I’m not sure this is exactly on topic, but it’s close.
About a year and a half ago here in Atlanta there was a rash of “bioterrorist attacks”. Somebody (probably some lone crackpot) sent letters to all the federal buildings reading “you have just been exposed to anthrax” and containing a white dust.
Blocks of the city were evacuated. Traffic shut down. They called in the CDC guys in class IV environmental suits to investigate. The city was a mess for about half a day.
The dust in the envelopes turned out to be nothing. There never was any actual anthrax, but the terrorist managed to snarl up the city pretty good. I guess that was what he wanted in the first place.
Somehow I doubt that isolating and making large quantities of even a common biological agent (botulin?) while not giving yourself a lethal dosage along the way is not as cheap, quick and easy as making a regular bomb.
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Also as said, the two don’t exactly cause the same damage: the damage caused by regular explosives is very graphic while the damage caused by biological agents would be very expensive. - MC
It’s my understanding that even if you infected New York with Bubonic Plague, it wouldn’t be a big deal. People died in Europe because no one knew jack about medicine and were treating plague victims by keeping them in a dark musty room full of herbs and demon scaring masks instead of opening a few windows, changing the bedding and giving them some orange juice and chicken soup. Modern medicine makes the bubonic plague a non-threat and you get a few cases of it reported by the CDC out west per year and that’s the lot of it.
As was postulated, I expect the biggest problem with a far spreading biological agent is that it’s back in your country before the night’s out. A short range, immediate effect biological agent wouldn’t be any more effective than blowing up a building in terms of people killed.
This CDC site claims that modern medical treatments can get the mortality rate for plague down to 10-15%. That’s still 3 times the death rate for cows with hoof and mouth disease; and look what a ruckus that caused in Britain. We may not have many fleas here in the states, but plague likes to go pneumonic in the summertime. I don’t think a lot of complacency is warranted here.
Squink, we have no shortage of fleas in the States. Just ask a pet owner. What we don’t have is large numbers of people who are chronically bitten by fleas, which is the sticking point.
For plague to kill massive numbers of people in a modernized country it would have to
a) take the form of pneumonic plague, hence avoiding the rat-flea-human chain,
b) strike in a densely populated area, and
c) go undiagnosed long enough for the disease to spread.
So far as I know, there’s no way to force plague to take the pneumonic form, and if large (and by large I mean “more than 100”) numbers of people are dying of a fast-acting disease in a small urbanized area, it’s gonna get diagnosed fast.
I agree with MC and Beeblebrox – terrorists looking to cause a commotion have far cheaper and more certain methods available.
Wumpus,
I agree that plague is a very poor choice as a bioweapon. That also makes it a poor choice for a discussion of the efficacy of biological agents in general.
I did not mean to suggest that plague would make a great weapon, only that it could still be used as one; even with all the advances in modern medicine.
That old saw to the effect that: “only six people in the world are smart enough to develop and deliver effective biological warfare agents” is becoming less true with each passing year.
Thanks for the links Cervaise. Cecil certainly hedges his bets nicely !
Sofa King: Terrorists, like most people in real life, lack any sense of style. Which is why Hollywood always tarts them up. Hollywood tells us that terrorists are sleek Eurotrash in tailored suits who think up fabulously baroque plans; in reality, terrorists are a couple of yahoos with a fertilizer bomb in a rent-a-van.
While we’re taling about baroque terrorist plans, I want to see a terrorist who sets off an EMP device on Wall Street. Not only would it throw Manhattan into chaos, it would wreak havoc with the world financial system, muahahahaha!
Have you got the straight dope on who Bin-Laden and his buddy rent their van from ? Maybe we could like stake the place out and catch the scumbag when he goes to get his wheels !
You seem to be over generalizing a bit there. Doesn’t that cause some distortion in your assessment of how serious a threat we face from bioweapons ? IMHO we could easily face a problem of a whole nother magnitude if even a single terrorist group were able to scrape together the cash needed to purchase their own van. With something like that they could probably even get a contract with the British government to ship old surplus cow carcasses to the Ukraine for safe disposal…
The Russian government has warehouses full of rusting biochemical weapons, due to be decommissioned, only they can’t afford it. If you were wealthy and evil enough, you’d just bribe some officials and buy some wholesale.