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Islamic State "Laptop of Doom" Hints At Plots Including Bubonic Plague
Foreign Policy has an in-depth look at the contents of a laptop reportedly seized this year in Syria from a stronghold of the organization now known as the Islamic State, and described as belonging to a Tunisian national ("Muhammed S."). The "hidden documents" folder of the machine, says the report, contained a vast number of documents, including ones describing and justifying biological weapons:
The laptop's contents turn out to be a treasure trove of documents that provide ideological justifications for jihadi organizations -- and practical training on how to carry out the Islamic State's deadly campaigns. They include videos of Osama bin Laden, manuals on how to make bombs, instructions for stealing cars, and lessons on how to use disguises in order to avoid getting arrested while traveling from one jihadi hot spot to another. ... The information on the laptop makes clear that its owner is a Tunisian national named Muhammed S. who joined ISIS in Syria and who studied chemistry and physics at two universities in Tunisia's northeast. Even more disturbing is how he planned to use that education: The ISIS laptop contains a 19-page document in Arabic on how to develop biological weapons and how to weaponize the bubonic plague from infected animals. ... "The advantage of biological weapons is that they do not cost a lot of money, while the human casualties can be huge," the document states.
I'm anything but a conspiracy nut. I think we landed on the moon, that Oswald shot Kennedy, and that Icke is a con man. But the timing on this is seriously convenient. We want to attack ISIS, and *poof*, evidence suddenly shows up that ISIS has weapons of mass destruction. It's enough to make me consider making tinfoil hats.
During the second Sino-Japanese war (1937 to 1941) the Imperial Japanese military frequently used both chemical and biological weapons against the Chinese, to no really marked effect. Toxic gas attacks only really work on an unprepared enemy, and take some time for the agent to spread out enough to be useful. Biological warfare is even less predictable; the Japanese military during this war frequently suffered quite large casualties in their own army as a result of biological agents blowing back onto them. Civilian casualties were large, but the military effect of all of this was quite small and you have to remember that this was conducted in a time before widespread countermeasures were available.
These days, attempting to breed up the hundreds of millions of fleas needed to spread plague then trying to contaminate them, and subsequently disperse said fleas in the environment would be a huge job, and largely futile given the fairly low amounts of insecticides needed to kill off fleas. Spraying large areas of towns and cities with chemicals like deltamethrin would of course not be particularly popular, but it would stop a flea attack dead.
Similarly weaponising anthrax is not a job for the faint-hearted, nor for the inexperienced or indeed anyone who has not got access to the antibiotics needed to treat an infection with this disease. As an aside, weaponised anthrax was the stand-by weapon devised in World War 2 for if the D-day invasions had not worked; the Scottish island of Gruinard was the original test target, and was only decontaminated by soaking the entire landmass in a seawater-formaldehyde mixture. The problem here once more is that a weaponised biological powder is hard to disperse, and ridiculously easy to counter as commonly-available HEPA-grade masks will keep it out of a person's lungs.
The final point to remember with terrorism is one of motivation. Terror attacks only work to achieve the terrorists' aims if they are very carefully targetted and choreographed along with a political campaign, to make them look like attacks against a mutually-disliked foe. This is why the IRA in Eire and Northern Ireland are largely silent these days; they changed from being seen as freedom fighters to being thought of as a general blight upon the entire society. Islamic terrorists are already being cast as such a blight, and never really get the chance to put over their side of the argument.