Useful Fools

While much attention has been paid to nuclear and chemical weapons, the biggest terrorist threat to the United States is biological. It is not surprising that the government says little about this, because at this time there is not much we can do about it.

Read on….

Biological weapons - specifically contagious biological agents - are the only weapons that can be used by small numbers of terrorists to attack the entire country (or world).

A nuclear weapon is a horrible thing, but is very hard to make and deploy, and limited in the destruction it can cause (for details, see this summary). Radiological dispersion devices are even less destructive, and would achieve their main effect by inflaming the irrational radiation paranoia firmly established in the west.

Likewise, chemical weapons are powerful and deadly, but are even more limited in the geographical extent of their damage - they only affect those who are directly exposed. The same applies to non-contagious or slightly contagious biological weapons (botulin toxin, anthrax, ricin).

Unfortunately, contagious biological agents “just keep on giving.” Unless they are contained, they eventually spread to the entire population. The most dangerous known such agent today is smallpox (variola major). Smallpox kills 20-40% of those infected. It has no treatment - it is a virus and no drugs are known to be effective against it (although modern antivirals *may* have some effect). It is easily genetically modified to be more virulent (for example, Russian scientists published a scientific paper showing the addition the gene for an Ebola toxin). Because there are many kinds of pox viruses in nature, kits for adding genes to pox viruses are available for a few thousand dollars!

The Soviet Union produced enormous quantities of smallpox and deployed it on ICBM warheads targeted at the US. Even today they have failed to adequately account for the agents and prevent access to certain facilities which, in the past, produced biological agents.

An outbreak of smallpox occurred in Iraq after the Baath Party (Saddam’s political organization) had taken control, and it is extremely likely that some samples were preserved (it used to be common practice for medical organizations to keep smallpox samples frozen in refrigerators). Furthermore, tens of thousands of scientists and technicians were trained in the USSR in the weaponization of smallpox, and many of these are now out of work.

The North Korean government (DPRK) was in power long before wild smallpox was eradicated. It is thus reasonable to assume that they also have the smallpox virus and have weaponized it. There is also credible evidence that the USSR provided smallpox to the DPRK.

The big question today is whether Iraq will attempt to use smallpox as a “doomsday weapon.” We cannot allow ourselves to be deterred by that possibility, but we have to recognize the risk. The next few months may be far more “interesting” (in the Chinese proverb sense of the word) than we can imagine!