Gawd, didn’t any of you guys watch “The Rock”? It tells ya all you need to know about being exposed to toxic gas. Everyone should just carry adrenaline in a big ol’ syringe with a ten inch needle…all you would have to when exposed is just stab yourself in the heart. 
Or was it atropine? oh well, I get all those heart meds mixed up…lol
Plutonium dust would be even more dangerous. The lethal dose is incredibly small, and the stuff persists forever. If it were sprayed over a city not only would it kill millions, but I can’t even begin to imagine how you could possibly clean it up.
The World Health Organization released a report Monday about the hazards of bioterrorism.
You can read the highlights at
http://salon.com/news/wire/2001/09/24/bioterror/index.html
The WHO still thinks that there is just as great a danger from naturally occurring diseases and the world can’t spend all its resources guarding against such matters when some of us could still just as easily fall victim to a 1919-like flu epidemic.
In an effort to keep me from throwing myself out the window last week, mr. jarbaby forwarded me any sort of “good news” articles he could find because biochemical"nickcagean"warfare is all I can think about.
So here’s something from the Wall Street Journal:
I hope this calms some fears. I know it did for me.
And while we mourn all of our losses here in the US because of the terrorist attacks, remember that over 41,000 people died in automobile accidents in 2000 and nearly 17,000 of those were attributed to DUIs. (Figures from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)
We do live in a dangerous world, but much of the danger is still of our own making. This is not to say that the fear of bioterrorism is not to be taken seriously, but we should be just as careful about getting behind the wheel of a car.
Yes, but automobiles cannot kill several hundred thousand individuals in one attack.
Jarbabyj, two points:
- We are at the dawn of a new era of bio/chemical terrorism, making comparisons with past/present menaces not very meaningful.
- The terrorists (Aum) in the Tokyo subway attack were hacks. More sophisticated modes of delivery could have killed countless thousands. Moreover, biochemical agents can be genetically manipulated to make them far more deadly
–and far more resistant to treatment.
Sam, of course, you are correct about plutonium, though some experts (no cites, sorry) are starting to conclude it may be far less deadly than once believed. Apparently, some military site in Colorado is supposedly contaminated with the stuff–including the HVAC ducts–as is the top soil in a huge radius around the plant. At least, that’s what the media says.
At the risk of turning this into a GD, the end result of getting killed by a drunk driver or sprayed by anthrax from supergenius terrorist is still likely to be the same. You will still be dead. And the average person has at least some semblance of control over preventing his/her death in an automobile accident.
SuperLorie:
The antidote for some chemical agents is Atropine, but it is not injected into the heart, but a muscle. Preferably the large thigh muscle (with an auto-injector). We had those in our gas kits during the Gulf War in Israel.
I also noticed in Tsunami’s post that treatment of post-symptomatic Anthrax is impossible. Does that mean that if there was an obvious terror attack and the agent was immediately identified as anthrax that if medicine (BIG IF) could be distributed to all possibly affected individuals that the deaths would be significantly lower or avoided entirely?
Just curious.
I agree about the GD aspects, BobT, but I’m looking at trends. Once the terrorists refine their bio/chemical warfare techniques–and they absolutely will–the resulting mortality rates may easily make 20,000 deaths per year in vehicular accidents look comparatively tame. There is also the sheer terror factor of psychological warfare. Widespread attacks could cause our economy to grind to a halt.
TQMshirt, I am not a biological warfare specialist, but the website I consulted says that the symptomology of anthrax infection mimic those of the common cold. Once a diagnosis is made, it’s too late. But then, given the lethality of inhalation anthrax, it’s too late once you acquire it.
Time will tell.
So, I guess it’s the Apocalypse for all of us.
The modern cropduster is a highly sophisticated airplane, and schools where cropdusting is taught employ complex simulators and intensive training. Because of the equipment required to spray, they have different flight characteristics than other airplanes. A pilot might be quite skilled in convential planes but find a cropduster difficult or impossible to fly successfully. It’s not something you rent to just practice on, particularly if it’s other airplanes you want to fly. That’s why the bad guys were looking into buying a crop duster, not renting one - it’s not like a Cessna where you find them everywhere for rent by the hour. It would be like renting a cherry-picker truck or construction crane to drive your family down to disneyland. These are strictly industrial machines.
There are still a few old-fashioned cropdusters out there, modified planes instead of those built specifically for the task. They have considerably less range (and cropdusters have a very small range anyway - they’re for lifting and dropping chemical loads, not transcontinental flights), carry less payload, and, again, the extra equipment alters their flight characteristics.
As far as using them for an attack - well, they ARE designed to spread chemicals from the air. But such spraying requires extremely low-level flight, which would certainly be noticed by those on the ground. Then there is the problem of delivering a lethal dose to a large area. If you’re over a city, and most people are inside, you’ll spray the outside of the buildings while those inside may escape the effects of what you’re doing.
It’s certainly possible for mayhem to be created this way, but it’s not necessarily easy. Me, I’d worry more about turning a hazmat hauler into a truck bomb.
If it makes folks feel better - cropduster owners are taking extra precautions such as removing essential items from the interior to render them impossible to start when leaving them parked, installing propellor locks that must be removed prior to starting, alarms on hangars storing the planes, and physically blocking the hangar doors with heavy machinery, all of which will make these much harder to steal. Meanwhile, work is underway to set up new rules for flying them, so air traffic control will be informed of legtimate flights and keep an eye on them. That way, if someone leaves the cotton or cornfield and starts heading to a population center they’ll have some warning. Is this going to prevent all possibility of a disater? Well, no, but it’s less likely than a month ago.
An LA Times article today pointed out that a crop dusting plane is particularly hard to fly because of the location of its landing gear which requires a special touch to keep the plane level.
Also, the nozzles on the majority of cropdusters wouldn’t be effective for spreading germs. Some nozzles could be used however (the ones used for spreading malathion for example), but now the government has put very stringent restrictions on their sale.
I think that it would be pretty hard to buy a cropduster now without undergoing an extensive background check.
But again, nothing is perfect and the determined suicide terrorist will probably figure out a way to do what he wants to do.