the terrorist. "How do I deliver this agent to all those people?" "Well, gee. If we can get the people to manufacture the agent and distribute it..."
The only reason we're not fucked is that almost everyone is sane, and of the insane people, very few are capable of the rational thought necessary to do what a sane person would never do. That and most people are completely directionless. The economic leash keeps most people working 40 hours a week or more and dreaming of a better life, instead of being focused enough to invest time and money over a period of time on annihilating large numbers of people and doing it intelligently enough that it is not readily apparent what is going on until it is too late.
You may think the government is blind, but if you do, you are the blind one. On some matters of national security, such as the purchase of various items which can be used to do very terrible things, controls are rather tight and there are computers churning through transactional records all over the world to identify risk factors. Just the other day we found that AT&T has been feeding all communication on their network to the NSA. Surprised? Hardly.
So basically, the only person capable of doing real harm is a really intelligent, focused, sane person. Exactly the person that will not.
...but can't anybody produce 'bio-weaponry' by purchasing used blankets at a thriftstore and infecting them with smallpox? Why is it 'new' that eBay can be used? Why would it cost $10,000?
I think I know enough about this to give a rough realistic estimate of costs or the research and development side. Of course, you could do something for 10K, but not a whole lot. If you were head of a secret program in Iraq or China, you could have a nice biowarfare facility for a captial cost of around 5 - 10million; operating costs would be salary for 15 scientists, plus equipment and supplies at about50K/yr/scientist.
The problem is that a lot of the specialized stuff you need is sold by only a few vendors, so you would have a lot of costs in hiding purcahses. (sort of like Saddam's aluminium tubes [for artillery] - cheap on the open market, $$ with the double agents).
The point of this is, it does not really matter if the cost is 10K or 10 million or even 100 MM - for a govt agency, it is about the same. So basically, almost any country in the world could setup a nice little building somewhere, staff it, and start looking into making thier own little virus or anthrax or whatever.
I don't know what scaleup and delivery systems cost - that is another issue. A medium size (100 liter) fermentor is not that exspensive; certainly not doulbe the RnD budget. If you need rockets or something to deliver the agents across oceans, that is probably the most exspensive and difficult part of hte whole operation
While a sphere would be the most efficient form for a critical mass, it isn't a necessity for a gun-type weapon.
AFAIK, the assembly dropped on Hiroshima consisted of a simple tapered cylindrical slug that was fired into a ring-shaped target. Well within the capabilities of any industrial machine shop.
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
As was mentioned, the "Easy" part of the NBC triangle had already been deployed in Japan by Aum Shinrikyo. Oddly, the "Hard" part had already been deployed there 2x circa 1945.
A gov't at great expense & a group of fanatics at an expense that a gov't would not notice, make for quite a range of possibles.
Yes, the article can be seen as leading, but it's not that much of a reach. Bioweaponry has been deployed on "small" scales both intentionally & by accident already.
(WWII Soviets, Japanese & Germans all did some "field work" reportedly & the accident the Soviets had w/anthrax was also notable. The "fun with food poisioning" event should also be noted, even if only at the salad bar)
This article should prob been seen as a "poke" to try to get someone's attention and remind them to try to think outside the box sometimes.
(getting some to actually think in some cases would be newsworthy tho)
You can get a gene sequencer on eBay for $500 at the moment. And I was looking forward to poking at it lying for not being available under such an obvoius name.....
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
So here's a question.. What about creating a virus that affects men who share a certain percentage of patrilineal DNA, that is, of a bloodline with a known patriarch?
Pick an enemy, dig up their great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, create the virus, and release it using UAVs...
Al-Qaeda Operations, how may I direct your
call?
Sincerely,
Kilgore Trout, C.E.O.
I'd like a bio-weapon that causes sustained uncontrollable noisome flatulence, but otherwise doesn't seriously harm the target. We'll call it Operation Air Bear.
Not unless the line has a particular genetic feature which does not exist outside that line. Which is nearly impossible.
Also, you can't build a virus such that it will only work on individuals with certain DNA. Only gene expressions will determine whether the disease gets access to the body. Which means that, even given that your patrilineal line, which also becomes matrilineal after the first generation, by the way - Fun fact: There is only one expressive gene on the Y chromosome, which activates the production of natal testosterone which triggers all the physical changes needed to produce a male child. All male-dominant genetic expressions, like MPB and color-blindness, are inherited from the mother. - had a completely unique DNA sequence that actually did something, any other person that happened to have different DNA expressing the key trait would be subject to the disease as well.
Also, this disease would affect so few people that it would die off rather quickly. You'd probably have to track down each individual and administer it to them personally, at which point you might as well just shoot them.
Sounds like a great plot device, though.
A strain of paranoid prevention can be worse than the disease, whate'er the intention.
1) While yes, is IS possible to make viruses that target specific ethnic groups, there is no 100% method.
2) Any virus designed for one ethnic group can easily mutate (or be changed on purpose for vengence) to attack another.
Net result, is this weapon, while incredibally deadly, will almost certainly also attack your own friends, loved ones, etc.
While there exists many suicidal individuals that can be recruited to do-and-die, as of yet there is no real masochist group that has scientists smart enough and willing to create a virus that will almost certainly do as much damage to their own people and allies as it would to their enemeies.
Even the worst Hamas/Al Quaeda group does not want to risk killing their own brothers/sisters.
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Not that the blankets will work even if you get some ordinary virus to work with. I know, I know, the whole native American thing, but really that history is doubtful. It's unclear whether Jeffrey Amherst's plan to send out infected blankets was at all effective. Smallpox was already epidemic among native Americans.
Smallpox isn't the most robust virus. In lab conditions, 90% of aerosolized smallpox -- the delivery method of the Soviet stockpile -- dies within 24 hours. With some exposure to UV light it does more poorly. Blankets just wouldn't be your best choice.
So you don't have the virus, and you don't have an effective delivery system.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Sorry, but Carter Burke's line "worth millions to the BioWeapons division" immediately popped into my head.
If the real small time terrorist had any brain power, and a total disregard for life, they would have had chemical/biological weapons long ago. It only takes a determination to create them and a few textbooks. I can't see how using such weapons would benefit the DIY terrorist's cause though. The desire to possess such weapons is generally an act of insanity, and the will to use them an act of a psychotic. The most worrying terrorist organisations though are states like the USA, and invader/occupier regimes like Israel that continue to develop new weapons of mass destruction (mini nukes in the case of the USA, and racially targeted biological weapons in the case of apartheid Israel). At least these regimes are (at least somewhat) constrained by international opinion to more mundane acts of daily direct brutality, although given the chance, a racist regime like Israel would happily finish the ethnic cleansing job with biological weapons.
Am I the only one who doesn't think that developing bigger and better ways to kill people is an "Advance", but in fact a step backwards?
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